It’s Justice Stupid!: Why Be Confused About American Foreign Policy?

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

    This morning, March 18th, Jeremy Henzell Thomas, writes, “I heard an interview with a State Department official on BBC radio yesterday in which he said that American policy was always directed to American strategic interests and not to ideals of freedom and democracy in foreign lands! I’m confused. Aren’t we all?”

    There is no reason at all to be confused about American foreign (or domestic) policy if one disinguishes between ultimate goals and short versus long-term objectives in their pursuit.

  To begin with, America as a nation more than any other nation (which is why we are “exceptional”) is caught in a dialectic between freedom/ democracy and survival.  We are very serious about freedom and democracy, though exceptionally few policy makers appreciate that the Founders of America insisted that truth and its application through justice is the only ultimate goal and that freedom and democracy can never be more than hoped for results. 

    The dilemma arises when we see a conflict between free democracy (as distinct from totalitarian democracy a la the French Revolution) and protection of our vital interests necessary for survival.  My experience in preparing policy papers and talks for three presidents and several cabinet officers is that “needs” always trump goals.  We need free access to the resources of the world, such as oil, and we need to promote creative destruction (as in Iraq) in order to thwart the enemies of global civilization, such as Saddam Hussain, Al Qa’ida, and “Islamic radicals” everywhere (especially now at home).

    The dilemma here is whether and how to choose priorities between short-range and long-range objectives in pursuit of our ultimate goals.  For example, over the long-run pragmatic policymakers suspect that the soft power of freedom and democracy in the world is more reliable as a defense of our national needs than is hard power (brute force).  Over the short run of a few years, however, they fear that the threat of radicals hijacking free peoples outweighs the potential of democracy to produce a world conducive to America’s needs. 

    For example, Bahrain may be perhaps the world’s most corrupt and unjust country in the world, but we must maintain the monarchy that has exploited the people of Bahrain for two hundred years ever since the Sunni Al Khalifa tribe invaded the ancient Shi’a nation of Bahrain.  Why?  Simply because our Fifth Fleet is stationed there to “protect” Saudi Arabia against Iran.  Secretary Gates visited Bahrain the day before the Saudi’s declared that they would invade Bahrain to meet its own (and America’s) national security “needs”.

    The U.S.-China relationship is a classic example of the dialectic between short-run and long-run needs.  Over the short run we need China to keep its assets parked in America in the form of Treasuries so that we do not have to declare bankruptcy and so that ultimately we can expand our export markets to offset imports.  But much more serious over the long run is the threat that China and related alliances can pose to continued American domination of global finances, particularly by hi-jacking the system of money and credit that we have exported all over the world as our ultimate weapon of self-defense.

  The dilemmas in American foreign policy, as well as domestically, occur because we have abandoned the very concept of justice.  President Obama is the first president since Ronald Reagan to speak about and even emphasize justice, but Obama seems to have absolutely no concept of what justice is, and President Reagan never followed through on any of his most cherished policies.  In practice, though perhaps not in theory, their ultimate goal was not justice but personal political survival as taught to them day by day by their advisors for whom justice was not even worthy to be the subject of a joke.

    The most dangerous threat to the future of civilization is American ignorance of what motivated America’s Founders, namely, that all ultimate purpose and true authority comes from seeking and observing the natural law that lies at the core of all world religions.  We can save our own and the other civilizations in the world only if and to the extent that we can serve as a model in recovering our transcendent, traditionalist roots so that we can rehabilitate the role of religion in the world not as the cause of our otherwise intractible problems but as the only solution.