Íslenska leiðin - 01.11.2003, Blaðsíða 20

U.S. foreign policy after 9/11:
Where does Icelandfit in?
Bthe other hand, assumes that order comes from
conscious interactions and agreements or
*' Micheal T. Corgan conventions between people. This idea of rights
f:pmfp«=yr7r nf pniirimi frifrrp, holds that rights are community-based and
Æk Bcstm tMversity particular. Rights belong to the group but will vary
in some degree from group to group.
Over two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson,
the third American president, noted with
satisfaction that "kindly nature and a wide ocean"
separated the new country from the exterminating
havoc of the rest of the globe. Nearly a hundred
years later Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State,
William Seward, echoed this thought when he
boasted that America had weak neighbors to the
north and south and to the east and west, fish. It
is hard to overestimate the impact that this
isolation from the turmoii of the rest of the world
has had on the American mind, whether it is
simple knowledge of geography or the conduct of
the government's foreign policy. Indeed our
bloodiest war, even after all the havoc of the
twentieth century, remains the one we had with
ourselves.
Developing, as it has, in relative safety and in the
absence of immediate consequence for
misjudgment or blunder, American foreign policy,
while answering the same needs as policies of any
other country of means and power, has shown
three distinguishing characteristics. American
foreign policy is consensual, destinarian (i.e.
having a sense of specific mission), and
technocratic.
By consensual I mean that American policies seek
to follow one dominant theme or practice. No
coalitions agreements here. Both the United States
and modern European states are products of
eighteenth century liberal enlightenment
philosophy but there are some important
differences. This is especially notable in the idea of
rights. The US was mostly influenced by ideas off
John Locke - the Declaration of Independence is in
its opening paragraphs a virtual précis of Locke's
2nd Essay on Civil Government. By contrast,
European states owe more of their character to the
thinking of Rousseau and the other French
philosophes.
The US, via Locke, assumes that there is a
fundamental harmonious order that is both
individual and universal. Thus rights inhere in the
individual and are the same for all men
everywhere. Policies to be truly effective and
durable must be and ultimately will be the product
of consensus as understood above. Rousseau, on
The destinarian aspect of American foreign policy
is inherent in the ideas of the very first European
settlers in North America. This 'brave new world/
this new found land was to be the locus of a
biblical "city on the hill," an example to all nations.
The first nations the Pilgrims saw as needing their
example were the native Americans (Indians) but
one hundred fifty years later the new United
States claimed for itself much the same sense of
destiny. Even the Seal of the United States
contains the self-congratulating phrase Novus
Ordo Seclorum - A New Order of the Ages. When
Americans fought wars, these always had the
character of religious crusades. General and alter
President Eisenhower entitled his account as allied
commander in chief in World War II "Crusade in
Europe."
The third orientation in US foreign policy is the
technocratic bias toward political practice in
foreign affairs. The consensual framework of all
American politics and exceptional national wealth
have led to a problem-solving outlook in all
American policy-making. This has meant that in
the political realm, just as in almost all other areas
of human endeavor, Americans see problems to be
solved rather than difficulties that must be lived
with. Moreover, there is a strong tendency to dis-
aggregate problems into component parts and
solve them separately or sequentially. For
example, the Marshall plan shows all the evidences
of a technocratic solution to political problems.
Closer to our own day one exceptionally
characteristic statement of this bias toward
problem solving was that of Jimmy Carter, our
most technocratic of presidents. At the Camp
David accords in 1978 he spoke of "solving the
Middle east problems, once and for all." Oblivious
to the obvious and well-founded skepticism of
attending Egyptian and Israeli leaders, Carter
actually meant what he said.
The Cold War led to a convergence of European
and American views on the nature of order in the
international community. This convergence
resulted in shifts on both sides of the Atlantic in
the area of foreign policy outlooks. The US began
to engage in alliances and the Europeans, witness
the rationales and apologia for the European
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