DOES PRINCIPLE OR PRACTICALITY RULE OUR FOREIGN POLICY?

By Edwin Cooney

In the early 1960s, as I was becoming aware of the importance of our standing in the world community as the moral leader of a worldwide political and military alliance against Communism, the observations of two Americans came to govern my image of the United States of America.

In 1962, Marine Colonel astronaut John Glenn, the hero of Mercury’s first orbital flight “Friendship Seven,” was quoted as saying: “I never see the American flag go by during a parade that it doesn’t bring tears to my eyes!”  For me back then, Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr’s status as a Marine and an astronaut linked the warrior and America’s glory together.  Subsequently, I fervently believed that the noblest act any citizen could perform would be to die for his country.

The second most stirring statement I ever heard came from a very different American, William Jennings Bryan of “Cross of Gold” speech fame.  Bryan, who was also known as “the Great Commoner,” would resign as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State in opposition to the Wilson administration’s increasing sympathy for the British and French alliance against the German and Austrian Central Powers during World War I.  Bryan was a Christian pacifist.  As such, he gained the contempt of both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Young FDR was then serving as Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy.  Both Roosevelts considered Bryan to be exceedingly naive and totally unsuitable as Secretary of State.  For William Jennings Bryan, just as for President Wilson, the morality of every issue, domestic or foreign, constituted the worthiness of every issue. Here’s the Bryan statement that so impressed me:

Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes -- a republic whose history, like the path of the just, "is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

 (Obviously Mr. Bryan, like a young Edwin Cooney, saw neither slavery nor Indian genocide as blots on our history or on our capacity for justness.)  Thus, I was moved by the possibility that America’s brand of morality was the brand the world most needed to flourish and prosper.

Our involvement in the Vietnam War began to alter my certainty that my country had a monopoly on morality.  I’ve since come to understand that no nation possesses such a virtue — if such a possibility might be in fact a virtue!

Writing in the Sunday, January 25th edition of the New York Times, Ross Douthat opined that the United States had become a prisoner of the Saudis.  The occasion was the recent death of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.  Secretary of State Kerry described Abdul as a man of wisdom and vision who was revered by his people.  Mr. Douthat went on to observe that Saudi Arabia, like the government of North Korea, the new government in Yemen, and ISIS, is a gangster state.  The only real difference between the Saudi family and the leaders of North Korea and ISIS is that the Saudis sit on a huge oil reserve, the profit and protection of which keeps them practical rather than principled.  Thus, it makes good sense that they tailor their foreign policy toward the best interests of the United States which remains their richest and most profitable market.

Meanwhile, its domestic religious practices are pretty much in line with some of the most brutal methods practiced by jihadist Islamic fundamentalists.

As 2015 opens, Americans are increasingly alarmed over the Islamic jihadists whether they be members of al-Qaeda or the newly established Islamic state known as ISIS.  For many Americans, the struggle is a moral one between Christian America and a radical outdated religious sect devoid of any sense of respect for human dignity.  Hence, just as mid to late 20th Century Americans convinced themselves that the cold war was a moral struggle between God-fearing democracies and “Godless Communism,” many Americans insist that our national security is today being threatened by a force as immoral as “atheistic communism.”  Unlike atheistic or Soviet communism, fundamentalist Islam is a religious faith.  It’s my guess that the Islamic clergy are every bit as dedicated to their faith as Billy Graham or the late Jerry Falwell to the moral principles of Christianity!

America has only about 117 years of experience in international affairs compared to the hundreds of years of foreign policy experience European governments have.  We only began colonizing the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii following the 1898 Spanish-American War. While we paid lip service to a Christian mission (especially in the Philippines), our real motive was largely corporate profit.  After World War II, we advertised our motives as being both moral and geopolitical.  Thus, most Americans, myself included, like to believe that America’s moral values are what motivate everything we do in both domestic and international relations.

The truth, however, is that international affairs like human relations seldom offer easy choices of association.  Just as our progeny command our love and connections despite their behavior, their friends, or even their attitudes toward us, so must America thrive within the family of international  relationships.  Strictly speaking, morality has never been the basis of America’s international friendships.  Back in the 1970’s, I remember reading quotes from representatives in the Nixon administration asserting that certain South and Central American dictators were “sons of bitches, but at least they are our SOBs!”  Thus, a few years later when President Jimmy Carter began preaching human rights as a prerequisite for our moral approval and our friendship, old Nixon hands as well as future Reagan policymakers belittled Carter’s insistence on human rights despite their eventual designation of the Soviets as the leaders of “an evil empire.”  Just as the morality of our own friends and neighbors is absolutely none of our business and beyond our control, so it is when it comes to America’s friends and neighbors.  To suggest otherwise is to cheapen the very importance and power of human morality.

America’s foreign policy is based on the practicality that historians and diplomats label as “Realpolitik.”  If the days of “realpolitik” went out with the passing of Bismarck and Disraeli in the late 19th century, it’s the best kept secret since LBJ decided not to seek re-election in 1968!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY