U.S.

Breaking the Golden Rule

June 2, 2012   ·   1 Comments

Source: Foreign Policy

By Stephen M. Walt:

Remember the Golden Rule? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s not normally regarded as a cardinal rule of foreign policy; in that realm, “an eye for an eye” seems closer to the norm. But lately I’ve been thinking that Americans ought to reflect a bit more on the long-term costs of our willingness to do unto others in ways we would most definitely not want them to do unto us.

This past week, the New York Times has published two important articles on how the Obama administration is using American power in ways that remain poorly understood by most Americans. The first described Obama’s targeted assassination policy against suspected terrorists, and the second describes the U.S. cyber-warfare campaign against Iran. Reasonable people might disagree about the merits of both policies, but what I find troubling is the inevitable secrecy and deceit that is involved. It’s not just that we are trying to fool our adversaries; the problem is that we end up fooling ourselves, too. As I’ve noted before, when our government is doing lots of hostile things in far-flung places around the world and the public doesn’t know about them until long after the fact, then we have no way of understanding why the targets of U.S. power might be angry and hostile. As a result, we will tend to attribute their behavior to other, darker motivations.

Remember back in 2009, when Obama supposedly extended the “hand of friendship” to Iran? At the same time that he was making friendly video broadcasts, he was also escalating our cyber-war efforts against Iran. When Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei reacted coolly to Obama’s initiative, saying: “We do not have any record of the new U.S. president.  We are observing, watching, and judging.  If you change, we will also change our behavior. If you do not change, we will be the same nation as 30 years ago,” U.S. pundits immediately saw this as a “rebuff” of our supposedly sincere offer of friendship. With hindsight, of course, it’s clear that Khamenei had every reason to be skeptical; and now, he has good grounds for viewing Obama as inherently untrustworthy. I’m no fan of the clerical regime, but the inherent contradictions in our approach made it virtually certain to fail. As it did.

We keep wondering: “Why do they hate us?” Well, maybe some people are mad because we are doing things that we would regard as unjustified and heinous acts of war if anyone dared to do them to us.  I’m not really surprised that the U.S. is using its power so freely — that is what great powers tend to do. I’m certainly not surprised that government officials prefer to keep quiet about it, or only leak information about their super-secret policies when they think they can gain some political advantage by doing so. But I also don’t think Americans should be so surprised or so outraged when others are angered by actions that we would find equally objectionable if we were the victims instead of the perpetrators.

And if we keep doing unto others in this way, it’s only a matter of time before someone does it unto us in return.

By admin

Readers Comments (1)

1. john_wright says:

   This is the same kind of information about the Vietnam War that Daniel Ellsberg brought to America’s attention in 1971, so the government’s secrecy policy has not changed over the last 40 years.

   Of course, foreign nations, and their citizens, are aware of what the US is doing in their countries, so preserving the ill-informed tax paying US citizen is likely the primary reason for the secrecy.

   Keeping the facade of “the USA always means well” is comforting to the typical citizen that pays financially and with their lives.

   And the only presidential candidate, of either party, willing to suggest decreasing our foreign involvement was the fringe candidate Ron Paul.

   I expect the USA will eventually be view by history as a remarkably paranoid nation, engaging in foreign military actions to protect itself from exaggerated foreign threats, when inherent geographical separation made successful foreign military threats very unlikely.

   I’m not a historian, but wasn’t the war of 1812 the last time the USA was physically invaded by a foreign power with the intent of actually changing the government?

   Pearl Harbor was a strategic military strike somewhat similar to “take out the Iran nuclear facilities” some in the USA are now suggesting and was not an invasion with Japanese ground troops.

   Vietnam and 9-11 were not military actions on US soil.

   And the USA’s love of personal handguns makes it an unruly candidate for military conquest.

   So for 200 years of both large and small defense budgets, the USA has been free from foreign invasion.

   Yet the USA behaves as if the foreign invader wolf is always at the door.

   10:40 pm on June 9, 2012

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