The National Interest

 For most of my life, I firmly believed that one could never err on the side of pleading for "restraint" in American foreign policy. I figured the self-interest of the nation was so obviously on the side of aggrandizement that no one needed to advocate further for that position. The political system would always select for the "hawks" and those bent on advancing U.S. power; so the "responsibility of intellectuals," in the Chomskyan sense, would always be to try to counteract this drive. 

What I didn't pay enough attention to was the possibility that there might be people whose personal self-interest was so at odds with the interests of the country that they might actually succeed in shifting our foreign policy toward the goals of our country's adversaries. I gave short shrift, I fear, to the risks posed by that group of individuals, whom the military historian Edward Creasy dubbed: "a body of intriguing malcontents, who were eager to purchase a party-triumph at the expense of a national disaster."

In short, I had been blind to the possibility that the United States too might have its Quislings and collaborators. 

Now, however, it's no longer possible to ignore this fact. We have a cohort of men within a stone's throw of power who genuinely seem to despise this country and its institutions, and openly favor the interests and ambitions of our authoritarian adversaries. In just the past few weeks, we heard new revelations that Trump communicated in secret with Vladimir Putin after leaving office; and that his biggest financial backer, Elon Musk, has conducted his own parallel foreign policy with the Russian dictator too. 

Tucker Carlson, meanwhile—who is constantly invited to Trump rallies—has made no secret at all of his affinity for Putin's regime. He has also gone out of his way to enthusiastically support our nation's past totalitarian adversaries too. Has everyone already forgotten Tucker's summertime foray into Hitler apologetics and Holocaust denialism? 

Trump is also more or less openly hinting that he will hand Ukraine to Russia and Taiwan to the People's Republic of China. The whole plan is nakedly to sell out our democratic allies and to advance the interests of rival powers that directly conflict with our nation's own. And he's gotten a major U.S. political party—traditionally the party of the "hawks" at that—to sign up for it. 

Who could have thought it would be so easy? What 1930s fellow travelers and KGB agents failed to do for decades, Trump, Tucker, and Elon have pulled off in a fraction of that time. It turned out all it took was to drape oneself in the flag, sing a few Lee Greenwood lyrics, and sprinkle in a bit of xenophobia and white nationalism—and suddenly millions of self-described "patriots" the nation over will get on board with the agenda of handing the country (and the world) over to Putin and Xi Jinping. 

Why are they doing this to us? For the same reason Creasy mentions: their personal and party interests conflict with those of the nation as a whole. So they are placing those interests above country. Elon Musk wants to preserve access to China's markets, perhaps. Tucker probably enjoys the support he receives from Russian troll farms in boosting his content. And Trump will do anything to get back into office so he can dismiss the pending Justice Department investigations into his malfeasance. 

They are indeed a group of "intriguing malcontents [...] eager to purchase a party-triumph at the expense of national disaster." 

What a "parcel of rogues in a nation," as Robert Burns would put it. We are bought and sold for Putin's gold—what a parcel of rogues indeed!