National Interest and Ideology

Nikunja Goswami
Enrollment No. 009
National Interest is invariably expressed in ideological terms. Comment.
Ideologues, a system devised by Destutt de Tracy in late seventeenth century to determine the psychological side of humanity. Ideology can be understood as an interrelated set of belief system that explains social, economic and political conditions, and articulates a set of actions and policies designed to make better life for a target audience.
Intellects believe that ideologies are a modern phenomenon. Nineteenth century was considered as an era of ideologies where wave of different ideologies were witnessed across the globe. Some of those eruptive ideologies were experimented and consequences failed. Who conditions ideologies? Why and how it is generated? Ideologies are conditioned under environment we dwell in. As Aristotle argued men to be a political animal with a gift of reason and speech. Here ideologies are generated with reason. A normative belief in systematic approach is delivered by the reason to generate certain concept or theory.
When ideologies are created, who are the receptors? Ideologies are implemented by a direct and indirect agent of a state or a nation. They are experimented on societies to fulfill a goal with a method.
We can argue that the direct or indirect agent may reflect bias to serve the interest of a particular group or individual. Ideologies either have the tendency to over simplify reality or completely distort it. Reality here is the nation’s interest not only on its mass but also on international audience.
National Interest is the reason of the state. It can be understood as a country’s ambitions in domestic and foreign arena. It could be economic, political, and cultural. Understanding of national interest can be traced back to France when it was first practiced by Cardinal Richelieu to block the power of Holy Roman Emperor. Soon the following decades the national interest saw its domination in Western politics....