Hypocrisy and Foreign Policy

I mentioned some time ago that I had been given a subscription to The Economist. I'm not sure that I'm going to renew it - while it provides valuable thumbnail-style-sketches of global events from week to week, I haven't been overly impressed with its "leaders" (editorials).

I thought well of a recent one, however, as it rather insightfully touched on something that I've been mulling over for quite some time. A current vogue criticism of Bush and Co. concerns the "hypocrisy" of fixing democratization as a pressing desideratum  (especially in the Middle East), while continuing to make common-cause with non-democratic regimes. My own view is that it is literally impossible to operate in the de facto anarchic milieu of the international scene without sullying one's ideals, to some extent - for the simple reason that the route to the ideal world must traverse the actual one. (I'm not sure, especially in light of the fiasco with Iraq and "oil-for-food," if some critics are really serious when they advert to sanctions as a "solution" for refractory regimes, whether nominal allies or otherwise. I wonder, at the least, whether they're morally serious). In other words, Realpolitik is here to stay - though whether there can be, and whether there currently is gestating, a style of Realpolitik which might entail its own supersession long-term is a different, and fascinating, question (in fact, THE question, I'd say). Alas, many critics seem more content to make partisan noise and score points, rather than think through the logic of their vituperations.

The economist leader for the February 26 issue begins thus,

"If anyone still doubted that hypocrisy, or at least inconsistency, is endemic in international relations, this week surely proved the point. As George Bush toured Europe emphasising, in speech after speech, that the central principle of his foreign policy is the effort to spread liberty and democracy, Europeans queued up to mutter about how many American allies are unfree and undemocratic, and how contradictory it is to use guns and tanks as prime tools in that cause. Far better, they said, to be a 'moral power' like the European Union, spreading freedom through softer and subtler means of influence and engagement - means like, as Mr. Bush heard to his horror, lifting the EU's embargo on arms sales to China, in return for precisely nothing from that communist regime on human rights, or democracy, or on its sabre-rattling over Taiwan. Oh, except more trade, including more arms sales."

Later in the piece, the editorialist deftly illustrates how a welter (mark the term well) of interests conspires to make for shifting allegiances and oscillating mutual usefulness between nations, in the tension between shorter and longer-term goals:

"Achieving a consistent foreign policy towards China is famously difficult. This week, America was simultaneously grateful for Chinese help in persuading North Korea to return (well, perhaps return) to six-party talks about its nuclear programme, and angry (especially in Congress) at the Europeans for wanting to sell China more arms. Japan is angry too ... but simultaneously glad that China is now its biggest trading partner and quiet about the question of human rights. China too is inconsistent: it purports to be hugely insulted by the arms embargo, yet also considers its relationship with America to be passing through one of its better phases." [Ed. We can pass over whether the last point is an inconsistency].

My own hunch is that anyone condemning current "hypocrisy," and proposing an alternative course, is not actually proposing a course free of hypocrisy - but rather is recommending an approach animated by a different hypocrisy. Even isolationism (a policy to which I must admit I am attracted), while having a more obvious consistency, can run afoul of a nation's ideals and values; there are sins of omission as well as commission. In the past, I've likened the best nations (in which group I certainly include the U.S., despite its many faults) to "tragic" heroes - and by "tragic," I mean a condition/state of affairs in which it is impossible to act without doing harm, and thereby incurring a kind of "guilt." That some think this can be wiped away with a few simple reorientations of policy here or there is beyond comedic - its farcical.

The most dangerous aspect of "marriages of convenience" with unsavory regimes is inertia - a kind of moral corrosion occurs, such that what were once distasteful expedients become insitutionalized relationships, with an imagination atrophied as to preferable alternatives (cp. the American "Twin Pillars" policy in the Gulf, which made a certain sense in the context of preventing the sovietization of the region). The most promising approach that I can envision to prevent this is for policymakers to structure such working relationships explicitly along shorter-term lines, with, in effect, "sunset" provisions. If the alliances are regularly reevaluated, as per a schedule, then there is less risk of becoming inured to the tyranny du jour.