Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Schwartz maintains that a foreign policy, like a domestic policy, should be based solely on the self-interest of the nation involved. A nation’s true self-interest requires defending its citizens’ lives, freedom and rights against foreign attacks. Freed from the alleged duty to bring democracy to foreigners, America would rarely fight wars, but when it did, it would win them quickly.
Your fourth book is A Foreign Policy of Self Interest: A Moral Ideal for America by Peter Schwartz.
This book is also about the ideas at the foundation of foreign policy. It establishes a broad framework for an alternative to the problems that Journo finds in his book. What Schwartz maintains is that a foreign policy, like a domestic policy, should be based solely on the self-interest of the nation involved. This is another controversial point of view. But this idea needs to be understood before it is criticised.
I think that his take is fundamentally correct, but to grasp what he is saying requires a new understanding of what self-interest and egoism mean. They do not mean rapaciously attacking others. This is not a way to live a happy productive life for a rational human being, and it is no way for a nation to prosper. Self-interest properly understood would mean engaging voluntarily with people through mutual production and trade, not attacking them for loot.
Schwartz says the only morally self-interested purpose of a government is to protect its citizen’s rights and their freedom. Therefore the only moral purpose of the military is to defend the lives and rights of its citizens. From this point of view America would rarely engage in foreign wars. It would not see its position as being the policemen of the world with some kind of moral obligation to attack any dictatorship overseas on behalf of foreign peoples. America would aim only to defend American lives. Every nation in the world could easily avoid war with the US by not posing a threat to Americans.
When America did have to fight it would be against a clearly named enemy. The goal of the war would be to win as quickly as possible. Winning a war quickly may be brutal but it is far better than having a war go on for ten or 20 years, in which entire generations are brought up under terror and slaughter.
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Dr John David Lewis is Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Programme at Duke University, North Carolina. He is also an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship, a Senior Research Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, and a consulting editor for The Objective Standard. He is the author of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History.
