Rethinking Foreign Policy (Part 3)

In this third of three articles written in 1993-94, Roger Donway discusses specific means of pursuing the basic goals of foreign policy: intelligence, free trade, and security.  

Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy
Part Two: Rethinking Foreign Policy

In my last article, I mentioned three broad areas of foreign policy and spoke of the general goals that ought to dominate them. Those areas were: intelligence, trade, and national secu­rity. I said that intelligence should seek to inform policy-makers thoroughly about the foreign states with which they have to deal, not only the political-military characteristics of those states but also the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. I suggested that trade policy ought to aim at a Free World commercial alliance. And I recommended that national security policy ought to aim at a Free World security alliance.

In this article, I would like to discuss some of the principles that I believe would serve as appropriate guides to those ends.

But before turning to principles, I want to clarify a matter of terminology. By the "short-range" or "near term," I mean one to several decades. By the "medium-range," I mean one to several generations. By the "long-range," I mean one to several centuries. Obviously, these time spans are much longer than the time spans usually denoted by these terms, partly because one is dealing with the myopic perspective of Pragmatism.

Intelligence

For a foreign policy to succeed, it must be crafted to deal with foreign countries and cultures as they really are. But this means a foreign policy must be based on accurate information about those countries and cultures, interpreted by objectively formulated principles of the humanities and social sciences. And that presents two problems.

The first problem is that few rational principles have yet been formulated in the humanities and social sciences, with the partial exception of economics and philosophy. We do not yet have the equivalent of capitalist economics or Objectivist phi­losophy in the fields of history, sociology, or political science. For example, we do not yet know the degree to which national culture can ameliorate or exacerbate a sense of political oppres­sion and thus delay or hasten an uprising.

As a result of this first problem, intelligence has been wracked by a no-win debate between so-called "professionals" and "realists." The professionals take the absurd position that foreign intelligence should be interpreted without principles (without "ideology"). The realists take the position that all principles are subjective, and so foreign intelligence should be subjected to debates (though they never explain how a debate between two subjective views is going to produce objective knowledge).

The second conceptual problem in intelligence is that even in cases where we do possess rational principles for the humanities and social sciences they are not the principles dominant among intelligence analysts, who more often rely on conventional left-liberal wisdom. The result of this dominant leftism was seen during televised hearings on the nomination of Robert Gates as CIA Director. Analysts complained that they were being subjected to pressure from the Reagan administra­tion to assert "facts" that policy-makers wanted to hear.

But the reality, I suspect, is that conservative Reagan admin­istration officials found intelligence analysts using conven­tional leftist wisdom to produce findings and tried to make them change their ways—with good reason. That conventional leftist approach has produced one intelligence failure after another. Most obvious was the conclusion that the Soviet Union's economy was working, just as it was becoming a basket-case.

I should say, however, that the need for intelligence based on rational social sciences and humanities is not an invitation to apriorism. Some libertarian scholars, with a better grasp of economics than the typical intelligence analyst, argued correctly that the USSR was not succeeding economically. But from this they concluded that neither was it a military threat. That conclusion did not follow, nor was it correct. Richard Pipes, a top Russian scholar of conservative leanings, depicted the situation correctly: the USSR was a basket-case on a war footing, allocating to its military-industrial complex (broadly conceived) something between 25 and 40 percent of GNP.

No wonder, then, that in the early 1980s, before Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary, the chief of the Soviet general staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, was proclaiming to all who would listen the urgent need for perestroika (his term). Had America's intelligence community combined economic savvy with political realism, it might have given far greater attention to these frenetic calls for economic restructuring that were coming out of the Soviet establishment. And the unravel­ing of the Soviet empire might have come as less of a surprise to policy-makers.

Until rational theoretical principles have been formulated in the humanities and social sciences, I believe the realist solution—the staging of overtly ideological debates within the intelligence community—offers a "second-best" route to genu­ine knowledge about foreign countries and cultures, albeit for reasons the realists cannot explain. It would be, in effect, the equivalent of the old-fashioned journalists’ dictum to "get both sides of the story": a second-best to objective reporting, but far superior to the New Journalists' rampant subjectivism.

Free Trade

In my last article, I quoted Ayn Rand as saying ''The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade, i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges, the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another." ("The Roots of War," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) I also suggested that, if a country wanted to achieve international free trade, its best route wasthrough unilateral free trade. Here I want to reiterate the point but also note that the standard of unilateral free trade is not the same as completely unrestricted trade. A free country may validly place limits on trade, limits implicit in Ayn Rand's phrase: "private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another."

Export controls. I believe that American companies may be legitimately forbidden to sell any goods to potentially hostile governments or their public companies. Indeed, I think that such a policy might be wiser than the policy of nonproliferation, which tries to halt the sale of certain supposedly dangerous technologies to everybody.

