Comment: National interest and national peculiarities: A guide to foreign policy. (2001, 20 Marks)
The statement pairs a universal with a particular. National interest is, in Charles O. Lerche Jr. and Abdul A. Said’s definition, the general, long-term and continuing purpose that state, nation and government see themselves as serving. Every state has one, and realists treat it as the compass of policy. National peculiarities are what make a state distinctive: geography, history, culture, political system and national character. The claim is that foreign policy is best guided, and best explained, when the first is read through the second.
National interest: the compass
- Hans J. Morgenthau (In Defense of the National Interest, 1951; Politics Among Nations) made interest defined as power the guide that frees policy from moralism and from statesmen’s whims. Its irreducible minimum is protecting the state’s physical, political and cultural identity.
- He separated an unchanging core from variable interests; Thomas W. Robinson refined this into primary and secondary, permanent and variable, general and specific interests.
- As a guide it disciplines. A state asking what it actually needs avoids crusades whose aims outrun its capability, as Kautilya argued in treating statecraft as a calculation of advantage.
National peculiarities: the lens
- Morgenthau himself counted national character and national morale among the elements of power: realism concedes that states are not interchangeable.
- Stanley Hoffmann (Gulliver’s Troubles, 1968) traced an American national style: legalism, an engineering faith in solutions, and exceptionalism.
- Jack L. Snyder coined strategic culture (1977) to explain why Soviet nuclear doctrine diverged from American assumptions: historical experience shaped how the same weapons were understood.
- India illustrates the pairing. Colonial memory, civilisational self-image and continental size turned a common interest in security into a peculiarly Indian form: non-alignment, then strategic autonomy, rejection of a discriminatory NPT, and a preference for restraint. George K. Tanham (1992) claimed India lacked a strategic culture; Kanti Bajpai answered by identifying competing Nehruvian, neoliberal and hyperrealist streams.
- Today. When Washington added a 25% penalty tariff over Russian oil, the MEA called it “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable” and vowed to protect India’s national interests (6 August 2025). India also abstained on the UNGA Ukraine resolution of February 2026 (107–12–51). Yet once US sanctions hit Rosneft and Lukoil (October 2025), Indian purchases of Russian crude fell to a multi-year low: autonomy as the idiom, interest recalculated as costs changed. S. Jaishankar calls the result “convergences and issue-based arrangements” rather than alliance.
Why neither is a sufficient guide
- Raymond Aron (Peace and War, 1962) argued that states pursue plural goals (security, power and glory or ideas), so no single rational definition of national interest is possible. Arnold Wolfers (1952) called “national security” an ambiguous symbol that closes debate rather than guiding it. Charles A. Beard (The Idea of National Interest, 1934) showed the formula filled by whichever economic interests held power.
- Peculiarities invite essentialism. Wartime national-character studies such as Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) froze cultures into stereotypes, and post-1945 Japan and Germany changed course without changing “character”.
- Kenneth N. Waltz’s structural realism treats states as like units. Anarchy punishes peculiarities that ignore the balance of power, so the system, not the nation, sets the guide.
- Alexander Wendt’s constructivism supports a refined version of the statement: identity (peculiarity) and interest are mutually constituted, not separate guides.
Conclusion
The statement holds if the two are read together. National interest tells a state what it must secure; national peculiarities explain how it understands and pursues that end. Used alone, interest becomes an empty formula and peculiarity becomes stereotype. India’s autonomy-driven, issue-based diplomacy shows that the best guide is an interest calculated through, not against, national experience.