Wisdom-based Foreign Relations
Preliminary remarks
Some readers may object to my use of the word “secular” in this article because for them there is no dualism between the secular and the scared and thus no such thing as “secular” life. Instead, “all of life is religious.” This does not mean that everyone participates in overtly religious activities all day, every day. Of course they don’t. It means that people hold deep faith commitments about life. And this is true for everyone, but everyone, including atheists and secularists. In this view, even atheist individuals or secularly-based societies have ultimate faith assumptions (commitments to beliefs about what lies behind the material world that cannot be proved but must be taken by faith). Nevertheless, life proceeds in the direction of the ultimate faith commitment that an individual or a society holds. That faith may be in human autonomy, or a closed universe, or nationalism, and so on, and it usually lies in the background of an individual’s or society’s life, being taken for granted.
Until recent years, however, when faith taken for granted in the West (“secular” faith) has been made conscious to an often sleepy public square, if only through best-selling, controversial books from so-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, who have, in their polemics against religion, unembarrassingly explained where their own faith lies. The essayist Christopher Hitchens is another, and in “Christopher Hitchens: Man of Faith,” an essay responding to his book god is not Great, I proved, as much as it is possible to prove about deep faith commitments, the title of the essay.
So I am sympathetic to the “all of life is religious” view, but I am unwilling to drop the word “secular” or employ it only as if it were describing some sort of bad disease. I am using it as it is found on the lips of common usage, in which “secular” merely denotes things that are not considered “religious.”
I am using both words, then, in what could be called their normally understood sense, rather than in the technical sense meant by the “all of life is religious” theologians. In common usage, religion is about how people express the commitment they have to God symbolically and what goes on in their churches, mosques, or synagogues. It is about their rituals, sacred books, theology, explicit witness, or devotional activities such as prayer and worship. Distinct from that is what people have learned to call “secular,” a word to describe what takes place outside of their churches, synagogues, or mosques. It is used to point to aspects of life such as the arts, science, law, business, politics, legal processes, social relationships, and so on, and especially often, to one’s work in the world. (See: John Peck & Charles Strohmer, Uncommon Sense: God’s Wisdom for Our Complex and Changing World.)
My main source of inspiration for the five norms introduced here comes from years of studying the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Bible, and the scholarship that has grown up around the wisdom literature of both sources. This literature arose in the old-world Middle East, and what took me be surprise and began to grip my imagination was: 1) how much of it surrounds the foreign policy of the time, 2) that this dimension of the literature is largely overlooked by scholarship, and 3) how winsome, believable, and relevant the narrative is for our contemporary Middle East situation with its religious and “secular” actors.Adversarial bilateral relations then get caught in a trap in which each nation feels that it is being forced to sign off on what amounts to the sectarian demands of the other’s ideological checklist
Also, this essay assumes that political ideology, whether secular or religious, or some composite of both, can influence, if not control, the decisions and moves of a state’s leadership in its talks with another state’s leadership. This approach to international relations has figured large in the prevention of wars between modern Western democracies because, although these democracies are not identical, they have much political ideology and social structure in common that is typically called secular. A similar history can be found in the Arab world, or across the larger Islamic world, whose countries have enough religious ideology in common to sway its many and varied governments from going to war with each other.
However, in relations between countries of the West and of the Muslim Middle East, that history, as everyone knows, has been one of war as much as it has been of peace. Some of the blame for the wars lies at the feet of national leaders and their policymakers (on all sides) who relied too exclusively on political ideology for a thaw in their nation’s relations with an adversarial nation. That approach usually doesn’t work. No one likes to be forced. And so the other nation responds in kind. Adversarial bilateral relations then get caught in a trap in which each nation feels that it is being forced to sign off on what amounts to the sectarian demands of the other’s ideological checklist. This figures huge in the situation between the United States and Iran today (President Obama’s more pragmatic approach may not in the end be able to change this, and the ultrafundamentalist ideologues of the Iranian regime don’t seem to want to). Instead of this lose-lose scenario, I believe the wisdom tradition offers diplomats, negotiators, and policymakers, as well as the domestic populations of both countries, under creative and responsible leaders, the potential for moving into a win-win situation.
Introducing five norms of wisdom
I have identified five norms for international relations (there may be more) in the historic wisdom narrative, and to these I have given the names: peaceableness (e.g., peacemaking, peacebuilding, the pursuit of cooperative agreements and arrangements); relations (among people who are different); insight (from learned lessons and relevant other experiences); skill (in diplomacy and negotiations; preventing and resolving problems and crises between states); and mutuality (the common ground interests, values, and concerns shared by all peoples everywhere). The acronym p.r.i.s.m. makes a convenient memory aid for these five norms, but the categories are by no means airtight. In the light they shed on our subject, there’s plenty of overlap among the norms.
Right off the bat, Christian readers will notice that wisdom-based approaches to foreign policy are about something quite different than finding clever verses from the Book of Proverbs and somehow getting our elected leaders to apply them. And although scholars do not see a wisdom literature per se in the Quran that corresponds with that of the Bible, Muslim readers will notice, in these five norms of wisdom, correspondences to features of the broader Islamic understanding of ijtihad (see “Two Theories of Ijtihad,” M. A. Muqtedar Khan, on the Web). Foreign policy specialists, of course, will have recognized in the p.r.i.s.m. normative roles that diplomacy has played ever since kingdom first learned how to get along with kingdom, so it must not be concluded that anything completely new is being introduced here. However, rather than being informed by the wisdom way, the norms that have given direction to the practice of international relations traditionally have been shaped by religious ideologies (e.g., Europe under Constantinianism, or the Middle East under the Ottomans) or by “secular” ideologies (e.g., the modern West’s political idealism and realism and their derivatives, or neoconservatism).the norms of wisdom would provide somewhat of a different energy, shape, and trajectory for the formation of international relations
So constructed today, bilateral or multilateral relations between nations that are quite different can easily freeze over. This does not mean that every compass point of modern statecraft has been or will be unwise or destructive. It does mean that the norms of wisdom would provide somewhat of a different energy, shape, and trajectory for the formation of international relations than national leaders, religious figures, and foreign policy specialists might intuitively perceive as possible from the paradigms that have become second nature to them.
