The World Role of the United States
Will, George F.
A SYMPOSIUM The Seventies: America's Promise as a World Power The World of the United States George Will Brazenly, and with full consciousness of the nature of the deed, I want to commit a...
...I do not want to raise the general argument about the uses of historical analogy in contemporary political considerations, or the argument about the particular parallels between 1938 and 1971...
...Can There Be Peace Without Power...
...This argument betokens a weariness and puzzlement which some persons are working to translate into a political movement toward isolationism...
...To ignore our domestic ills would be to commit the sin of neglect...
...One index of the national uneasines about its own standards, and its own ability to chart a path to political right, is that Americans are unsure about how to perform the majestic duty stipulated in the Declaration of Independence -- the duty of acting with decent respect 1o the opinions of mankind...
...Now admittedly, there is no inherent virtue in maintaining extensive and costly military forces or in developing ~ncroasingly .mrJhi.~ticated weanons...
...The fixation with foreign opinion reached an apotheosis of sorts during the dreary 1960 presidential campaign...
...Burke did not devalue all general theories -- after all, he gave the world a Burkean theory But he placed squarely at the center of political reflection the problem of the relation to theory to practice...
...A person who is properly "other regarding" understands that ignoring others, and allowing them to fend for themselves, is not always showing proper regard for others...
...And in our periodic efforts to transcend our philosophic self-portrait we swing from the behavior of pure calculation to something equally unhealthy: the dogmatic embracing of pure duties...
...But even without reforma"HELP WANTED: Sincere gentleman seeks runningmate...
...it has a moral dimension9 This uneasiness is a manifestation of a chronic difficulty with the nation's prevailing liberal philosophy...
...Hence they understand the obligation of the wealthy to share with the poor...
...First, consider American power...
...No nation with peaceful intentions requires or can justify a defense establishment which is larger than that which is necessary to meet the nef of her own security...
...For example, when we recognize the many possible choices we can make, for good or ill, we may discover that there are more kinds of arrogance under the sun than are dehounced in Senator Fulbright's thin book...
...They grow and bloom and multiply with special fecundity on the burned-over terrain of academic political science...
...The one strand is the confident, eighteenth century Enlightenment doctrine of self-evident truths regarding natural rights, truths accessible equally to all men...
...This is not the time for Americans to forget that there is more to living well than cultivating one's own garden, however splendidly it may bloom in the end...
...This would be splendid, because we could live our lives entirely absorbed in ourselves, and we would be assured of moral purity...
...Russell understands power as "'the achievement of intended effects...
...Not surprisingly, as shown before, and during and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, the UN has a capacity for ineptitude and downright mischief that is altogether too characteristic of sovereignties created in the middle of the 20th century...
...And he wanted the American nation to share The Alternative November, 1971 9 his enthusiasm for (as he put it) standing at Armageddon and battling for the Lord...
...The system is designed to work evpn ,~,~,-~ ,~,, -,,,, ;e .ioti,~ from any motives other than calculated selfinterest...
...14 The Alternative November, 1971 tion in our philosophy, we need not despair...
...Second, the t~s of the debate suggest that we now must choose between just two alternatives "globalism" and something else whereas, in fact, there are a large number of alternatives on the continuum between unmentioned isolation and unwanted 'globalism9 There is one more thing to be noted about the term 9 The continuity of America's various commitments under four Administrations prior to the present one was not denounced as 9 except by the minority isolationist wing of the Republican Party thatdid not follow the internationalist lead of Senator Vandenberg after the war...
...This, it is clear, involves an oscillation between being ignoble and being dangerous...
...But Americans also understand that there is a corollary obligation -- the obligation of the powerful to share their power with the weak...
...Our country is founded on the assumption that men are primarily calculators of their own interests and that the political system must accommodate ilself to this hard fact about the species...
...This is the arrogance of a wealthy people which despises the needs of others and reserves its wealth exclusively for its own enjoyment...
...Erosion of Military Strength...
...The first is a development in physics...
...It was Edmund Burke who told us that the problem with general theories of political behavior is that they can be distraction...
...These same figures have forced us, over the same eight-year period, to reduce the number of our Navy carrier wings from twenty:four to fifteen, the number of our tactical Air Force squadrons from 119 to 105, and to reduce by almost thirty percent the number-.of our active naval vessels, from 932 vessels to 658...
...Today high hopes for the UN have been drastically -- but not, I think, excessively -- pruned back in the face of two realizations...
...And it is not always possible to assume that self-restraint in the interest of others means shackling our own power...
...Americans are also given to take sides, and have done so at various times and places...
...It is intended to conjure up alarming spectacles, and to have a thoroughly perjorative connotation...
...Burke affected a salutary lowering of our confidence in the capacity of general theories to encompass the unique subtleties of particular cases...
...It is only interesting for what we can learn from it about the motives "of those who want to distract us...
...The Balance of Terror While the effectiveness of our foreign policy has ultimately rested on our power to unleash nuclear devastation on any enemy, it has long been an accepted fact at home and abroad that it is unthinkable that the United States should ever initiate an atomic strike...
...The military victory in the Ch, il War solved op~ ~roblem -- the threat of succession -- but of course it di...
...I have never had a consuming interest in military affairs, but because of the responsibilities of my office and because of the growing evidence of America's rapidly 'deteriorating defenses, I have found it necessary to seek out the facts...
...Morality often does involve selfrestraint...
...But rejecting this does not commit one to very much...
...They are unfortunate because this country will be more secure and more admirable to the extent we as a nation -- not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans -accept and rejoice in the vision of America's world role which the late President voiced a decade ago...
