The Trouble With US

Richard Haass, the Mahatma of the Council on Foreign Relations recently wrote an article in Foreign Affairs entitled: The Trouble with Allies.

He is searching for a playbook that America can use in dealing with our so-called friends who deviate from the program that we have outlined for them, and in this article he demonstrates various techniques that the United States can employ in disciplining foreign friends who go off the reservation.

Essentially, the techniques that he illustrates are persuasion, carrots, sticks, turning a blind eye , and workarounds.

I would like to add my two cents to the discussion,  well, more than two cents.

Herewith are my guidelines of reality, principles we must adopt when intervening in foregn nations.  These conclusions are based upon my readings and experiences of what I’ve learned in my lifetime.

1. When we go into a foreign country, we roll the dice. Essentially we are gambling, and we must understand that when we roll the dice, there is the good possibility that we might lose. In that event, we must never bet more than we can afford to lose.  And we must be prepared to walk away when we lose.
2. It’s their country, not ours..  We must never again get into nation building, nor must we ever again fight someone else’s war. It’s not our country; it belongs to them.  Most importantly, the world is not our playground. It does not belong to us. There is no manifest destiny. God did not give us any mission to export our beautiful democracy to the world. And it’s not that beautiful anyway.
3. I don’t know much about New York, Oberlin College, Oxford, or any of the other places that Mr. Haass may hail from, but down here in Texas we have a saying that you hear quite frequently.  And it goes like this: You can’t fix stupid. What that means is that we can try to persuade someone like President Diem in Vietnam of what to do, but ultimately the decisions are his.  And if he’s too stupid to listen to what we have to say, then we need to get out of town, because when you talk too long to a crazy person, you’re the one who belongs in the padded cell.
4. Free will is the rule in life. Free will exists and other nations want to win also. To not recognize this is to put us in league with Dallas Cowboy fans who can’t seem to understand that other tems want to win also.  It’s not the job of the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Washington Commanders to lay down and die on the way to the Cowboys’ coronation.  These other teams have desires also.  Likewise with other other nations and peoples; it is not their job  to serve us.
5. We can’t reasonably expect these other countries, with different cultures, different values, different customs to march lock step with us.  What that means is that we cannot set policies where we sit too high on our horse.   People who sit on high horses tend to get knocked off.  Instead, what we must do is set reasonable achievable, minimal standards that we expect a foreign nation to hit.  If they can’t meet those standards, then hasta la vista, baby. It’s time to walk away.
6. The corporations who operate in foreign countries must operate under the guidelines that are set by the United States government. These corporations may not operate sweatshops. They must pay a living wage.  This must be the case because it is the American people who will be asked to defend corporate interests when things go south.

What kind of standards should we set?

1. The workers have to be paid a reasonable living wage. Exploitation breeds poverty, and poverty breeds communism.  When the workers have power through proper economic reimbursement, the rest of the issues in their society should take care of themselves.  Money is power.

Economic freedom is what Third World leaders fear most from their people.  Economically free people tend to reform their countries to the disadvantage of the despot.  When the United States government and its corporations fail to give the people of the Third World country economic freedom, they play into despotism; they help foster despotism.

What we want to do is create a strong, vibrant, economic ally. What we don’t want to do is create a sweatshop of exploitation, a sweatshop that we will have to march into with our troops and police every 30 to 50 years..

A strong capitalist system is the best  bulwark  against communism and nastiness.

We must walk away from the playbook of the past that was written for us by the Romans, and then the British.  These civilizations brutalized their dependent nations and colonies.

We owe it to ourselves to be smarter than the Romans. We owe it to ourselves to be smarter than the British. If we are not going to learn from history then let us shut down the history departments in our  high schools and colleges post haste.

The British, as we all know, adopted the policy of divide  and conquer amongst all their colonies. They destroyed them and prevented them from becoming economically vibrant and independent nations. They balkanized India, Sierra Leone and the rest.  

We must not do the same. We must follow the principles of John Kennedy and become a partner to make these countries better.

The smart leader forges win-win relationships, and often in favor of the people he or she is entrusted to lead. They used to say in the old Indian tribes that the chief was the poorest man in the tribe. He was the poorest man in the tribe because he gave the shirt off his back so that his braves could fight the good fight. Good leaders do not hog all the credit. Good leaders do not create win-lose relationships. If the United States wants to be a leader, it’s going to have to stand in the background.

A good leader also has to take a lot of guff.   He or she can’t have a thin skin.    In my pediatric office I give my employees  a lot of leeway, and I often cut a wide berth for them.   If I insist on being right every time and doing things my way, the office won’t work. That’s reality. I need to let them win.

When we help others, we help ourselves.

An ounce of  prevention is worth a pound of cure must be our motto.

Preferably we don’t want to have to engage in  persuasion, inducements, sanctions, turning a blind eye, and workarounds.

We want to prevent the scenarios that mandate such measures. A good administrator prevents problems.

That’s what we want to be – a goood adminstrator.

Let’s look at Vietnam. Mr. Haass is correct when he states that the regime change undertaken (not necessarily at the request of President Kennedy) backfired on us.

Regime change made the South Vietnamese government look like puppets. It made us look like overcontrolling bullies. The effect was to destabilize the government.

What could we have done better?

What we should’ve done right from the beginning was to introduce (through our US corporations) a  new economic model to the citizens of South Vietnam so that they would be paid more money for their jobs. They would no longer be slaves.

We should have won hearts and minds through action, not words.

We should have been walkers, not talkers.

In that respect, we prosecuted (and still do)  an impossible and insane foreign policy.

We want people to defend capitalism, but we don’t want to give them a stake in the game.  

That policy will not work.

People who are given a stake in the game will do 90% of the work for you.

You won’t need a propaganda campaign. The propaganda campaign is the economic model itself.

Nor will you require much in the way of persuasion, inducements, sanctions, sticks, blind ignorance, and workarounds.

Naturally, of course, you’re still going to have foreign “friends” who deviate from the program that you would like to prosecute.

The important thing, though, is that your job is much simpler.

That is the ticket.

Now, of course, we don’t have to do the right thing. We can continue to play the same game that we’re playing now.

We can have several more Vietnams.

We can continue to waste our money in more Iraqs and Afghanistans.

And we can continue to suffer the blowback of PTSD, drug addiction, massive immigration, polarization of wealth, and homlessness that these forays  have yielded.

And in 100 years, the great grandson of Richard Haass can write another article in Foreign Affairs saying pretty much the same thing that Mr Haass wrote a month ago. 

And we will be right back to square one.

It’s our choice.

Copyright 2024 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved