A Need For Honest Brokers

Moral Imperatives in One's Foreign Policy

The Saudi execution of Jamal Khashoggi is now "old news".  Nevertheless it keeps being raised by officials and commentators.  Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations, has raised the matter again, as well she might.

During an interview broadcast on Friday’s edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated that the United States must continue “to have harsh conversations with the Saudis” about how the U.S. “can’t continue to partner with someone that continues to brutalize people in this way.”

Haley said, “First of all, if you have Saudi officials going into a Saudi consulate, the Saudi government is responsible, which makes MBS responsible [for the killing of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi], period. That’s just what we know. Secondly, our United States principles, values will not allow us to give them a pass, and we shouldn’t. And I think that the president made a good first step when he sanctioned the 17 individuals. I think we need to continue to have harsh conversations with the Saudis about how this doesn’t fit the means of international norms, it’s not accepted by the United States, and we can’t continue to partner with someone that continues to brutalize people in this way.”  [Breitbart News]

 This is well and good: Haley's criticism is doubtless apposite and well meant.  One imagines it would be endorsed by most folk in the United States.  Yet at the same time it is beholden upon such critics that they also acknowledge and "confess" the sins of their own respective countries.  The United States, for example, like many Western nations,  has an official murder "factory": it has a legalized abortion industry--as has New Zealand, and most Western countries for that matter.

Now that does not mean that criticisms like Haley's ought not to be made.  They should.  But such just accusations need to be made in the context of acknowledging the log in one's own national eye, whilst pointing out a splinter in the eye of someone else's country.

Were such acknowledgments to be made regularly by critics and spokespeople it would make their criticisms of others more powerful, reasoned, and weighty.  In the case of the United States in particular, it would go a long way to achieving the goal of being able to talk softly whilst carrying a big stick.  We would likely see very different conversations and discussions amongst nations.  We would also likely see an early disclosure of those truly rogue nations whose malice and deceit is reprehensible.

Global Changes

Wish Lists From Reflections Over the Holiday Season

What are we hoping for from the United States Department of State under Rex Tillerson's leadership?  Several things.  We express these hopes acknowledging they do not arise from any insider's information or insight.  They are, rather, just wishes arising out of what we would argue to be sane, Christian principles of relations amongst nations.

Firstly, it is fundamental not to presuppose any nation to be a threat, let alone to be an enemy.  In stating this, we are not espousing some kind of latter day Quakerism, or pacifism.  On  the contrary, every nation ought to have a realistic view of possible threats, military or otherwise.  But there is a world of difference between competition, on the one hand, and military attack, on the other.

Therefore, it is prudent to follow Teddy Roosevelt's advice: when it comes to other nations, talk softly, but always carry a big stick.  No nation should be presupposed to be an enemy--particularly those whose own  "stick" is substantial and could do much damage.

Trump has "made noises" which suggest he may be willing to see the United States adjust its foreign and defence policies along these lines.  But it is far too early to tell.

Secondly, it is prudent not to get wound up by nations which appear bellicose and a real threat to their immediate neighbours, and even more distant nations.

Progressive Internationalism At Its Best

Making Sense of It All

The text below illustrates what happens when a laser-like focus upon national defence gets perverted into imperialistic geo-political ambitions.  Or, to put it another way, the text below--sent through by courtesy of one of our readers, which in turn originated from Canada--illustrates the inevitable rotten fruit of Progressive internationalism.  It also helps explain why the United Nations resembles, and ever will be, nothing more than a Monty Python satire.

I ​ HOPE THIS CLEARS UP ANY CONFUSION YOU MAY HAVE​

A highly restricted briefing document on Syria....

President Assad ( who is bad ) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his people rebelled and the Rebels ( who are good ) started winning (hurrah!).

But then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic State ( who are definitely bad!) and some continued to support democracy (who are still good.)

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Ukraine #2

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

March 4, 2015

Back in the old days, when Americanism was more robust than it is now, it used to be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” What this was supposed to mean is that our domestic disagreements paled in comparison to whatever it was the Nazis were doing. Now there was a time when this was at least plausible, whether or not it was correct. When there was, or seemed to be, a more cohesive cultural unity tying us all together domestically, it was easier to present a united front to the world, and it was easier to get Americans to all pull together in order to do so.

But at home that cohesive cultural unity is now long gone, and it is taking conservative Christians some time to recognize that it is long gone overseas as well. In short, if Obama is creating so much wreckage here at home, as we all recognize, then why should we believe that he is somehow spreading sweetness and light abroad? If Hillary is as corrupt elsewhere as she is here, then we have every reason to believe her flights around the world were simply an International Shakedown Tour. Why should I unite behind that?

We need to get loose of the simple binary formula that has America in the automatic white hat, with the baddies being anyone we identify as such. However, some critics of American foreign policy don’t want to let go of the standard binary system — they have kept the system but simply switched their default sympathies. But America shouldn’t get the automatic black hat either. It ain’t that simple.

The Wisdom of Gaffer Gamgee

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

One of the most compelling evidences that interventionist foreign policies fail is that they almost always end up resembling an asylum run by lunatics.  The outcomes and results are most often hard to credit.  One can do little more than document the twists and gyrations, the irrational stupidities, and the incredible contradictions that inevitably transpire.  It all seems much, much stranger than fiction.  An example?  Peter Hitchens asks us to consider the recent track record of the West in Afghanistan. 

. . . Afghanistan, where the nominally Christian West, having once mobilized warrior Islam against the Soviet Union (which was the ally of the Arabs in their war against Israel), now fights a furious war against warrior Islam.  Islam in its turn has repaid past American help with terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC.  Amusingly, it was the USSR that once claimed to be liberating the women of Afghanistan from the tyranny of Islam, a task it has successfully achieved in its own Central Asian empire.  Now it is the "West" which tried so hard to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan, that says its troops must remain there . . . to protect Afghan women from the tyranny of Islam.  Is this a war caused by religion, or by human folly?  (Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 132.]

Yet what is it about modern Western nations that drives them to become involved in the affairs of other nations yet, when disaster results, makes them purblind to the consequences for which they are largely responsible.

New World Order

Playing the Long Game

Never has so much been promised to so many and been delivered to so few.  When He Who is So Smarter Than Ordinary Men was voted in to the office of the US presidency, Obama promised a new world to--well--the world.  Gone would be the histrionics of previous administrations, the faux risks, the needless wars, the brittle alignments, the rhetoric about Axes of Evil.  Instead a new world of sweet reasonableness would break out.  Big Bully US would become a polite chap in the corner. 

But President Obama has become about as imperious as its possible to get--at least in terms of attitude and in the conducting of foreign affairs.  Well, it's understandable really.  When you are by far and away the smartest guy in the room, having to put up with a bunch of under-achieving dullards would strain the patience of your average demi-god. 

It has been noised about recently that every traditional US ally in the Middle East is fed up with Obama and his government.  He has managed to offend them all.