...Dean Aeheson I I its sovereignty and joined the League of Nations...
...I would like to talk about the urgent need to re-reorder our priorities...
...This uneasine~- is, in part, an entirely sensible response to the new dangerousness of the world and to the dumb prolongation of the Vietnam War...
...This is the source of the special drama and importance of the 1972 Presidential campaign...
...As a result we are not only falling critically behind in the necessary business of military research and development, but we have allowed our existing forces to deteriorate to a point where the ability of the President of the United States to assure the defense of vital national interests may be in jeopardy...
...we must now allow ourselves to take comfort from the illusion that these great decisions are dictated by vast impersonal forces...
...Teddy Roosevelt, the first president to recognize the internationalism in America's future, accepted with equanimity the prospect of America as an active world power...
...The imperative behind a 'pure duty" disdains calculation of national self-interest...
...What Nonsense...
...In fact he did more than accept it -- he relished it...
...The Burden of Choice But so long as we face squarely the fact that the pOlitical process must breathe life and, hopefully, honor into the nation's raw capacity for powerful action, we must face the burden of choice...
...The other strand is Madisonian, and it is the strand on which the nation actually was founded...
...As President Kennedy declared in his Inaugural Address, "the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbearers fought are still at issue around the globe...
...Both it and Senator Jackson's subsequent speech are significant manifestations of an increasing apprehension over AmeriCa's Capability to insure world peace...
...It will be tragic if the developed nations cannot reject the idea of a white man's burden without becoming indifferent to the non-white man's afflictions...
...We at the Saturday Evening Club congratulate the Pennsylvania Kid but regret the defeat of the progressiveminded Scissors Sam...
...12 The Alternative November, 1971 Today there are those who criticize American commitments because they involve people and places "10,000 miles away from home...
...But generally the term 'globalism" refers to a policy whereby the United States undertakes to act as a world policeman," vigorously enforcing its law -- or interests or something -- on all non-conforming subjects, at all points on the compass...
...In this recoil, the nation is drawn toward isolationism without the discomforting necessity of confronting the term -'isolationism" -- a term that is not newly minted, and one which earned its perjorative connotation as a result of the two decades prior to World War II when an irresponsible America was content to cultivate its gardens...
...A SYMPOSIUM The Seventies: America's Promise as a World Power The World of the United States George Will Brazenly, and with full consciousness of the nature of the deed, I want to commit a cultural rarity...
...Yet for some time now we have been on an anti-military binge which has forced drastic cutbacks in large categories of defense spending which are essential to our security...
...I have no general theory that will unravel future riddles...
...Withdrawal from our world role into splendid isolation would manifest a complacency born of arrogance, an arrogance addressed to the less fortunate...
...But the world is ,rarely that simple, and no reflective person believes that morality involves nothing but perfecting one's private life...
...The following speech by Senator James L. Buckley was delivered at the National Press Club...
...This is so for two reasons...
...The term 9" globalism" was not widely used in response to the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, Point Four, to massive foreign aid appropriations, a participation in NATO or SEATO, the organization of American States, or the Alliance for Progress...
...Ironically, the nation received it most conspicuously from that noble generation to which fell the ta-~k of founding a system that would work without anyone having noble motives...
...It has therefore been with deep concern that I have found my investigation confirming those recently published stories which ~onclude that we will soon find ourselves in a position where our deterent capacity will no longer be sufficiently plausible to cause the Soviet Union to back away from future confrontations involving interests vital to the West...
...Firsf, real -9 is an alternative no or~e advocates...
...Performance of a "'pure duty" is almost altruistic...
...it all depends on our good intentions...
...The Alternative November, 1971 13 When the forces of contraction, withdrawl, isolation and indifference are on the rise, America badly needs leadership that will call the nation to her duty, as Milton did for his nation when he declared: "Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live...
...A reader of the Federalist Papers...
...Economic and technological power are today, more than ever, the sinews of national power...
...The Usefulness of Force The first argument holds that the usefulness of force is illusory -- that "force settles nothing...
...James Russell Lowell, poet and practicing dove in the great national debate about the Mexican war, was moved to declare: .'~rhey are slaves who dare not be -- In the right with two or three...
...That is the wrong question, destiny has nothing to do with it...
...What is our task...
...But, on the other hand, given our huge capacities, to use the existence of domestic exigencies as an excuse to curtail our international responsibilities would be to commit the sin of sloth...
...Remember, the danger that the nation will embark on policies of "'pure duty" stems from the nation's longing for some moral imperatives better than those demanded by the "Federalist" morality of calculation, and this kind of noble imperative cannot be drawn from Holmesian liberalism...
...What is at stake is not our manifest destiny but out mamte~t uuty to use our great power on behalf of those principles we believe in...
...Today we are in danger of becoming an 'other-directed" nation -hollow, and content to derive our standards of political right from whatever behavior happens to be winning the inchoate 'approval" of foreign populations...
...This is the 9" Federalist" strand, and it supports a political order that is marvelously efficient and yet, at times, strangely unsatisfying...
...He said, "We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first Revolution...
...Hence it seems safe to say that, while force cannot settle everything, it certainly can settle some things, and that there is hopeful precedent that it can settle things for the better...
...It remains true,as Einstein said, that the world is more apt to be destroyed by bad politics than by bad physics...
...The Eleventh Hour I take no pleasure in reciting these figures...
...Bismark was fascinated with the Democracy in Action~ Terry Krieger On 1~ August 1971, Mr...
