Thinking Citizen — History, Ethics, Economics — Premises Matter Most
Thinking Citizen — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: History, Ethics, Economics — Premises Matter Most
How do you think about foreign policy? Is it just too complicated? So you don’t waste time thinking about it at all? Or do you have a duty to think about it? And if so, do you have a system for making sense of something so complicated? If so, what is that system?
Is that system based on the idea that the most important thing is to be “realistic” and banish any “ethical” considerations from the thought process? This would appear to be the view of such thinkers as John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt at Harvard’s Kennedy School. They are the latest incarnations of a tradition going back to Thucydides (460–400BCE), Machiavelli (1469–1527), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Hans Morgenthau (1904–1980), George Kennan (19004–2005), and Henry Kissinger (1923–2023).
Or is it based on the idea is that it’s all about ethics. It’s about distinguishing the good guys and bad guys? the Axis of Evil (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc) and the Axis of the Good (US, Europe, South Korea, Japan, etc.)?
Or is your view that it’s about the money? Is war rooted in imperialism which is rooted in capitalism which is rooted in greed? Is, therefore, the United States the greatest threat to world peace, freedom, and justice because it is the leading capitalist, imperialist country in the world?
What are the three most important premises of your foreign policy perspective?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE ARC OF HISTORY BENDS TOWARD FREEDOM, PROSPERITY, AND TRUTH AS WELL AS JUSTICE — below charts from the Swedish physician and demographer, Hans Rosling (1948–2017)
1. The truth is that capitalism turns necessities into luxuries and communism turns luxuries into necessities. (Andrew Carnegie)
2. It was one thing to be a communist in 1848 when during the prior three decades the lifespan in industrial England had declined from 55 to 25 years.
3. It’s another to be a communist (socialist) in 2025 after the experience of Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela…..
THERE ARE BAD GUYS IN HISTORY THAT TRY TO TURN THE CLOCK BACK AND IF YOU DON’T RECOGNIZE THE WOLVES OF HISTORY FOR WHAT THEY ARE THE CONSEQUENCES CAN BE CATASTROPHIC
1. Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought he had secured peace for the world when he signed a deal with Hitler in September 1938.
2. Weakness is like raw meat to a tiger.
3. US weakness in Syria in 2012 led to the Putin’s takeover of Crimea in 2014.
NB: Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
THE ANTI-SEMITISM OF HAMAS AND IRAN’S THEOCRACY HAS A LONG AND STORIED HISTORY — connect the dots from England in 1290 to Spain in 1492 to Germany 1933–1945, to the Simchat Torah massacre of 2023
1. The paradox is that the ethnic minority most persecuted in human history is the one that has, arguably, contributed most.
2. After all, no Judaism, no Christianity. No Judaism, no Islam.
3. Not to mention all those Nobel Prizes.
NB: The history of anti-semitism is the history of envy. The story of Adam and Eve who envied god. The story of Cain who was jealous of his brother Abel. Ingratitude, not money, is the root of all evil.
Thinking Citizen Blog — Israel-Palestine — Historical Context Matters — Three Indispensable Charts…
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
