Bismarck In An Age Of Cholera

(With apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)

Why were we friends with Saddam?, they ask, indignantly. "They," in this case, would be critics of the President, the kind who shout: Bush lied! People died!

As a nation, I think we've always cared about what friends we have. It's just that in the past, our standards were different, and determined by the needs of the moment.

There are two strains in American foreign policy, as I think most folks are taught: The idealistic, and the realistic. Wilsonian policies would be an example of the former; Nixonian the latter. Before you condemn Nixon, consider that "only Nixon could go to China".

What is the bottom line? It is simply this: We forget that, as Bismarck said, nations have neither permanent friends, nor permanent enemies. Rather, they have permanent interests. The security interests of the United States are those interests.

Once every so often, we have the idealist in the White House, like Jimmy Carter, who gave back the Panama Canal (as someone else has mentioned), and who fretted over our hostages until it became our national obsession. Such idealism is not always helpful, unless it is made to serve the national interest. (In this regard, JFK's idealism was used in service of a very clear element of realpolitik -- the pursuit of supremacy over the Soviet Union, our mortal enemy.)

To be honest, I don't know how idealistic the leftists are who support Cindy Sheehan and the like, or who criticize the President's foreign policy on the basis of a photo op involving Saddam and Rummy. I tend to think that some of these folks let their heart do their thinking for them -- whether, in that, their motives are pure or impure. The world tends to treat those of pure sentiment (in more than one sense) very poorly. They are often the first to go. The revolution eats its own.

And therefore -- friendship between nations? Pure sentiment. And thus ultimately irrelevant, or anathema.

If the Hegelian dance of creative destruction is the contradiction they seek, then I think it's one that exists. There is no contradiction, otherwise, between our support of temporary friends in the support of permanent interests.