...Nor need they now believe the derivative doctrines of so-called "'realists" that purports to show, in the fashionable formulation that "power has its own logic...
...Keep Your Powder Dry All I have wanted to do in these remarks is encourage a sensitivity to the many moral dimensions of our condition as a powerful nation blessed with power, and hence, blessed with the burden of choice that goes with the capacity for powerful action...
...What is neither widely recognized nor properly appreciated is the fact that the gap between the United States and the other developed nations is widening in America's favor...
...When the combined American land, sea, and air forces prevailed at Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa, something was settled: the nations of South East Asia would be spared the experience of being hammered into what the Japanese warlords were fond of calling the "Greater Asian CoProsperity Sphere...
...The depredations of these lesser men are unfortunate not only for what they do to the memory of a good man...
...Serious men of good will may disagree about the wisdom of making this choice...
...First, the very idea of a "'pure duty" mvolves lhe ~dea of a mission so holy that its obligatory nature cannot be called into question by any conceivable empirical evidence or unanticipated contingency l'hal is, a pure duty" involves a categorical imperative that insulates the actor from any need to think about anything but the tactics of success...
...The nation has been fighting the fourth bloodiest war in its history while never devoting more than four per cent of its Gross National Product to the war...
...Madison American liberalism has two strands, complementary but distinguishable...
...This vision does credit to the nation and it insures the late President an honored place in the ranks of those statesmen who used the power of eloquence to leave an honorable impress on the national consciousness...
...There is an important lesson here about the usefulness of force...
...This is what makes American citizenship an honor, a privilege and a joy, and enables one to be hopeful that America's power will continue to be a blessing...
...The specter of 'globalism" has been conjured into existence by persons interested in giving a particular structure to the current debate about America's international role...
...it is more than a prudential uneasiness...
...In the interest of avoiding the evil of what they mistakeningly call a "'moralizing" foreign policy, they cast doubt on the possibility of a moral foreign policy...
...We are in the kitchen to stay and if we are going to behave well there, we will need a clear notion of what we mean by power...
...What we do not need is a dangerouus disjunction between the life of calculation and the fulfillment of real or imagined duties...
...This complicates matters considerably...
...But how...
...When we understand the kind of oJmmitm(,n~ 'o gt...
...By "'pure duty" I mean this: a kind of commitment which seems especiaUy exalted because it is entirely free from all taint of self-interest or other kinds of calculation...
...Kennedy's Inaugural Address has already been enshrined as one of our great state papers, a part of this nation's precious heritage of words that are deeds, words that move the listening nation to worthy commitments and re-dedications...
...we II'lU.'~r feel, all the more poignantly, the gap that separates us from that president who relished standing at Armageddon and battling for the Lord...
...On the homefront the word "power" has become an element of effective political slogans among persons who seem more concerned with prescribing the proper color for power -be it black or white -- than they are with prescribing the ends to which power should be put...
...He has been the object of healthy national fretting...
...Moral isolationism is not morality, for men or nations...
...These various commitments do not amount to a policy of -policing the world," and, in fact, these policies did not provoke the theory of "globalism...
...More importantly, critics cannot have it both ways...
...But it is more than this...
...and especially of Madison's papers Ten and Fifty-One, is struck by this fact: the American political system is designed to 'supply the defect of better motives...
...In relation to foreign affairs, this .aslates into a reliance on foreign marketplace...
...In our case, our responsibilities since World War II have necessarily been international in scope as they have concerned themselves primarily with the need to contain the aggressive outward thrust of the Communist powers...
...The second fact is that there is no way for America to escape the choices and burdens that traditionally face fully sovereign, and very powerful, nation states...
...At this "point it may be useful to confront two kinds of arguments that are often invoked by those seeking a shift away from internationalism, a shift away from the American tradition of sharing wealth and power...
...That is, they fall back on the Holmesian notion that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the marketplace of ideas...
...Men have logic, and the capacity to control the power...
...Then the candidates frittered away the nation's lane with argumeats over the Quemoy and Matsu islands, over apologizing for the U-2 incident and over Harry Truman's use of strong language...
...Obviously we should reject the quite implausible notion that "force never settles anything...
...This poirtts up the second difficulty with the idea of "'pure duty": it conveys a sehse of self-righteousness that is apt to lead one to countenance ruthless measures...
...Surely these morally intense critics are not against that...
...It is clear that even if it were possible to delay having foreign involvements until we built a New Jerusalem at home, we would never step upon the world stage...
...Yet the victory was progressive and constructive because it left some new American dilemmas -- including a racial dilemma far better to live with than slavery...
...If we want to survive and prosper without relying on the special partiality of a deity, we had better reform the philosophy which makes us susceptible to the appeal of 09u re duties...
...But the nadir of the campaign was a lot of solemn nonsense about some unpublished government polls purporting to show that, by some 10 The Alternative November, 1971 undisclosed measure, American "'prestige" had fallen below some magic level among some undisclosed foreign constituency...
...Power Defined Not too much necessarily follows from this...
...I do not refer to the fact that Franklin Roosevelt campaigned in 1940 on the pledge of peace and non-involvement while intending all along a steadily increased involvement that could only soon lead to war...
...But it is the nature of such an impress that it can fade if it is not renewed, and it can be erased by the unopposed efforts of willful man...
...Globalism A specter is haunting the American public -- the specter of globalism...
...But they were hardly "other-directed" men...
...Hopefull, there will be other men anxious to combat, rather than eater to, this desire to renounce the strenuous life of a responsible and purposeful great power= These men will be the true heirs of President Kennedy's vision of an internationalist America...