However, I do not believe that Washington should express its contempt for an unfree government by banning sales to its private citizens and private companies (unless we are at war with the state, de jure or de facto). Indeed, unless the products or technologies involved are diverted to the unfree government, such sales may help to undermine oppression, by building up a sphere in which the individual is responsible for himself. Thus, instead of punishing dictators through restrictions on private trade, I believe our government should institute a twofold classification of de jure governments based on consent and de facto governments based on coercion. It should then develop methods for denouncing the latter and for instituting direct contacts with their oppressed peoples. Remember, dictators crave nothing so much asmoral sanction, international legiti­macy, and domestic passivity.

One must be careful here, however. So-called business deals with the Soviet empire did not in fact involve businessmen but bureaucrats. Outside of Poland 's agricultural sector, legiti­mate private business hardly existed under Moscow's rule. Consequently, those deals and loans that we heard so much about served only to strengthen the USSR's empire, as New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal has often pointed out.

But Rosenthal is wrong to allege that trade with business­men in China commits exactly the same error. We are not at war with China, not even de facto. And at least some China trade appears to involve genuinely private businessmen. If so, the effect is likely to be quite different.

Import controls. Contrary to most libertarians, I think a case can be made for banning the importation of goods that are produced by foreign public companies or that are subsidized by foreign governments. The following statement by Milton and Rose Friedman (Free to Choose, 1979) is typical of the argu­ment I dispute. "Another source of 'unfair competition' is said to be subsidies by foreign governments to their producers that enable them to sell in the United States below cost. Suppose a foreign government gives such subsidies, as no doubt some do. Who is hurt and who benefits? To pay for the subsidies, the foreign government must tax its citizens. They are the ones who pay for the subsidies. U.S. consumers benefit. They get cheap TV sets or automobiles or whatever it is that is subsidized. Should we complain about such a program of reverse foreign aid?"

I say yes. Suppose a young steel master, like Hank Rearden, has just set up in business. He has calculated his markets and his costs, borrowed his capital, built his plant, hired his workers ­and suddenly he is bankrupted by an influx of foreign, subsi­dized steel. I believe he is an indirect victim of coercion. (The direct victims, of course, are the foreign taxpayers.) As an indirect victim of coercion, I think this hypothetical steel master should be capable of instituting a civil suit that will get the subsidized imports banned.

Moreover, I believe a victory for the steel master would represent a victory both for justice and for the long-range economic interests of Americans.

National Security

Looking to the medium term, the free countries of the world should be given the option of joining the United States in a new alliance: a Free World security alliance, limited to capitalist states and semi-capitalist states in an active process of political-economic liberalization. But many decades will prob­ably pass before any states (including America) can be placed in even the second of those categories. What should the United States do in the meantime?

To begin with, I believe America's Cold War alliances should be dissolved. They were essentially ad hoc. They aimed at deterring aggression by the USSR and it wasthis highly concrete goal that allowed vastly disparate countries to work together. In the absence of that goal, it is becoming clear, the alliances do not work.

In their place, however, America should establish bilat­eral and multilateral "understandings" with the freest of its former allies. These would explicitly look ahead to a Free World alliance, and, in the meantime, they could still provide for joint military planning, joint exercises, prepositioned matériel, even bases. But they would lack the solemn and automatic commit­ment to joint defense that characterizes an alliance. By means of these understandings, the world's semi-free states could, when necessary, join together in short -term coalitions, as we did during the Kuwait war.

But it is only around a superpower, I believe, that the semi­-free states would form a timely coalition in a security crisis. And I think it is obvious—as a matter of socioeconomic statistics and political-cultural history—that only the United States is now capable of being the superpower rallying point of the semi-free world.

Among the national security tasks of the semi-free world, over the next 50 years, I believe that the chief one will be ensuring that the two great unfree powers—China and Russia—­fall far behind the United States in advanced military capability and thus fall out of the superpower class. The second major task, I expect, will be preventing lesser unfree states from becoming significant regional powers, either conventional or nuclear.

Four Judgments

If the United States does become the one superpower, how should it and its allies (and later the Free World alliance) wield that power?

I have argued throughout this series that the national interest of the United States is broader than defending the United States against aggression. I have said that its national interest lies in creating a Free World, and that it must therefore have an abiding concern for islands of freedom wherever they exist.

Applying that standard is not easy, however, and includes judgments of quantity and probability as well as principle. Recognizing the difficulty of making such judgments, let me conclude this article by returning to the four foreign policy situations that I initially noted and describing how I see them.

Iran. This is the easiest case. No expanded definition of the national interest is needed, nor is any careful calibration of response.

The immunity of diplomats has stood for centuries above all grievances between nations. Even in the case of treacherous attack, countries have held their enemies' diplomatic personnel only until an exchange could be arranged for their own diplo­mats. Hugo Grotius, the great authority on natural law, said that to offer violence to diplomats is not only an act of injustice but violates sacred principles of human trust. And, he observed, "Almost every page of history offers some remark on the inviolable rights of ambassadors and the security of their persons, a security sanctioned by every clause and precept of human and revealed law."

The seizure of the American embassy in Tehran was aggression against America more infamous than the attack on Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war. The regime that held American diplomats hostage should not have been allowed to exist for a week, even though such action would almost certainly have cost the diplomats their lives. That the same regime has since, in the Salman Rushdie incident, gone on to suppress free speech in America serves to underline the need for its extirpation.

