George Washington's farewell address warned us to avoid foreign entanglements. But since the Spanish-American war in 1898 we have been increasingly involved in world affairs.
Having abandoned Washington's advice, we have no idea how much we should be involved in a world shared with many terrible regimes. Television rubs our noses in outrageous misery, evoking heartfelt calls for humanitarian interventions in troubled areas.
How should we respond?
It is much easier to overthrow bad governments than to replace them with better ones. As Benedict de Spinoza realized centuries ago, "It is . . . dangerous to remove a king, even though it is perfectly clear that he is a tyrant. For a people accustomed to royal rule, and kept in check by that alone, will despise and make a mockery of any lesser authority; and so, if it removes one king, it will find it necessary to replace him by another, and he will be a tyrant not by choice, but by necessity."
Spinoza anticipates the mess America created in Iraq. A former tyranny cannot immediately be governed by our standards of political decency, by us or by anyone else.
We refused to govern Iraq ourselves. We also prevented Iraqis who could have governed from doing so. The Iraqi leaders we installed may have been less harsh than Saddam Hussein, but for exactly that reason were unable to govern. We thereby created conditions resembling Thomas Hobbes' description of anarchy, a "war of all against all" in which there is "continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
The middle of the road can be the worst place to drive. Our approach in Iraq and elsewhere represented an unsatisfactory middle ground between two radically different policies, either of which could have worked.
We could have resumed George Washington's policy, minimizing foreign involvements, abandoning efforts to overthrow bad regimes or to prevent foreigners from treating one another viciously. We could have granted de facto recognition to all governments and been willing to make mutually beneficial deals as long as they leave us alone.
Or we could have opted for humanitarian imperialism. After overthrowing bad regimes, we would accept responsibility to govern for many years while teaching locals how to govern themselves. This is what Rudyard Kipling meant when he spoke, in a rather racist manner, about "the white man's burden." French imperialists spoke of a mission civilisatrice.
Humanitarian imperialism probably would not be a good idea. People in countries we are trying to help would see our proclaimed goals as a subterfuge for oppressing and exploiting them. Popular resistance would increase our difficulties in governing.
As Spinoza indicated, filling the vacuum left by an overthrown tyranny would be impossible if we governed using standards expected here at home. Avoiding a Hobbesian nightmare would require us to treat the local population harshly. This would evoke accusations that we have a double standard, harsh treatment by the former regime being our claimed reason for overthrowing it.
Imperialism would also be hard to justify to Americans, whose money and blood would be expended, not because it is in our national interest, but in order to benefit foreigners.
Given the difficulties with imperialism, we would do better to revert to George Washington's foreign policy. We should applaud countries which move towards democracy but, unlike George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama, avoid trying to impose it on countries like Iraq. We should not imitate Woodrow Wilson's effort to make the world safe for democracy by fighting a "war to end all war," which failed to achieve either of these overly ambitious objectives.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently hinted that we might move away from doctrinaire efforts to overthrow bad regimes and democratize them. If I understand Tillerson correctly and if he has the support of the president, we might hope to see the U.S. pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, abandon efforts to overthrow Syria's Assad and other foreign leaders, and give up trying to fine tune political arrangements in other parts of the world. So far, unfortunately, there is no sign this is happening.
Perhaps the best way to influence other countries will be for us to set such a great example in our domestic and foreign policies that people everywhere can't resist wanting to emulate our institutions. If that is to be our approach, however, we obviously have a lot of work to do right here at home.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published 1981 and his most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon, and a number of other states. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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