...Therefore, the whole fabric of our defense policy has depended on our having sufficient strategic weapons survive any attack launched by an enemy to assure'ns the ability to deliver a retaliatory strike which would inflict unacceptable losses...
...In some respects America may be approaching a zenith of multidimensional power which far exceeds the fleeting pre-eminence that went with our brief post-war nuclear monopoly...
...d~'vcloolYlent of physics ~s obvious...
...9' 9 is a term that has only gained wide currency among men who will forgive any excess committed in the name of other peoples' nationalism9 It is ironic that the term "globalism" has been adopted by many of the persons who, in the thirties, strenuously urged the U.S...
...And these nations embody conflicting interpretations of justice...
...First, the notion that force "never settles anything" simply will not withstand an elementary acquaintance with the contours of history, including American history...
...Yet the adequacy or inadequacy of a nation's defenses is not determined by considerations of domestic priorities, but by the power relationships within which it must operate...
...Second, consider the question of sovereignty...
...It was not always this way with American political leaders...
...The False Alternative But what about the other argument, which holds that we cannot justify exertions abroad until we have solved all our domestic ills...
...This insulation breeds ignorance and arrogance, and the joining of ignorance and arrogance is more potentially destructive than the splitting of the atom...
...What makes virtue hard is that morality is stern...
...National Uneasiness What is more significant than the tactical use of the term "'globalism" is the national uneasiness which the idea of 'globalism" is designed to exploit...
...There may be an arrogance behind a choice to renounce power, or reject commitments, or deny responsibilities, or disdain certain peoples' interest on the grounds that they are unworthy of American exertions...
...Action done from a sense of "pure duty" deserves criticism, but unfortunately such action is often criticized as "'moralizing...
...Caucasian preferred, but natural sense ot rhythm no obstacle...
...The Pennsyl~,anla Kid's predecessor, (Hard Rock) Mislen, attended the convention...
...One is struck by the fact that many critics, who now object to American concerns 10,000 miles' away, are vigorous supporters of foreign aid bills...
...Popularity Thanks to the complementary efforts of sociologists and moral philosophers, Americans have become conscious of a particularly undesirable social type that flourishes in this country...
...But a susceptibility to the appeal of "pure duties" -- an appeal that will brook no moderation -- is one of the things that makes men behave like hyenas...
...As President Kennedy declared in the ringing conclusion to his Inaugural Address, when we go forth to do right on this earth, we must act "with a good conscience our only sure reward, and with history the final judge of our deeds...
...Americans, as heirs to the first and most successful democratic revolution, and as heirs to an honorable tradition of engagement beyond her shores, now have precedence in teaching nations how to live...
...The clear record of history will protect President Kennedy's good name from the revisionism of lesser men who seek to exploit his name while abandoning his vision...
...How convenient it would be if moral behavior boiled down only to caring well for one's own interest...
...They were not to be intimidated by public opinion, at home or abroad...
...We frequently must inconvemence ourselves, as a nation, to avoid sins of omission...
...It is true of slave men and slave nations...
...Period...
...In the past we have succeeded" time and again -- witness, for example the Berlin and Cuban crises -- in causing the Soviets to back away from confrontations which might have ignited a Third World War precisely because we had the military power to back the positions we had to take...
...Certainly we must not rest until our domestic garden blooms...
...Liberalism equates a confidently held moral belief to a sin against the open mind, and we are left with an ethical doctrine which cannot distinguish between an open mind and an empty mind...
...this weakness of 'he Federalist" doctrine also gener~,ws a moral fecklessness...
...I offer no "general theory" of international strategies and tactics because such theories are inconvenient...
...American's know very well -- from experience -- that they make their own history...
...Surely part of our susceptibility to enthusiastic and evangelical movements at home, and to crusades abroad, stems from our desire to seize upon opportunities for the explicitly moral behavior that our system does .not demand...
...The ~ concept of power seems to exert a hypnotic fascination over persons nowadays...
...If we cease to do so we will lend great plausibility to the suspicion that our concern for our own convenience betokens scorn for the interest of others who find the world more dangerous and afflicting than we...
...This is what has been called the balance of terror...
...the imperative behind a -pure duty" is scarcely of this world...
...We are afflicted with a desire to prove ourselves better than the self-interested creatures our philosophy says we are...
...There are other options...
...Because in the words of Hanson W. Baldwin, "'For the United States...
...The policy of "globalism" is a strawman -- an option which no responsible American political leader now advocates...
...The second is a new bout with an old weakness in our philosophy...
...But more important than technology is the role of American liberalism in provoking moral uneasiness about foreign policy...
...One must recognize that there is no supra-national body that can assume significant political tasks in a divided world...
...Two Types of Sins Not surprismgly, in reflecting about the nation's international rights and duties we are led back to one of the oldest questions in the Western philosophy -- "Am I my brother's keeper...
...America's departure from the singleminded pursuit of self-interest -- which our philosophy sanctions but which is unsatisfying -- is the option of free men with free minds...
...Nevertheless, we are now in a period of grave internal stress, and there are those who think we must make another one of those stark, absolute choices, this time the choice between domestic rehabilitation and international action...
...Happily, Americans can give -- and, indeed, owe -- thehown nation such an endorsement...
...In looking at the matter correctly, we are driven away from what we are really comforting notions of necessity and inevitability with regard to our options, and we are confronted with this dismaying truth: we can choose to make great exertions at home and abroad...
