Why do so many people on the right and the left turn into John Galt when it comes to foreign policy?

Great Debates
1

***“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

That is the rallying cry of John Galt, a philosophy where no one has any obligation to any other aside from the obligation to respect the freedoms and rights of other people.

And the farther left and right (the right is more complicated, this pertains mostly to the libertarian wing) you go, the more hostile you become to any and all interventions.
I understand why the conservatives have more affinity to this position, it’s more of a return to form. The isolationist paleocons and libertarians, they are skeptical of using the power of the state to help others in both financial matters AND martial endeavors.
But the liberals are a different story. Theirs is not a philosophy of ME and MINE, and damn the rest. They are quite open to projects that spend their own treasure for the sake of others on financial matters. But for many, turn the focus on helping some other people fight against their enemies and they turn as skeptical as the most hard line libertarian.

They suddenly become fiscal hawks, worrying about all the “wasteful” military spending, they downplay and mistrust suggestions that outside intervention by their government can have any positive impact. Foreign aid? Maybe that will help, but sending weapons to fight off some bad actor? Allowing air strikes against those targets? THAT is a bridge too far.

OUR presence is the irritating factor, so they say. We need to leave that part of the world and let THEM fight it out and die and burn and suffer. That is not OUR problem. Since when is that some core liberal value?

What happened to **human **rights? A typical response is that we should not be the policemen of the world, we can’t fight everywhere and put out all the fires that pop up all the time. Which is true, but does it follow from that that we can’t help fight ANYWHERE? That we can’t choose to aid people militarily anytime?

Plenty of people will tolerate some limited strikes on a group like ISIS, but others want us to wash our hands completely of the region. There are two types of objections. Practical constraints on the limits and fallout of our activity overseas. And principled opposition to the legitimacy of American involvement anywhere. The last is the John Galt position, and it seems to be shared by a great many members of the far left and libertarian side.

ISIS is advancing on some civilians on a mountain and is trying to murder the men and enslave the women?

John Galt position: And this is my problem because??? Not my effing problem. They need to deal with their issues on their own. Oh, they can’t? Again, this is my problem because?

That attitude strikes me as deeply illiberal, as a total rejection human rights, where the ONLY concern is human interests. A callous ice filled world void of any morality and solidarity for your fellow man.
Before I get people saying we should not be involved in so many wars, I might agree with you. I think there are plenty of limits to American power, but I still want to use American power and not turn us into fortress America where our only concern is ourselves. I want a mix of human rights and interests to guide our use of force. That seems like what an actual liberal ought to want. So why do so many on the left sound like John Galt when it comes to foreign policy?

2

For many on the left, this came from the war in Vietnam. We might have been open to trying to do some good, to help out the people there…but we were messing it all up, and doing more harm than good.

Another really bad lesson was from Ronald Reagan, where he’d give aid to any tyrant or dictator who promised not to be a communist. We propped up some monsters, and this did not please the left (any many on the right were also not happy.)

Watching Iraq be destroyed…and not rebuilt…is another big disincentive. Also, we intervened in Libya…to what benefit? The place is screwed up, maybe worse than under Gaddafi. And what’s the point of bombing Syrian government forces if it only opens up a power vacuum for ISIS to move into?

Many – left and right – want intervention limited to where we can actually do some good. Where we not only have a clear mission, and a clear exit strategy, but where the people there want our intervention.

3

Because in the absence of any really effective international government, the world’s nation-states are to some significant degree living in the State of Nature with respect to each other. Not entirely, there are some highly effective international laws and conventions and treaties and alliances and understandings and obligations and international associations; but obviously not effective enough to keep something like ISIS or Somalia or Rwanda or Yugoslavia or North Korea from happening. And in a world like that, John Galt’s POV – as applied not to individuals but to national collectives – has got to make at least some sense to every nation-state’s makers of foreign policy. It’s an attitude old enough to have a name predating Ayn Rand’s birth – Realpolitik – and the attitude is much, much older than the name, it almost certainly goes back continuously to the Stone Age.

4

Some reasons a lot of liberals are skeptical of so called humanitarian intervention (no particular order):

  1. For hundreds of years appeals to humanitarianism or the white man’s burden has been a fig leaf for corporate, colonial, and geo-strategic interests. If ISIS was in a non-oil African nation the outcry from American hawks wouldn’t be nearly as fever pitched.

  2. Conflicts aren’t black and white. Usually gray and gray.

  3. Fear of blowback.

  4. Even if we’re well intentioned idealists, interfering with another country’s culture and internal politics is liable to do more harm than good as opposed to letting things play out naturally. We don’t know the language, the culture, or all the differing factions. But we can blow shit up real good.

The comedy of this is most highlighted in the current situation in Iraq where Americans are spending millions of dollars so American jets can destroy millions of dollars of American military equipment appropriated by ISIS.

  1. Today’s allies are tomorrow’s bad guys, and vice versa.

  2. Lefty liberals tend to espouse borderline pacifism. “Bombing for peace” isn’t an attractive rallying cry for them. They can be convinced in some cases, like if a country is being invaded and asks for our help, but you want to untangle some messed up ethnic-tribal-religious knot? No, thanks.

  3. They’d rather see military budgets used to improve America instead of bombing foreigners. See Eisenhower’s chance for peace speech.

  4. Liberals are ashamed of Western cultural chauvinism. There’s no difference between killing someone to take their resources and killing them to implement franchise democracy. You can mix in some cultural relativism here.

  5. Fear of repeating past disasters, whether it’s Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia.

  6. Other countries can play the same game. How would you feel if China tried to “bring stability” to Mexico with a couple hundred thousand troops? Afterall, look at all the death and destruction being wrought by the cartels and gangs and the corrupt government. How could anyone in good conscience oppose them?

With all that said, there’s still a whole lot of cruise missile/nation building liberals around.

5

See Boko Haram.

6

. . . Wait a minute . . . Let’s not just dismiss this idea . . . Is there any way we could talk them into it?

7

Nigeria is a major oil producer, though I’m not sure if Boko Haram threatens their oil producing regions.

8

This sounds like a straw man to me - I don’t know any liberals/progressives that don’t want to help impoverished people around the world, in each case where they are hesitant it is completely based on:

  • doubt that we can do any good
  • fear that we are doing more harm than good
  • concern that we are just creating more enemies than we are killing
  • recognition we have a history of going to “help” but ending up just creating more wage slaves.
  • recognition that some people don’t want our culture dropped on them
  • recognition that the right/moneyed class has led us into war after war for their own benefit
  • we don’t want any more shell shocked friends with missing limbs
  • continuing to fund the war machine / military industrial complex only makes it more hungry next year

Talk of wasteful spending is a counter argument that liberals learned from conservatives who use that argument to cut social spending - they think the “logic” works in reverse, and it does not.

With regard to ISIS, liberals are of the opinion that we gave into (lost the public opinion race with) the conservatives twice already on Iraq, and look where we are now - lets just give the hands off approach a chance, mkay?

We are tired of the lies, we are tired of the racism, we are tired of the bait and switch, and we are tired of our names (we are Americans too) being dragged through the mud- the rest of the world liked us during the Clinton years, and through 9/11, but then the neo-con war-hawks got control, and they fucked it up for us all. Sorry if we don’t trust the motives on the current attempts to use our wealth and blood to kill more brown people (in an area that produces lots of oil).

Do you have any cites where progressive-liberals use the selfish John Galt arguments to keep american money and troops at home? I understand that Libertarians use these arguments, but they are not the same as progressive liberals.

9

It’s fairly common in any lib discussion about the military budget. Someone will always point out how it should be spent for domestic use instead. Here’s an article on Daily Kos about America selling drones abroad. Some examples from the comment section:

10

Clearly, somebody doesn’t understand what “sell” means.

11

The essential difference between left and right is, respectively, support for the common man and support for the rich and powerful.

