Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Vapid Preaching that Won’t Stop ISIS – and Fails the Morality Test

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foreign policy, Iraq, ISIS, morality, national interests, nonviolence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, terrorism

First, let me stipulate that the 53 clergy, theologians, and religious sisters who sent a letter to President Obama August 27 urging exclusively peaceful responses to the ISIS threat in the Middle East have every right to express their opinions. But those disagreeing have an equal right to point out that the letter offers zero useful advice to the U.S. government. At least as important, its only conceivable merit is the reminder it provides of the utter irrelevance at best, and potential dangers at worst, of simplistically applying to the Hobbesian world of international affairs moral precepts that are praiseworthy and vital to individuals and to successful domestic societies.

Second, let me stipulate that I don’t regard moral or humanitarian outrages as the main or even significant reasons for opposing ISIS militarily. My overriding concern – and the concern that should be paramount in the minds of U.S. government officials – is eliminating the threat to U.S. national security posed by ISIS before it produces an attack on American territory.

What’s so pathetic and ludicrous, though, about the August 27 letter is that it fails so completely even on moral grounds. Its recommendations can’t possibly achieve their humanitarian goals before ISIS adds at least tens of thousands of civilians to its list of victims – including small children. In other words, even if you believe in the prospects of “long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy, nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation” in the Middle East, there can be no doubt that these initiatives will do nothing to prevent more ISIS atrocities for years at best.

And positively counterproductive from a moral standpoint is the letter’s proposal for an arms embargo “on all parties to the conflict.” One rationale is at least grounded in recognizable rationality: “U.S. arms and military assistance to the government forces and ethnic militias in Iraq, in addition to arming Syrian rebel groups, have only fueled the carnage, in part due to weapons intended for one group being taken and used by others. All armed parties have been accused of committing gross violations of human rights.”

But the signatories also believe that military force can be successfully replaced by “community-based nonviolent resistance strategies to transform the conflict and meet the deeper need and grievances of all parties. For example, experts have suggested strategies such as parallel institutions, dispersed disruptions, and economic non-cooperation.” Of course, the only conceivable result of this strategy is making the signatories and their supporters feel good about themselves. And while they’re patting themselves on the back, ISIS will continue murdering, raping, torturing, and enslaving.

At the root of this ethical quackery, however, is an assumption shared by far too many to the left of center, in particular, who do ostensibly live and work in the fallen, earthly realm of public policy: that all of the world’s bad actors are motivated by concrete, fundamentally justifiable grievances whose at least partial satisfaction will pacify them. Thus the signatories’ recommendation that Washington prevent the further “accumulation of grievances that contribute to the global justification for the Islamic State’s existence among its supporters.” Prominent on this list are “decades of U.S. political and military intervention” in the Middle East that “have significantly contributed to the current crisis in Iraq.”

Given clear American bungling in the region, these claims might be plausible – except they can’t possibly explain ISIS’ savagery toward women and children, including those that are Moslem. I have no idea whether this behavior meets standard definitions of “evil,” or whatever other religious or philosophical labels might apply. What’s indisputable is that it can’t reflect any agenda remotely acceptable to anyone believing that American statecraft should seek a better world – as opposed to the narrower goal of defending purely American interests.

Ironically, there is a U.S. anti-ISIS strategy that could obviate the need for American military actions at least in the long term. But at least one of its pillars – establishing genuinely secure U.S. borders to reduce greatly the odds of ISIS fighters and other terrorists accessing the American homeland – probably wouldn’t pass muster with the 53 August 27 signatories, either. Combined with the other above objections, it’s more than enough to make you wonder. Is their bottom line preventing war and violence? Or is it preening?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Limits to Morality

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China, morality, national interests, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, realism, Russia, U.S. foreign policy, Ukraine

One reason for starting this blog was my desire to resume analyzing U.S. foreign policy – a career hat I wore for many years.   The timing is great for me, if not for the country, because the confusion surrounding this realm at least rivals that created by trade and other aspects of U.S. economic policy. So in this first post on this subject, I’ll tackle an issue with which Americans from President Obama on down are struggling unproductively – the extent to which moral questions should influence the nation’s diplomacy.  

