America’s Role in the World
by: Dwayne Hastings - Nov 1, 2005 - comment
Calls for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq may be more than a reaction to loss of American life there. A growing number of American pundits believe American foreign policy should stipulate the nation only engage internationally through multilateral organizations.
Faith & Family Values executive editor Richard Land disagrees. He believes America’s best export is the “universal ideal of freedom” and sometimes America must act alone if it is the “only and necessary option.”
Post-Cold War Debate
Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, squared off with James Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice, in a discussion of unilateral action versus multilateral action in the post-Cold War era.
In the discussion centering on the role of America in the world community, held at Wheaton College, Skillen called for a renewed emphasis on building “multilateral international cooperation.” He said this is “essential to our own security” and would help foster “just governance” in countries around the globe.
Land countered that the maximum propagation of freedom and self-government is the best way to protect America’s long-term security and the long-term interests of a peaceful world.
“Freely elected governments accountable to their people do not attack and seek to subjugate freely elected governments accountable to their own people,” he said. He noted that history shows that since the founding of the American republic there had been only one instance of a government freely elected by its people and accountable to its people that attacked another government that had a government that was freely elected by its own people and accountable to its own people.
“The single instance was when the Confederacy, which was a government elected by white males, attacked Fort Sumter, which represented another government elected by white males,” Land explained. “If we want to maximize peace in the world, we need to maximize freedom and democratic self-governance in the world. And I believe America must lead the way in doing that.”
The United States ought to be “working to establish the best, most just, international organizations for the benefit of all,” said Skillen, author of With or Against the World? America’s Role Among the Nations. He said America’s involvement with Iraq caused “increasing anti-Americanism” because the “U.S. has conducted itself in a way that can legitimately be referred to as rogue” with actions inconsistent with the purpose and desire of multinational international bodies.
America engaging in unilateral action is not the “preferred option” or the “best option,” Land said, but there are times when it is the necessary and only option. “We must fulfill what I believe is our responsibility as a nation,” he explained. “It’s not about American hegemony. It’s about freedom. I for one am not willing to give France and Germany a veto power over when America believes it is in the best interest of freedom to act.”
Land said he was not opposed to America engaging in multilateral action, noting that “most of the international instruments that have been created to try to bring about peace and justice in the world over the last sixty years had their impetus in American foreign policy. It’s not just an accident of history that the United Nations is located in New York City,” he continued.
Yet Land quickly added that he reserved America’s right to act unilaterally when no other nation will act. “I believe in American exceptionalism,” he said, explaining that was not a “doctrine of pride. It is not a doctrine of privilege. It is not an attempt to maximize our sovereignty. It is not nationalism. It is a belief that America has blessed this nation in incredible ways,” Land said.
He went on to explain that he does not believe America is God’s chosen nation. “I don’t believe America is the new Israel. I don’t believe America is perfect, but I do believe that God has blessed our nation in providential ways,” Land continued, saying the Bible tells us that to whom much is given, much is required. “America has a special purpose in the world, and that purpose is to be the defender of freedom and the propagator of freedom,” Land said. He noted his perspective does not flow from a desire to impose American ideals on the world, but to promote universal ideals. “Freedom is a universal ideal,” he stressed.
A Wonderful Myth?
“Our nation has stood ready, continues to stand ready, to work with all nations of good will in defense of freedom,” Land continued. “When others are unwilling to act and we believe that freedom and human rights are at stake, we retain the right to act.”
Skillen said it was a “wonderful myth” that the U.S. has any kind of mandate to be the world’s “propagator of freedom.” America is “utterly incapable of doing it,” he added.
“The United States has not been chosen by the peoples of the world to be their government,” Skillen responded. “The United States has no claim, and I would say no authority, from God or anybody else to be the one that decides on its own how the world should be governed.” Skillen went on to say that his primary concern was “just governance.”
