Welcome to Episode 20 of Class Unity: Transmissions. For this episode, Nick is joined by Class Unity member Dave for a wide-ranging conversation with Philip Cunliffe on the question of the national interest. Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at University College London, author of The National Interest: Politics After Globalization, and co-founder and contributing editor of Aufhebunga Bunga.

The discussion centers on Cunliffe’s argument that the “national interest”—long treated with suspicion on both the left and the libertarian right—has returned not as a coherent doctrine, but as a symptom of the collapse of globalization and liberal internationalism. Cunliffe defends a sovereigntist, rather than nationalist, conception of politics, insisting that the national interest should be understood as a democratic process of contestation defined by citizens rather than insulated elites. Nick and Dave press Cunliffe on whether appeals to global problems and global governance have allowed ruling classes to evade democratic accountability, and whether it is possible to retain global awareness while re-anchoring politics at the level of the nation state.

The episode also digs into the book’s historical and theoretical core. Cunliffe discusses classical realism, liberal internationalism, and the Cold War transformation of the national interest into a technocratic and national security–state project. Nick and Dave challenge Cunliffe on whether realism genuinely reflected mass politics or instead replaced aristocratic judgment with expert management, and whether liberal internationalism restrained power or dissolved political responsibility by moralizing foreign policy. Throughout, the conversation returns to a central tension: how to avoid reifying the national interest while still treating it as a necessary framework for democratic struggle.

Recorded on December 15, 2025, the episode also serves as a kind of end-of-year reflection on contemporary politics. From Israel and Gaza to the advent of a second Trump administration, MAGA fragmentation, and competing claims over what counts as “America First,” the discussion explores whether renewed appeals to the national interest can meaningfully hold elites accountable—or whether they risk being captured once again by narrow sectional interests and the national security state. Cunliffe reflects on the limits of optimism, arguing that while democratic contestation offers no guarantees of good outcomes, abandoning the national interest altogether leaves politics empty, moralized, and unaccountable.

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