Clarity, Cosmopolitanism, and Foreign Policy

When I finally figured out what I wanted for my first tattoo, I went to the tattoo artist and tried to explain what I wanted.  A mountain lion, in profile.  It seemed so simple, right?  I could visualize it clearly in my head.  Except that I stumbled when I tried to explain it to the artist.  He told me to bring in an example of what I wanted...a picture or something.  (So I went prowling through the library, looking for a picture of a mountain lion.  And discovered that what I thought was classic and commonplace really wasn't.  It was hard to find a picture of what I wanted.)


Typing things out in a blog is sometimes similar.  I can see something quite clearly in my head.  It seems so bright, and shiny.  Then when I try to put that vision into words I stumble.  I want to get further into foreign policy suggestions, but I realized that the concepts don't flow together well yet.  Once again, I need to cover a few more things first. 


Kwame Appiah has a book called Cosmopolitanism that I recommend to anyone interested in this topic.  He made the point that we don't have to agree on everything in order to get along.  That is, we can have very different values.  Diverse opinions on what's best for our country.  And yet we can still live together peaceably enough. 


It reminds me a bit of my extended family, particularly during Thanksgiving.  I have relatives across the entire spectrum, politically speaking...and for the most part we can all sit down together and enjoy our Thanksgiving meal.  This does, however, presuppose that we all value our relationships more than our politics.


This year, this crazy election year, I have seen various friends on Facebook talk about unfriending or blocking people they disagree with.  They sometimes make very eloquent arguments for why they do so, and I'm not going to say they're wrong.  I will say, however, that it's not the choice I make.


I keep my Facebook feed pretty much wide open, for a couple of reasons.  One is that I don't want to deliberately create a bubble.  When you start curating your feed, filtering out the people who disagree with you, then you only hear part of the debate. 


In looking back, some of my most rewarding and interesting conversations have been with the friends and family across the political aisle.  (It helps that most of them are intelligent people with thoughtful positions.  I can't say it's often changed my mind, but it has added depth to my understanding of the issues.)  This is also, btw, why I don't like calling various people ReThuglicans or DemoRats or whatever the cutesy insult of the day is.


The choice I make can be good or bad, depending.  On the negative side - I don't take as strong a stand as the issues call for.  I am friends with people who don't always share my views, and who express views that some of my other friends would strongly disagree with.


On the other hand, I can sometimes have an impact that others don't.  Because I'm friends with people I disagree with.  (It helps that I don't fit neatly into political stereotypes.  It's harder to dismiss me as a bleeding heart liberal when I've served my country, in Iraq and Afghanistan.)


The point of what so far has been a more personal digression is this.  Some of the same issues (and strengths, and weaknesses) come into play when we decide how we are going to interact with another country.

Take China, for example.  We have very different values, particularly with regards to human rights.  Detaining booksellers from Hong Kong, simply because they sell books that criticize China?  Awful!  The Chinese government must be pretty weak, to find criticism so threatening.


Is this something we should ostracize them for, like banning our Facebook friends?  Is this something we can disagree on, and still sit down for Thanksgiving together? 


Are we better off engaging, maintaining relationships while making our disapproval known? 


Or are we better off cutting ties, so that we aren't supporting it or a part of it?

Raison d'Etat

Foreign policy experts, for the most part, focus on realism (though one person's realism is not the same as another).  There's a peculiar sort of logic to it, in that experts are not concerned with what is morally right or wrong...the only true test is whether or not you achieve your aims.  On behalf of your nation. 


I deliberately made that a little vague.  Most of those aims are, to be sure, to make your own nation strong and prosperous.  Or secure.  Or somesuch.  All are nicely covered by saying "achieve your aims".


That's part of why figures like Cardinal Richelieu and Otto von Bismarck are such complex and fascinating characters.  Not saints, no.  Yet masters of their time, and mostly in service to their state.  (For good or ill). 


It's hard to judge characters like this, as they are definitely not 'nice', or 'good', or necessarily people we should admire or want to follow.  They managed to do great things, though. 


I brought this up because if we're using Raison d'Etat, or realpolitik, or some other form of realism to determine our own policies than (using that logic) the only way to judge the decisions made is by their results.


It's a harsh method, one that allows no wiggle room for error.  Nor for good intentions.


And by that rubric, American policy in the last 60 or 70 years has not been all that great.


Yes, we saw the end of the Soviet Union.  Yes, we're a very powerful nation.  Our policies haven't been a complete disaster, though how much of that is because of our innate strengths I don't know.  We're a large country, with fairly secure borders (comparatively speaking), a well educated populace and a lot of resources.  We're also dealing with all sorts of turmoil and change.  Globalization, the Information Age, nationalism, multi-nationalist corporations, environmental change...there's been all sorts of challenges.  People have been doing the best they know how, and this isn't meant to point fingers and condemn anyone.


At the same time, can anyone look at Vietnam and say that the United States came out of it stronger?  Can anyone look at our history with Iran and think we're safer, or more secure? 


Can anyone look at the financial crisis, the recession, Syria, rising tensions in the South China sea, tensions with Russia and China (and the Philippines) and think we've been doing well?


Again, I'm not trying to call anyone in particular out.  It's just...


It's just that foreign policy, national security, and the Washington consensus has fads.  Just like businesses, and fashion, and just about everything else.  People aren't ever going to be thrown under the bus for being wrong, if everyone else was wrong too.  So even though 'nobody' saw the fall of the Soviet Union coming when it did (as one example) nobody was going to be penalized for that failure.  After all, everyone made the same mistake.


And nobody was going to be penalized for failing to predict the financial crisis, since hardly anybody credible saw it coming.


Again, this is hard to do.  Like predicting 9/11.  Once you know something happened you can go back and pick through the pieces, figure out which clues foreshadowed the event.  But figuring it out in real time?  Sorting out those pieces, putting them together with the other pieces, and figuring it out in time to actually act on it?


Very, very hard.


And something that's absolutely essential.