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I'm No Foreign Policy Expert...
I'm no foreign policy expert...
...in fact, I know next to nothing about what kinds of policies we have regarding individual nations with whom we are either allies or enemies.
But after watching parts of the G-20 summit, and the reactions by our esteemed political gabfest regulars, I am convinced that a seasoned kindergarten teacher could do as good a job as the so called "experts" when it comes to understanding the motivations behind the actions of our rivals.
Because if you look at the proceedings in Pittsburgh dispassionately, what you see is the same scuffling for attention that five year olds do when they are on the playground.
Now we see everybody under the sun howling about Iran gaining the power to arm their very own nuclear weapons. I thought our own president, Mr. Barack Obama himself, who, at the very same G-20 summit where all of the news about a secret reactor in Iran began to come out, said that "no one nation should try to dominate another nation."
"Responsibility and leadership in the 21st century demand more. In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world. Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War."
President Barack Obama
Address to United Nations General Assembly
Why do we say these things when we really don't mean them?
Because if I'm the ruler of Iran - not Ahmadinejad, but the people he answers to - and believe that my national sovereignty is as valid as any other country's ability to decide its own fate, then I'd probably tell the UN Security Council to go jump off a cliff.
In many ways, it is analogous to the "family meeting" concept that caught on in the 80's, where everybody in the household got together to discuss major issues affecting the entire family. Who had the veto power in those meetings? The parents - the people who were paying for the very room in which the meeting was held.
I'd much rather have my president tell it like it really is - that we get all the say so because we are paying the lion's share of the United Nation's bill with some of the money we've borrowed from the Chinese; that we'd really like to quit building these nuclear weapons because they cost too damn much, but we don't have the muscle to make India, Pakistan, North Korea or Russia give theirs up; that we consider the nukes in France and the United Kingdom to be the same as being located behind our borders; and that we give Israel a pass, mostly for having the moxie to claim an official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" with a straight face when we all know they've got them.
I won't be holding my breath waiting for anything like this to ever happen.
As a communication tool between sovereign nations, the United Nations was a good idea, but the pomp and circumstance and posturing that passes for diplomacy has gotten in the way almost since the beginning.
And if you stop a minute, and think about the facts that are involved - if you take a long, long look at the picture of the little boy in the picture above, who was burned to a crisp in Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 - the only country I can think of that has ever used nuclear weapons in a wartime conflict is...
...the United States of America.
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Suggestion: See if you can state in a simple declarative sentence what you are advocating.
"I want X to do Y because it will benefit Z"
September 30, 2009 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Because this nation once used nuclear weapons against other human beings doesn't preclude us from trying to limit their deployment today. Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is laudable, albeit impractical. But you bring up an interesting point: At what point does national sovereignty trump nuclear weapons control? Or does it? Or can any one nation or even group of nations force another country's nuclear disarmament, especially when its dread regional foe has perhaps hundreds of such weapons?
September 30, 2009 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not completely sure what your point is, Kris, but let me comment on at least one aspect of it.
Among great principles, fairness is of enormous importance, but it is not always the most important. In some circumstances, it is more important, in my view, to maximize the probability that we humans will survive as a species, that those who are suffering be relieved, that those who yearn for freedom achieve it, and that the dangers of oppression and annihilation be reduced.
To realize these goals often means identifying those among us, as individuals and as nations, who pose the greatest threat, and taking steps to prevent them from harming the rest of us. We must do this even if it means treating them in a manner we would not impose on others, and it means doing it even by those of us who are not guiltless of past transgressions, since there are no nations without sin.
In the context of current issues, we must take seriously a future threat from an Iranian theocracy that has shown contempt for its own people and has vowed the destruction of another nation, Israel. We should not take seriously all inflammatory rhetoric from Iran, nor proceed recklessly, but neither can we ignore the threat nor pretend that other nations are equally threatening merely because they possess more weaponry.
It is for these reasons that international policy decisions are a difficult challenge - they can't be reached by simple formulas or simple philosophies, but must be based on evidence, probabilistic assessments, and a relentless willingness to adapt to changeing circumstances.
To expose the human race to something less capable of accomplishing our goals would be unfair in the broadest sense of the world.
September 30, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see what's so difficult to understand about "why do we say these things when we really don't mean them?"
If we have to invent complicated methodologies to explain why we can ignore the things we can all see with our own eyes in order to make the parts of reality we are willing to accept adhere to some of the simplest principles of all, like the idea of "fairness" or "equality", its no wonder that most of the world, including our own citizenry, think that a lot of our public policy is the kind of bullshit snake oil salesmen used to sell.
Personally, I think the need to feel a sense of moral and intellectual superiority is behind these multi-pronged explanations that allow us to assert the logical equivalent of "2 = 4" with a straight face.
If we use logic when its expedient, and philosophical bluster when it isn't, then what are we doing?
I'd rather here the president say "we Americans know what's best for the rest of you (except China) ruffians and demagogues, so just shut the hell up and do it our way" than listen to the sappy line of bullshit he and every other commander in chief has peddled to the world.
I'm still not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
September 30, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink