Campaign Issues and International Relations
M. Gene Aldridge, NMIRI Board Member

Hello Friends of NMIRI:
Thank you for your support and your ongoing readership.

Las Cruces, NM- Political campaigns are always interesting. We tend to hear “noise” in campaigns and sometimes we lose track of the substantive issues that will reign down upon the candidates once they become President of the United States. What might be some of these issues that are not getting fair hearing in the campaign due to noise?

First, President Bush has been attacked for preemptive policies associated with the War on Terrorism. The corollary criticism to this campaign attack is that he needs to pay more attention to delicate diplomatic negotiations in trying to solve the world’s problems. The underlying criticism is that he is too quick on the trigger for war and has not relied on diplomatic maneuvering in his foreign relations policies. Nothing could be further from the truth.

President Bush can be criticized for many things in international relations work, but his preemptive approach to security for the U.S. is historically in tandem with other national events over the time. In a new book, entitled Surprise, Security and the American Experience John Lewis Gaddis has outlined this traditional historical pattern where the American experience was required to reform our thinking about national security. Gaddis calls this the “grand strategy” for changing our national security role after surprise attacks, for example.

The issues he cites are the 1814 event where the British burned the White House and the Capitol and John Quincy Adams whose policies called for unilateralism and preemption as it relates to the entire continent. While this grand strategy worked because technology did not allow attack between two oceans, the Pearl Harbor event shattered the U.S. experience because now we were attacked on our land much like Poncho Villa accomplished by attacking us earlier on the U.S. – Mexico Border in Columbus, NM in the early 1900s. In each of those cases, we responded to the surprise with preemption that was consistent with our security needs. In each case, Gaddis reminds us, the “grand strategy” was changed because of surprise that demonstrated we were not prepared. Thus, changes in our grand strategy were necessary.

As Gaddis points out “the preferred form of empire for the United States through the end of 1930s remained one based upon continental hegemony, ideological example, and commercial opportunity. In the first instance it was enough to control our continent because we had oceans that protected us and we declared to the world that the continent was off limits. The U.S. was content to use ideological (Cold War) differences to drive its security issues during the last 60 years with Russia and communism in general. We were successful, for a time, at both these policies. Recently, our global economic interests were thought to win the day after the cold war in that many countries began to develop free markets and move in the direction of democracy. This appeared very good for the U.S. during the 1990s, but clearly it is not sufficient as we move into the post war conditions of September 11, 2001. So we stopped Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan only to confront communism’s ideological confrontation in world affairs. War and diplomacy won the day for each of these conditions.

Now we are faced with tyrants who can manage renegade rebel operations out of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. They use authoritarian forms of radical Islam as their “front” mechanism. When attacked by surprise again, the U.S. acted decisively to the shock of September 11th just like we have in previous generations. We moved with decisive power to corral both of these two nations for support of terrorism and tyrannical style leadership. We sent a new signal to the world and our allies. Like it or not the United States of America is the empire of liberty, to coin Gaddis’ phase. Our expansion cannot be just to the continent of the U.S., but it must now be global to preserve the nation and its dream for a world with liberty at its core.

Why respect any nation’s sovereignty that harbors terrorists that attack us? Preemption is the mechanism to halt the threat of terrorism and radical Islam authoritarians just like we did against a Nazi Germany and Japan, for example. Remember, Japan used the Emperor as their front for religion too. If you believe that America is safe with terrorists running around the world ready to attack free societies, then you will fall into the camp that suggests that the “War on Terror” constitutes a dangerous precedent for the U.S. Most of these critics come from Europe where their socialism, as is the case with Germany and France, keep them knee deep in debt servicing so that they cannot think about terrorists, but would rather cut deals with tyrants like Saddam Hussein. The other group hails Bush doctrine on preemption as the remedy for terrorists who seek to attack our nation and the Western cultures in order to gain some security strength in the world over radical Islamic terrorists, as they view it. The Bush preemption doctrine on the surprise attack is now extended in a historical sense from our borders to the world. In other words, Bush has said to us that no one is safe as long as tyrants and terrorists exist to attack us at will. This is a new policy direction that extends even the idea of the Monroe Doctrine to the world.

Gaddis reminds us to reflect long and hard about a foreign relations policy which produces such perceptions about our arrogance to the rest of the world. The truth is that we have little hope for a world that sits idly by while terrorists blow up our hard earned infrastructures and murder our families and fellow citizens. Now they have moved from blowing up our embassies to hitting us on our soil. John Quincy Adams was worried about an America that would try to extend our capabilities to the whole world. Bush is right to secure liberty around the world and Adams would approve it were he here today given the conditions that exist. Why? Because what applied to our borders only under Adams and others, also now applies to the world with respect to terrorists, just like it did to the pirates and thieves of old on our shores. For too long our foreign policy has been weak because we have not clearly understood the strategy of “offensive realism” in defense of liberty.

