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You know how socialists don't get capitalism? Well, nationalists don't get diplomacy. The socialist thinks their state is all-powerful domestically, and the nationalist thinks their state is all-powerful globally, so it can seize whatever it wants by force, because it's so strong, and nothing will ever happen, and no one can resist. Both worldviews are wrong, for similar reasons. The socialist hates capitalists so much, and the nationalist hates foreigners so much, that they often just become blinded by hatred. They come to believe the outgroup is so incompetent that they aren't a threat, and have no use, so long as maximum force is employed. And sometimes this mindset takes them surprisingly far! They loot or conquer much more than you'd expect. But eventually, they encounter constraint. If you can't put yourself in another man's shoes, you can't sign a deal, whether in diplomacy or capitalism. Empathy is politically and economically important. https://t.co/XE0l5thYwq Btw: it’s true that there are both imperialist nationalists and autarkic nationalists. The imperialists want to conquer other countries, while the autarkics want nothing to do with them. Both actually have a logic and an illogic. The logic of empire is: like any business, if you're not growing you're dying. But there's also an illogic, the illogic of imperial overstretch. Similarly, the logic of autarky is: it's good to be able to build it yourself. The illogic is when that's taken so far that there's a rejection of the division of labor intrinsic to capitalism, or the idea of learning from others. Generally it's better to treat these political paradigms like programming paradigms. Just like there's sometimes a time for a recursive approach vs an imperative approach, there's sometimes a time for an autarkic approach. But you need not identify yourself as a recursionist or an autarkicist. Just use the best tool available. There's also in theory a third path that's neither expansionist nor autarkic. Just be a "normal" country, trading with others, neither conquering nor hating them! In practice, though, this means you're either part of an empire or you're autarkic enough to survive outside that empire.