Promises, Promises

What we can (and cannot) expect in a treaty.

Sometimes world events make us wonder if there is any hope of injecting Christian values into the political process. Such incidents raise tough questions about loyalty, honesty, and relationships with other nations. In recent months, for example, we have learned how the U.S.:

• made proposals at the Reykjavik summit that took our NATO allies in Europe by surprise and could compromise their defense;
• deliberately falsified information about Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi in order to gain support for our anti-Libyan policies;
• went behind the backs of our allies with a weapons-for-hostages deal with Iran, a move that could dangerously shift the balance of power in the Middle East.

Such events lead Christians to believe their values will never be an essential ingredient in foreign policy. That is unfortunate, because biblical standards deserve their rightful place in the international arena. But in the modern context, we will better understand the role of our faith in international politics if we recognize one simple distinction: the difference between a contract and a covenant.

Confusion

Both contracts and covenants can be good, of course. One is a human accommodation to the bottomless depravity of man, the other a human approximation of the unfathomable goodness of God. One operates with the vocabulary of law, using words such as verifiability, control, self-interest, division, defense, and deterrence. The other operates with the vocabulary of love, using words such as trust, respect, sacrifice, unity, vulnerability, and encouragement. Contracts are made between men with God as witness. Covenants are made between men and God, who is a participant.

Consider the difference between marriage vows and a marriage contract. Traditionally we choose to speak vows of undying devotion to our loved one, pledging fidelity, faithfulness, and permanence no matter what the circumstances. We use the language of love and consider our marriages as transcending the law, something too sacred to be exhausted by a marriage license and a judge. Some, though, prefer a marriage contract, a written agreement stipulating property rights and conditions under which new arrangements may be necessary. The unexpected and disastrous are seen not as trials to be worked through, but semi-predictable events that can be planned for. Worse, contracts in marriages may become a convenient way to end the relationship.

Yet, in the case of marriage, we need both covenant and contract. Though covenants designate a relationship to God, they do not—on their own—serve the practical and legal interests of earthly society. So we sign a marriage license and register with the state. The license alone, however, is insufficient. It only guarantees a civil, sterile relationship.

We are made in the image of God, and we long for relationship with both God and man. Thus, the more realistic option is to operate in both realms at once, but with eyes wide open about which is which.

Contracts

How does this apply to goals for foreign policy? Take, for example, our relationship with our allies. On the contractual level, we have a responsibility that is part self-interest and part moral responsibility. We are concerned with what is efficient for us and our allies. But we also want to do what is right, for even on the contractual level, there is a morality that plays an important part in our interaction.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came into being because Western Europeans recognized the need to band together after World War II and take away whatever temptation existed in the minds of Soviet leadership simply to overrun the impossible-to-defend continent. For the United States, Europe is a convenient buffer separating the two superpowers, and a treaty assures that. The treaty also assures those nations of our support should they face an attack. Thus, our interest in mutual military security headed the list of concerns in the drafting of the NATO contract.

But the NATO pact creators felt agreement that was based solely on military interests lacked the glue that would stand the tests of time. So part of the basis of the treaty was “the common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” The theory is this: The more the member countries have in common in terms of economic, moral, and cultural values, the easier it will be to work together on the primary aim of the alliance, military security.

The theory seems to have some validity. Of the four major military treaties entered into by the United States since World War II, NATO and RIO (with countries of Central and South America) have endured. Much of the difficulty we face in negotiating with countries outside the orbit of these treaties, such as the Soviet Union, comes from the lack of common moral and cultural ground on which to stand. There are too many things on which we do not agree, indeed do not even understand about one another, making even the simplest of military and economic agreements tortuous to consummate. Still, we work at treaties, buying the time needed to know one another better. (Agreements with those who do not hold to law are fruitless, thus we maintain a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.)

Though two treaties have held, two have not: SEATO and ANZUS. Such failures only confirm our view of treaties as mundane entities, created to solve temporary problems, doomed to a short life by the changing, shifting nature of political realities. Yet the failure of a treaty should not discourage us from trying to create better ones and improve those in effect. (When compared with the alternatives of war and anarchy, they are good indeed.)

Covenants

Because contracts contain this moral dimension, there is always the temptation for Christians to confuse them with covenants. Usually disaster results, as we interchange Christian ideals and judgments (such as those embodied in the Sermon on the Mount) for realistic political goals. This is characterized by the mixing of covenant language with the language of contracts. Several years ago, President Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” a statement by a politician using spiritual language. That same President once alluded to Armageddon in assessing the potential for nuclear war. President Reagan has a right to his spiritual evaluation of the USSR and the possibility of going to war against that nation. But to confuse these issues with his political responsibilities is inappropriate.

A covenant cannot be codified and put on a political agenda. It serves man’s eternal goals, not his temporal ones. The spiritual does not serve the human, but complements it. It recognizes the shared value of not just a political peace, but a transcendent peace born of God. It represents a peace taught by Jesus Christ, a peace that goes beyond the time and space of our negotiating tables. Christian politicians do not use this peace as a bargaining chip. As politicians, they rarely talk about it. At most it salts and peppers our discussions, not determining the words as much as the attitudes brought to the endeavor.

We long desperately for this peace to make a difference in our world. Face-to-face meetings of our leaders, like the ones at Geneva and Reykjavik, raise those longings, make them seem almost possible, be cause it is only in the fleeting moments of those encounters that the contractual and the covenantal have any chance to influence one another while two human beings, both made in the image of God, have the possibility of living in both realms, one seasoning the other. At other times, the negotiations tend toward the legal, the prosaic, the mundane, the human.

At the covenantal level we have a right to hope and pray for peace everlasting—but we dare not let it replace the need to practice the politics of balance of power, détente, and deterrence.

The Church’s Responsibility

The relationship of the U.S. with its allies is special, but not transcendent. The church needs to recognize our treaties and agreements for what they are—arrangements of limited scope in specialized spheres. They will not last forever. They will last only as long as they serve the military, economic, and cultural goals we have set for them. As Christian citizens, we need to support them. We need to do what we can through our vote and other avenues of influence to make the arrangements as effective as possible.

But we must always recognize that contracts are imperfect—light years away from the ideal of the brotherhood of man. They are guarantees, grudgingly given, laboriously produced, that provide a peaceful venue where the real issues of life—spiritual issues—can be explored.

Political philosopher Hans Morgenthau recalled that Abraham Lincoln was once asked how he could make tough political decisions in a fallen world. Lincoln’s reply: “I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

And so in the light of Reykjavik, Libya, and Iran, it might be easy for Christians to minimize the value of treaties. While that is a natural expression of our frustration—frustration that God-honoring covenants between nations just will not work—we must entrust our leaders with the task of returning to the bargaining table. Imperfect though they are, we desperately need contracts prescribing the conditions for peace.

But the state, or the individual acting on behalf of the state, must never forget the universal law of justice, and must always be looking, if even only out of the corner of his eye, for the chance to move closer, inch by inch, to fulfilling our covenant with God here on earth.

By Terry C. Muck.

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