Somalia. This, too, is a relatively easy case. American television constantly beats the drums for sacrifice. Some of the needy are Americans (unemployed, homeless, or ill); some are foreigners (victims of floods, earthquakes, or famine). But the message is always the same: How dare you be happy while these people are in misery? How dare you live for yourself?

Of course, the media do not focus simultaneously on the full panoply of mankind's needs, for if they did Americans would say "To hell with it!" Consequently, we are treated to the Misery of the Month.

For example, did anyone notice that, while Somalia was being played up, tribal warfare in nearby Burundi killed 150,000 people and turned nearly a million more into refugees who had to flee their country? A few major newspapers had small stories on the slaughter, but the amount of attention given Burundi was tiny compared to that given Somalia.

Thus, I believe the mission to Somalia was altruist in the very worst sense of the term. It sacrificed American lives and money; it was not a proper function of government; and it lacked even the fig leaf of being directed at "our fellow Americans."

Unfortunately, this idea of using the military for humani­tarian tasks is becoming very popular, for a variety of motives. In many cases, I think, it is simply a ploy to retain large budgets for the Pentagon, in an era when the federal government is abandoning its legitimate roles for illegitimate ones. Asthe managing editor of a foreign policy journal, I recently received a manuscript suggesting the U.S. military take up the following new tasks: disaster relief; famine relief; nuclear reactor emer­gencies; drug maintenance and education programs; prison management; rural health care; toxic waste removal; public education; building infrastructure; and running inner-city boot camps for delinquent youth. The author of these proposals was not a professor of sociology at some elite liberal arts school. He was a professor of international affairs at one of the American military's war colleges.

Haiti. This case is only somewhat different from Somalia, for here the Clinton administration has waved the flag of defending democracy.

I have said that America must have an abiding concern for islands of "freedom." I did not say "democracy." Democracy is a process by which a country chooses government officials, or, sometimes, passes laws. It has a certain philosophical connec­tion with freedom: After all, if we are adult enough to run our own lives, surely we are adult enough to choose our own leaders. But we cannot look to the degree of democracy in a country's politics as a substitute for the degree of freedom. In the case of Haiti, the fact that its people freely elected a rabid anti-American demagogue, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gives that demagogue zero claim on American sympathies. Insofar as Haitians on Haiti are suffering under the rule of Gen. Raoul Cèdras, that is a humanitarian matter that may be of legitimate private concern to some individual Americans, but is not our government's concern. Insofar as Haitians are fleeing Haiti for the United States, I welcome them.

Bosnia. The last, and by far most difficult case, is Bosnia. Should America provide Bosnia with sufficient forces to repel Serbia and its Serb allies?

To answer that question, I would begin by asking: If Bosnian Muslims were provided with enough assistance to win, would they then establish a free state? Or would they simply establish a Bosnian Muslim state? I very much fear the latter.

The case is illuminated, I think, by the following (admit­tedly far-fetched) thought experiment. Many tens of thousands of people would like to leave Hong Kong for freedom before the territory is taken over by China; many would probably be willing to fight for their freedom. If America provided transport, training, arms, and air cover, would Bosnian Muslims welcome tens of thousands of Hong Kong Chinese, first as soldiers in a war for freedom, and then as full citizens in a free, secular, non­discriminatory Bosnia? I doubt it. I do not think Bosnia's Muslims are motivated by a desire for individual liberty, and, therefore, I do not think America should involve itself in the Bosnian war.

This is a terribly high standard for American assistance, I realize. But if Americans are to fight for another people's liberty, it must be for individual liberty, not national or ethnic independence. Ethnicity is the principle destroying the world.

That said, I do think America should take several other actions with regard to the Bosnian war. For example, I think it should welcome all refugees from that war. More significantly, it should disregard the arms embargo on Bosnia (though not on Serbia). And it should insist on a prompt investigation into allegations of war crimes, and if, as seems likely, war crimes were committed, then Washington should see to it that the guilty are punished at once, even if that includes the president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic.

I do not here discuss, because I do not have room, what America ought to do if Serbia (with or without its current president) attacks the ethnically Albanian enclave of Kosovo. I will note, however, that such an attack might be the prelude to a general war in Eastern Europe, and I would certainly add that possibility to my considerations.

*****

The foregoing attempt to derive and apply foreign policy principles is intended only as a beginning. I would not claim that these principles follow necessarily from the goal of a Free World alliance. And indeed I would not claim that the goal of a Free World alliance is a proven conclusion of political philosophy.

My more basic aim in this series has been, as the title says, to "rethink" the standard Objectivist view in foreign policy, while remaining true to the framework of Objectivism. My motive has been to stimulate new thinking. For without wishing to minimize the external opposition to Objectivism, I believe that its greatest danger comes from within, in the form of scholasticism: the reduction of a rational philosophy to a vast network of frozen formulae, and the substitution of memorization for philosophical thought.

Originally Published in IOS Journal Volume 4 Number 1 • March 1994

Part One: Rethinking Foreign Policy

Part Two: "Rethinking Foreign Policy"

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