Whether you were sitting in an international relations class or listening to a mainstream politician expound on some foreign policy issue, you’ve probably heard that countries have “national interests.” They pursue them, they defend them, and sometimes they apparently do things that undermine them. The United States, it seems, has vital interests in the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, and pretty much everywhere else on earth.

In discussions about US foreign policy — especially debates about how to make it less terrible — references to these mysterious interests are rarely far behind. Just this week, Defense News reporter David B. Larter claimed in a Twitter thread that the United States is still in Iraq simply because “we have core interests there.” He continued with a dire zero-sum calculation: “It’s that or we leave it to Iran and Russia to run it.”

Not to pick on Larter, but his use of “we” is emblematic of the way “national interests” are typically invoked in these discussions. Interests are presented as shared faits accomplis — objectives that are self-evident, inevitable, even natural. And as the descriptor “national” implies, they’re also supposedly beneficial to the country as a whole.