Toward a principled and pragmatic foreign policy
Often the debate over the 2003 American led Iraq war has come down to a supporter of the war saying "Hey, we got rid of a brutal dictator who tortured people and killed hundreds of thousands." The response from an opponent of the war is usually "We didn't go to war for human rights. We said there were WMD. There were none. And we can't go after every bad guy out there."
In order to sort this out, we need to start out with some first principles. First off, liberal democracies are morally superior to dictatorships. Let's just say that if a nation have a reasonably free press and allows its citizens to participate in the selection of its political leadership, that country fits the description. Second, human rights is central to America's foreign policy debate. If human rights didn't matter, the success or failure of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union wouldn't matter either, even if these regimes trampled over the human rights of their citizens. Third, there is good reason to believe that liberal democracies tend to not make war against other liberal democracies. So, while the advance of liberal democracy is often stated as a human rights goal, it also has national security implications.
In light of these principles, the justification for the war against Iraq looks awfully strong. Great Britain has nuclear weapons. But most Americans go to bed at night without fretting about it. This is because Great Britain is a liberal democracy. WMD possessed by Saddam's dictatorship was a different matter. Saddam used WMD against his own people, so it's not a stretch to think he would use them against Americans.
One liberal pundit joked that if America is going to start knocking off dictators, they should do so in alphabetical order. A conservative pundit responded that if America is going to pay the blood and treasure for toppling dictators, America should get to decide which dictators get toppled first. Personally, I think Iran's dictatorship is the one that most urgently needs attention and military action shouldn't be ruled out.
In order to sort this out, we need to start out with some first principles. First off, liberal democracies are morally superior to dictatorships. Let's just say that if a nation have a reasonably free press and allows its citizens to participate in the selection of its political leadership, that country fits the description. Second, human rights is central to America's foreign policy debate. If human rights didn't matter, the success or failure of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union wouldn't matter either, even if these regimes trampled over the human rights of their citizens. Third, there is good reason to believe that liberal democracies tend to not make war against other liberal democracies. So, while the advance of liberal democracy is often stated as a human rights goal, it also has national security implications.
In light of these principles, the justification for the war against Iraq looks awfully strong. Great Britain has nuclear weapons. But most Americans go to bed at night without fretting about it. This is because Great Britain is a liberal democracy. WMD possessed by Saddam's dictatorship was a different matter. Saddam used WMD against his own people, so it's not a stretch to think he would use them against Americans.
One liberal pundit joked that if America is going to start knocking off dictators, they should do so in alphabetical order. A conservative pundit responded that if America is going to pay the blood and treasure for toppling dictators, America should get to decide which dictators get toppled first. Personally, I think Iran's dictatorship is the one that most urgently needs attention and military action shouldn't be ruled out.
posted by Steel Monkey at 9/15/2004 09:34:00 PM
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