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The
Interventionist-Internationalist Complex
In
a previous
essay, I expressed admiration for the non-interventionist foreign
policy set forth by George Washington in what we call the Farewell
Address (1796). I stated that the American way of life is best expressed
by the phrase, "live and let live." George Washington's foreign
policy of peaceful neutrality – basically, what Switzerland's
policy has been for five centuries – is an application of "live
and let live."
This
view of the American way has always had two major rivals. The first
rival view has shaped American foreign policy for almost two centuries,
and American economic policy since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
This view can also be stated in four words: "Defend the little guy."
Hans Kraepelin coined a word for this outlook over 30 years ago:
infracaninophilia – love of the underdog.
The
second rival view can also be expressed in four words: "Do it our
way." We used this phrase with the tribes that originally occupied
North America above the Rio Grande, and also on Spanish-speaking
people who came under our jurisdiction as a result of the war for
Texas, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War. In the case
of the colonies that we gained during the Spanish-American war –
Puerto Rico and the Philippines – we justified the theft in
terms of "defending the little guy," and then we ran things our
way, but officially on behalf of the little guys. We became the
overdog. As for the American tribes, we placed them on reservations,
and, after the Civil War ended, began the initial American experiment
in welfarism, which is still going on. When you think "welfare State,"
think "Bureau of Indian Affairs." When you think "socialized medicine,"
think "Indian Health Service."
"Defend
the little guy" was the ethical impulse, and when it was combined
with the secularized postmillennial vision of America's "manifest
destiny," it produced modern interventionist foreign policy. It
was the ethical-racial vision of "the English-speaking man's burden"
that led to the creation of the Council of Foreign Relations in
1921. The CFR was an extension of the Rhodes-Milner group, represented
by the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA). (On this
point, see The
Anglo-American Establishment, written by Carroll Quigley,
who taught Bill Clinton history at Georgetown University. Even better
is Part I of Otto Scott's 1985 book on South Africa, The
Other End of the Lifeboat.)
I
have described the racial aspect of this vision in a chapter on
William
Jennings Bryan, who opposed it. The Aryan triumphalism of the
Progressives, 1910-1939, was an extension of Charles Darwin's Origin
of Species by way of the work of his cousin, Francis Galton.
Anyone who has studied the history of the eugenics movement in the
United States is familiar with this dark side of the Progressive
movement. Eugenics was bankrolled by the Eastern Establishment,
especially John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
The
use of foreign policy as a way to uplift other nations, but always
at a profit for large corporate interests, was basic to British-American
foreign policy in the twentieth century. Consider the career of
Raymond Fosdick (1883-1972). He was the brother of Harry Emerson
Fosdick, who was Rockefeller's pastor and for whom Rockefeller built
the Riverside Church in the mid-1920's. Raymond Fosdick had gone
on Rockefeller's payroll in 1913. He had been sent to the Paris
Peace Conference in 1919 as part of "Col." Edward Mandell House's
group, "the Inquiry," which ran the American team at Paris. At the
League of Nations, Fosdick, as Under Secretary General, worked daily
with 31-year-old Jean Monnet, France's Under Secretary General.
Fosdick wrote to his wife that he, Monnet, and the British Under
Secretary General were working to lay the foundations of "the framework
of international government. . . ." (Letter of July 31, 1919; in
Fosdick, ed., Letters on the League of Nations [Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966], p. 18.)
This
was no idle boast. Over the next six decades, Monnet became the
driving force behind the creation of the European Common Market
and the New European order. He died in 1979. Meanwhile, Fosdick
returned to the United States, became Rockefeller's attorney in
1920, and ran the Rockefeller Foundation's empire for the next three
decades. He wrote Rockefeller's authorized biography, published
in 1956. He was a founding member of the CFR in 1921, along with
many other members of the Inquiry.
To
justify the intervention of the United States into two world wars,
the Progressives and their ideological heirs appealed to the deep-seated
desire of Americans to defend the little guy from the German bully.
This strategy failed to get us into the wars in 1915-17 and 1939-41.
It took attacks on American ships, plus the needless decision by
Hitler to declare war on us on December 11, 1941. Wilson's fake
neutrality, which in fact backed Great Britain, got us into World
War I. (Charles C. Tansill, America
Goes to War; Harry Elmer Barnes, The
Genesis of the World War.) Roosevelt's economic embargo
on Japan and his constant pressure on Japan to get out of China
got us into World War II. (Tansill, Back
Door to War; Barnes [ed.], Perpetual
War for Perpetual Peace; Charles A. Beard, President
Roosevelt and the Coming of the War.)