Maybe now, more than ever, we must be ready to fight for liberty around the world, even if we become the target for those persons and nations who seek to kill optimism and hope in the world. We must protect the values we hold near and dear in our foreign policy and not continue our relativistic stance that ends up in equivocation like that of Clinton era international policies. There are some Libertarians who want the U.S. to be isolationists, but the world conditions will not allow us to do so at this moment in the 21st century. Many liberals wants us to come home from Iraq, after having established the beachhead in the Middle East, because they do not have the stomach for more war and want the jaw bone diplomatic corps to take charge. We need both strategies, symbolic capabilities via our military and negotiation by our diplomats.

The second argument against Bush’s policies in international relations is that he does not use diplomatic negotiations as a mechanism for trying to change the world. This is totally false and requires some explanation.

Bush has engaged Libya, Iran and North Korea for starters in multilateral negotiations. In the case of Libya, we have results with the new relationship that has caused Moammar Gahdafi to relent on nuclear weapons. In the case of North Korea; Japan, China, and the U.S. are engaged in working out the issues for North Korea through negotiations that are multilateral and ongoing. With respect to Iran, the U.S. is also working the United Nations and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to ensure that Iran’s enriched uranium particles are from home sources or from sources that may have involved Pakistan. The U.S. is seeking support from NATO countries and the U.N. to address this issue with Iran. Direct talks with Iran will become important in the months to come or Iran will have to risk having the U.S. or some ally come visit to destroy the developing nuclear capability of this nation. The U.S. cannot allow Iran to move toward nuclear weapons knowing what we now know about the terrorist networks around the world and their links to Iran. This is just too intolerable to accept. We continue to dialogue with Saudi Arabia and Syria as well.

You will notice that both Bush and Kerry are somewhat mute on these latter issues about the fate of North Korea and Iran specifically in the national debates. We must make them speak out on these issues because the approach and outcomes may be more dangerous than all the threats we faced at the beginning of this century. Do we wait for American diplomacy to have another failure in North Korea like we did under the famous Carter – Clinton deals or do we push the diplomatic process and then attack if all fails? The point is that we are negotiating as a nation with these other axis powers to stand down or face the consequences. Without intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rest of the world would doubt our intentions to act with military force. What Bush has accomplished quite clearly is that we will act decisively on the one hand where our security has directly been attacked or is being threatened, while we negotiate with others who potentially can be brought around to settle in negotiations, rather than in war. The enemy is counting on the weakening of the American will to win or to have our presence felt in the Middle East. The election is a choice between the old relativistic policies of the liberal left or clear new policy directions from President Bush. Which signal the American people send via the election may be more important that we now know.

Wouldn’t you like to hear the debate between Kerry and Bush on how they would manage Iran and North Korea? Kerry already has said he wants to allow Iran nuclear development for peaceful purposes while he takes back the spent fuel so that it cannot be refined for nuclear war devices. If we could not trust them in the first place, why would we trust them in the second? Kerry says on North Korea that he would be willing to talk one on one with North Korea, but that leaves the other nations in Asia without responsibility for the outcomes of the discussions. Kerry’s approach is quite paternalistic to say the least. Bush’s offensive realism is much more conducive to obtaining results in the international setting.

But let’s be clear, without preemption on the part of Bush in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the possibilities for Bush’s options become quite limited. He has managed to put the world on notice; that we mean business and this allows us to simultaneously negotiate with Iran and North Korea. Bush is “preemptive” in policy, but also is in deep negotiation in other areas of the world. He has done both quite cleverly and effectively despite those opinions to the contrary.

Adam Smith said, Americans “are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.” Free markets bring prosperity for nations when individual interests are promoted. To suggest that a world full of terrorists running around destroying capital interests for the individual, like the train explosions in Spain or the September 11th attacks, should not be addressed by an authority like the U.S. willing to do it, is the march of folly all over again. It is the Trojan Horse. It is the kind of relativism that leads us to this kind of muddled thinking in international relations. After being attacked, Bush is right to preserve our individual interests as a nation, with it he advances liberty. He is also right to continue negotiations as he has demonstrated. The liberal left wing in this country does not deserve to have control of our foreign relations policies until they decide they are interested in a more realistic approach to our nation’s challenges and are willing at all costs to provide security for our citizens. The enemy cannot have anymore time having once attacked our shores.

Professor, M. Gene Aldridge
New Mexico Independence Research Institute, Inc.
505 523 8700
galdridge@zianet.com

©Copyright NMIRI 2004
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e-mail is galdridge@zianet.com.

© 2004 NMIRI