Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, November 29, 2009 4:41:49 PM
I was working on another post when it struck me how much the present war on Islamic terrorism has confused many commentators.
I was writing about the many ethnic and religious bigotries expressed by various communist nations when it occurred to me that many would see the Chinese conflict with the Uigurs as their version of our struggle with Islamic terrorism. However, though Islamic militants got involved in that conflict, as they did in the Chechen conflict and several others, the Chinese attacks on the Uighurs are more akin to their occupation of Tibet than any defensive conflict.
But that is a problem we often have when looking at conflicts. We are so used to casting one side as the good guys and one as the villain, that we have trouble looking at a struggle where both sides are wrong. ( "
Life Without Villains", "
Evil and Greed", "
Enemies Into Villains", "
Rethinking My Earlier Position") For example, the Chinese were hardly fighting off Islamic militants when they started their struggle with the Uighurs. It was imply yet another of their countless assaults on a separatist minority. On the other hand, the Uighurs did allow in any number of militant Islamic groups, which means that supporting the Uighurs now would mean handing over control to Islamic terrorists. It is, unfortunately, one of those struggles where neither outcome is good for the world. (Though from the perspectives of specific nations, one outcome or the other may be more advantageous.)
Perhaps the most famous of such conflicts was the eastern front in World War II. Given a choice betweent he Nazis and Stalinists, there really was no good outcome. Eastern Europe was destined to either communist slavery, or Nazi slavery. And as both sides had a fondness for exterminating politically hostile groups, Hitler through explicit death camps, Stalin through a mix of executions and engineered famines, it is hard to say that one was even marginally better than the other.
The reason I bring this up is because when such topics arise in the course of a debate, one side will often point to the sins of one side to show the error in supporting them*. However, that is wrong for two reasons. First, because the sins of one side does not mean the other is free of error, or is not even worse. Second, foreign policy is not about right and wrong so much as about national interests. Which is why, even in conflicts where both sides are "bad", we can choose to support one or the other, as the support advances our national interest, rather than being the morally correct choice. Our foreign policy is not about morality in some absolute sense, but instead about the government's duty to defend our nation's interests abroad.
To do anything else would be to fail to fulfill their obligations.
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* For example, the left often tries to impugn Reagan by pointing to support of Iraq or Iran at various points in the Iran-Iraq conflict. However, their criticism completely ignores the fact that the struggle was not so much about picking the "good" side, as it was about keeping the Soviets out of the Persian Gulf.
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POSTSCRIPT
My writing on foreign policy can be found in "
Lebanon and Saint Reagan", "
Foreign Policy", "
Iran Gets What It Wants
" and "
Civilian Casualties".
POSTSCRIPT II
I don't mean to suggest foreign policy is amoral. Instead I am saying that the moral duty of our government is to protect our interests. If there is a situation where one side is a threat to our safety, it is the moral obligation of the state to minimize that threat, even if that means supporting the "wrong" side in a struggle. It would be immoral to do otherwise, as it would increase the risk to our citizens, which our government is morally obligated to protect.