With this in mind, I would like to consider what type of ordering principle arises once we have conceived of a political allegiance that rises above the familiar individual of the anarchic order, but stops only half as high as the celestial dome of unfamiliar humanity. Here, at the inflection point between anarchy and empire, one finds the idea of the independent national state. And here one finds a third ordering principle whose root is in the moral order, and the one that in my view is the best and most noble of the three: The principle of national liberty.

The principle of national liberty offers a nation with an evident capacity for self-government, and with the ability to withstand the siren songs of empire and anarchy, an opportunity to live according to its own understanding. Such a principle therefore conceives of the political order as one in which each such nation is left to pursue its own unique purposes in its own national state. The principle of national liberty thus takes as its point of departure that which is vital and constructive in each of the two principles with which it competes: From the principle of empire, it takes the ideal of direct allegiance to the abstraction of the state rather than to familiar men—the practical effect of which is a state monopoly on arms and law such as admits the possibility of domestic peace; and the possibility of living under an abstracted authority that is no longer connected to particular individuals by ties of familiarity, this being the most important condition for establishing impartial justice. From the principle of anarchy, it retains the ideal of a ruler sensitive to the actual interests and aspirations of specific persons living in a particular society; it is this that finds expression in the aim of government over a single nation only—an aim that in effect proscribes foreign conquest, and for the first time permits a conception of the liberty of other nations as a potential good in itself. Indeed, these same two components, exclusive government over a given nation, and the limitation of government to a particular nation, are the essential prerequisites of national liberty; and together they constitute the ideal of national sovereignty.¹⁵

We are accustomed to thinking of the political good in Platonic terms, as the quest for the good regime. But the foregoing suggests that the possibility of establishing the good regime may itself require the prior establishment of a tolerable political order, which can serve as the foundation for such a regime. For where the imperial and anarchic principles continue their rule, the good regime—and in particular the institutions that we today associate with free government—is impossible. A state which is not devoted to the principle of governing a certain nation alone, but which instead entertains thoughts of unification with various unfamiliar nations, is ultimately a conquering state, whose energies are constantly dispersed in the emergencies of extension and domination. Such a state tends to see before it imperial interests that are increasingly detached from the reality in which each of its subject peoples lives, so that it is necessarily lacking a proper concern for the troubles of any actual people. Consequently, this type of regime is hardly ever conducive to developing truly representative government or equality before the law, not to speak of a decent respect for liberty. Moreover, the imperial state, even when it is not engaged in overt conquest, can never restrain itself from menacing other governments, undermining their legitimacy and traditions, and the integrity of their rule, the better to continue on its course of extension the moment it sees an opportunity to do so.

In the same manner, we find that the premise of personal loyalty to familiar men, which is at the heart of all anarchic order, is in effect a principle of sedition and resistance against every impersonal government, whose role must of necessity be to replace the corruption of individual loyalties with a concern for true justice and the good of the people as a whole. In this, the anarchic principle is inevitably at war with the institutions of free government, as these can only develop where loyalty to individuals has been superseded as the ordering principle of public life by loyalty to all members of an entire people. Thus the principle of anarchy is found not only to be an impossibly poor soil for the development of the institutions of a free people, but also, like the principle of empire, to undermine these wherever they are found. 

Taken together, these observations suggest that free institutions can develop only under a particular kind of political order: Such institutions must come into being, if they are to come into being at all, in that space that exists between the transition of a people from personal to national loyalties, on the one hand; and their acceptance of imperial assumptions for themselves, on the other. It is here, and only here, that one finds the possibility of political life ordered in accord with the principle of national sovereignty, and it is this principle that holds the key to the establishment of the good regime and of free government generally.

Upon examination, we find that the relationship between the principle of national sovereignty and the existence of free institutions stems from five advantages which national sovereignty enjoys over its rival ordering principles: First, as suggested above, the order of the national state is superior to that of anarchic order in that it renounces the corruption of loyalty to individuals, and bases the state on the loyalty of each individual to the abstraction of the nation. This substitution of a very great body of individuals as the principal object of political loyalty permits the suppression of combat as a legitimate means of resolving conflict within an extended territory, and therefore the banishment of war to the periphery of experience; that is, war ceases to be an instrument for the defense of petty local interest, and becomes an instrument for the defense of the common sphere of domestic order and peace alone. Similarly, it is this abstraction of the nation that permits the enforcement of order and justice to be removed from the realm of personal commitment and prejudice. These two developments, the depersonalization of warfare and the depersonalization of justice, are the bedrock of the national state that separates it from the feudal or anarchic order. Upon these it is possible to build a rigorous understanding of a common interest and therefore sentiments of solidarity with a broad public. And these, in turn, permit the emergence of doctrines of the rule of law, representative government, and civil equality.

Second, the national state differs from the imperial state in being premised on the principle of national liberty. As such, it tends to disdain conquest, preferring to allow neighboring peoples to govern themselves in peace so long as they do not pose a threat to its citizens—a revision in the nature of the state that permits the emergence of the intuition that the state has fulfilled its principal worldly mission if it succeeds in redeeming the one people it represents and governs; and that it is absolved of the responsibility of bringing the remainder of mankind under its grace. To the degree, then, that national liberty and sovereignty can become the common ordering principle of an order of states, each can, for the first time, find itself secure in its pursuit of domestic tranquility, as a result of the common renunciation by each civilized national state of its need to be the liberator and conqueror of all the others.

Third, it is the tendency of the sovereign national state to accept the idea that each nation will have, by virtue of the principle of national liberty and sovereignty, the ability over time to develop its own unique purposes, traditions, and institutions worthy of being honored by others. By contrast, it was the mark of the revolutionary imperialism of Napoleon that he could countenance no regimes not modeled after his own, with the result, for example, that even so ancient an institution as the Venetian city-state, whose traditions had survived for more than a thousand years, was to him no more than an abomination that had to be destroyed utterly. Echoes of this same intolerance can be heard, as well, in certain circles in the emerging European Union, for whom the idea of limiting their sovereignty and law to any specific group of nations does not seem to appear nearly so excellent a principle as their indefinite extension for the good of humanity.¹⁶ In opposition to such a view, the principle of the national state entails recognition of the legitimacy of the unique constitutions and traditions of other nations, and this in turn provides the ground for relations of true peace and mutual respect.

Fourth, the national state, by virtue of its proximity to other sovereign states with which it is in natural competition for influence, wealth, and glory, must constantly be on its guard against losing the sympathies of its most able citizens, who may readily become critical of the state, or even find a home elsewhere, should the government prove too oppressive. Thus there exists in the order of sovereign states a significant check on tyranny that does not exist in the imperial state: That which arises from the fear of rulers lest their state begin to appear inferior in comparison to neighboring states, thereby driving wealth and talent that might have been their own into the hands of their rivals, while winning for them opposition at home and humiliation abroad.