— by Polydamas
The recent decision by the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama to resume diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba after the United States has imposed half a century of an embargo on Cuba’s communist regime is emblematic of this administration’s penchant for never failing to do the wrong thing, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons. In the parlance of poker, the administration bizarrely decided to fold a good poker hand to give a reprieve to a moribund Cuban regime with a rapidly-dwindling pot.
We certainly appreciate the general philosophy expressed by libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky), who stated to The Daily Beast on December 18, 2014 that “he believes in more trade not less, and that includes Cuba” and that he believes in “peace through commerce”. (http://tinyurl.com/mww3652). Senator Rand further explained that “The 50-year embargo just hasn’t worked. . . . If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. . . . In the end, I think opening up Cuba is probably a good idea.” However, we believe that, unfortunately, his aspirational theory does not work here.
As libertarians, we are strong proponents of individual liberties and laissez-faire economics. As libertarian idealists, we fervently hope that every nation around the world would accord its citizens the maximum individual and economic liberties. However, as libertarian realists, we also acknowledge that not every nation is prepared to allow its citizens to exercise their liberties to their full extent. The big question here is what, short of war, can a free nation do to encourage its repressive neighbor to move in the direction of greater liberty?
Of course, a free nation could set a good example to its neighbor and, in the words of Puritan John Winthrop, be “a city upon a hill”. The free nation could endeavor to educate its neighbor with speeches, pamphlets, academic studies, books, and the like. However, ultimately, a free nation can seek to promote the cause of liberty more aggressively by offering the repressive regime the carrot of free trade or the stick of embargo and boycott.
To more easily explain Senator Paul’s error, let us transport the situation from a complicated political conflict between two countries to a simpler conflict between people in a small town. Let us suppose, for a moment, that there is a small town that is committed to libertarian, free trade principles. In that town, there is a man who is married and has several adult and adolescent children who live with him. Let us suppose that he imprisons his wife and children in their house and he forces them to toil like slaves. The man supports his family through shoplifting, passing bad checks to the small town’s store owners, and, generally, preying on weaker people. No amount of talking with him, pleading, and trying to convince him to stop results in any progress.
Let us, then, suppose that the people and shopkeepers that had been victimized by this man meet at the town library to discuss how to best stop their continued victimization and also how to free the man’s wife and children. As libertarians, they already decide not to initiate force or violence against him. Instead, they debate among themselves whether they should refuse him entry into their establishments. In other words, to impose an embargo, an economic boycott against him. The intent of the embargo is to, ultimately, prompt a behavioral change in a freeloader who has violated the rights of others.
Let us suppose that a few clever would-be attorneys argue that the town’s ideological commitment to libertarian ideals and to free trade means that they have to continue to supply him with goods and services even if he did not pay. However, this absolutist argument is roundly rejected as impractical and foolhardy because the town people do not wish to be further victimized and because he would have no incentive to change his behavior. A few kindhearted souls protest that such an embargo would only hurt the wife and children. Again, this argument is also rejected despite considerations of compassion towards the wife and children because the man would have no incentive to change. The town people hope that, faced with dwindling supplies and an existential crisis, the man’s wife and children would turn against him and oust him from his leadership of the family. The town ultimately votes to carry out the embargo against the man and his family.
Let us suppose, now, that the embargo lasts a few years. The embargo is not absolute and there are some people in town who give the man some money and supplies to enable his predatory behavior, but barely to survive and definitely not enough to thrive. Although the man does not capitulate and is full of fiery rhetoric, the embargo is still quite effective because he and his family members are reduced to wearing tattered clothes and their house is in severe disrepair. Then some of the man’s benefactors who gave him money and supplies and otherwise enabled his predatory behavior suffer declines in their finances and can no longer support him as they previously did.
