The Spiritual Good of De-Globalization

I do not rue the end of globalization. As I note above, globalization undermined the economic conditions of solidarity throughout the West, especially the sense of shared weal and woe that binds elites to the masses. It has also encouraged spiritual disabilities: a soulless technocratic mentality and cocksure arrogance (“I’m on the side of history!”) paradoxically combined with dispirited complacency. Today’s turn toward reconsolidation will bring its own troubles. But perhaps it will also offer remedies.

The American spirit often nurtures a utopian hubris. In 1782, the heady year after Lord Cornwallis’s defeat at the Battle of Yorktown, Benjamin Franklin’s friend, the Pennsylvania luminary Charles Thomson, drew a phrase from Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue to describe the American project: novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. The phrase suggests a new beginning destined to change the entire world.

The end of the Cold War and ascendancy of American power gave free rein to this American conceit. The impulse may have been noble. To seek to share one’s inheritance is a generous gesture, as long as it’s not imposed. But the dangers soon became evident. “Thou shalt be a democracy” didn’t always work. It turns out that other peoples have different ideas about how to live. Worse, the global project threatened to eclipse the American experiment. As Christopher Caldwell observes in his review of Angela Merkel’s memoir (“Merkel’s Country”), a progressive mindset too easily shifts loyalty away from a particular nation and directs it toward the larger world aborning, one purportedly attuned to higher ideals. In recent decades, a hoped-for empire, one of material prosperity and universal human rights, superseded the American republic as the ideal, at least in the minds of some.

The end of the unipolar moment returns the ­United States to a more sober frame of mind, one aware of the fragility of any shared enterprise. In his Gettysburg ­Address, Abraham Lincoln endorsed the American creed of liberty and equality, principles that transcend history and place. But he spoke his words during a terrible war. He evoked a place and a history. Our nation’s great principles were made real by the courageous men who signed the Declaration of Independence. The task ­Lincoln assigns his listeners is to preserve “that nation.” In 1863 and 2025, “that nation” was and is not a Platonic Republic or imperium of human rights. It was and is our nation, the one fought for at Concord and founded in Philadelphia. Lincoln calls us to put our shoulders to the task of ensuring that this nation and its form of government “shall not perish from the earth.” 

The vocation of preservation and renewal has ­reemerged. It will define the politics of the West in the coming years. To say that populism throughout the West answers to the shall-not-perish imperative is a simplification of complex political realities. But it’s not a false characterization.

I coined a phrase to capture the turn toward reconsolidation: “the return of the strong gods.” Some of my friends prefer more straightforward terms, such as “national conservatism.” Whatever our favored label, a turn away from globalization and its ideological justifications is underway, not because of “nativism,” love of “authoritarianism,” or some other atavistic vice, but because globalism has failed. Moreover, the return of the strong gods will not betray America’s native idealism. On the contrary, it will better serve our exalted sense of national destiny by renewing the foundations of our power and prosperity. 

From the very outset, many religious figures and political leaders have spoken of America as the “new Israel.” Lincoln was a better theologian, knowing that we are, at best, an “almost chosen” people. Thus qualified, the biblical analogy offers helpful illumination. In the Old Testament, God does not promise a world empire to his chosen people. Rather, they are to be a light unto the nations, a role requiring covenant faithfulness, not dominion. Perhaps the end of the end of history will help us shed the illusion that Americans in the early twenty-first century possess the final and perfect political wisdom—or the supreme power—to govern the world. We need to recover a smidgen of biblical wisdom: We serve the world by preserving this nation and renewing our covenant, which is a covenant with one another as fellow citizens, not with “humanity” or some other abstraction.

Agon is a Greek word that means conflict. Globalization was alluring because it promised peace and prosperity. But agon also means contest, struggle, and trial, which are necessary for human ­beings to attain nobility, excellence, and transcendence. God gives us crosses to bear, not to burden us with pointless suffering, but to awaken us from the slumber of a complacent, me-centered existence. 

Let no reader imagine that I wish for war. It is my hope that wise leaders will navigate the coming challenges with prudence. But we must acknowledge the spiritual benefits of living in a world with serious consequences. Those who visit Israel often note the vigor and vitality stimulated by the undeniable reality of that country’s enemies. Again, this is not to hope for enemies. A fool hastens conflagration, thinking it redemptive. But we should not blind ourselves to the spiritual benefits of escaping the illusions of a post-political, post-national utopia.

Alexandre Kojève prophesied the triumph of the universal and homogeneous state, an empire of technocracy. Perhaps God in his providence is dashing the globalist’s hopes for a world knit together by commerce, pacified by plenty, and managed by experts. The emerging world order of great powers and spheres of influence (or whatever terms seem appropriate) will bring greater tensions, perhaps even larger conflicts. Let us seek to moderate and blunt them. But we should welcome the fact that these challenges will test our loyalties and resolve, not just as nations, but as individuals with roles to play, however minor. That test, that agon, is a blessing, not a curse.