Airstrip One

The Transnationalist Right

With the recent arguments on transnationalist progressivism put forward by John Fonte of the Hudson Institute, there was a space that the concept did not appear to address. As W. James Antle III (great name!) of etherzone commented,

This is not to suggest that transnationalism is solely a prerogative of the left. There is also a transnational right that believes that the nation-state is becoming superfluous, or at least would like to help it become so.

Unfortunately, most of the possible analysis of a transnational conservatism or a transnational capitalism has been constructed by tired Marxists attacking the corporate boogieman. A more detailed argument is put forward by Eduardo Viola with a rather clumsy political model that invites criticism but it sets out some of the features of transnationalist conservatism.

The Conservative-globalists are in favor of open economies to the world market, a central role to the transnational corporations, a partial disarmament and a gradual improvement of the UN partially limiting the Nation State’s power in order to built a transnational authority based on a stratified structure of countries: empowerment of the Security Council (enlarged), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. The CG are the dominant force in the world system and they represent what is known as neoliberalism. Some examples of the CG are: predominant sectors from the great North American, West-European and Japanese parties, the modern sectors from the Brazilian center and right parties, the Chilean National Party, the modern sector from the Argentinean Justice Party (Cavallo), governing since 1989.

The transnationalist right in Britain includes such figures as Kenneth Clark, Michael Heseltine and other pro-eu and pro-euro conservatives. It might be argued that it also includes the Anglospherists and other conservative groups that put forward a cultural and political alternative to the European Union yet implicitly recognise the diminution of the nation-state on the global stage.

Whilst the tranzis (coined by David Carr of Samizdata, I believe), have been critiqued and rightly so, there does not appear to have been a focus on what transnationalism means for conservatives and libertarians.