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Sunday, July 31, 2005

God and US Foreign Policy

John Judis has written a "policy brief" for the Carnegie Endowment called The Chosen Nation: The Influence of Religion on U.S. Foreign Policy (2005). As the title implies, he argues that religious views have set a framework for how Americans and their leaders have conceived foreign policy since the birth of the Republic.

Looking at the current President Bush's speeches, he writes:

Three related ideas can be found regularly in Bush's speeches on foreign policy that are rooted in America's religious past and have been voiced throughout its history. The first is the idea of the United States as God's "chosen nation" - from Abraham Lincoln's "the last, best hope of earth" to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation."

The second is the idea that the United States has a "mission" or a "calling" to transform the world. During the debate over the annexation of the Philippines, Senator Albert Beveridge declared that God had "marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the world." Richard Nixon in the 1960 campaign affirmed that "America came into the world 180 years ago not just to have freedom for ourselves, but to carry it to the whole world." And of course, George W. Bush proclaimed in April 2004 that "as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. ... That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned."

The third idea is that in carrying out this mission, the United States is representing the forces of good over evil. "There never has been - there never can be - successful compromise between good and evil," Franklin Roosevelt said about the conflict with Germany and Japan in World War II. And George W. Bush declared at West Point in May 2003, "We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name."

As much as it pains me to see any kind of similarity described between Franklin Roosevelt and George W. Bush, a heavy moralistic interpretation of foreign policy has definitely been used before. Forgive the metaphor, but the devil is in the details. Even though he used the rhetoric of good and evil on occasion during the Second World War, FDR was never driven by the kind of personal religious rigidity that Woodrow Wilson was, or the kind of moralistic simplifications that are so characteristic of George W. Bush.

Judis adds a useful caution that there are obviously other things determining American foreign policy than religion. He says that "the Bush White House would probably not have decided to go to war with Iraq if the Gulf's main product were kumquats instead of oil." But the role of religion has often been neglected in looking at factors shaping foreign policy, and Judis' article is focusing on that particular element.

His comments on the effects of early American religious leaders on foreign policy didn't convince me, though. Contrary to the fond fables of the Christian Right, the people in Revolutionary America (2nd half of the 18th century) would not nearly as heavily "churced" as the general population was by the 1840s or 1850s.

But even though he gets there by a too-easy route, Judis is right in seeing a heavy apocalyptic strain in US foreign policy from the beginning. And if you're on the Lord's side in an apocalyse, there has to be someone to play the Devil's role on the other side.

And, he argues, at various times that role of The Enemy in that framework has been played by the Pope (aka, the Antichrist), the Old World, "hellish fiends" (aka Native Americans), Filipinos, decadent European imperialism (First World War), Communism and The Terrorists.

Oddly enough, his table on that foreign policy framework does not include the Nazis and Japanese militarism. Because the Second World War for unconditional surrender of those enemies distinctly affected the oversimplifications of the Cold War and now the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), recently re-christened The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE). No doubt soon to be followed by the Global Struggle against Terrorists, Radicals and Intolerant Groups (GSTRING).

Judis makes an antiquated but charming argument for George's Washington's "no foreign entaglements" vision of foreign policy.

What has distinguished the most successful U.S. presidents and diplomats has been their ability to pursue the framework's goals while retaining a realistic - non-apocalyptic - view of means and ends and capabilities. In the early 1790s, some Americans dreamed of creating a world revolution by supporting the French. In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned against the United States, which was a minor, marginal power, identifying itself with either side in the European struggle. He cautioned against "permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others." Washington was not arguing for what would later be called isolationism, but for grounding America's ultimate objectives in a realistic appraisal of its power and of foreign threats.

But when he assesses Bush's foreign policy, he winds up arguing that even though Bush's foreign policy represents not so much the influence of the Christian Right as a different kind of Protestant apocalyptic thinking:

To focus on the religious right's influence is to miss the heart of what Bush is saying when he invokes religious concepts to explain his foreign policy. Bush's belief that the United States has a "mission" or a "calling" from the "Maker of Heaven" to spread freedom around the world puts him in a mainstream of religious expression that goes back to the first settlers from England. What sets Bush off from some of his more illustrious predecessors is that in making foreign policy - a task that requires an empirical assessment of means and ends - he may have been guided not only by the objectives of Protestant millennialism but also by the apocalyptic mentality it has spawned. That has made for eloquent and stirring oratory, but it may have also detracted from a clear understanding of the challenges facing the United States.

But how Judis manages to separate this from the Chrstian Right - even contrast it to the Christian Right - escapes me. He says this about their influence on Bush:

Some critics, particularly abroad, have blamed the administration's mistakes on the influence of the conservative evangelicals who make up "the religious right." The religious right has certainly influenced Republican Party politics and very specific areas of foreign policy. They have lobbied for a greater Israel - a preoccupation that grows out of their reading of Revelations - and against Christian persecution in Asia and Africa. But their general outlook on the world represents a dissenting strain of Protestant millennialism that emphasizes Christians seeking their own salvation before the "end times." That view may have influenced Bush's initial skepticism about foreign intervention, which he expressed during the 2000 campaign, and his disdain for the United Nations, but it was not reflected in the expansive view of U.S. aims that Bush adopted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and in his tolerance of religious diversity.

Not only do I disagree with his judgment here, but I have a hard time seeing how he would make that argument. In fact, this latter quote doesn't make that much sense. It's true that fundamentalists' views of the End Times are not accepted by most American Christians. But they are very influential on foreign policy of the Bush Republicans.

Ironically, Judis himself in a sidebar gives a good, brief summary of the Christian Right's "millenial vision" and how that translates into their views on policies toward the Middle East:

Many of the Pentecostals and Fundamentalists who make up the religious right embrace a dissenting form of Protestant millennialism that English theologian John Nelson Darby brought to the United States in 1859. This view of history is deeply pessimistic and has often reinforced an insular view of the U.S. role in the world.

Darby contended that the period from Christ's crucifixion to the "end times" before the millennium was a "parenthesis." The end times would begin with the abrupt return of Jesus to "rapture" the true believers to heaven. These exemplary Christians would be spared seven years of bloody "tribulation," which would take place in Israel to which the Jews would have returned and laid claim. At the end of seven years, Jesus would return to defeat Satan in the battle of Armageddon, and the millennium would begin.

Christians who adhered to this theory believed that their main task on earth was to lead model lives so that they could be raptured before the tribulation. For most of the last century, many of them eschewed politics and had no view of foreign policy, except for a strong interest in the Jewish return to Israel. Even now, when many have entered politics primarily to combat what they see as a secular threat to their faith, they remain wedded to a very narrow view of U.S. foreign policy objectives focused on Israel. Much of the religious right backed the war in Iraq not because they wanted to democratize the Middle East but precisely because Iraq's Saddam Hussein had threatened Israel, which they are determined to protect in preparation for the end times.

posted at 11:25:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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