Remembering Benazir Bhutto
Today, August 20, 2013, nearly six years after the murder of Benazir Bhutto (twice Pakistan’s Prime Minister), General Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan’s military dictator at the time of Mrs. Bhutto’s death), has been indicted for her murder. If like me you feel her life is worth remembering…, Read more
Wise U.S. Foreign Policy Begins at Home
Wise U.S. Foreign Policy Begins at Home
It’s no secret that the United States faces critical policy choices at home and abroad and that a disabled political process in Washington lacks the skill to find wise ways ahead in either area. In addition, a widespread lack of understanding exists among the American public about the place of domestic life in foreign policy.
Perhaps this is because of a perceived dualism between the two areas (excepting rare moments of truth for the nation sent from afar). Or perhaps it is because foreign policy decision making is not particularly democratic; it is superintended by the President, Congressional activism, and a relatively small community of elite analysts and advisors, none of whom submit their policies to a direct popular vote. Only afterward, do we the people get to decide.
Lack of public understanding about the importance of the domestic to the foreign, and vice-versa, diminishes the ability of an American citizenry from recognizing when US foreign policy is not furthering the good of the international commons. Historically, when scholars have looked critically at this, their views have been cast as controversial. I’m thinking, here, of when Charles Beard and, after him, William Appleman Williams evaluated the Open Door Policy.
It’s unlikely that any serious controversy will arise with the new book by the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, even though Richard Haass argues for a new American foreign policy that is zealous about domestic policy. Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order recommends a Doctrine of Restoration, which rests on what Haass calls three pillars: it insists on a rebalancing of US foreign policy abroad, one that eschews a focus on the greater Middle East and pivots to Asia; it places less emphasis on military instruments and more on economic and diplomatic tools and capabilities for implementing US foreign policy; and it judges that the world for the foreseeable future is relatively unthreatening to the United States.
Read the review here.
Waging Wisdom test blog post
This would be a post with the category for the book, it should only appear on the page for the book’s blog, not on the main blog
Stay Home, America; Get Your Own House in Order
I’ve been extremely busy for months with The Wisdom Project, including long hours on the new book. There’s a lot I’ve wanted to post, and probably should have, but “eight days a week” still remains in the la la land of Beatles lore. So it saves me a lot of time when someone else not only says something I’ve wanted to say but says it better that I could have said it. There’s real wisdom packed into this this short piece in Time about US foreign policy by Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Read more
“That war . . . almost a kind of ideal”
“How did we, as a society, lose the ability to formulate questions about the feasibility of a political alternative? How did it happen that a person who suggests a nonviolent solution is the delusional one, the traitor, and the one who calls for the leveling of Gaza is the true patriot? How did peace become the enemy of the people, and war always the preferred option?”
These are just some of Nomika Zion’s poignant questions. Nomika lives on a kibbutz in Sderot, an Israeli city close to the Gaza Strip border. The people of Sderot suffer terribly from being the regular target of rockets launched from Gaza. But during the years she’s lived there, Nomika has come to fear not just those rockets. She fears that war, and no longer possibilities of peace, has become, or is soon to become, “the most consistent and contrast feature of our lives.” She has many good and sufficient reasons for concluding this. Read more
Obama and Christie: A Parable for Our Country?
Obama and Christie: A Parable for Our Country?
By Charles Strohmer and Kenny Woodhull
The day after hurricane Sandy devastated coastal New Jersey, Barack Obama and Chris Christie met and blew some minds. The sight of President and New Jersey Governor refusing to play politics with Sandy irritated some on the far right and far left, but the narrative presented the rest of us with a choice. We could see it either as a one-off example of bipartisanship or as a parable. If the former, the ideologically charged polarization of our country will continue to worsen. If the latter, we might just start to bring to end that polarization and move the country in a wiser direction. It’s up to us. Especially now, after Barack Obama’s re-election. Here’s why.
In the midst of what was countless times called a “huge crisis,” Obama the liberal and Christie the conservative came together. They meandered around New Jersey’s devastated south shore neighborhoods to meet with the suffering and comfort the grieving. They joined their considerable forces to set in motion recovery and rebuilding resources. They praised each other in interview after interview for the other’s “outstanding efforts” and “extraordinary leadership” in the crisis. Read more
Obedience or Obeisance in Political Life?
Obedience or Obeisance in Political Life?
It is very difficult today to get American Christians to exercise humility and wisdom in political life. It’s even more difficult to make a biblical case for it in a short article. But John Stackhouse has done it. Stackhouse, who holds the Chair of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, does it by drawing us into the ambiguity of life that biblical wisdom acknowledges.
Calling us to reflect on where we live – in this world, fallen, east of Eden – Stackhouse writes that we should expect things: sin, waste, stupidity, absurdity, vanity, promiscuity, and so on in political life. But he doesn’t stop there. He holds a mirror up to us and challenges us to look not just “out there” in the world but at “the enemy within.” The ambiguity within. Read more
The Middle East Now, and Its Not Pretty Near Future
The Middle East Now, and its Not Pretty Near Future
For this post, I’m breaking a rule never to post anyone else’s thoughts without commenting on them myself. So I’ve got to hand it to Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, who co-authored an article on the Middle East in the current New York Review of Books (“This Is Not a Revolution”; Nov. 8, 2012). They have gotten me to break my rule. Agha, an Oxford academic and noted Track Two diplomat, and Malley, a Middle East analyst with the International Crisis Group, have given us, in general but non-sensationalist terms, the most accurate summary of the region and its near-future prospects that I can think of. Here are some short paragraphs from their well-informed article. They speak volumes. Read more
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