The foreign policy debate in the United States has often been peculiar, in that it’s not infrequently about the United States rather than the world. Throughout history, other great powers have thought about world politics in terms of national interest. Americans typically think about the world through the prism of their image of America.
Thus in the 1920s and 1930s, American isolationists worried that American involvement in Europe’s bloody affairs would corrupt the United States. Two generations later, Vietnam-era neo-isolationists argued precisely the opposite: a racist, imperialist, militarist America (often spelled “Amerika”) was bad for the world. Good America, bad America: how Americans think about our own country has a profound effect on how we imagine U.S. foreign policy.
Thus in the wake of the recent murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, when an Egyptian demonstrator declares “We hate America” and USA Today headlines his declaration above-the-fold on Page 1, Americans (and those who would lead us) quickly divided into two camps.
One camp, while deploring the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, immediately begins apologizing for alleged American hostility and insensitivity toward Islam. The other camp deplores intolerance but argues, correctly in my view, that stupidity is no excuse for homicide; this second camp also believes (again correctly, in my view) that the lethal attack on Ambassador Stevens and other U.S. diplomatic personnel had far more to do with the anniversary of 9/11, the cultural pathologies of the Arab Islamic world, the despair among jobless young Arab men, and a pattern of U.S. fecklessness in the face of Islamist aggression than it did with an idiotic film trailer shown on YouTube.
This division is mirrored in the Catholic debate about world politics, which reflects different understandings of the relative moral and prudential merits of conventional expressions of power (called “hard power”) and new forms of nonviolent political action (“soft power”). The soft power camp rightly points to the success of the nonviolent Revolution of 1989 in central and Eastern Europe, and argues that, if soft power could crack the Berlin Wall and put an end to the greatest tyranny in history, there’s no problem that the deft application of soft power can’t solve.
While acknowledging the contributions of soft power to the Communist crack-up, Catholic hard power advocates remember that that successful exercise in new modes of political action took place within a hard power context set by Western re-armament under Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl and the Strategic Defense Initiative. In this view, soft power alone is no guarantor of peace, security, and freedom, especially when the West is confronted with the irrational passions of jihadist Islam.
Despite the priority that the next president and Congress will necessarily give to fixing a broken U.S. economy, America’s leaders must also confront grave foreign problems that will not be wished away:
The jihadists smell American weakness and irresolution; and history has taught us the harsh lessons of where that perception can lead.
Religious freedom is under assault throughout the world, with thousands of new martyrs being consecrated annually; yet the present administration has, for almost three years, refused to promote religious freedom in full (dumbing religious freedom down to a mere “freedom to worship”)—just as the previous administration did not grasp that the assault on Christians in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan was symptomatic of serious problems which any effort at democracy-building in those societies had to confront.
Russia has indeed accepted the present administration’s offer of a “re-set,” except the “re-set” is likely not what the administration anticipated: Vladimir Putin has “re-set” Russian grand strategy back to the days of Peter the Great, aiming to recover the losses incurred by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This, in turn, has created new pressures on the new democracies of central and Eastern Europe, some of which are making accommodations with Moscow in light of a perceived American withdrawal from world leadership.
Americans are not imperialists by nature; yet history has thrust global responsibilities upon us. How shall we respond? From behind? Or from ahead?
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
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Comments:
I'd wager just about all of us have a family member who is in the service or who has served. And I'm guessing you would just as easily accuse a leader of being a warmonger if they served than you question their credibility for not having done so...
Why don't you respond to the points he actually made which had to do with the larger geo-political picture and the problems they present to the world and the U.S.
It is difficult to reconcile the vision of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (supported at the time by the President, a bipartisan Congress and the vast majority of Americans) or Afghanistan, or the continuation of the killings by drone attacks in the NWFP of Pakistan with adjectives such as "feckless". It seems an inescapable conclusion that going down Mr Weigel's path would lead to more, and more extreme violence, as the current level of killing seems not enough to subdue "irrational Islamists".
Woodrow Wilson, a progressive educator who had never seen war, led us into World War I, and FDR, a progressive patrician who was confined to a wheel chair (he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in WW I, but saw no action), led us into WW II (I happen to approve both moves).