...A tiny or timid nation that attempts very little may achieve all that it intends, but it will still not be a truly powerful nation by any stretch of the imagination or definition...
...In this regard, Boswell records that Dr...
...The second argument holds that we cannot justify the expendit~re -- of material wealth and moral energy -- involved in applying force abroad until we have cured all our own social ills...
...men will come forward to pledge relief from the heat of the kitchen...
...But now the nation is anxious for a respite from the rigors of history...
...American liberalism of the Holmeslan variety is a very different commodity than that liberalism which animated the supremely confident politics of the nation's founders...
...The American record of generosity is unexcelled in the annals of statecraft...
...This is serious because reckless behavior in the name of 'pure duty" may give morality a bad name -- and, in fact, it has almost done just that...
...To moralize, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is "'to make (an event) the subject of moral reflection...
...This is surely how it will appear if we discover the virtues of non-involvement at a time when our traditional internationalism calls for great exertions on behalf of non-white, non-Europeans...
...Regardless of one's ultimate hopes, one must not let one's wishes parent one's thoughts...
...The nation has always hoped for better from its citizens and has often received it...
...I want to praise the United States' role as a blessed -- yes, blessed -- 'responsible nation' with such great power that it can act in the international arena to promote its principles of justice, as well as the necessities of its national safety...
...But we must also continue this century's honorable business of furnishing forth American heroes when they are needed by those less blessed than we with wealth and power...
...There are those, such as Walter Lippmann, who candidly call themselves isolationists...
...This base attitude manifests itself in the argument that says we should pass civil rights bills to mollify Ghana or Chad...
...The notion that conditions require us to choose one to the exdlusion of the other involves, again, the fallacy of the false alternative...
...They undertook treason and revolutionary war on the basis of truths they held to be self-evident, not on the basis of public applause or private polls...
...He was restless but not aimless...
...I want to do three things...
...Let me explain...
...But we must not lose sight of the fact that such a contraction is a matter of choice...
...But it does not follow that we must or should shun morality...
...The idea of "'globalism" is a red-herring -- a diversion intended to distract attention from the real issue...
...The 'other-directed" man is a hollow man...
...As the President so clearly understood, we dare not forget this because it would be imprudent and, more important, it would be ignoble for us to stand aloof while our beliefs are at issue around the globe...
...Thus the term "'globalism" puts to political use the fallacy of the false alternative...
...But, unhappily, these are words that many persons today adore on parchment but oppose in practice...
...the eleventh hour is here...
...He only had confidence in the general axioms of practical wisdom learned by personal coping with particular cases...
...America's Proper Roles Let us merely be vigilant lest we manifest the most squalid kind of arrogance of power...
...and we are on our own as a sovereign nation...
...The Hoimesian 'free-market" substitute for real moral reasoning cannot, in the long run, satisfy the American search for real moral duties any more than the "'Federalist" self-interest ethic can...
...Morality, for moral men and moral nations, is an other-regarding thing (which has nothing to do with being an "other-directed" man...
...But this restless moral energy stands today as a kind of lingering rebuke to us all...
...The nation is weary and there are persons anxious to eater to that weariness...
...Johnson was exclaiming like that in 1778, when Americans were busy doing what they believed right and necessary, in spite of the protestations of such distinguished foreign opinion...
...One wishes Americans would consult Hilaire Belloc's delighftul Cautionary Tales and read about Godolphin Horne: "Godolphin Horne was nobly born, He held the human race in scorn...
...Our military might, in other words, has been the critical factor in our ability to maintain the tenuous peace which by ,~ad la~g~ 1~,,~ exit, ted since the end of the Second World War...
...This inability of the "Federalist" doctrine to make healthy moral demantis, and thereby satisfy the nation's healthy appetite for moral enterprises, can result in reckless intoxication with actions dictated by -pure duty...
...The second realization is that governmental operations, by a supra-national organization, in a world of armed and assertive nation states, requires more skill, dexterity and wisdom than the vast majority of nations can bring to bear on their own domestic affairs...
...Then these critics remind us that it is one world, one small world...
...Among unsuccessful candidates were Arthur (Slow Motion Shorty) Paricer, Tim (Connecticut Slim) Moylan, .who sang what the New York Times described as "an obscure love song," James (Big Town) Gorman, James (Open Road) Langford, and Sam Long, better known as Scissors Sam, who urged the crowd !to throw a real bum into office...
...What these critics should properly be against is the national oscillation between pure self-interest calculation and "'pure duty" as its motives for action...
...It is the arrogance of a powerful people complacently hoarding its abundant power as it hoards its abundant wealth -- that is, for its own exclusive convenience...
...The justifiable preference for a nation involves a rational-endorsement of its justice...
...lie is derivative, by determining his value and conduct by the approbation of others...
...In short, Americans have never believed that history is composed of enveloping tides which nullify and mock man's efforts at voluntary action...
...And it is the counsel of despair, born of cynicism, to believe that moral reasonings are incompetent in the great and deadly business of promoting justice and felicity between nations...
...The trouble with "pure duties" is three-fold...
...Thirty-one years ago this nation was committing such a sin...
...The ability to know one's duties is one of the things that distinguishes men from hyenas...
...Or perhaps it will only appear that we hold part of the human race in scorn...
...Markets test preferences, not truth...
...This makes being moral suspiciously convenient...
...Surely we frequently identify an act as a moral act, precisely because it is done at the sacrifice of the actor's convenience and safety...
...This fundamental principle ought to be as self-evident today as it ever has been in the past...
