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Subject: Kissinger
From: Dave Long <dl@silcom.com>
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[can't think of how I'd be running
afoul of the spam filters with this
post, so here's the second try...]

Kissinger's book _Does America Need
a Foreign Policy?_ provides a few
handy abstractions:

> The ultimate dilemma of the statesman is to strike a balance between
> values ["idealism"] and interests ["realism"] and, occasionally,
> between peace and justice.

Also, he views historical American
approaches to foreign policy as a
bundle of three fibers:

Hamiltonian - We should only get
  involved in foreign adventures
  to preserve balances of power.

Wilsonian - We should only get
  involved in foreign adventures
  to further democracy, etc.

Jacksonian - We should never get
  involved in foreign adventures.
  Unless we're attacked.  Then we
  go Rambo.

He has tactfully left out the hard
realists*; as for the rest I gather
wilsonians play the idealists, and
hamiltonians act where values and
interests intersect, and jacksonians 
act only when values and interests
overlap.

Kissinger himself seems to be a
Hamiltonian; much of the book is
about how he thinks we ought to
be shaping the balance of power
in various foreign regions.

Maybe I've been too affected by
Kant, but I can't see that such
a strategy works unless one can
count on a Bismarck runnning it:
how lopsided does the US look if
everyone tries to run a balance
of power politics?

- -Dave

*
> The road to empire leads to domestic decay because, in time, the claims
> of omnipotence erode domestic restraints.  No empire has avoided the
> road to Caesarism unless, like the British Empire, it devolved its
> power before this process could develop.  In long-lasting empires,
> every problem turns into a domestic issue [which should be handled
> very differently from international ones] because the outside world
> no longer provides a counterweight.  And as challenges grow more
> diffuse and increasingly remote from the historic domestic base,
> internal struggles become ever more bitter and in time violent.
> A deliberate quest for hegemony is the surest way to destroy the
> values that made the United States great.

Kings and tyrants generically have
followed the same power politics:
garner popular support by keeping
potential oligarchs down.  In other
traditions, a king is a legitimate
tyrant, and a tyrant an illegitimate
king.  In the US, I'd hope that we,
like Samuel, wouldn't naturally make
such fine distinctions.


