Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“The meaning of ‘national interest’ may seem obvious. It is the public interest where the public is made of the citizens of a nation. It is the interests of all the citizens. If these interests don’t exactly coincide, the national interest is assumed to be, in some way, their sum. The concept is similar to the interests of two individual partners in a business or an association: it is the sum of their respective interests — in making a profit or (say) advancing some charitable purpose. If the national interest is not a straight sum, addition and subtraction, of all individual interests, it consists in some other form of aggregation. On second thought, problems become rapidly obvious. How is it possible to add and subtract, or otherwise aggregate, even just conceptually, the interests of two non-identical individuals?” (09/14/24)
https://www.econlib.org/the-arbitrary-interests-of-the-united-states/