I have never had a foreign policy or a world view on foreign policy. I’m very interested in the world and all of its weirdness, but I’ve never been all that interested in how our rulers interact with it. They are going to do whatever they want to do, regardless of what I have say about it. I try to keep up and read some trusted sources on the issues of the day, but I find most of it boring. The history of the Khorasani Arabs seems interesting, but I have no interest in why we may or may not be bombing them.
This column by Kevin Williamson brought that home to me as I read the comments section. I have opinions about our foreign adventures. I have some assumptions about what we should and should not do. I have some opinions on the people and nations of the world. But, I have no philosophy of foreign policy. I’m not even sure if I fall into any of the convenient buckets. Some of the comments in that NRO column strike me as insane. Others seem sort of reasonable. The last bit of his post is what strikes me as the most sensible starting place for my post.
If I thought that the United States could be Switzerland, I’d be tempted to import that foreign policy: Trade with everybody, get rich, and be armed to the teeth in case you have to keep the global riff-raff at bay. But the United States is not a tiny, landlocked, Alpine country noted for its excellence in banking and watch-making. But I am in the market for some creative thinking about how to use our economic weapons — from trade to our newly abundant energy supply to the fact that the elites of every country, including our bitterest rivals, want to send their children to college here — to supplement what we’re all calling “boots on the ground” now. I would not object to dispatching some serious green-eyeshade types to the Pentagon to figure out how it has come to pass that we’re still spending far too much money on defense while seemingly cutting all the wrong spending.
And while I sympathize with Jonah Goldberg’s view that “National Honor Matters,” I am very open to the prospect of simply buying off those who can be bought. While the prospect may rankle, if doing so means lower expenditures in treasure and blood both, consider Sun Tzu’s advice to those in his time who resisted the use of spies, considering the proposition either too expensive or dishonorable: Failing to make use of available advantages, “simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.”
What I am most in the market for is a foreign policy that marries a humane and prudent vision of our national interest to the operational competence necessary to ensure that we do not spend decade after decade scrambling to react to the mistakes of the immediate past. So far, I’m not buying what anybody’s selling.
It seems to me that before you can start shopping for a foreign policy, you might want to start thinking about the reality of the world, that foreign world for which we need a policy. “Humane and prudent vision of our national interest” sounds great, but you have to figure out what it means to have a humane policy while you’re figuring out the national interest. I think I could sum up my criticism of the ruling class approach to the world as ignorant, naïve and devoid of a sense of self. In other words, the reason the rulers have failed is their understanding of the world is wrong and their understanding of themselves is delusional.
So, where to start?
Celebrate Diversity: For a very long time now the Left has been chirping about the glories of diversity. It seems to be waning now, but that’s not because the world has suddenly become homogenous. The world is a big diverse place with all sorts of local weirdness. Most people are not like us. They don’t live like us and they don’t think like us. As much as it hurts modern America feelings, big chunks of the world don’t like us. Their reasons may be justified or just plain crazy, but there’s not much we can do about it. In all probability, trying to do something about is why they hate us.
Recognizing it is half the battle. The other half is the why. Despite what the Left has been preaching, science and observation tells us the people of the world are not all the same after all. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. It’s full of Africans because the humans there evolved in that place for 50,000 years. As crazy as this may sound, Africans are built for Africa, not Iceland. That means they are good at being Africans, but not very good at being an Icelander or a Texan. The same is true of China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, etc.
What we consider weird, these people consider normal. It is what they know. A thousand generations of Bantus have been nothing but Bantus. Thinking they will suddenly become Minnesotans just because we showed up is a good way to make enemies. Respecting people for what they are is not “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s the reality of the world. It is also the foundation for a “humane and prudent” understanding of the world.
We have a past: Anytime I participate in a debate over foreign policy, I get the sense that my fellow citizens have amnesia. I mentioned in that thread on NRO that we have been bombing the Fertile Crescent for two decades and people seem surprised by it. Desert Storm was launched in 1991. We actually started flying combat missions in 1990. That’s a long time to have been dropping ordinance on people. We try hard to only kill the bad people, but we have killed a lot of people who did not think they were all that bad. Maybe they were, maybe not.
