Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a great Independence Day! This Monday’s post I’d from Stephen. Thank you Stephen! Have a good week everybody!
Time for something a little more lighthearted and fun, foreign policy. Okay, lighthearted and fun for me, but then I have an odd sense of what is fun and amusing. Perhaps a better title would be, “If I were President”, but no matter.
Foreign relations is the one aspect of government which was delegated primarily to the President rather than to Congress, and the one function of government where the President is the lead figure and not merely there to execute and administer the will of the people through their representation in Congress.
Even as Commander in Chief while the President has a free hand in the conduct of any war he does not have the authority to actually declare war, thus his role is secondary to that of Congress.
However, in an era of kings, the Founding Fathers thought that no other nation would even care to negotiate treaties and agreements with a contentious legislative body when they were used to talking directly with other monarchs, and that they may likely try to negotiate and manipulate member of Congress separately sowing division or even merely wait out the term of the President, being temporary compared to the life tenure of a monarch, simply to see if the next guy gave them a better offer.
Thus the sole power to negotiate with foreign powers was vested in the executive, with a slight reservation of the advice and consent of the Senate to create a check to keep the President from, as the phrase goes, selling out the store.
(Which, it was not by accident that the same phrase was used when it came to making judicial and executive office appointments because the President was meant to have a free hand, Congress was not meant to have much of a say in the matter except in extreme circumstances. We can save that discussion for another time perhaps.)
Foreign policy has thus been associated largely with the very character of a President since our republic’s foundations. It is only recently that foreign policy has taken a back seat to domestic policy primarily due to the rise of the unconstitutional welfare state which consumes nearly a fifth of our national GDP.
From Teddy Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy, to Manifest Destiny, to the Monroe Doctrine, to Washington’s admonition to avoid entangling foreign alliances, even to mocking Jefferson’s “little boats” as ineffective, foreign policy has not only defined certain presidencies, an effective and well articulated foreign policy would often carry forward for decades of following presidents regardless of party. It was well and truly said that politics stopped at the water’s edge.
Thus, I think every person has imagined what they might do given the opportunity to act as President and be capable of setting our nation’s foreign policy. I am no exception, so let me explain what I think the ideal foreign policy.
I’m certain you are familiar with “The Golden Rule”, “He who has the gold, makes the rules”. No, wait, the other one, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
It is certainly an interesting concept to take this to such a collective level as to be a national policy, to treat other nations as you would want those nations to treat your own. The problem naturally being that different nations have different interests which are not necessarily integrated with a uniform policy of other nations treating each other as equals.
A nation may want to support a weak ally and give them favorable treatment. They may want to support a domestic industry they consider vital with a certain amount of favoritism. One may be wary of treating a hostile nation in the same manner as they treat their allies for fear of alienating those very allies.
It is upon such notion that such treaties as GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) base such ideas as MFN (Most Favorable Nation) status where the lowest tariffs one imposes upon a signatory to the treaty must be offered to every other signing nation. It did not mean that you had to have low tariffs nor prohibit protective tariffs, just that other nations were all treated the same. (It also included the idea that once lowered tariffs could never be raised again.)
The other problem, naturally, is that such other nation may not be inclined to treat you the way that you want to be treated regardless of how you treat them. In fact, many people, and by correlation many nations, are inclined to view a kind and open national comity as a type of weakness, an invitation to seek advantage.
Treating others the way you hope they will treat you is all well and good, but what are you to do when they don’t reciprocate? When the other nation seeks to take advantage of your good intentions. When the other nation is more malevolent than beneficent.
It would be foolish to persist in a foreign policy which placed your own nation at a perpetual disadvantage in negotiations because your opponent not only knew that your proposals would be generous but was eager to press hard for an advantageous advantage for their own.
Of course, the fact that one can simply refuse such advances can be a preventative in a wise administration, but the absence of that wisdom allows the bar to be moved against that nation which would employ the “golden rule”. Once established it becomes problematic to renegotiate relations without the appearance of reneging upon those past agreements merely on the principle that you didn’t like how those previous negotiations had developed.
What is needed is a different principle to deal with those to fail to return the comity between nation, a foundation to justify needed renegotiations as well as a principled means to punish those opposing nations which would act in bad faith or selfish nearsighted interests.
Personally, I have decided that the appropriate foreign policy ought to be a reflective policy, that is to say to reflect upon the other person that same behavior or tariff or demands that they would impose upon you. In other words to mirror back their own policies towards them, to force them to live by their own standards.
For example, if a foreign nation imposed a tariff of 20% on goods coming from your nation, then you impose a tariff of 20% on their goods. If they impose a protective tariff upon your beef exports, then you impose that same protective tariff upon all of their goods. This creates a natural incentive for a nation to avoid picking and choosing to favor certain industries over others, and a general disincentive for protectionism in general.
It abandons, however, the pretense of imagining that such a scheme would lead to a utopian future without any tariffs as the GATT treaties pretended to seek, which could never happen anyway.
The same general principle applies equally well to thwart other aggressive foreign policies of other nations. As you know the backing of a mirror is with silver, so that I call my idea of a reflective foreign policy The Silver Rule: “Do unto other as they have done unto you.”
Not quite as kind and generous as the golden rule but the silver rule tends to assertively caution against untoward aggression. However, it appears lacking as a complete principle of general foreign diplomacy, in part because a reflective policy requires a passive, reactive foreign policy, rather than a proactive policy of engaging with other nations.
Then a simple solution occurred to me, why not both?
In particular, when engaging with foreign powers proactively, it is quite appropriate to follow the dictates of the golden rule; but when responding to any foreign power reactively, the appropriate response is the silver rule.
When Mexico subsidizes and encourages people to illegally cross the border, closing down that boarder becomes an appropriate reflective response; but when approaching Canada allow free travel across the border expecting Canada to reciprocate in kind.
Any sound foreign policy ought to be one which promotes comity between nations. (Comity: The legal principle that political entities (such as states, nations, or courts from different jurisdictions) will mutually recognize each other’s legislative, executive, and judicial acts. The underlying notion is that different jurisdictions will reciprocate each other’s judgments out of deference, mutuality, and respect.) https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/comity