At
any time, there are two dozen wars going on in the world. The media
rarely mention any of them. Occasionally, one of them gets our attention,
and off we go. Somalia in 1993 is an example. Why were American
troops sent to Somalia? No one knew. When a few of them got killed
and dragged through the streets, and this was seen on national TV,
Clinton pulled the troops out, and nothing more was said. The public
immediately forgot. Go to the CIA
Yearbook. There is no mention of our ever having deployed troops
in Somalia. The bullies in Somalia are presumably still beating
up on the little guys. Life goes on as before. How many Americans
are prepared to discuss Rwanda-Burundi in terms of the history of
the Hutus and Tutsis? Americans do not care. Why should we? It is
not our fight. There are too many fights for us to care about all
of them.
There
is a division of labor in life. There is also scarcity. America
cannot afford to fight every fight, rescue every little guy. Our
government ignores most fights. But Americans remain playthings
of the Presidency as far as the "war of the week" is concerned.
To
conserve scarce resources and focus our attention, American Presidential
administrations should follow George Washington's Farewell Address.
They should imitate Switzerland. But this limited role for America
does not please the interventionists-internationalists. Nor does
it please most conservatives, who serve as faithful trustees for
the former group. Their task is to keep the common man's sense of
justice focused on carefully screened and selected foreign shores.
A
Conservative Critic
In
a letter to me from a conservative critic, we read the familiar
justification: "Defend the little guy." I reprint his e-mail here
because it represents the ethical impulse behind the foreign-policy
intervention that gets us into endless wars. It is what the common
American adopts when extending the power of the CFR and the other
New World Order acolytes.
I
have read with great disappointment your treatise on non-involvement.
"If
this nation had adhered to these words, we would be far richer,
far freer, and far less worried about alien fanatics who kill civilians
as a religious statement of faith."
So
says CNN.
I
spoke with a Pakistani man shortly after the WTC. He was born in
Pak[istan], raised in Hong Kong and now resides in Silicon Valley.
He was saying "Why does the world hate America so much, why would
they do this?" His answer was because America meddles in the affairs
of others.
My
response to him was that there is such a thing as irrational unthinking
hatred, born of ignorance, fired by unbounded jealousy of various
would-be "leaders". The Islam hatred for America is not thought
out. His own statement of "Why does the world hate America?" is
equally not thought-out. He is merely repeating what he has heard.
If he had thought this out for himself he would have looked at BOTH
sides of the issue. But for America, there would be far greater
suffering in the world.
I
said that were it not for this "meddling" there would be many millions
of dead Bangladeshis, Nicaraguans, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Eritieans,
Afghanis and others.
He
is well educated, enormous training and technical skill set but
like you also educated at the University of CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC.
These people are not great thinkers.
I
have read your works for many years. I find many illuminations in
them. But not this time.
Why
is dis-involvement so paramount? Because a news anchorman put that
notion in your head?!? Do you with impartiality raise your glass
to Mohandas Gandhi and also the man that puts a pistol in the mouth
of a 3 year old? What are the politics of a toddler? Why not take
sides? Doesn't your religion, doesn't your God believe in doing
right for rights-sake? Men, given the ability by God to make a choice
between right and wrong have decided that the burning of Jews, killing
of innocents is wrong. Dis-involvement? Then God must have a wrong-minded
notion in his head.
Haven't
you ever considered that perhaps, in many cases (and in this case
in particular - US support for Israel) that America is right? Americans
have the world cornered in self-flagellation.
There
is a difference between Washington's farewell address given by the
leader of one of the worlds WEAKEST and most isolated nations and
the farewell address the same man with the same intellect would
have made today.
Would
you tolerate a neighbor regularly beating his wife?
Would
you look aside as a woman is raped by an assailant? Is that what
you teach your children? Even if the assailant is a Christian soldier
and the woman is a Muslim as in the Balkans? The Europeans did look
aside. Is a Godly work only something done easily and economically?
The Europeans didn't want to get involved because it was difficult
and expensive.
Assume
there is no local police as there is no world police force. Would
you tolerate your neighbor beating his wife? Perhaps regularly and
badly. Would you tolerate him beating his children also. And then
you would go to God saying that "I have done God's work. I am a
Godly man"??
Do
you suppose Washington's farewell address would be more appropriately
directed at Saddam Hussein, Jiang Jemin, Bashar Al Assad, Khameni,
Rafsanjani and Mohammed Omar? Have you sent it to them?
Best
Regards,
My
critic equates the United States as a civil entity with me as a
caring human being. He also equates a nation-state that stands alone
in terms of its claim to national sovereignty with me as a non-sovereign
citizen in a commonwealth. The two concepts are not the same.
