As Obama and Cameron toasted the “special relationship” of their two states, I wondered if it’s more special than the one with Israel or any other states. Woodrow Wilson in 1914 laid out a radically different vision: neutrality of the U.S. government and of Americans as citizens:
“The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned.”
“I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another. “
Wilson left isolation and neutrality behind, however. His heart was not in these. He took sides in World War I according to another vision that he articulated in 1916. That vision still guides U.S. foreign policy, although greatly corrupted by other interests and by the embrace of empire.
If we examine his 1916 vision, we need to understand why, despite its appeal to moral behavior, it has gone wrong. And we need to replace it by a better vision.
In 1916, he stated:
“We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Like other nations, we have ourselves no doubt once and again offended against that principle when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as our franker historians have been honorable enough to admit; but it has become more and more our rule of life and action. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations.
“So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America when I say that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation.
“There is nothing that the United States wants for itself that any other nation has. We are willing, on the contrary, to limit ourselves along with them to a prescribed course of duty and respect for the rights of others which will check any selfish passion of our own, as it will check any aggressive impulse of theirs.”
Consider the problems with this international political philosophy. First and foremost, it embraces a world of sovereign and territorial states, but in the very same breath, it argues that every people has a right to choose their government. These two aims are, in practice, contradictory. Besides, who is to be the judge of them? Who is to enforce them? How is self-interest to be kept out of the judgments and enforcements?
Why is a “people” the locus of a right to choose? Why is it not a person? How does a people choose as opposed to each person choosing? How does a state become sovereign? And what gives it any right to be sovereign?
Does the world possess a right to be free from any aggression anywhere and at any time? Which state is to be the judge of when a disturbance of peace is an aggression and when it is not? Or which states? Who is to be the world’s police? What criteria shall they use? What happens when self-interest enters in? What happens when they make mistakes in their judgments? What happens when doubts prevail over who is right and who is wrong? Is there to be world government? What happens when one nation predominates over others technologically or militarily?
Isn’t Wilson proposing world government? Isn’t that exactly what he says when he says that the U.S. will associate with any association of nations to secure the peace? Is the uniting of states to police the world a recipe for peace or a recipe for oppression? What happens to the voices of individual persons in this vision of a world divided into states but at the same time united into one? Who or what sets limits to the power of such a combination? What endows the people who control it with special powers of objectivity and judgment?
Will abstract associations and states and combinations run the world, or will it not always be individual persons and groups who control the machinery? Who will control the controllers when the latter have all the guns? Who will limit them when they take sterner and sterner, oppressive and more oppressive measures to keep the peace? Who will judge the judges?
Who will decide when “a people” can secede? Who will decide when a new state is legitimate and when it is not? What men can possibly be neutral in any of these decisions?
Must we not reckon with the self-interest of men everywhere? Must we not reckon with their inherent limitations and failings? Must we not reckon with the inabilities of men? Do political combinations limit these failings or amplify them? Didn’t the events after World War I already demonstrate that the victors did not know how to make a peace and keep it?
And if the UN has also failed to mitigate disturbances of peace, does the U.S. think that it can do so single-handedly? Isn’t that simply an alternative vision of world government?
What is a better road to peace among the peoples of the world? Peace begins in the hearts of each of us. Peace starts with the person. It grows from the person.
Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” contains an alternative vision. It ends with this:
“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.”
7:06 am on March 15, 2012
