President Biden went on national TV on October 19, calling Congress to support funding for Israel and Ukraine. It is generally expected that the administration supports Israel and Ukraine, and the President did. But his explanations suggested a lack of clarity in our purposes. This is not to castigate Biden: almost any politician would leave the same unclarity.
In his speech, Biden called Americans’ safety his first priority, referring to Americans killed and captured in Hamas’ October 7 attack. He denounced the terrorists’ depravity, cited the rights of both Israel and Palestinians, and mourned the deaths of innocent Gazans. Then he turned to Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Both Hamas and Putin, he said, are out to annihilate a neighboring democracy. Having fitfully invoked horror, democracy and safety, the President noted that dictators and terrorists, if allowed success in their efforts, “don’t stop.”
He did seem to want “democracy” to sit somewhere at the center of these motives. But citing “democracy” raises problems. Ukraine’s is incomplete and Israel’s does not extend to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Biden also said our values “are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with,” but we are working with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among other non-democracies. If we support democracy only in rhetoric or when convenient, what are our “real” motives?
Another outlook, a cogent critique advocating strategic “restraint,” makes many of these points. We are, in this view, risking unnecessary entanglements with questionable regimes and alienation from some democrats, and making commitments we may not keep. We should be guided instead by “truly vital” security interests, consider rapprochement with “former adversaries,” and lean on allies to counterbalance local threats.
To be sure, this article cites a real risk of overextension. But what are the “truly” vital security interests? Which local threats can we leave others to handle? And when is an adversary no longer an adversary? By what criteria would we make these determinations? Should Europe address Putin’s invasion of Ukraine without us? Is democracy in Taiwan not vital enough to defend? Yes, as the article says, we need to repair our own democracy – but how far back can we pull from other democracies and outright military aggression, and still keep faith with our founding?
The most important goal for U.S. foreign policy is to exhibit the American ethos named in the Declaration’s creed, that holds all persons equally endowed with unalienable rights and that governments exist to secure those rights. The creed is not a template yielding automatic answers; diverse paths, like Biden’s or like the “constraint” concept, could conceivably carry its ethos. But clarity is crucial: the creed is abstract and if we do not tie our actions clearly, consistently, and credibly to that ethos we risk debasing our national self-conception.
U.S. policy since the Cold War has often hinged on what strategist Michael Mazarr termed unexamined “evolved collective beliefs” (around Iraq in his Leap of Faith) such that policy decisions end up with “more of the character of a reflex than a choice.” We feel responsible, perhaps entitled, to stop atrocities, in no small part because we have global power. We feel we are fighting for democracy, as a habit of the Cold War (where we did recruit dictators in the larger effort), and because the conflicts that draw our attention touch on familiar, democratic, places – western Europe, Israel, south Korea. 9/11 subjected us to terrorism, so we now lump adversaries with terrorists – which risks mirroring dictators’ practice of branding any opposition as terrorism.
Biden said we made mistakes after 9/11, but not what they were. Our biggest mistakes had less to do with any particular action than with failing to keep purposes clear. As Amb. Chas Freeman said about Afghanistan, after deposing the Taliban in 2001, we began “moving the goalposts this way and that, (with) no debate about why … Soon, no one could offer a coherent explanation of why we were fighting in Afghanistan.” For lack of clarity in the “big things” that Gen. David Petraeus describes, we then lost that war in the weeds.
This blog has supported arming Ukraine because allowing naked force to secure political interests will block freedom’s development. The case to support Israel is impeccable if one is committed to its existence. Its internal democracy supports it, as does Hamas’ depravity. But the underlying commitment to Israel is a policy choice rather than an automatic moral requirement, and must be deliberated and explained. Taiwan may make semiconductors and may impede Chinese expansion, but is truly important to us because it is governed by democracy and impartial rule of law. Every country that does gives our creed, our reason for being, another level of vindication. We need to leave no doubt that our commitment is to principle. If we are not clear in our motives, everyone, including our domestic malcontents – woke, MAGA or other – will assume whatever suits them about America’s goals. Chinese communists, Putin, and Iranian mullahs will happily cite any murkiness as hypocrisy, and our ethos, and claim vindication for their own territorial, mercantile, or ideological ventures.
America conceived itself in an abstract creed of rights and government to protect them. We need to validate the idea at home. We also need to help protect others who live by its principles; nurture its conditions, particularly against egregious violation; and encourage others to see that freedom was not made just for one country. We need to concert policy and actions, which are means, to that ethos that names our ends. Clarity is vital.
Common Conviction 