At this point, with the man and his family close to their breaking point, does it make sense to proclaim that the embargo was unsuccessful and to discontinue it? No, the man and his family have been impoverished, especially with dwindling help from his former benefactors. Does it make sense to discontinue the embargo without any iron-clad assurances that the man will not return to his freeloading ways, to victimizing shopkeepers, and to imprisoning his wife and family members? No. However, this is what happens. No one can deny that, in a test of wills over the span of years, the town people capitulated and the man ultimately prevailed.
If the discontinuation of the embargo makes no sense in a small town context, it makes even less sense in a geopolitical sense. With the recent plummeting prices of petroleum, caused by America’s oil fracking industry and Saudi Arabia’s decision to lower prices to make fracking uneconomical, Cuba’s longtime allies, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, whose petroleum monies had supported it for half a century can no longer afford to do so. The Obama administration’s decision to resume diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba is nothing short of snatching defeat for America from the jaws of victory.
It is entirely unsurprising to us here at The Cassandra Times that the Obama administration would discontinue the embargo and capitulate only ten yards before the finish line, before the Cuban regime of Fidel and Raul Castro would have collapsed of its own weight and lack of support. Rescuing Cuba from utter collapse fits perfectly with the Obama administration’s modus operandi. As capably explained by Dinesh D’Souza in his excellent book “Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream”, at every turn, the Obama administration will never miss an opportunity to champion the interests of the colonial territories over the interests of the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe.
Bettering the naive foreign policy of President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s which abandoned its westernized ally the Shah of Iran to the murderous theocracy of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Obama administration’s foreign policy, consistent with its creed of anti-colonialism, abandoned and turned on the stable regimes of Libya’s Muammar Gadddafi, Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Yemen’s Ali Saleh, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Similarly, the moderately cooperative governments of Iraq and Afghanistan have been gradually deprived of American support so as to cede North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian peninsula to the forces of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. The anti-colonial sentiments of President Obama are also the reason that his administration now rushes to prop up the Castro regime in misguided appreciation for the latter’s half a century of infamous anti-colonial defiance of the United States.
We here at The Cassandra Times find that the Obama administration’s anti-colonialism is incompatible with the beliefs of our nation’s founders about individual liberty, economic prosperity, and foreign policy. Although we do not necessarily fully subscribe to every one of the creeds to the extent professed by Robert Kaplan in his excellent November 20, 2014 piece “The Realist Creed” (http://tinyurl.com/nnrvsu4), which is reproduced in full below, the Obama administration would be well-served to study it carefully as remedial lessons and attempt to mitigate the undeniable disaster which is its foreign policy.
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November 20, 2014
The Realist Creed
All people in foreign policy circles consider themselves realists, since all people consider themselves realistic about every issue they ever talk about. At the same time, very few consider themselves realists, since realism signifies, in too many minds, cynicism and failure to intervene abroad when human rights are being violated on a mass scale. Though everyone and no one is a realist, it is also true that realism never goes away — at least not since Thucydides wrote The Peloponnesian War in the fifth century B.C., in which he defined human nature as driven by fear (phobos), self-interest (kerdos) and honor (doxa). And realism, as defined by perhaps the pre-eminent thinker in the field in the last century, the late Hans Morgenthau of the University of Chicago, is about working with the basest forces of human nature, not against them.
Why is realism timeless and yet reviled at the same time? Because realism tells the bitterest truths that not everyone wants to hear. For in foreign policy circles, as in other fields of human endeavor, people often prefer to deceive themselves. Let me define what realism means to me.
