The United States still prioritizes interests over values.
Often we must value concrete responsibility over abstract principles.
“… The United States still prioritizes interests over values. … Although the president promised morality-driven change to U.S.-Middle East policy, once he was in office, he reverted to a “normal” American approach to the region—one that places a premium on securing American interests with the help of mostly unsavory partners.” That’s from Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in America Should Drop Its “Red Lines” and Be Honest About Strategic Interests.
I’m certain he knows a great deal more than I do about foreign affairs and the Middle East. I find his perspective helpful in understanding America's dilemma. However, it did raise in my mind. The question — “what is a Christian to make all this?”
Many Christians will say that the nation must always live up to its values. Others will be more situational and ask about how love and justice are best served in the specific situation.
Anthony Lang offers a broad view, “Understanding the role that religion plays in foreign policy is different from understanding the role of moral principles in foreign policy. Religions provide more than moral norms for behavior. They add their own particular understandings of the human person. They have their own definitions of the relationship of the person to the political community. And there may be an eschatological dimension to their sense of the purpose of human life. In addition, religions are likely to rely on a set of sacred texts and a community of believers, as well as on a diversity of ways of interpreting the sacred texts. Given these characteristics, religions can have diverse relationships to the political community, either supporting national and state policies, or playing a more prophetic and critical role.” (The Catholic Church and American Foreign Policy)
Hold in mind his notion that religion provides much more than just moral principles in addressing the issues in front of us.
I found myself thinking about the two recent presidents who have been influenced by Christian thinking. Joe Biden by Catholic social teaching and Barack Obama by Reinhold Niebuhr.
I’m drawing on Lang’s work on catholic social teaching. Can you see some of President Bidden’s approach in this?
Economic: laborers deserved rights but that this did not entail the need to abolish private property … support a just distribution of wealth.
Just war: was undertaken for a just cause (to reverse an illegal intervention); it was undertaken with a right intention (not for personal or solely national interests); it was a proportional response; it was the last resort, after diplomatic negotiation; and it involved a reasonable hope of success.
Foreign policy: move along two intellectual tracks: hard-line anti-communism and human rights advocacy … some sought to combine the two.
When I think of President Obama I see a stance, an attitude, that echo’s what I see in Niebuhr. For example, here are three quotes from Niebuhr that, for me, capture something of the President’s stance.
“No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by that final form of love, which is forgiveness.”
“There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.”
“We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.”
As I read Cook, "the United States still prioritizes interests over values” I thought about how that does capture a popular, conventional take on the issue. It felt familiar. Possibly from a college course on foreign affairs. I found myself changing the wording and saying to myself “at times we must value concrete responsibility over abstract principles.”
From Abstract principle and concrete responsibility: A God who demands bold action and promises forgiveness “In Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, ‘The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live. It is only from this question, with its responsibility toward history, that fruitful solutions can come, even if for the time being they are very humiliating. In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility. The rising generation will always instinctively discern which of these we make a basis for our actions, for it is their own future that is at stake.’ Having returned from the safety of teaching at a seminary in the United States to the world of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer ended up struggling with a moral dilemma. He’s decision to participate in the plot to kill Hitler was a decision for concrete responsibility over abstract principle. His own ethical purity sacrificed for what he saw as the future of his nation.” Which returns me to Niebuhr’s thought, “we must be saved by that final form of love, which is forgiveness.”
We are to obey our conscience. And we are to work at informing our conscience. What’s your take on all this?
This abides,
Brother Robert