Morality in Foreign Policy
Morality in Foreign Policy At the Republican National Convention in 1976, as Ronald Reagan's challenge to Gerald Ford for the GOP presidential nomination was on the verge of falling short, the...
...The nature of the regime is crucial, rather than some alleged underlying, geographically or economically or culturally determined "national interest...
...Necessity has its claims...
...And the freedom and security of one's own nation come first...
...They succeeded in substituting their own foreign policy plank for the administration's preferred one in the Republican platform...
...But our freedom and security turn out to be inextricably linked to the character of regimes elsewhere in the world...
...As President Bush said in his State of the Union address, "America's purpose is more than to follow a process—it is to achieve a result...
...Now all of them are Reaganites...
...It is an admirable vision—one that's moral and strategic and practical...
...The priority of the political order implies a morally informed American foreign policy...
...In truth, the regime of Kim Jong Il cannot and should not "find respect in the world...
...President Bush has no hopes for world government, or for a world beyond conflict...
...But there is no substitute for victory...
...Condoleezza Rice was in graduate school, doing work on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that would later win the approbation of Kissinger's deputy, Brent Scowcroft...
...Now all the president has to do is execute it successfully—in Iraq, and beyond...
...Reagan ended one such threat, with the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...For, to repeat, "America's purpose is more than to follow a process—it is to achieve a result...
...Perhaps the only misstep in the foreign policy part of his State of the Union address was the president's statement that "the North Korean regime will find respect in the world, and revival for its people, only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions...
...Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were serving in the Ford administration, and Cheney, as White House chief of staff, was directing the effort to stave off Reagan...
...The result the president had in mind was "the end of terrible threats to the civilized world...
...As President Bush said to the people of Iraq, "Your enemy is not surrounding your country—your enemy is ruling your country...
...Now, it is true that regimes don't exist apart from the various material interests and geographical and historical characteristics of nations...
...Wilham Kristol...
...So "morality in foreign policy" is always limited...
...It mattered that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire...
...But his understanding of our mission is not narrowly American...
...Of course, it may be prudent for now to try "to show the North Korean government" that its nuclear program is a mistake...
...Bush does invoke a sort of "American exceptionalism...
...In America, results matter...
...Now, as the president explained, we face a different kind of threat—"a world of chaos and constant alarm," where "outlaw regimes" sponsor terrorism and acquire and trade in horrific weapons, the better to threaten their neighbors and intimidate their people...
...The liberty we prize," he said, "is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity...
...They rallied behind a challenge to Ford's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and his "realistic" foreign policy of detente...
...It matters that North Korea has, as the president said, an "oppressive regime rul[ing] a people living in fear and starvation...
...What happened...
...Thus, a brutal tyranny like Saddam's is evil, Bush said, or else "evil has no mean-ing"—and Bush intends to liberate the people of Iraq from their regime...
...Americans must be held to the same "high standard for humanity" as every other nation...
...In 1976, George W. Bush was, one assumes, like his father, a Ford supporter...
...Temporary accommodations will always be with us, as long as we live in a world of nations, and regimes...
...Well, Reagan won—first the presidency, then reelection, then the Cold War...
...A vision can inspire and guide...
...But in the end, Americans look forward to the day when this regime is as much a thing of the past as that of Nicolai Ceaucescu or Joseph Stalin...
...The Reagan plank was entitled "Morality in Foreign Policy...
...Morality in Foreign Policy At the Republican National Convention in 1976, as Ronald Reagan's challenge to Gerald Ford for the GOP presidential nomination was on the verge of falling short, the Reagan forces assembled for one last battle...
...He embraces "morality in foreign policy," but does not entertain illusions of "the end of foreign policy...
Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 21