...How embarrassing it should be for an American to reflect that Hitler declared .war on us before.we declared war on him...
...Johnson was once moved to exclaim, claim, 9"I am willing to love all mankindexcept an American...
...The first argument is an argument about capabilities...
...For example we may accept the erroneous idea that a nation is behaving morally only when it is not intervening in the affairs of other nations...
...This idea presupposes that, for nations, the only-sins are sins of commission...
...He answered: "To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in...
...Hence we must say: a powerful nation is one that usually achieves intended effects, and wh~h often attemps difficult and sometimes perilous things...
...The pace of change in the technology of weaponry has not apVreciably slowed since the quantum jump ,uppl,ed by 'he Manhatten Prolect :wenty-sLx years agt...
...The very fact that some grave new problems confront the victors after armed force has disposed of old problems may be itself powerful evidence that armed force was very successful...
...America is a nobly born nation, conceived to embody some admirable principles of justice...
...not solve the problem of what to do with the freed slaves and the conquered South...
...The late President's commitment to both the theory and the practice was demonstrated in his words and his policies...
...It is a warning against enslavement by public opinion...
...What this means, quite simply, is that we are rapidly approaching a point where no American President will be able to emerge from a~political confrontation with the Soviet Union with our foreign policy objectives intact, whether that confrontation takes place in the Middle East or Western Europe or even in the Caribbean...
...To be sure, even if one desires a foreign policy fashioned to fit our finest moral precepts one can go astray...
...And the facts that I have been able to determine and their implications are so very serious that I feel I must do what I can to contribute to a better public understanding of what is at stake...
...In fine, however-much our present liberalism prods us, we must reject the Holmesian nation that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the marketplace of ideas...
...In terms of the all-important indeces -- economic and technological advances -- the crucial gaps in the world continue to widen...
...They are led into thinking that the only way to avoid the evils of pursuing 'pure duty" is to withdraw from foreign involvements...
...We are left with nothing but a vague sense of obligation to all mankind -- but this obligation is empty -- it is politically void because mankind does not exist as an operative unit in the world order...
...We have not simply cut the fat out of military budgets, we have been hacking away at the sinews and muscles as well...
...There are two important things that separate us from him...
...Third, the pursuit of IxR'e duty" will not easily be tempered by an acceptance of partial success -- it must result in total victory, unconditional surrender, or a -'final solution...
...But the bleak moral assessment of man that underlies the system has left the nation justifiably uneasy and susceptible to a serious instability in its moral behavior...
...Hence modern liberalism cannot be counted on to prevent periodic intoxication with policies supposedly embodying 9'p ure duty...
...On the contrary, often self-restraint in the interest of others" will mean a willingness to deny our desird~'not to The Alternative November, 1971 11 get involved in some of the world's nastiest disputes...
...This side of paradise, national distinctions are important, and there are sound reasons for preferring some nations over others...
...The only "general theory" that comes to mind is one which Margaret Meade, borrowing from Cromwell, says is the basic American advice: "Keep your powder dry...
...For surely, for men and nations, there are" both sins o1 commissioh and sins o] ommissh~n...
...The men who issued the Declaration of Independence did so out of decent respect for the opinions of mankind...
...But this should be selfrestraint in the interest of others...
...In recent writings about foreign affairs there is a similar focus on the brute fact of American power...
...The shame is in the fact that the nation's leader had to behave that way in order to get the nation to behave honorably...
...In an armed world this can be dangerous...
...It is but a short step to the belief that confidence in the worthiness of your civilization must be a violation of the canons of philosophic propriety...
...A powerful nation is not just one that can achieve what it intends...
...The Republican Roosevelt was a great president because his restlessness had a moral dimension...
...This type is the "'other-directed" man described so vividly, and deplored so vehemently, in the last two decades...
...But when one hears an American commitment criticized because it is many miles from home, one cannot but recall Nevile Chamberlain's description of Czechoslovakia as "a distant nation...
...Happily, Americans no longer worry about their manifest destiny...
...Morallty vs...
...to these men will fall the task of holding the nation to what President Kennedy called "the long twilight struggle" for the expanded enjoyment of political principles which were born here, but which are not our private property...
...The first is the realization that it is impossible to impose any kind of sovereignty on a severely divided constituency -- and the world constituency is .as divided as ever...
...Teddy Roosevelt's vigor and confidence and commitment to action typified much of what is best and most unique in the powerful living tradition of this most purposeful nation...
...Tht...
...And then we must go back sixty years or more, to another young President, to Theodore Roosevelt...
...It all comes down, in-the end, to what John Erskine called, "The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent...
...Americans are quite right to go in search of real duties, regardless of how little moral exertion is reqired of them by their "'Federalist" system...
...Bismark was actually mystified by our ability to behave as we do and survive, and he could only conclude that 'God must love drunks, babies, and the United States...
...What is vital is that the analysis of power -- defining it and measuring" it -should be considered a part of a larger and more vital form of reflection...
...This shrewdly designed system has served us well...
...When the violence of American musketry and cannon prevailed from Trenton to Yorktown in the Revolutionary War, something was settled: America would be an independent nation...
...When American troops, aided by the United Nations' forces, first destroyed the invading North Korean army, and they pushed the Red Chinese north of the 38th parallel to stay, something was settled: South Korea would not be conquered...
...There are many definitions of power abroad in the land nowadays...
...A contraction of our concerns may well be popular today...
...Of course to show that his double effort is economically possible and morally mandatory, does show that it is apt to be made...
...Since 1948 the U. S. has played the international role formulated by Roosevelt, Truman and Marshall...
