This morning I’ve published two foreign policy posts at Outside the Beltway. The first is a short recap of the events that have led up to the tense waiting for North Korea’s satellite launch or missile test depending on whom you believe.
The second is a little reflection on the statements of the envoys of the various countries in attendance at the conference on Afghanistan going on at The Hague. For some reason or other the various ministers’ reactions reflect their own experiences and interests more than they seem to reflect a dispassionate consideration of the situation in Afghanistan.
“For some reason or other the various ministers’ reactions reflect their own experiences and interests more than they seem to reflect a dispassionate consideration of the situation in Afghanistan.”
Your perplexity is ironic, I am sure. They’re diplomats being diplomats. The business of diplomacy is to advance one’s own nation’s interests as far as possible in the world without resort to direct violence. If that happens to advance the interests of poor people elsewhere, that is a happy accident.
The United States of America has for generations, under administrations of both parties, tended to present diplomacy as our religious obligation to spread freedom and democracy and prosperity — which has the secondary effect, we suppose, of making America safer and weakening our enemies.
When George W. Bush was president, for some reason, a great many Americans decided he wasn’t practicing diplomacy and they cried out for a return to diplomacy, forgetting what a cold-blooded business it is. They still haven’t got it. We awoke this morning to headlines like, “Obama tries to rally world to cope with downturn.” Evidently, he forgot, too.
I don’t know Callimachus, it seems to me that the United States, for generations before WWII, preached a gospel of republicanism, which aided it at a time in which it wasn’t a great power. It was no doubt easy to preach to a world that could afford to ignore America. Everything since WWII has been an effort to consolidate the real power and the ideology. I personally think that struggle is worth while.