Current U.S. policy has “weakened our ability to help healthy multilateralism,” he continued, saying the “mutual confidence and trust” has been broken between the U.S. and other countries as the U.S. seeks to “preserve a maximum sovereignty that gives us maximum room for unilateral action.”
“Military action is less and less useful in our shrinking world,” Skillen said. “It is less and less useful as an instrument of international justice and [of] achieving a country’s will and purpose,” he said.
“Just governance” is what is needed in Rwanda and Sudan and North Korea right now, Skillen said. “Is the U.S. prepared to provide just governance?” he asked, saying he did not believe the U.S. was, even though America has the responsibility to do so.
Land said it is one of the “peculiarities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century” that the greatest threat to human rights does not stem from confrontations between countries but instead from governments acting against their own people.
When the U.S. government determines it will act only multilaterally, the result is the massive bloodshed and destruction the world has witnessed in places such as Rwanda, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, Land said.
If no other country or international body responds in situations where there are “massive deprivations of human rights,” shouldn’t the U.S. act? Land asked. The human cost is high when America has the resolve and just cause to intervene but declines to act, he added.
Former President Bill Clinton now wishes the U.S. had taken the initiative and stemmed the slaughter in Rwanda, Land continued. “It would have taken two or three battalions of Marines to stop the slaughter of close to a million Rwandans,” Land continued. “We didn’t act because we couldn’t get the worldwide community to act with us, and nearly a million people died.”
Who Has God’s Blessings?
Skillen said people are being oppressed all over the world. “Why isn’t the U.S. there?” he asked Land. “I don’t think there’s any right whatsoever the United States has to do that. Internationally, it’s increasingly going to require multilateral agreement to deal with these things. If we’re not working to see that that’s done, then we’re going to be implicated in being powerless before the very things that include the oppression and the absence of just governance,” Skillen continued.
“God holds governments accountable to do justice,” Skillen said. He called Land’s position “freedom idealism,” a concept he said was not “biblically grounded,” wondering aloud if “God has blessed no other nation with a call to promote freedom.”
“I don’t think God has blessed any other nation to the extent he has blessed this nation,” Land responded. “In my opinion, it is impossible to understand American history without understanding the providential intervention of God to preserve this nation and to make it a haven for people who have come from all over the world.
“We are a disparate nation, a pluralistic nation made up of people of many different ethnic groups and many different religious backgrounds held together by an ideal. And that ideal is freedom,” Land went on, noting the Bible is clear about our obligation and responsibility to reach out to those who are suffering and to liberate the oppressed.
Land said that throughout history some have questioned what Bush referred to in his second inaugural address as the “global appeal of liberty. In 1946, the mandarins of American foreign policy were saying the Germans didn’t want freedom,” Land said. At the time some said Germany was a “militaristic society” that would never have a successful democratic government. They believed Japan was a “medieval and feudal society” that would never accept a democratic government.
“It’s our responsibility as Americans to help those who want their freedom,” Land said. “This is a doctrine not of pride and not of privilege. It is a doctrine of obligation and responsibility. I believe that we as Americans are at our best when we are helping others who want their freedom to have their freedom.”
Land explained the U.S. cannot intervene in every situation, citing North Korea as an example. A multi-lateral approach is the best for such a situation, while a military option would be counterproductive, he added.
“We have an obligation and a responsibility to use our influence to maximize freedom when we can and to work in concert with others when we can. But if others won’t act and people are dying and we have the ability to stop it without causing the deaths of massive numbers of other people, I think we become morally culpable for not doing so,” Land said.
The United States doesn’t have independent authority to decide what governments stand and what governments fall, Skillen replied.
“Our influence in the world is not limitless, but it is considerable,” Land said. “And with considerable influence comes considerable responsibility. I would argue that we have more responsibility for seeking to be the friend of freedom in the world and the defender of freedom in the world and the servant of freedom in the world than countries that do not have the influence that we have.”
Dwayne Hastings is Vice President for Print & Editorial at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
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