...To understand this uneasiness one must go back to President Kennedy's admonition that today makes us uneasy -- the admonition that here on earth God's work must truly be our own...
...some politically interested men have staked their careers on the cultivation of sentiment in favor of such contraction...
...These are responsibilities which we did not seek, but which we cannot escape as the only free world power capable of facing up to the Russian challenge...
...We 9n ust not lose sight of the fact that national power is directionless and often inert until disciplined and directed by our own decisions in the political process...
...There are those -- and they are legion -- who argue that we have neither the right, duty, nor capacity to attempt good works on this earth except on that part of the earth that lies within the boundaries of the territorial United States...
...However much one cherishes the notion of a common humanity, the fact is that humanity is divided into nations which behave very differently from one another...
...We may regret this in the quiet hours of the night...
...Former Senator McCarthy" has focused on what the title of his books calls The Limits of Power...
...Under the influence of modern American liberalism the nation acquired a guilty conscience about possessing firm ideas about political right and wrong...
...The Revolutionary War settled one problem -- British sovereignty over the colonies -- and by doing so created a huge new problem -- the problem of forming one nation from thirteen colonies...
...In the midst of confusion about our nation's world role, we should not go lusting after general theories, however soothing...
...America's high hopes for international organizations grew from the trauma of the Second World War and from the suspicion that it all might have been avoided if we had been less jealous of Ill Great American Series Nuclear war has become "'the broading omnipresence, under the Shadow of which the nation-states impinge on one another...
...Americans have never been tempted by historicist doctrines, and hence they have been immune from the blind confidences and black fatalisms that historicisms generate...
...That is, there is a lingering stain of shame attached to the whole matter of U.S...
...entrance into the European theater of Worm War II...
...Today we are passing through a 9p eriod of danger and doubt far graver than President Kennedy understood when he took office a decade ago...
...Hence we must recognize that American power is not about to wane or diminish...
...The sin of omission was in going to war too late...
...And we must keep in mind that in the real world, no country can conduct an effective foreign policy without a military capability which is appropriate to its responsibilities...
...This is what our policy of nuclear deterrence has been all about...
...Jefferson vs...
...In fact, the term is only used to denounce a specific use of military force on behalf of an Asian nation victimized by the expansionist nationalism and Communism of a neighbor...
...Because of the attrition caused by inflation, these cutbacks have been far more severe than would appear on the basis of dollar figures alone...
...Theodore Draper has itemized what the title of his book calls The Abuse of Power...
...to intervene in Spain to prevent the success of a totalitarian nationalism -- and Franco at least committed his enormities in his own nation...
...Theirs is a nation which, when properly responsive to all aspects of its animating philosophies, can bring sober Madisonian sophistication to the promotion of noble Jeffersonian ideals...
...In this latter argument the critics are correct and persuasive...
...But Liberals, who correctly urge involvement and commitment at home as the true moral life, develop a strange double standard when they suggest minimal involvement abroad is the proper posture for a moral nation...
...However, all that is needed to render the tactic ineffective is to recognize it...
...If "~e only riational sitis in foreign affairs were sins of commission, we could safely withdraw from that realm, and with that simple act gain exemption from sin...
...they dull our awareness of the uniqueness of each case, and thus encourage recourse to doctrine and formulae when we should be examining fresh evidence...
...vicissitudes of American history, with its instabilities and passions, and its frequent disregard of traditional sobrieties regarding external affairs...
...The great contribution of Burkean conservative political philosophy is that it tempers our expectations from general theories...
...Thls ha~ changed Armegaddon from an article of flamboyant presidential rhetoric into a grim political option...
...It does mean that, in a sense, the nation simply cannot make much use of the pithy advice Harry Truman gave politicians when he snapped, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen...
...In simpler times, when it was somehow easier to maintain touch with reality than it is today, it was understood that the first priority of any society was to provide for its own survival...
...First, I want to reject the terms of the debate about this thing calico 9 Second, I want to examine the source of the uneasiness concerning our world role9 Third, I want to say some kind things about a vigorous, internationalist world role...
...R, 150 E. 35 Street, i N. Y. 10016...
...It is worthwhile for my generation to be reminded that activist America is quite capable of sins of omission -- the sin of non-involvement...
...There is in America a deep and divisive unease -- not to say- bafflement -- concerning how we, as a people, should act upon the words with which President Kennedy concluded his Inaugural Address -- the words that 9'h ere on earth God's work must truly be our own...
...Hence we must also reject the doctrine that the best test of a policy is the power of the policy to win applause in world-wide popularity contests...
...Hence this liberalism is not only reckless, but, in thelong run, it even lacks the ability to prevent the more dangerous kinds of moral recklessness...
...Burke's genius lay in sketching the limitations of all theories which purport to give answers to questions of correct behavior in vast numbers and varieties of future cases...
...It is well-known that the economic and technological gap between the developed and underdeveloped nations is widening...
...It was in the light of this conviction that President Kennedy prescribed an active, powerful, internationalist, interventionist role for the United States...
...This is alarming because this is the generation to which has been granted (in President Kennedy's Inaugural words), -'the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger...
...Contact E. Muskie...
...These are the facts about "'globalism,'" in the light of which one can appreciate Lord Acton's statement that nothing is so embarrassing as the pedigree of an idea...
...It is not in the nature of such terms to 9c arry precise meaning...
...My point is that the choice is not necessary...
...Consider the following...
...That is the counsel of cynicism...
