Time For A Change--Defining America's "Mission"

Recently Oxfam America launched a petition drive with the view of calling upon the incoming Obama Administration to develop (and, presumably, implement) plans to end the sexual violence directed against women in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa. The nature of the petition as well as its wording implies strongly that this act represents a test of the American "mission" in the world.

Oxfam America and others of like mind have, with this petition, joined the chorus of groups and individuals demanding that the US live up to its global "mission" by alleviating global poverty, ending anthropogenic climate change, feeding those who are hungry, protecting the tropical rainforests, halting acoustic pollution of the oceans, and other tasks too numerous too mention. All of these activities are necessary. All are important. All would serve to the greater benefit of humankind.

But, to what extent are they incumbent upon the United States? How can one argue that any or all constitute America's "mission?"

Getting a grip on what, if any, "mission" accrues to the United States is manifestly necessary. It is necessary if the Obama Administration is to formulate a coherent foreign policy and gain the support of We the People--or at least the politically articulate portion which is concerned with foreign affairs.

For a half century there was no debate over the American "mission." It was consensually understood and agreed that the "mission" of the US was to act as Leader of the Free World in the apocalypse freighted Cold War with the Soviet Union and its clients.

With the end of that confrontation, uncertainty replaced the consensus. The records of the Clinton and W. Bush Administrations demonstrate this uncertainty and confusion, albeit each in a different fashion.

As any number of diplomatic historians have argued over the past century, any confusion regarding the "mission" of the US in the world has stemmed from a basic split in how Americans and their governments have balanced the pursuit of ideals with the requirements of realism. The recurrent shifts between realism and idealism in American foreign policy have existed almost from the beginnings of the American experience.

The roots of idealism are to be found in the "mission statement" implicit in the views of the founders of the Puritan colony of Plymouth. To the Puritan mind, they were on an "errand into the wilderness." The nature of that errand was to continue the process of purifying their community so that in the fullness of time and consonant with the will of God, they would be recalled to England. Recalled to save the mother country from the creeping evil of "Popishness."

You don't get more idealistic than that.

Despite a brief flurry of revolutionary zeal which saw the American Patriots attempt to export the beauties of their revolution to Canada by force of arms, the leaders of the Revolutionary and early Constitutional periods were remarkably free of the idealistic fervor which normally propels a nation born of war. As the underlying pragmatism of the Constitution shows clearly, the "decider guys" of the Federal period held ideals well tempered by a healthy regard for the requirements of reality.

The writings of the Founders and their immediate successors indicate that realism trumped the excesses of idealism. In foreign affairs the universal position was commercial friendship with all who reciprocated and a total rejection of any sort of intervention in the affairs of other countries. It was believed and argued that by focusing its efforts upon developing its land, resources, and, most importantly, its domestic institutions of government, the United States could provide an example worthy of emulation.

In short, the Americans of the early Nineteenth Century were in favor of a sort of leadership-by-example approach to foreign policy. By so doing and by the fact of success, the US would encourage the peoples of other countries to embrace our form of government, economy, and social organisation.

Not until the last years of the 19th Century did this general consensus fray. When it did start to ravel, it came apart with speed and ferocity. Expansion across the continent, at first peaceful (unless you were an indigenous American in the way), morphed into the more muscular Manifest Destiny of mid-century. This in turn transmogrified into the euphemistically expressed imperialism of the Internationalist Progressives.

The Internationalist Progressives were activist oriented ideologues. To their eyes, the US had a "mission" which went far beyond filling a large chunk of the North American continent. Far transcended mere success in the development of resources and institutions. Going much further than leadership-by-example and its essentially realistic view of costs and benefits, the Internationalist Progressives were gung-ho for the forcible exportation of American institutions to other peoples regardless of the desires of the recipients.

The Internationalist Progressives were eager to take on the challenge offered by Rudyard Kipling. They rushed to pick up "the White Man's Burden."

Whether Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt or Democrats like Woodrow Wilson, US Administrations with the backing of the majority of We the People mounted interventions and occupations throughout the world. The Internationalist Progressives never argued that pragmatic interests or the requirements of reality demanded these interventions and occupations except in passing.

The real motive was always idealism.

The ideal in play was simple, easily understood, and agreed upon by virtually all Americans.

Here is the ideal, short and sweet

The nature and character of the United States and its institutions were superior to those existing elsewhere. The exportation of these were in the best interests of the recipients. The moral nature of America demanded that we right presumed wrongs by providing better government, better economic structures, better social institutions.

We could do no other. It was our "mission."

President Wilson put it perfectly as he ordered the landing of troops at Vera Cruz during the midst of the bloody and expropriation minded Mexican revolution. "We will teach the Mexicans to elect good men."

