A Final Note on the State of American Foreign Policy

You probably won't like what I have to say.

Many Americans now agree that we need to reevaluate over 50 years of American foreign policy.  They see it as a failure and want to know why. 

Are they ready, though, to face the answers?

First, however, before discussing policy choices, we need to ask what is meant by “failure.” Many challenge that judgment. 

Over the past half century, tens of thousands in the U.S. have become wealthier than ever before.  Millions have been lifted from poverty around the world. New global companies, financial giants, have emerged that lead the way in products and services. 

This has been a new age of reason--astonishing breakthroughs in technology and science, in medicine and agriculture.

While there have intervals of tragic war and continuing abuses of freedom and human rights, a case can be made for the fact that more live in physical safety today than at any time in the past 200 years.  Conflicts have been settled in many areas; we have avoided nuclear war. 

But, yes, from a larger and more human (less materialistic) perspective, yes, American foreign policy has failed.  Or so I believe. 

Or can we say, that with the technology we have at our disposal, the United States and its allies might have done far more to raise the living standards of people in poorer regions of the world and lessened the inequalities in their own industrially developed societies.  And when we look out our own the front door, we see climate disruption, unmanaged technological change and religious fanaticism raging at us from a dimly lit future. 

This is not, though, what I want to talk about today. 

I want to accept that we have failed in important ways and are failing in even more essential ways, and then reflect on “what has gone wrong.”

I see two answers.  One I discussed in a recent blog, missionary zeal and the hubris of power have combined to carry us far beyond rational limits in a bid to remake the world. 

The second is different.  Eisenhower warned of a growing military-industrial complex, of a foreign policy that furthered the corporate interests of the United States by a far-reaching network of bases, armed interventions, military threats and retaliatory actions.  The face of this new American Empire was free trade and opposition to disruptive “terrorist” forces.  The reality was restrictive alliances, support of authoritarian governments, and control over global finance. 

While I still tend to favor the first explanation, I do not deny the force of arguments for the second alternative.  They seem, actually, to have worked in tandem.

This is, it seems to me, the discussion (and study) we need to have. 

The future does not have to echo the past. We actually are, in the long run, masters of our own destiny. (To argue this would require another conversation. I realize that it is not self-evident.)

Only an awakened American citizenry can turn this ship. Our present leaders are ideologically “suspended” in time. Their wealth, their view of themselves as patriots and benevolent world leaders, their fear of change, yes and for some their greed and callousness keep their hand on the tiller. Many are good people. Some are cowards. For most the challenges of the future are way over their heads, way above their pay grade.

And then there are the complacent. You and me?