The need for a foreign affairs policy
Even though it is always tempting to write an April Fool’s Day message wherever I am on April 1, this column is serious in its intent. (Messages from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I was ambassador for three years, are noteworthy in illustration, one announcing to the Department of State that the DRC would be sending a fraud team to the Olympics.)
Reflecting on last week’s column, probably a bad idea, I noted that none of the Three Great Powers — China, Russia and the United States — is currently in any shape to intervene effectively in any other country’s affairs to restore that country’s ability to live and act responsibly and independently.
China is clearly not free enough of its three internal obsessive problems — Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs — to really take on any external, unrelated problems. Russia has shown little to no success in dealing with Ukraine, Belarus or hardy perennial Chechnya, not to mention down-but-not-out Alexei Navalny.
The United States’ internal wrangling is embarrassing, particularly the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the lack of U.S. government response to Russian and Chinese cyberattacks on American systems. (Joe Biden can’t be that nice toward the Russians and the Chinese.)
The result of the Three Great Powers’ inaction: conflicts in Venezuela, Mozambique and Myanmar; flapping around in Afghanistan; continuing mayhem in eastern Ukraine and Syria; competing governments in Libya; uneasy seacoasts in West and East Africa; and the usual collection of potential firework sites around the world, with no surety of “great power” firefighting if any of them get out of line.
We used to have that. Great powers didn’t used to let client states act unstably because (a) the great powers had them so tied up with aid and “technical assistance” and (b) it was more fashionable to stop them from running loose.
Thus, if we were to move to organize a Three Great Powers summit now, its agenda might include a list of countries that did not exist a century ago. (I’ll duck the question of whether we are better off now with the likes of them — Iraq, Syria, Rwanda, Burundi.) Should world leaders have to know the difference between Tutsis and Hutus? The answer is “yes.”
Still, the main point about the little countries, those that in principle pose no threat to us, is that we should keep them in perspective. Grenada, Panama, Vietnam? The latter is a case of the Roman Catholic Church drawing America’s first Catholic president into the wrong war. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia now have communist governments.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think we should defend all the shaky governments in the world with troops. I think that any American politician who wants to take us to war should have to explain to us and let us vote on the matter in question unless it is the equivalent of Dec. 7, 1941, in the urgency or proximity of the threat.
America’s role in Third World affairs should always be what it could do, not what it has done, although the two are related. We are still getting over our loss in Vietnam. What we need, quickly, from the Biden administration is clear resolution of a foreign affairs issue that would become a signature State Department matter for Mr. Biden’s government. Something consistent with long-term American positions and principles. Would immigration be a good choice?
It is not unthinkable that Mr. Biden could lead us to such a signature resolution of a problem. He is older, somewhat middle-ofthe-road, and probably doesn’t care if he is a one-term president.
If he is opposed in 2024 by only the yellow-haired dope in Florida, an endorsement of his positions by a modest achievement at the polls should not be impossible to acquire.
On the other hand, one does not know what the Republicans will do faced with the post-Trump ruins of their party. It would be laughable, or tragic, to think of their party, founded in the mid19th century as an anti-slavery organization with Abraham Lincoln its first candidate to take the White House, ending up in the dust bin of American history.
On the one hand, watching the Grand Old Party going down the drain with Donald J. Trump at the helm is tragic; on the other hand, it is being forced to play out the hand it dealt itself, as it did with Richard M. Nixon.