How does foreign policy matter for Americans? Of course we need to stay safe from hostile arms or invasion, and no we can’t allow other nations to restrict our rightful activities in the world. Then again, as a powerful nation, we feel we should “do something” when horrible doings abroad come to our attention, like mass murder or political repression.
The experts talk about national interests, or “the national interest,” in varying interpretations of what any of those are. Terms ranging from “national security” to “fair trade” to “democracy promotion” and many more, are constantly thrown around, and often used to connote very different things.
In foreign policy, a nation acts as a single entity. Its conduct exhibits its priorities, however they are chosen, and however it shapes that conduct. Americans engage in many diverse activities that affect the outside world, so seeing our national conduct involves understanding which doings represent the nation, and/or pulling some coherent meaning out of all those doings.
Put another way, before international relations were played among “nations,” there were “sovereigns,” archetypically monarchs, pursuing their sovereign interest. America’s sovereign is “we the people,” who promulgated our governing state in the Constitution, and who conceived itself as holders of certain truths in the Declaration. What is this sovereign’s interest?
America conceived itself in the name of unalienable individual rights, and government that serves to secure them, by consent of the governed. Where almost all other nationalities rest, ultimately, on some combination of blood, soil, church or tongue, this one is only named in this creed, the truths that the Declaration says “we hold.” The nation’s existence as conceived, then, hinges on our continued holding of those truths. Any nation must show that it can endure in an ever contentious and now rapidly changing world. This nation must meet the old demands of protection and well being, but also keep faith with our creed.
If our conduct fails to secure our tangible needs, then we show that a nation defined as we are cannot sustain its material existence, and perhaps that free society lacks competence. If, on the other hand, we secure our tangible needs but without regard for the rights of persons, we show the Declaration’s self definition to be superfluous to our real lives. We show our nation incorrectly conceived.
The requirement that we exhibit commitment to our abstract creed raises an odd need for our conduct. The purpose for our actions, to meet the dual needs of creed and of the nation as its living vessel, is odd in human history. We need to communicate our creedal commitment, and act by it in a credible way. Ideologies and eyewash are both familiar to international actors, and we cannot afford for our intentions to be confused with either. In this respect, even the most passive and neutral conduct will need explanation and substantiation in the way we do it. Isolationism, we feared in the 20th Century, indicated indifference to basic values, which were threatened by totalitarian tyrants. “Liberalism” today might require bolstering in its basic spirit, against authoritarian depredations, or might call for us to let others develop as they will, lest we be seen as using it as “cover” for our own profane interests.
This concern, for credible expression of our core sovereign interest and existential national purpose, calls for highly competent policy management. Our sovereign intent needs to show through the vagaries of administration change, even in polarized times like today. We need to ensure against overreach – as John Quincy Adams did in his invocation against seeking out “monsters to destroy” – cravenness, as many saw our motives in the Spanish-American War; pusillanimity in either our values or our needs; and any number of other distortions to our core intent. The management question opens a need for full and rigorous reflection and deliberation, in its own right.
Above all, we need voices to recall, for all of us, that our conduct abroad not only protects and provides for us in tangible ways, but also carries a new kind of sovereign interest into the world. This new kind of sovereign interest is our whole reason for being as a nation, which serves the deepest interest of each of us, validating and promoting the primacy of rights in public life.
Common Conviction 