A short, and surprisingly helpful answer is “As much as the American people feel like.”  After all, the Unied States is a sovereign state, meaning that it is legally and politically accountable to no authority other than its own government (even when it signs treaties).  And however imperfect our representative form of government is, its main purpose remains carrying out the public’s wishes.  So if the American people want more moral considerations injected into foreign policymaking, they have every right to do so, and numerous means of making these wishes known to their leaders.  

Of course, this conclusion raises its own important moral questions.  For example, doesn’t morality dictate that this foreign policy be financed in a financially moral way — that is, by paying for at least much of it in the here and now, rather than by foisting heavy costs onto future generations lacking any say in the original decision?  And shouldn’t financial and military sacrifices be shared throughout the body politic?  Former President George W. Bush sure flunked those tests, when he paid for the Iraq war (which I still broadly endorse) by borrowing (and worse, cutting taxes in the process), and fought it with a volunteer military.

But there are two even more fundamental, and related, reasons to be wary of morality as a guide to American foreign policy.  First, the nation needs to answer the question, “Whose morality?”  The easy answers are “The President’s,” or “The President’s and Congress'” (depending on your views on war powers issues in particular).  But those answers are anything but conclusive.  The Constitution, for example, clearly places some checks on the President’s ability to send U.S. military forces into combat and to expend resources on foreign policy.  As for Congress, the Constitution denies it operational control over the military, and any authority to carry out the laws it passes (except for the rules by which it governs and regulates itself).  

These obstacles throw the question back to the public, which only makes deciding “Whose Morality?” infinitely more vexing.  Further compounding these difficulties is figuring out how to decide which version of morality should be selected, and when it applies.  Unless the morality camp’s position is that there’s a single variety and a single set of rules for translating it into concrete policy steps in every circumstance?  

Often when debating policy, Americans reasonably rely at least in part on expertise – on certain individuals or groups they reasonably believe possess some combination of special knowledge and experience that merits special respect.  But who are the morality experts?  Clerics?  From which religion?  And from which sect or denomination of that religion?  And  when did priests, ministers, rabbis master the public policy side of the equation?  Does anyone suppose that elected politicians are morality experts?  Academic philosophers?  Any academics at all?  Media pundits or newspaper editorial writers?  Hollywood stars?          

Those last few categories understandably invite snickering, but too often, opinions from those quarters are taken with the utmost seriousness in our foreign policy debate.  This prominence should be a clear warning:  No one’s a widely recognized expert on morality.  And therefore everyone is (arguably except for convicted criminals).  In other words, it’s certainly interesting that, say, President Obama, or UN Ambassador Power, or Congress’ leaders, or the Pope, or the Washington Post editorial board, or Bill O’Reilly, or George Clooney believe that the United States has or doesn’t have certain obligations to address some particular outrage on the world stage.  But their views are intrinsically no more interesting – and certainly no more important – than my views, or my wife’s views.  Or your views.  

The second reason for doubting morality’s use flows from the first.  Since no one has any special expertise on moral questions, it seems impossible to think that enough of a national consensus on morality can emerge to create a useful guide for foreign policymakers.  Of course, it will always be difficult to create a national consensus on defining U.S. foreign policy interests – and especially those interests that warrant costs and risks.  Just as obvious, those generally considered experts often disagree strongly among themselves on courses of action.  But can anyone doubt that it’s ultimately going to be easier to reach consensus on interests than on morality?

After all, calculating interests depends on evaluating information that is reasonably uncontroversial – e.g., about geography, about resource endowments, about size of markets, about the relative strength of different national militaries.  These facts rarely speak for themselves to policymakers or the public, largely because actions usually involve tradeoffs among interests, and therefore judgment calls can rarely be avoided.  But using the prism of interests at least requires thinking of information that can be mastered and measured with considerable precision.  That simply isn’t the case with the prism of morality.

I hope that this kind of thinking on morality and foreign policy strikes you the way it strikes me – as the height of common sense.  I also hope that, when you read about current international crises in places like Russia’s neighborhood, East Asia, or South Sudan, you start asking why our political leaders and our supposed opinion leaders either seem so unaware of it, or so determined to wish it away.