The grunts fighting to suppress the Philippine Insurrection put it just as well. They were a bit more cynical, but such is the prerogative of the guys at the bloody tip. They had a jingle which contained the chorus, "Under the wide and starry flag/We'll civilize them with a Krag." (The Krag-Jorganson rifle was the standard issue weapon of the time.)

We the People and our governments stuck with the idealism of the Internationalist Progressives until the awesome let down of the Twenties. Reality slapped us in the face. The "War to End Wars" had not ended wars. The "War to Make the World Safe For Democracy" hadn't performed that miracle.

World War I was a failure from the American perspective. Lives had been expended for nothing. Blood out, zilch in.

The Internationalist impulse was replaced, not by realism, but by another form of idealism. We the People became self-absorbed both during the years of apparent plenty--the Twenties--and during the time of poverty--the Thirties. This was the time of our total disengagement from the affairs and threats of the world. This was the time of Isolationism.

The reality of threat kept knocking on Uncle Sam's door as the Thirties ended. Few were ready to listen. Ultimately reality with a thwacking great boot kicked the door in on 7 December 41.

During the war, We the People, with the full and often knowingly duplicitous encouragement of the Administration of FDR, were filled with the ideal of a world that would be made peaceful by the joint efforts of a war-winning coalition. We were assured (and we assured ourselves) that once the grand combine of the US, the UK, the USSR (as well as the tag-alongs, France and China) had obliterated the aggressors, they would continue to guarantee a world of peace through the United Nations.

That idealistic view was proven to be hallucinatory even before the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco. With the acknowledgement of the Cold War as being real, very dangerous, and long term in nature, realism came out of the shadows for the first time in generations.

The Containment Policy as interpreted by Truman and then Eisenhower was profoundly realistic. It accepted the limitations imposed by reality. It accepted the world as it was and sought to remake the global political order slowly on the margins until the internal weaknesses of the Soviet Union caught up with it.

The policy of roll back espoused by most Republicans on the Right and even some Cold War Liberals on the Left was idealistic. When attempted even in limited form, roll back proved that ideals could be quite deadly. (Consider the Cuban Missile Crisis and hold your breath at just how close we came to the very unpleasant reality of a nuclear exchange.)

Whew! We're through a quick background sketch of the zigs and zags of US foreign policy and its companion, the nature of any American "mission."

Without recapitulating the ideologically propelled debacles of the past twenty years, suffice it to say that recent history parallels the history of long ago. Idealism leads to interventions in the affairs of other peoples and countries without due regard as to the human terrain upon which our well-intended efforts are to operate.

Realism, which has been conspicuously absent over the past decade and a half, demands that We the People and our governments take the world as it is.

Realism requires that we properly appreciate what our core national and strategic interests actually are.

Realism insists that we evaluate closely and carefully what the risks and benefits of a particular policy option might be.

Realism is based upon a full understanding of the strengths and limitations resident in our instruments of national power.

Realism also is predicated upon an accurate reading of the human terrain upon which our policy will operate.

Given the nature of the world's political and economic order today, the pure leadership-by-example model that served the nation well during the first century or so of its existence no longer is sufficient to protect, let alone advance, our core national and strategic interests. It was realistic back then. Now it is not.

The realism of the Cold War is no longer realistic. It is not applicable in a multi-polar world. It would only become realistic should the current conflict expressed as the Global War on Terrorism become a seemingly permanent bifurcation between the Islamist oriented states and all other countries. This Huntington "Clash of Civilizations" is unlikely, but not impossible. Not impossible by a long shot.

A new definition of realism must not only take account of global problems in which the US must play a collaborative role in its own national interest, it must acknowledge that not every "human wrong" no matter how despicable can be addressed by the US acting alone or in concert with other like-minded countries. This is why the Oxfam America and similar High Minded efforts are both wrong-headed and, if acted upon, would lead only to failure.

The collapse of states, the plunder and rapine of kleptocracies and kleptocratic movements are filled with nauseating abuses of human rights. They are filled with the most reprehensible of human cruelties.

These miseries and crimes are real. But, that does not mean that it is realistic for the US or the EU or even that central depository of the High Minded, the UN, to intervene, particularly to intervene with military force.

Nations, even Great Powers, must choose their battles carefully and cautiously. Care, caution, proper detailed planning based on accurate understandings of the human terrain to be targeted as well as the goals to be accomplished are all hallmarks of a realistic foreign policy.

An even more central feature of realism in foreign policy is knowing what the nation's core interests are and how the proposed policy will serve to defend or advance these interests.

Idealism, no matter what form, no matter how lofty the aspirations behind it might be, serves only to cloud the eye and befuddle the mind of a nation. Blind and stupefied countries rarely, if ever, have any useful "mission."