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“It is our true policy to steer clear of
entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
George Washington
Last week I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its
authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize
that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign
matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not
the executive.
But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world
in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not
threatening our freedoms at home?
I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace
and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military
alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.
Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means
America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the
internal affairs of other nations. It does not we that we isolate
ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel,
communication, and diplomacy with other nations.
Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy
position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations- entangling alliances with none.”
Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for
others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign
attachments.”
Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking
them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but
conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since
so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the
critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the
intellectual honesty to admit it.
Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, “times have
changed,” and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s. The
obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding era
should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First amendment
because times have changed and free speech causes too much offense in our
modern society? Should we give up the Second amendment, and trust that
today’s government is benign and not to be feared by its citizens? How
about the rest of the Bill of Rights?
It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles
simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist
policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change.
If anything, today’s more complex world cries out for the moral clarity
provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.
It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy
that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand
the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again
into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran,
Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves
whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to
remake the Middle East in our image.