The U.S. military, according to the Huffington Post, of all sources, is far better educated than the population at large:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/military-education-
infographic_n_1873842.html
And as far as class demographics go, here is a somewhat dated but interesting article from the Center for Data Analysis via the Heritage Foundation:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2005/11/who-bears-the-burden-demographic-characteristics-of-us-military-recruits-before-and-after-9-11
Best,
Richard
There are exceptions... men who have gravitas without going to war. The younger, shoe dodging Bush though is always the danger if you avoid the rule....a one trillion dollar+ preemptive war that costs many lives based on scant and incorrect intelligence and done while lowering taxes. ( Brown University recently costed out Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan at $4 trillion).
Lord Acton, too, says of liberty that “In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food”
Only the “soft” power of Enlightenment can overcome that.
I looked at a number of sites besides Heritage. All are rough studies in terms of people who experience war actually...which was my connected point: gravitas comes from seeing the worst.
Heritage used "all the branches" despite repeatedly using the word "soldier"... but war experience varies radically with branch. A sibling in the Coast Guard might never see any fighting; one in the Air Force or Navy nowadays might see no fighting but might see a minority fly off to some danger from a ship or base unlike the naval battles of WWII. In short in this millenium, going into the Navy might have little risk to life compared to a bodega owner in the Bronx. The first 4 ranks of the army and marines take over half of all deaths recently. There is no study as to the income level of those who see the worst. If you are seeing $50K a year per household as a lot, we differ. I see average as low. I knew drop outs and felons were not entering.
Michael PS: Yes, certainly soft power has its place and probably is, in the long run, more powerful. In the short run, though, we do have a responsibility to protect ourselves and our allies. But even assuming we can use soft power to do so, how enlightened is it to say, in response to the murder (effectively) we must never offend murderers? (As Obama did.)
Honestly, it doesn't seem like Obama wants to even use soft power. With his Iranian-born chief advisor Valerie Jarrett, Rev. "God Damn America" Wright, et al. and appeasement-bordering-on-apologism, you have to almost wonder sometimes whether Obama doesn't actually sympathize with Muslim extremism.
The "chickenhawk" argument is a particularly stupid form of ad hominem. Are you arguing that had Bush been a war hero yet made the same decision for the same reason, it would have been the right one? Surely you can see the absurdity of that argument. Alternatively, are you arguing that had Bush been a war hero, he would have made a different decision? It's hard to argue against a hypothetical, but history offers a good bit of evidence against that argument. The war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the first advisers to Viet Nam; the war hero Lyndon Johnson then escalated that conflict to a full-fledged war. The war hero George H.W. Bush sent troops into Kuwait, and the war hero John McCain was one of the many who favored the invasion of Iraq. The chickenhawk argument is not only stupid, it's not even an argument. It's not designed to further debate; it's designed to shut down debate. If you can dismiss Weigel as a coward with no legitimacy to comment about whether a war is necessary or not (assuming that was even what he was arguing), you don't have to actually think and answer his specific arguments. You can just indulge in hand-waving dismissal. And feel morally superior doing it. I hope you enjoy your spurious moral superiority. Those of us who are serious will debate any potential military action on its merits. Is it in America's interest? Are those interests important enough to justify the action? Is there a better way to protect those interests? Those who are unserious can ask silly questions like: Are the initiators or advocates of the action war heroes?
Do some research on Lyndon Johnson and how he got the silver star medal for one flight in a plane that had to turn back with mechanical difficulties. John McCain was a hero then later betrayed his wife as was the case with John F. Kennedy.
But let's per your instructions go to Weigel above: "The jihadists smell American weakness and irresolution; and history has taught us the harsh lessons of where that perception can lead."
Apparently they smell this from Obama and Panetta killing 20 top Al Qaeda people in four years under a quintupling of the drone program. This is the new conservative Catholic take on Obama after Libya...an incident being used by them
to cover up the 47% video of Romney. Obama killing most of the top leadership of Al Qaeda vanishes in a second at Libya because Catholics want Obama out...as they should. Whether they should wnt Romney in is another matter. You'll notice last night he said he would increase medicaid by inflation plus one percent a year. The only problem is that medical inflation is north of 7% so he fooled many elders last night who will need medicaid if they die slowly in a skilled nursing home.
But jihadist smell fear in Obama-Panetta? Fiction. And I suspect that particular group who killed the ambassador will be droned in time and when it happens, Catholic conservatives won't notice because apparently we slander our enemies and that's fine even though Christ said to love them as opposed to slandering them.
I think if you knew the extent of destruction caused by foreign militaries in majority Muslim countries you wouldn't write the things you do. I also think non-muslim Americans on the whole would be more sympathetic to muslims abroad. Why is it that in this land of free speech, very little coverage is given to the deaths of afghanis or Iraqis from the invasions, or Pakistanis from silly drone attacks. Do you even know how many people have died as a result of these operations? Do you think it's even relevant?
When this key information is suppressed from the american public for the sake of some perverted notion of our national interests, our efforts to prosletyze for freedom of speech falls on deaf ears.
If a political leader is of the opinion that a cause he champions justifies going to war, then he is obligated, in all justice, to put his own life and limb on the line above all others in the pursuit of that cause. In the absence of abiding by this principle of moral psychology, it becomes all too easy for the leader to abuse his power and advocate unjust wars on the basis of deceptions of various kinds - both of oneself and others. The post-lapsarian moral requirement that the leader himself lead his troops into battle thus offers an essential corrective on the waging of unjust wars for devious and deceitful reasons.
From this standpoint, the main problem with the "chickenhawks" is that they are able cavalierly to gamble with the lives and well-being of millions without the requisite sort of gravitas in moral decision-making that the decision to wage war inherently warrants. The requisite gravitas also requires that if a leader is of the opinion that war is warranted but is unwilling to put himself personally in harm's way on the battlefield, then he is morally obliged to abdicate his leadership position to someone else who is.
George Washington was a leader cast in this kind of mold. For over 100 years now, very few leaders have been cast in this mold, with the result of untold suffering on the part of innocent millions. Note also that this principle of sound moral psychology requires not merely that the leader be willing to send his sons into battle, but that HE HIMSELF is morally obligated to enter the lists.
The drone program does make awful mistakes but one report I read attributed a 46% civilian casualty rate to the Pakistani army when it attacks militants in the north west provinces on the ground....perhaps over using artillery rather than house to house infantry. You need not believe that figure as I need not believe the various assertions about the drone rate of civilian casualties. Partisan groups often do the stats. I am merely giving you another avenue of inquiry as to the alternatives to drone use which alternatives may not be too good even if you find figures less than 46%.
C of the E Member, So let me get this straight. Whether a leader has the "moral authority" to lead us into war actually changes whether the war is or is not in our interests. So Viet Nam was a good war because it was initiated and escalated by two people who had been to war. World War II was a bad war because it was initiated by someone who had never been to war. And if a war is started by someone without the "moral authority" to lead us into it, it's a bad war unless and until a leader with that authority takes over, after which it is a good war. C Member, your argument is pure sentimentality with no basis in logic or reality. You can't logically defend a logical fallacy, which ad hominem is, and (attention: clue coming) the chickenhawk argument is a textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem).
And the idea that only people who have been to war can be serious about debating military action is so ludicrous I feel silly responding to it. There is absolutely nothing about having been to war that, in itself, qualifies one as more of a foreign policy expert than anyone else. Your whole "argument" amounts to shallow, pompous sound and fury signifying nothing.
You wanted me to move on to Weigel's thoughts. I did. Now instead, you want to go back to the chickenhawk concept. It's not a term I'd use. It's the term you used. Don't confuse your terms with mine. A person can be flip and falsely courageous about war and still be courageous in non war matters in real life. They need not be a "chicken" at all. I allowed to Rich that there are men with gravitas about war who were never in war so its not an exceptionless reality. There are warriors who shouldn't be exhorting others. I neither want to hear Weigel or McCain on urging war.
Your dependence on insults in your posts though tells me that I would not want you urging anyone in my family in war matters. I could be perfectly incorrect because I am no Freud... and Weigel is no Panetta.
