The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
The USA has exhibited its most exemplary positive strength when its primary governmental focus has been on foreign policy. However, that was not possible until both our nation and the family of nations recognized our country as an emerging world power.
President Theodore Roosevelt was the first American leader fully to realize the dilemma and the opportunity in which our nation found itself. The building of the Panama Canal, the world tour of “the Great White Fleet,” and the rapid expansion of our economic and military power all signaled his awareness that America had no choice but to enter the international arena in major displays of interest in foreign affairs.
During and after World War I, Woodrow Wilson also clearly perceived the necessity of America taking a leading role in foreign policy, through the establishment of the League of Nations. Sadly, he was not able to convince an America-First Congress to join the League. Wilson’s bad health ultimately removed him and us from active interest in foreign policy.
Afterwards, domestic matters consumed America until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That thrust Franklin Roosevelt and America into a position of world leadership he had been quietly pursuing until we entered World War II. Before that, America emphasized American interests above the needs and opportunities represented on the world stage.
American foreign policy had its finest years under Harry Truman, the providentially accidental president who followed FDR. The Marshall Plan was the most visible illustration of Truman’s remarkable presidency. His foreign policy was perhaps best chronicled in the audacious title of Dean Acheson’s book, Present at the Creation. The future of American leadership in international relations was cemented by actions taken by the man from Missouri and the then-Secretary of State and the State Department.
Foreign policy and military policy became closely intertwined from the time of the Korean War through the Wars in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is simply a sober and tragic reality that no great world power can avoid wars.
Now the United States finds itself in another period when its attention is largely directed inward upon itself and its own domestic problems, of which there is an abundance. President Biden is plagued by the plague and by his own declining popular support, the Congress is hopelessly catatonic because of its mean-spirited polarization, and the American people have fallen into a “woe is us” attitude.
This inward-looking stance places our nation and the world in acute danger because of the alarming rise of autocracy in many nations, including the USA. At the moment, Russian interference in Ukraine is the most obvious issue. But Vladimir Putin is not the only autocrat who represents a threat to democracy and world peace. Xi Jinping is clearly taking steps for China to become The World Power, and he often boldly proclaims it. He constantly threatens to invade Taiwan, and action we and our allies strongly oppose. Other autocrats have recently taken control in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, Brazil, Venezuela, Congo, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.
The United States now risks falling into the navel-gazing stance it took from the end of the Wilson presidency through the years leading up to Pearl Harbor. If we are going to be a world power, we must act like one. That means that foreign policy must be as important to us as domestic policy.
We are a nation of three hundred and thirty million people, the third most populace country in the world. As has been our essential geographical situation from the beginning, we have two wide oceans to our east and west, and two peaceful and peaceable nations on our north and south. Geography has been extraordinarily kind to us, but it also has lulled us into imagining we can safely live in a self-created cocoon, letting the rest of the world to make their own irrational choices.
The truth is that we have no such luxury. World powers can never lose sight of the world’s problems. To spend too much attention, dollars, and energy on ourselves at the expense of the world is inevitably to weaken ourselves. Ukraine, NATO, the EU, other allies, underdeveloped nations, over-autocratic nations, climate change, and a never-ending host of international conundrums are calling to us to work with them or around them or against them. A genuine world power must rise to the occasions which history thrusts upon it. Foreign policy is the means by which that is done. – January 27, 2022
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.