美國「國家利益」究竟是什麼意思？
national interest
What does US ‘national interest’ really mean?
無國界的未來,國家利益,全球化,普世價值,
在公共空間中被人民公開爭論、重新定義。
全球化曾試圖替它下定義，但失敗了。如今，它正在回到自身應有的尺度與位置。
分析｜華府政治
克里斯多福・莫特（Christopher Mott）
2025年11月24日
在外交政策的論述中，「國家利益」這個詞幾乎被無所不在地使用，彷彿它有著明確而絕對的定義。
多數辯論——特別是關於是否改變外交策略，或贊成／反對某種經濟或軍事介入時——都會訴諸這個詞，讓它成為自己主張的正當性依據。
但「國家利益」究竟是什麼？
毫不意外地，這其實和其他社會科學概念一樣具爭議性。不同的人會基於不同因素給出不同的理解——例如他們來自哪個地區、對國家政府的概念是什麼。
保守派可能將其視為保護文化不受外來影響；
左翼則可能認為它由階級利益組成，由統治階級為內外自利而定義與操控。
自由派中間路線則更清楚：他們把國家利益視為推動全球市場與價值的一種方式。
在現實主義中——這種政治哲學視外交為在無政府的世界中，以最低限度的意識形態束縛，尋求生存與繁榮的實用之道——「國家利益」反而被刻意保持模糊。因為它承認：國內政治與國際政治是兩個不同的領域，在各社會之間差異甚大。
然而，這並不意味著該概念不值得探討，特別是對於那些在數十年耗損性的干預之後，希望美國及其盟友採取更克制外交的人而言。
在《國家利益：全球化之後的政治》 “The National Interest: Politics After Globalization”,一書中，倫敦大學學院副教授暨作家菲利普・康里夫（Philip Cunliffe）主張：
國家利益的模糊性本身就是一種力量。他從歷史上「國家理性」（raison d’etat）的演變取材——從馬基雅維利、黎塞留紅衣主教等人開始——指出法國大革命、美洲獨立戰爭、啟蒙時代的諸多事件，讓「國家利益」變成人民爭論的場域。
康里夫認為，這並不導向「唯一正確的國家利益概念」，而是讓模糊本身成為恢復主權、讓人民重新掌控國家方向的關鍵。國家透過公開辯論、集體探索，決定什麼是共同利益的最佳追求方式。
這不僅是民主且包容的過程，也承認人類知識與能力的局限。他引用冷戰時期著名政策規劃家喬治・凱南（George Kennan）的名言：
「謙卑地承認我們所真正能理解的，只有我們自己的國家利益。」
康里夫據此論證，維護國家利益並非純粹的自私行為，而是社群在沒有可訴諸的全球權威下，集體以謙遜態度導航無序世界的方式。
透過從一般公民可理解、並與其地方情境相關的議題出發，外交政策辯論可以重新回到人民手中，而不再只是全球化時代逐漸脫離土地的精英們的專屬遊戲。
在冷戰後的全球化時代，對國家利益的地域性理解之所以消失，不只是科技變遷，而是政策階層間的一種意識形態時尚——他們太過急於擁抱「無國界的未來」。康里夫直接寫道：
「所有分配性的衝突都會被全球經濟成長的浪潮愉快地沖刷殆盡，而政治將被倫理、法律與技術專業所取代。全球化解決了國家利益的難題，因為事實證明，我們的國家利益與其他人一模一樣：全球成長與整合。因此，自由派聲稱人民的利益已被滿足——卻從未必須說清楚什麼是國家利益、它從何而來、又如何被實現。」
這場自詡為進步的運動，其實把外交討論的公共性從整個社會奪走，把定義權更加集中在少數既全球化又知識貧乏的菁英手中。
這導致了以「普世價值」或對抗抽象概念為名的一系列衝突——沒有明確勝敗點，意味著可以無止境拖下去，代價卻持續由一般人承擔。在美國，這種趨勢甚至讓國家利益與全人類的命運混為一談：華盛頓共識的外交官們相信，人類物種的未來取決於美國將政治、社會、經濟規範輸出全球的能力。
然而，自詡為進步源頭的美國本身，卻因去工業化與公共基礎建設投資萎縮，而讓越來越多人民被拋在後面，成為全球化金融與意識形態工程的代價。
其他國家，尤其是歐洲，也跟著走，只為逃避討論自己在美國主導秩序中從屬地位的尷尬。畢竟，把自己想像為「人道提升計畫的夥伴」，比承認自己只是全球保護費體系的藩屬國，要愉快得多。
然而，如今就連丹麥——即便在 9/11 後盡責履行北約義務——都因美國外交路線調整而受到公開威脅，反映出：連習慣於美國主導的國家，也可能重新開始坦率討論「國家利益」了。
透過回到地方、回到具體社群的討論，而非抽象普遍主義，康里夫認為國家利益能打破未經選舉的官僚體系的壟斷。他強調，國家利益之所以「不說謊」，不是因為它帶來確定性，而是因為它模糊，必須在公共空間中被人民公開爭論、重新定義。唯有如此，它才真正屬於國家本身。
作者介紹
克里斯多福・莫特（Christopher Mott）系和平與外交研究院研究員，《無形帝國：中亞外交與戰爭簡史》的作者，並擁有聖安德魯斯大學國際關係博士學位，曾任職於美國國務院。
Globalization tried to define it, and failed the people. Now it's moving back to scale and where it belongs.