Oaths
and Sovereignty
The
United States makes a claim of sovereignty. It makes this claim
on its own authority. It does not ask permission. This nation did
not request its sovereignty from any higher sovereign civil order.
Thomas Jefferson did not write a declaration of interdependence.
Indeed, the most effective legal argument against the United Nations
is that the UN does not possess a legitimate claim of superior sovereignty.
I have not sworn an oath of allegiance to the United Nations or
to any other sovereign nation. I am under the authority of the United
States government because I am covenantally bound to it by an implicit
oath. I have not surrendered my citizenship.
As
an American citizen, I have the legal authority of citizen's arrest.
I have the legal right and the moral obligation to defend a neighbor
from unlawful coercion by a bully. This is my answer to the question:
"Would you tolerate a neighbor regularly beating his wife? Would
you look aside as a woman is raped by an assailant?" But my authority
inside the sovereign national jurisdiction of the United States
has nothing to do with a neighbor in Canada who may be being beaten
by a Canadian bully. I used to live within a few miles of the Canadian
border. It was a Dutch-Calvinist cross-border region, where theological
distinctions and old battles mattered far more than a mere national
border. There were cars heading north and south across the border
every Sunday. Had I known of an assault on some Canadian who attended
my church, I would have possessed no right to grab my rifle and
cross the border to offer help. I would have been breaking Canadian
gun control laws. I would have gone to jail faster and longer than
the bully.
From
time to time, America's claim of national sovereignty must be defended
on the battlefield. As a citizen, I have accepted a legal obligation
to defend my nation from attack. This is because I am covenanted
to my nation. But I am not covenanted to any other nation. Or am
I? A treaty has equal authority with the U.S. Constitution. Ever
since the NATO Treaty of 1949, the U.S. government has entered into
many mutual defense treaties. It has sent tens of thousands of conscripted
men to die in foreign lands, without a declaration of war.
The
logic of foreign policy interventionism says that sovereign nations
are not truly sovereign, that there is some implicit covenantal
oath that binds one nation's citizens to the citizens of other nations.
Citizens of one nation therefore have a legal obligation to shed
their blood and surrender their property on behalf of people living
in other nations, despite the fact that there has been no military
threat to their own nation.
The
idea that my national government owes anything to victims in another
nation ultimately rests on the idea of world government. It is the
idea that American citizens have had a mutual oath taken representatively
for them on behalf of a higher political entity with higher ethical
goals than mere national sovereignty. It is the idea that implicit
civil covenants extend to civil governments beyond one's own nation.
It
is not random that internationalists and foreign policy interventionists
have continually pushed the world's nations toward membership in
the League of Nations or the United Nations or other trans-national
sovereignties that will legislate for the citizens of every member
nation, and even nations not in the international covenant. (Serbia-Bosnia
comes to mind.) The surrender of national sovereignty to international
bureaucracies has been the goal of the interventionists who have
dominated American foreign policy since at least the 1890's. The
office of Secretary of State became a family legacy. John Foster
served under Benjamin Harrison. His grandson John Foster Dulles
served under Eisenhower. Dulles' brother ran the CIA. His sister
ran the Berlin office of the State Department. Their uncle had been
Secretary of State under Wilson, after Bryan quit in protest against
Wilson's false neutrality.
This
surrender of America's national sovereignty in the name of extending
American sovereignty began with the Monroe doctrine of 1823, which
made the United States heavily dependent on the British Navy to
enforce the doctrine's terms. America promised to intervene on behalf
of the Western Hemisphere in order to defend each nation against
incursions by European powers. This meant European continental nations.
The British, who wanted access to Latin American trade at the expense
of other European mercantile powers, backed us up. So, a decade
after the British burned Washington D.C. to the ground, they were
using our government as a cover for their foreign policy in the
Western Hemisphere. Serving as a cover for British foreign policy
was what got America into both world wars.
Conclusion
"Live
and let live" nationally means "mind our own business" internationally.
The more that we have become embroiled in other nations' conflicts,
the less we have been able to honor "live and let live" at home.
George Washington understood this relationship in 1796. Very few
Americans still do.
If
we really wanted homeland defense, we would get out of the foreign
interventionism business. The reason why we are going to get a Homeland
Defense cabinet-level agency is because our Presidents are unwilling
to get out of the foreign interventionism business.
Washington,
D.C. bears George Washington's name. It does not bear his philosophy
of foreign policy neutrality. You have to live in Switzerland to
get that.
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©
2001 LewRockwell.com
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