First, Win the Cold War

Senator Hatfield’s essay makes two significant contributions to the current debate over the future of U.S. foreign policy.

First, Hatfield rightly reminds us that it is morally wrong and strategically unwise for America to retreat from an active role in shaping world politics and economics. Now that a curious coalition of Old Right and New Left activists is aggressively pressing the new isolationism (now styled the “new nationalism”) onto the national agenda, the case for prudent internationalism will have to be made just as vigorously. As will become clear below, my internationalist agenda differs significantly from Senator Hatfield’s. But as the 1990s replicate, in this respect, the 1930s, I am glad that the senator is willing to challenge today’s Charles Lindberghs and Burton K. Wheelers.

Second, I welcome Hatfield’s call for a new moral/intellectual model for our foreign policy, ahead of the barricades now labeled “realism” and “idealism.” The 1970s taught us that idealism bereft of a sense of the hard realities of international public life can make bad situations much worse. The late 1980s were a reminder that undiluted realism can blind us to the human energies, often religiously derived, which can sometimes transform politics beyond our most optimistic imaginings. The task for the 1990s—to which the wisdom of classic Christian statecraft can make an important contribution—is to define a new model that incorporates idealism without illusions, and realism without cynicism.

Does “global reconciliation” define that new model? For reasons of theological integrity and political prudence, I’m inclined to think that our goal should be a bit more modest. As I understand ecumenical Christian orthodoxy, “global reconciliation” is a mark of the kingdom come in its fullness at the return of the risen and glorified Christ, through whom the Father reconciles all things to himself (Col. 1:20). This biblical vision of a reconciled humanity stands before us as an eschatological horizon, against which we can discern the brokenness of the present and toward which we should order our worldly actions. But the final accomplishment of this “global reconciliation” is, Saint Paul teaches, God’s work, not ours: a teaching that both desacralizes politics and gives the political vocation a distinctive human dignity.

The political task should be more narrowly defined. The peace of shalom, the peace of the kingdom in which swords are beaten into plowshares as the nations stream to the mountaintop of the Lord (Isa. 2:2–4), is not a peace that can be built by human hands. Conflict is a constant of the human condition, the political meaning of the doctrine of original sin. But human beings can, under grace and using the moral and intellectual skills given them by their Creator, build the peace that Saint Augustine called “the tranquillity of order”—the peace of rightly ordered political community, the peace in which law and politics replace mass violence (or its threat) as the way to settle the ancient argument, “Who rules?”

In east central Europe and Latin America, the world has made remarkable strides toward that “political” peace over the past year. Those brave democrats who challenged the false god of Leninist totalitarianism have given a fresh, modern meaning to Saint Augustine’s understanding of the peace that is possible in this world. Their accomplishment is both a vindication of the policy of containment and a challenge to those whose realism impeded their vision of the kind of change that was, in fact, possible in the communist world. That the revolution of 1989 was a largely nonviolent one should also give pause to those Christians who have glorified revolutionary violence over the past 20 years. The real models of morally serious resistance to tyranny are Lech Walesa, Tadeuz Mazowiecki, Frantizek Cardinal Tomasek, and Vaclav Havel—not Daniel Ortega, Robert Mugabe, and Fidel Castro.

Unwarranted Optimism

On a less happy note I am, I must confess, rather less persuaded than Senator Hatfield that the reform process in the Soviet Union has gone anywhere near as far as it must if the USSR is going to be transformed permanently into a “normal” state—which is the essential precondition to President Bush’s goal of “integrating” the Soviet Union “into the community of nations,” or to Senator Hatfield’s vision of a “prudent partnership” between the U.S. and the USSR. The end game of the internal Soviet empire remains to be played out—in the Baltic states, in Moldavia and Georgia, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and, above all, in Ukraine—and on the presently available evidence, one would have to conclude that President Gorbachev’s concept of “self-determination” does not qualify him as a nascent Jefferson or Madison.

In other words, I don’t think the Cold War is over—and even were it over vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, one would still have to face the fact of a billion Chinese still living under Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. Inside-the-Beltway fantasies notwithstanding, we are nowhere near the end of history, and there is a lot of work to be done in building a world that is peaceful, secure, prosperous, and free.

The first step toward securing the peace-that-is-possible-in-this-world, the peace of political community within and among nations, is thus to bring the Cold War to a successful conclusion. That will require continued U.S. pressure for democratization and economic liberalization in the Soviet empire, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, and the other remaining outposts of the Leninist delusion. The best single index of reform in the communist world remains, I am convinced, the situation of religious believers. While there have been important improvements on the religious liberty front in the USSR in recent years, they have yet to be codified in law. Until they are, they are easily reversible. Continued U.S. support for a radical legal reform in the Soviet Union aimed at protecting basic human rights should be a priority of our foreign policy, as should support for the democratic revolution throughout the world.

Building a genuine peace in the world involves more than successfully concluding the Cold War, of course. Senator Hatfield rightly flags the problem of terrorism as an issue of great concern, but I would go somewhat further and ask us to think through an intensified form of that curse: the dreadful, and all-too-likely, combination of crazy states + ballistic missiles + gas (or conceivably nuclear) warheads. When Iraq’s Saddam Hussein threatens to destroy “half of Israel” with such weapons, we have passed beyond “terrorism” as we have known it, and more energetic responses are required of us. Strategic defense systems could well provide one of those responses. Christians will also have to think much more seriously in the 1990s about preemptive, discriminate military action as a means of peace-keeping.

As for the continuing crisis of the world’s underclass, one hopes that we have learned some things by now. We certainly should have learned that tyranny tends to breed poverty, instability, corruption, and human misery. We certainly should have learned that market-oriented approaches to economic development work far better than state-centered or socialist approaches. This suggests that U.S. development assistance should be geared, not toward massive, capital-intensive infrastructure projects, but toward the economic empowerment of ordinary people. Unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of the peoples of Latin America, Asia, and Africa is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty in those regions, whose economies suffer, not from the alleged rapacities of Western multinationals, but from hidebound governmental regulation that stifles human creativity and drives vast numbers of people into the black market (now gently called the “informal sector” by some analysts).

Tyrants On The Run

For those who want to see politics (including international politics) conducted in ways that befit human beings made in the image and likeness of God, the past year has been extraordinarily heartening. The world’s tyrants are on the defensive; those who want to build societies accountable to moral norms whose deepest roots lie in biblical religion are on the march. But there are no guarantees of happy endings this side of the kingdom. We could botch the opportunity now before us—the opportunity to build a world order in which the peace of political community is the norm rather than the exception.

We will not seize this great opportunity if America retreats into isolationism.

We will not seize the opportunity if we mislearn the lessons of the postwar period and conclude, as some Christian anti-anti-Communists would have it, that the Cold War was really just a big misunderstanding after all.

We will not seize the opportunity if we conduct a foreign policy that weakens or abandons America’s commitment to basic human rights and the democratic revolution.

Given a fair chance, people the world over choose freedom—the freedom of democratic politics, and the freedom of market economies. The United States government’s role is to support that quest for peace through freedom by means of a prudent diplomacy, a wise national security strategy, and a people-oriented approach to economic development.

American Christians have a parallel, but distinctive, responsibility: to help the world (and our own nation, for that matter) understand the truth of Lord Acton’s argument, that freedom is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.