Analysis | Washington Politicsgoogle cta
washington politics national interest
Christopher Mott
Nov 24, 2025
In foreign policy discourse, the phrase “the national interest” gets used with an almost ubiquitous frequency, which could lead one to assume it is a strongly defined and absolute term.
Most debates, particularly around changing course in diplomatic strategy or advocating for or against some kind of economic or military intervention, invoke the phrase as justification for their recommended path forward.
But what is the national interest, really?
It should come as no surprise that the term is actually as contestable as any other social science label. Different people will approach the question with perspectives that vary based on factors as different as what region they originate from or what their concept of the national government is. A person of a more conservative disposition might see it as ensuring the protection of a culture from outside influence, while a leftist could see it as one defined by class interests, with the National Interest itself being both defined and controlled by the ruling class of a given society for their own internal as well as external self-interest.
The liberal center, meanwhile, clearly sees it as a method to spread global markets and values.
In realism, the political philosophy that sees foreign affairs as effectively the art of seeking the practical path to survival and thriving in an anarchic world with a minimum of ideological attachments, the concept of a national interest is left almost intentionally vague — a recognition of the fact that domestic and international politics are two different fields that often diverge from society to society. This, however, does not mean that the concept should not be explored, especially for those in the United States and its allied nations who value a more restrained approach to the world after decades of ruinous interventionism.
In “The National Interest: Politics After Globalization”, University College London associated professor and author Philip Cunliffe argues that the very ambiguity of the concept is itself a strength. Drawing from the historical evolution of the kind of raison d’etat first popularized by figures like Machiavelli and Cardinal Richelieu, Cunliffe argues that the French Revolution and other events in the enlightenment, such as the various wars of independence in the Americas, saw a turn toward making the very concept of national interest a site of popular contestation.
Rather than state that this meant a singular solid conception of the term, Cunliffe contends that this very ambiguity is the key to restoring citizen control over sovereignty from an out of touch global elite. The nation itself determines what is the national interest by openly and publicly grappling with how best to pursue communal self-interest.
Not only is this process democratic and inclusive, it also understands the limits of human knowledge and capabilities. Quoting the famous Cold War era policy planner George Kennan favorably that “Modesty to admit our own national interest is all we are really capable of knowing or understanding,” Cunliffe makes the case that, rather than a pure exercise in selfishness, upholding National Interest is a humble exercise of a community collectively attempting to navigate an anarchic world with no overarching authority to appeal to.
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By appealing to a set of issues that can be understood by the average citizen and centered around their local contexts, discussions on foreign policy can be accessible to the people of a society and not merely the plaything of a ruling elite that has become more divorced from being rooted in a specific place over the course of the era of post-Cold War globalization.
The loss of regional distinctions in conceptions of interest was not just due to technological change, but a specific ideological fad among many of the policymaking classes who were too eager to embrace a borderless future. To quote Cunliffe directly:
“All distributional conflicts would be happily away by the global tide of economic growth, and politics could finally be replaced by the promulgation of ethics, law and technical expertise. Globalization solved the conundrum of the national interest because as it turned out, our national interest was in fact the same as everyone else’s: global growth and integration. Therefore liberals could claim that citizen’s interests were being met without ever having to articulate a distinct national interest, without ever having to account for how such interests were generated, where they originated, or how they were served.”
What this supposed march of progress actually did was to remove the communal aspects of foreign policy discussion from the society-at-large, and concentrate its definition even more in the hands of a small and cosmopolitan-yet-intellectually provincial elite.
This led to a series of conflicts justified under the rubric of universal values or battling abstract concepts that had no set point of victory or defeat — which meant they could effectively drag out forever, at great lingering cost to the average person. In the United States, this trend would see the interests of the state conflated with that of the entirety of humanity itself, with the nation’s foreign policy classes seeing the fate of the species’ evolution as intrinsically tied to the ability of the Washington Consensus to export political, social, and economic norms abroad.
Meanwhile, the country selling itself as this fountainhead of progress was leaving more and more of its people behind as deindustrialization and withering investment in public infrastructure became part of the price of pursuing the project of financial and ideological globalization.
Other nations, particularly in Europe, have gone along with this in order to avoid having their own difficult discussions on their subordinate positions in the American-led order. To be junior partners in a grand project of humanitarian uplift is a more flattering self-conception than to simply be a satrapy of a global protection racket, after all.
But with Denmark being overtly threatened by a change in U.S. approach to the world, even after dutifully serving its NATO obligations in Afghanistan after 9/11, frank discussions on the national interest seem poised to make a comeback even in countries long accustomed to U.S. predominance.
By returning to locality and discussion within specific communities rather than bland universalism, the national interest becomes, in Cunliffe’s terms, something that breaks the monopoly of unelected bureaucracy and thus something that will “not lie” like the pleasing bromides of ideology when it comes to grappling with an uncertain future. Not because it contains certainty, but because it is ambiguous and must be contested out in the open by the general public in order to determine what it should be.
Christopher Mott
Christopher Mott is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy and the author of the book, The Formless Empire: A Short History of Diplomacy and Warfare in Central Asia. He holds a doctorate in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, and has previously worked for the U.S. Department of State.
