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• Tuesday, August 21, 2007 08:22 AM

  Foreign Policy Community Goals

  First, thanks to Bobsammi for the clarification below. And thanks to Glenn, since I'd like to add that this discussion is so necessary - even if sometimes I'm not a fan of the tone.

  Here's the highlighted piece of the discussion from Glenn that is most relevant, meaningful to me:

  "the right to intervene -- when is it justifiable to slaughter innocent people in order to advance our 'interests'? Is it justifiable to invade and/or bomb other countries even when they are not threatening our national security?"

  I think here, perhaps, Glenn is verging into a bit of 24-style ultimatums that the right seems to like so much. (Would you refuse to torture a terrorist is millions could be saved blah...) I also think you will find a categorical reluctance on the part of the foreign policy community to answer that question. They are, first and foremost, utilitarians - as said before, their (our?) single overriding goal is to protect the national security of the people of the United States. Sometimes the word national interests is used; again, I think that distinction is mostly semantics, although admittedly it is the distinction that has great potential for abuse. For example, let's imagine for a moment that it is an unquestionably noble "interest" we are forwarding, with some influence on our direct national security - i.e., maybe it threatens us, maybe it doesn't. Who gets to make that final call? Do we trust that decision? And what lengths would we be willing to go to? These are difficult questions that resist black and white answers, and so do the people who have to deal with the repercussions.

  I don't for a second entertain the notion that U.S. "interests" (which has somehow adopted this malignant meaning) are necessarily good any more than I think they are necessarily bad. Like all countries, we operate with mixed motives, and in that environment (i.e. the real world) motives start to lose their relevance. Our power over the last fifty-plus years has increased the consequences of these decisions, but the framework remains the same.

  I think the answer to the discussion is clearly in the form of a strengthened world government. For all of its flaws, only the U.N. is in the position to even begin to be a fair arbiter of decisions that aren't by necessity motivated by parochial interests. And it's too much to ask for one country, with as much military power as Glenn points out that we have - to ever act in contrary to those interests. I wouldn't ever trust that country to do so even if they did agree to, any more than as a global citizen I trust the U.S.

  —kate_dc Read kate_dc's other letters
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