First of all, realism is a sensibility, a set of values, not a specific guide as to what to do in each and every crisis. Realism is a way of thinking, not a set of instructions as to what to think. It doesn’t prevent you from making mistakes. This makes realism more an art than a science. That’s why some of the best practitioners of realism in recent memory — former U.S. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III — never distinguished themselves as writers or philosophers. They were just practical men who had a knack for what made sense in foreign policy and what did not. And even they made mistakes. You can be an intellectual who has read all the books on realism and be an utter disaster in government, just as you could be a lawyer who has never read one book on realism and be a good secretary of state. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was unique because he was both: an intellectual realist and a successful statesman. But successful statesmen, intellectual or not, must inculcate a set of beliefs that can be defined by what may be called the Realist Creed:
Order Comes Before Freedom. That’s right. Americans may think freedom is the most important political value, but realists know that without order there can be no freedom for anyone. For if anarchy reigns and no one is in charge, freedom is worthless since life is cheap. Americans sometimes forget this basic rule of nature since they have taken order for granted — because they always had it, a gift of the English political and philosophical tradition. But many places do not have it. That is why when dictators are overthrown, realists get nervous: They know that because stable democracy is not assured as a replacement, they rightly ask, Who will rule? Even tyranny is better than anarchy. To wit, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was more humane than Iraq under no one — that is, in a state of sectarian war.
Work With the Material at Hand. In other words, you can’t just go around the world toppling regimes you don’t like because they do not adhere to the same human rights standards as you do, or because their leaders are corrupt or unenlightened, or because they are not democrats. You must work with what there is in every country. Yes, there might be foreign leaders so averse to your country’s interests that it will necessitate war or sanctions on your part; but such instances will be relatively rare. When it comes to foreign rulers, realists revel in bad choices; idealists often mistakenly assume that there should be good ones.
Think Tragically in Order to Avoid Tragedy. Pessimism has more value than misplaced optimism. Because so many regimes around the world are difficult or are in difficult straits, realists know that they must always be thinking about what could go wrong. Foreign policy is like life: The things you worry about happening often turn out all right, precisely because you worried about them and took protective measures accordingly; it is the things you don’t worry about and that happen unexpectedly that cause disaster. Realists are good worriers.
Every Problem Does Not Have a Solution. It is a particular conceit that every problem is solvable. It isn’t. Mayhem and human rights violations abound, even as the United States cannot intervene everywhere or take foreign policy positions that will necessarily help. That’s why realists are comfortable doing little or nothing in certain instances, even as they feel just as bad as idealists about heartrending situations.
Interests Come Before Values. A nation such as the United States has interests in secure sea lines of communication, access to energy, a soft dominance in the Western Hemisphere and a favorable balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere. These are amoral concerns that, while not necessarily in conflict with liberal values, operate in a different category from them. If Arab dictatorships will better secure safe sea lanes in and out of energy-producing areas than would chaotic democracies, realists will opt for dictatorship, knowing that it is a tragic yet necessary decision.
American Power Is Limited. The United States cannot intervene everywhere or even in most places. Precisely because America is a global power, it must try to avoid getting bogged down in any one particular place. The United States can defend treaty and de facto allies with its naval, air and cyber power. It can infiltrate communications networks the world over. It can, in short, do a lot of things. But it cannot set to rights complex Islamic societies in deep turmoil. So another thing realists are good at — and comfortable with — is disappointing people. In fact, one might say that foreign policy at its best is often about disappointing people, not always creating opportunities so much as keeping even worse things from happening.
Passion and Good Policy Often Don’t Go Together. Foreign policy requires practitioners among whom the blood runs cold. While loud voices abound about doing something, the person in charge must quietly ask himself or herself, If I do this, what will happen two steps down the road, three steps down the road, and so forth? For passion can easily flip: Those screaming the loudest for intervention today can be the same ones calling your intervention flawed or insufficient after you have embarked on the fateful enterprise.
Reading this list, you might think that realism is immoral. That would be wrong. Rather, realism is imbued with a hard morality of best possible outcomes under the circumstances rather than a soft morality of good intentions. For there is a big difference between being moral and moralistic: The former celebrates difficult choices and the consequences that follow, while the latter abjures them. Realism is a hard road. The policymaker who lives by its dictums will often be rebuked while in office and fondly recalled as a statesman in the years and decades following. Look at George H.W. Bush. But foreign policy realists who have served in high office, I suspect, are more comfortable with the kind of loneliness that comes with rebuke than some of their idealist counterparts. Loneliness is normal for the best policymakers; it is the craving for the adoring crowd that is dangerous.
