http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1826/three-powerfully-wrong_and-wrongly-powerful_americ

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1826/three-powerfully-wrong_and-wrongly-powerful_americ
It is impossible to speak of interests in the absence of collective identities. One can describe the interests of a group, or identify one’s interest as a member of a collective, but the idea that individuals (let alone states) have interests that exist outside of these categories of belonging just doesn’t hold up. Speaking of “US interests” masks this fact with what sounds like a commonsensical idea: we have to look after our interests first. But in whose interest—precisely—does the government of the United States pursue a given policy? The “average” citizen (as if there is such a thing)? Congressional lobbyists? The contractors who directly profit from our relations with foreign regimes? Rather than viewing this as a polemical bête noir, this is a question that we should be asking regularly, as part of the practice of engaged citizenship.