It really does not matter if we think they got what they deserved. The people of the world have judged us on out deeds, good and bad. Our system of government means we get a change in leadership every eight years and that means we have reneged on a lot of deals, in addition to killing a lot of people. The Kurds know we are an unreliable partner, just as we know the French are duplicitous backstabbers. The point is we have a history and we have a reputation. Our national interest is served best when we can see ourselves through the eyes of the people on whom we doing the foreign policy.
Most of us just want to have normal lives: Back in the Bush years, the neoconservatives used to go on at length about national greatness and the new nationalism. The stripped down version is that a nation must act like we expect a good citizen to act in his community. It is a mix of moral obligation and self-regard. Tromping around the world doing good works will invigorate the populace to do even greater things at home and abroad. Foreign policy is not just another public policy. It is the basis for a moral philosophy that will define the nation and the citizens.
The trouble with this, in addition to be completely wrong, is that almost all people just want to live their lives. They don’t look to their rulers for a sense of identity. Americans, still mostly Anglo-Saxon, prefer it if their rulers leave them alone. Even the more hive minded around the world tend not to care very much for greatness, unless it puts money in their pocket. Since the national interest of any nation is those things that benefit the people of that nation, going around the world inviting trouble can never be part of a prudent and humane foreign policy.
I don’t know how you build a unified foreign policy off these three pillars, but I think it is a good place to start. Maybe there are other or better principles. I don’t know. The point is you can’t shop for a foreign policy unless you have some idea why one is better than the other. You have to have a starting point in order to make the necessary comparisons.
“The trouble with this, in addition to be completely wrong, is that almost all people just want to live their lives. They don’t look to their rulers for a sense of identity.”
Hey, that’s an amusing thought, followed by a bit called “The Hive Mentality”!
> dropping ordinance on people
is done by legislatures. the military prefers ordnance.
That’s hilarious. Spell check strikes again, I guess. My favorite all time spell check is when I wrote “gorilla war” rather than “guerrilla war” in a comment somewhere. I’m still laugh at that one.
Foreign Policy is great, until someone doesn’t move their chess piece like you DEMANDED they do, so you can “win” the -Poli-Sci wannabe in “economist’s” clothing- delusion that “only steady growth can ensure survival in a zero sum “community”.
Yep, “participation” trophies for EVERYBODY. Even the nice folks doling out the Nobel Prize seem to agree.
Every nation dislikes if not actually hates another nation for some reason, imagined or concrete. Sometimes it emerges as aggression, non-cooperation or simply stereotypical jokes, which may or may not be actually funny.
You can find all sorts of reasons countries don’t get along, from war to interference to exploitation. Most countries at some time or another have put ‘boots on the ground’ in other places or made demands of others.
For what it is worth the US created a bad feeling in the UK during WWII. The US servicemen coming to the UK prior to June ’44 had smarter uniforms, better supplies (the UK had severe rationing) more money to buy what was available and being almost all male they found a local female population eager to do something enjoyable while their husbands/boyfriends were away. They were also dismissive of local traditions and ways, ignorant of Europe and carried it all off with attitude. Some of this was excusable, some not, some unfortunate. It’s hard to put a whole bunch of young men in a foreign country and expect them to behave or be anything other than what they were. Plus, there was a war on and most people never knew what the next day would bring. You took what you could then and there in case tomorrow was worse. On top of that, the Europeans always have a jaundiced view of US military tactics as simply being driven by the idea of using as much ammunition as possible. A thousand bullets where ten might do the trick, sums it up.
This is not anti-American. It is just how it is based on how it was. Without America’s intervention Hitler’s Germany could only be beaten by the Russian winter, and even that wasn’t more than 6 months each year. Europe was heading for stalemate unless Hitler ordered the invasion of the British isles and it isn’t clear he thought it worthwhile. Mind you, his lot were only partially welcomed in various occupied countries. There were for a long time bars in Rotterdam that had signs saying no German was welcome there, ever. Probably they have now been taken down in the spirit of EU love, but the fact was some Dutch really hated the Germans after much of Rotterdam was reduced to rubble.
Slowly people forget of course what the original causes were, but some things still jar with a lot of people. No matter how much help a nation gives another nation, something will bother them and cause troublemakers to stir up dissent. A foreign policy imagining all that is required is to be nice to people sometimes misses the point that everyone prefers what goes on inside their own borders without impositions from beyond.