...By way of illustration, because of inflation and because payroll costs have risen from forty percent of the defense budget for fiscal 1964 to sixty percent of the defense budget submitted for fiscal 1972, in the coming year we will be purchasing forty percent less in military research and hardware than we did eight years ago before we became actively involved in the Vietnam war...
...The election procedure at a hobo convention is that each candidate makes a speech and, after the speeches are over, the candid~ tte who receives the most applause from the crowd becomes King...
...ever we translate our moral precept~ into foreign policy practice, surely we must proceed on the basis of two facts One is that the power of America as sovereignty continues to grow, measured in both absolute and relative terms...
...On the other hand...
...Manifest Duty We can act to do good works here on earth, and can act with a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, if and only if we have a decent respect for ourselves, and a healthy suspicion of general doctrines that purport to give exhaustive advice for a world of troublesome contingencies...
...This is a common political tactic: control the terminology of the argument and thereby predetermine the outcome...
...When Americans despair of finding moral guides in the 'Federalist" strand of our liberalism, they resort to the standards spelled out with depressing explicitness in liberalism of the Oliver Wendell Holmes sort...
...The torch of freedom has indeed been passed to a new generation of Americans -- and they do not have a clear idea of what to do with it...
...First, we should recognize one thing...
...possessed of few and flimsy beliefs or traits that are truly his own...
...Internal storm and stress is the unbroken rule for Americans as we continue with considerable success the unprecedented project of governing a multiracial republic on a continental scale...
...But for our purposes we can borrow a definition of power from Bertrand Russell, whose powers of conceptual analysis are inversely proportional to his practical wisdom (and that means that his powers of conceptual analysis" are very great indeed...
...Hence, one cannot rationally desire the dissolution of national distinctions and the arrival of homogeneous mankind until one is certain whmh interpretation of justice will prevail in the end...
...Those who criticize America for 9" moralizing" are guilty of terminological imprecision...
...What we need is sober calculation concerning how best to honor our duty to advance our various ideals...
...We should pass such bills because they are r/ght and we should adopt foreign policies for exactly the same reason...
...It requires the actor to consider the interests of others...
...He had a moral focus...
...This is a nation that can manage extensive good works at home and abroad...
...Americans understand that for those to whom much is given, much is asked...
...Their intelligence is bewitched by their language, and they are led into pereeiv~ ae dnother false altt, c, ative...
...This role accorded with his conception of the nation as one "'proud of its ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the worM...
...Another problem with general theories is that we are an incurably empirical people and have an irresistable urge to test theories...
...Power Demands Responsibility What could have been more honorable than going to war against Hitler uninvited...
...As I understand it, 9 is a recently minted term, designed for partisan use in highly charged polemical argument...
...That depends on the political process -- on the choices we make for ourselves...
...This is a duty we should rejoice in, and which we should hasten to dispatch, using the power with which we have been blessed...
...To do so would imply the belief that, in the long run, moral behavior is dysfunctional or otherwise imprudent...
...When the rifles and cannon of the men in Blue shattered the ranks of the men in Gray at the Angle on Gettysburg's Cemetery Ridge, something was settled: America would be one nation, not two...
...men will come forward to offer rationales for an easier life...
...The Republican Roosevelt wanted the nation to act just as the First Republican President haa urged the nation to a~ -- with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right...
...Richard (Pennsylvania Kid) Wilson was elected King of the Hobos at the SeventyFirst annual National Hobo Convention held in Britt, Iowa...
...The Soviets simply could not risk a test of strength...
...The second is an argument about priorities...
...work.~ !h~J: he ie,: .:,._ ::at,vn t~ould ~u.~tam...
...And when President Kennedy resolved to send American troops into South Vietnam, and when President Johnson, continuing the policy of his predecessor, in February, 1965, supplemented the effort on the ground in the South and sent planes into the air over the North, something was settled: the Community military victory that was imminent in that bleak February was thwarted, to the point that now a Communist military victory is impossible...
...If peoples and places 10,000 miles away are too distant to properly engage our interest and energies, then the critics must acknowledge that these lands are still 10,000 miles away when the foreign aid bill comes before Congress...
...The sort of arrogance that Fulbright thinks he detects is the arrogance of those persons whose power insulates them from the need to justify their actions, and hence which, in the end, insulates them from the need to reason and think...
...We simply cannot any longer afford the blind attacks on just about every program for military research or military procurement which continue to be made in the name of an overriding need to reorder our priorities...
...Lloyd George asked his nation after the 1918 armistice...
...There are othera who, for one reason or another, shun the name while promoting the doctrine9 My concern here is with the various moral perspectives involved ?'~n the current confusion about Arfierica's duties as a world power...
...We will have to temper and modify our prevailing liberalism to achieve a stable assessment of ourselves as a nation, a stable notion of the things that matter most, and a stable appraisal of the possibilities of practical, forceful action on behalf of those things that matter...
...It is a precedent we should always be ready to follow...
...And Senator Fulbright has castigated the nation for what the title of his book calls The Arrogance ol Power...
...This is the Jeffersonian strand that made possible the founding of this country...
...Given all this, we must shape our foreign policy in the light of two facts: we shall remain" capable of exercising great power...
...For a free copy of NATIONAL REVIEW, write: Dept...
...It is the option of men open to fresh evidence, and still capable of new departures...
...One need not deny that there are a great many things that force cannot solve...
...The gravest political problem is the relation of theory -- including and especially moral theory -- to practice...
...Roosevelt wanted not just a vigorous nation, but a nation vigorously doing good works...
Vol. 5 • November 1971 • No. 2