It is the left that hoped for humanitarian intervention in places like Rwanda. It is the right that supported the Contras against the populists of Nicaragua. Since the right is happy to pretend to humanitarian values when it promotes its wars for wealth and power, the left has become cynical. This is particularly the case now, while the lies that led to the Iraq disaster are still vivid in memory.

As a separate matter, the whole Arab world seems so dysfunctional that many are skeptical that any intervention will be helpful. Saudi Arabia, one of the staunchest U.S. “allies” in the region, has provided much financial support to terrorists like ISIS, if not ISIS itself. Hezbollah, one of the main enemies of ISIS, has blamed the Americans and Israel for secretly supporting ISIS! The Arab Spring, happily touted by the neocons with their purple-finger elections and their Friedmanist plunderings, has turned into an Arab Nightmare. It is no wonder that the libertarians, who hate all governments as a matter of principle, are effectively allied with those on the left who see how cynical U.S. foreign policy has been under Presidents like Reagan or Bush-43.

I still consider myself a centrist. I believe that a rich and powerful America has often been a force for prosperity and stability around the world. American support for dictators in Iran, Arabia and, yes, even in Saddam’s Iraq, has contributed to world stability as well as the wealth of American corporations. When deciding whether to wage war, the key issue isn’t left-vs-right or even right-vs-wrong, but smart-vs-stupid.

It is right to fight against the thugs of ISIS. It would be hopeful if present enemies, like U.S. and Iran, found common humanitarian values in a joint fight. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. My support for the fight against ISIS is luke-warm because there is no good end-game in view, and the U.S. government, emasculated by a disloyal opposition, will not be able to lead any diplomatic effort.

12

Because, lately, getting involved in other countries’ messes has made the situation worse, in addition to costing lives and money. It was a lose-lose-lose, except for the terrorists.

13

Right, if it is dropping bombs liberals are against it because of death, and it is a waste of money that could be paying for teachers. The death argument does not work, so libs try the money argument.

If it is sending in “help” liberals are dubious about what the general means by “help”, but if libs are convinced it really is to feed and educate cute little children, libs are ok with spending conservative gun money on that. If the conservatives want to send in a bunch of “advisers and military and humanitarian aid”, then libs pull out the money argument after the “no war until all else fails” argument fails.

14

All of the legitimate arguments against foreign intervention also apply to domestic interventions.

15

Except that foreign interventions have resulted in thousands of dead Americans. Also different – leaking money out of the US economy vs spending money inside the US economy; creating motivation for further terrorism; thousands and thousands of civilian deaths; damaging foreign relations with our allies; reducing our global prestige by bungling things up so badly… other than that, maybe they’re the same.

16

I understand. So I should have said “most” rather than all. There is that one big difference, the rarity of using military force within American borders. Although the war on drugs is arguably a pretty good example of the pitfalls of foreign intervention being applied here on US soil.

17

I don’t think “most” covers it, when the consequences of bad interventions overseas are so catastrophic in terms of violent loss of human life.

18

Few, if any, mainstream politicians (or citizens) on the left or the right take John Galt’s position. The OP is simply a straw man, and referring to Atlas Shrugged wrt foreign policy in the Middle East is a good way of ignoring the enormous complexity and history of that region.

The US is fighting against ISIL right now, and Obama’s request for a new AUMF is mostly criticized on the right for not going far enough and on the left for possibly leading to ground troupes and an escalating ground war. I’m not seeing a lot of calls in Congress for the US to just get out completely.

Once again, I see a bunch of people rushing to debate a position that an OP has asserted, but has not proven. I’m often astonished how regularly that happens on this MB.

19

The worst damage done by law-enforcement agencies is not in any way comparable to that done by armies.

20

Not trying to claim it is, only that it fails for many of the same reasons. Lack of understanding of local culture, resentment caused by heavy handed force, we’ve even gotten some low level terrorism due to the drug war and certainly an increase in crime with many of the same effects on society.