A Cynic’s Simple Plan For World Peace
posted at 2:36 am on September 24, 2009 by The Other McCain
President Obama’s UN address inspires Jennifer Rubin to observe:
The president keeps telling us he isn’t naive (funny how Ronald Reagan and even Bill Clinton didn’t have to keep compulsively telling us that). Well, maybe he’s just incredibly cynical. Or uninterested in facing the real dangers to America and its allies. In his view, they simply don’t exist.
Rubin uses “cynical” in a pejorative sense, whereas I consider cynicism a healthy thing, the basic gut-hunch belief that whenever a politician starts speaking in glittering generalities of lofty goals and noble causes, he’s probably up to something crooked.
Where’s Howard Jarvis when America really needs him? The ferocious onslaught of Hope has left our nation with a cynicism deficit. When Obama speaks, we need more taxpayers asking themselves: “What’s this gonna cost me?” or “What’s in it for him?”
Cynicism is a necessary ingredient of successful foreign policy. Start with this basic idea: We’re the Big Dog, and we need to stop being embarrassed about it. When push comes to shove, the Big Dog’s got to be ready to fight his own fights, even if he’s fighting alone.
Look at our so-called “allies.” Never mind the worthless Italians, the cowardly French and the degenerate Dutch. Canada? You think anybody’s afraid of Canada? Canadians are useless as allies because no one has ever feared Canada as an enemy. The last thing any belligerent Third World despot has to worry about is arousing the wrath of Ottowa.
Now, look at the president’s U.N. speech: Lots of high-flown rhetoric about his “comprehensive agenda,” a “coordinated international response,” “a new era of engagement,” yadda yadda yadda.
Any speech sounds great when delivered with that trademark Obama baritone. As I’ve said before, “He could read the ingredients from the side panel of a box of pancake batter (‘…dextrose, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with mono- and diglycerides…’) and inspire standing ovations from an audience of adoring Democrats.” Or belligerent Third World despots, for that matter. But when you start looking at the text and breaking it down to its non-baritone elements — “the occupation that began in 1967″? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
My blog buddy Da Tech Guy has promulgated a “Statement of Common Principles” about foreign policy and it’s not bad. But what we need is not so much the correct principles as the correct attitude. You’re not going to get the right foreign-policy attitude when your top speechwriter is a valedictorian from Massachusetts who worked for Habitat for Humanity before joining the Kerry 2004 campaign.
America’s basic foreign policy problem is that we’ve got too many valedictorians writing speeches, and not enough Marines. What we need is a foreign policy that the average truck driver can understand, so that he’ll be proud to have his son go to the recruiting office and sign up for a free vacation at Parris Island.
We need something that can be boiled down to one of those Dirty Harry-style phrases that Ronald Reagan was so good at: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Six words, and once you get past “Mr. Gorbachev,” they’re all single syllables.
This need for simplicity inspired me to take a stab at a comprehensive foreign policy doctrine:
So far as I’m concerned, the world can be divided into four categories:
- U.S.A.
- Countries that we’re at war with.
- Countries that we’re not at war with.
- Countries that are watching from the sidelines and thinking, “Hmmm. Maybe we should jump in on this war against America.”
The objective of policy should be for category 1 to whip the living dog$#*t out of category 2, and thereby transfer them to category 3, so as to send a message to category 4: “Don’t even think about it, @$$holes.”
Peace Through Superior Firepower. Anybody got a better idea?
The State Department would never go for it and the New York Times will not approve, but that truck driver can understand it, and by the time his son gets through Parris Island, he’ll understand it, too.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
Oh Mercy on September 24, 2009 at 8:01 AM
“Canadians are useless as allies because no one has ever feared Canada as an enemy.”
In World War II, the Canadians were powerful. They’ve been free riding more and more and going downhill since then, but it’s not right to say there never was a time when they were scary. Maybe they will be again one day.
“Peace Through Superior Firepower. Anybody got a better idea?”
Yes I have a much better idea. It’s from Samuel P. Huntington, the author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Start with your own country, in your case America, in my case Australia, and classify every other country in the world according to how they usually treat your country when the chips are down. Then treat them accordingly, all the time.
Huntington gives five categories.
1. Friends who will be with you and you with them through thick and thin. Example: Britain. Recommendation: Do them all the good you can, as long as it’s no skin off your nose, never practice trade discrimination against them, and don’t insult the Prime Minister even if it is funny to imagine his face when he realizes that your American DVDs won’t play on his player.
2. Countries that regard you as good customers of something like it, and are inclined to give you a good rate. Example: Japan. Recommendation: Always deal fairly with them, economically, even if you are frustrated and suspect they are not doing the same with you all the time, let them get away with some free riding if they want to, and try not to throw up on their prime minister.
3. Countries that give you nothing, or that are happy to triangulate at your expense as long as you’re dumb enough to let them, but that you can deal with and that aren’t actively interested in messing you about, unless there’s something in if for them. Example: South Korea. Recommendation: Never give them anything free. If they want category 2 treatment, let them develop a category 2 attitude.
4. Countries that are always inclined to be hostile or at least obnoxious to you, but that you can usually deal with rationally. Examples: Russia, China. Recommendation: Be as bloody-minded as possible in all negotiations, minutely check compliance on every deal, and favor people in the friendlier categories at their expense every chance you get. Don’t get all excited and start making “confidence-building” concessions every time a new leader comes in and the papers start talking about the possibilities of a new friendship. It won’t last.
5. Countries that will do you what harm they can, don’t feel obligated to keep their word, and act more like hate-your-country ideological projects than proper states. Examples: North Korea, the Palestinians, the Islamic Republic of Iran (Which is more like an ideological project built by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini than a proper country.) Recommendation: Stab them if they stand, shoot them if they run, and never give them a break unless it’s their neck. Put no faith in negotiations: the maximum leader will break his word whenever he feels like it. You should not care if, due to some balance of power consideration or obscure special circumstance, they’re showing a smiley face this week: due to the ideological character of the state, it won’t last. Above all, no aid, ever. Do not subsidize your enemies.
Three ideas underpin this. One is that to distinguish between friends and enemies is vital for nations as it is for individuals. Putting your trust in collectives like “the international community” or “the United Nations” is useless.
Two is that nations have habits that have to be taken into account, and that are not reducible to impersonal, value-free balance of power considerations. It doesn’t matter whether the reason governments act roughly the same when the chips are down (regardless of what treaties they signed when it didn’t look like they’d have to live up to them), decade after decade and even century after century. It can be as elaborate as Marxist dogma or as crude as Turks and Greeks hating each others’ guts. The point is, those consistences are there.
Third, “coalitions of the willing” in the sense that Donald Rumsfeld initially meant, that is countries that are random except for their momentary pragmatic interest, are so rare as to be useless as a basis for strategy. In practice, the same countries are willing or unwilling over and over. If you disregard this, if you start every time with the attitude that the French are as likely to stand by you in war as the British are, then you’re being silly, and the French will have a good laugh at your expense, again, while the British will be frustrated and wonder what it takes to get you to distinguish between your real allies and phony ones, again.
David Blue on September 24, 2009 at 9:14 AM
For a simple change to bring about the beginning of the end of the problems with US diplomacy, a “good conduct” military discharge should be required for ANY promotion within the Department of State.
If you didn’t serve, you can stay in the mailroom for 50 years.
cthulhu on September 24, 2009 at 12:08 PM