Some of the following therefore may seem a bit foreign, if not alien, if only because the vast literature of modern international relations scholarship does not go back far enough. As a rule it starts with the early Greeks, such as Plato or Thucydides and the latter’s great work on the Peloponnesian War. I understand why classical Greece is the common starting point for international relations studies today, but I would like to suggest that it does not take students back far enough to learn from a time and a place, the old-world Middle East, when international politics was not so beholden to abstractions. There is precious little scholarship about this period of international relations. (Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations, edited by Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook, is a notable exception, as is the little book Prophets and Wise Men by William McKane, if you can find it.)
The wisdom norm of peaceableness
In its appraisal of human nature, the historic wisdom tradition is not idealistic but realistic. That is, the wisdom literature acknowledges a tragic flaw in human nature. Paradoxically, however, almost in defiance of that realism, the paths of wisdom are fundamentally about peace, as the literature makes clear, such as in the Hebrew Bible (Proverbs 3:17) and the Christian New Testament (James 3:17). Wisdom calls people who are different to find and build on cooperative ways of life in their relationships with each other. (By the way, don’t think that this is a “religious” article just because I’ve now cited two religious sources. The most reliable literature we have of the historic wisdom tradition appears in those sources, and that literature is not about religious life per se, e.g., the way we worship, pray, share our faith, theologize, and the like. Instead, it is chiefly concerned with the affairs, issues, and struggles of what today we typically refer to as secular life, including international relations.)
In both sources also, although wisdom cries in the halls of power for nations to beat their swords into plowshares, the narrative is realistic about the possibilities. Here we are in this world, where Kalashnikovs, cruise missiles, and nuclear weaponry outnumber plowshares; where even the pragmatic foreign policies of the West and the Muslim Middle East remain guided by sectarian ideologies; and where Samuel Huntington’s thesis about a pending clash of civilizations seem horribly too imaginable. Are the peaceable paths of wisdom for another world? Or do they intersect with the long and winding troubled roads of our world’s international relations to show us ways to more cooperative arrangements? Does the wisdom norm of peaceableness have resources for us and for our leaders now, in this world? Let’s seethe paths of wisdom are fundamentally about peace
In the modern inter-state system, the “absence of war,” which is largely what the system means by “peace,” can end when the political ideology of one nation starts to conflict too practically with that of another nation (often over economic realities). To prevent that end, diplomacy and negotiations become critical. But as someone has said, the two world wars of the twentieth century removed all doubts that peacemaking is one of the most ticklish tasks of diplomacy. Too right. And today we would add the U.S.-led war about Iraq to that notion.
It is commonly misunderstood by non-specialists that the same principles apply to easing tensions between adversarial nations as apply to settling disputes between individuals, so, they ask, why all the fuss? Peacemaking in the international community, however, is in fact exponentially more difficult. In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Christian political writer Reinhold Niebuhr put it this way, in his compound-complex way of reasoning: Individuals, being moral, “are able to consider interests other than their own in determining problems of conduct, and are capable, on occasion, of preferring the advantages of others to their own…. Their rational faculty prompts them to a sense of justice which educational discipline may refine and purge of egoistic elements until they are able to view a social situation, in which their own interests are involved, with a fair measure of objectivity. But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups. In every human group [Niebuhr included nations in this designation] there is less reason to guide and check impulses, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.” It is a dilemma between what Niebuhr often called an individualistic ethic and a collectivist ethic. Diplomats, negotiators, and international mediators are among those who ply their craft in the latter context.
The wisdom norm of peaceableness recognizes that there are different principles for thawing adversarial bilateral or multilateral relations than for, say, mending a marriage. Within this collective human predicament, when conflicting national interests are pressed egoistically, if not demonically, against one another, or when the threat of war arises, the wisdom norm of peaceableness urges national leaders and their diplomats and foreign policy advisors to back it down and concentrate instead on the better angels of human nature, the goal being to marginalize the absolutized ideological interests that have come to control the relations. Under the guidance of creative and prudent leaders, the wisdom way, then, would provide a means for the parties to talk through sticking point issues and seek agreements in areas that were not possible when conflicting ideologies became absolutized, adhered to, and controlled or ended talks between their nations.
Also, the cooperative international relations that this norm seeks is not that which is pushed and pursued by absolutized ideological interests, in which the word “peace” is one-sided. Frequently when war is on the horizon, one party will say, “We only want peaceable relations with them,” but the other party is thinking, “You just want peace for yourself. You’re just out for your own good. What about my good?” Because the wisdom norm of peaceableness is motivated by mutual good, a question for each party not only becomes how can we prevent war but, “How can I help with your well-being?”successful bilateral or multilateral talks informed by the wisdom way will not just be the absence of war but cooperation ordered toward the flourishing of the countries
The rewards of successful bilateral or multilateral talks informed by the wisdom way will not just be the absence of war but cooperation ordered toward the flourishing of the countries. For this kind of peace to be successful in the long run, however, international policy agreements must capture the hearts and minds of the domestic populations the policymakers represent; in other words, major policy pursued between two (or more) nations must be seen as legitimate by a large percentage of the domestic populations in question if it is to succeed. I will say more about this under the norm of relations.
Here, I just note that although foreign policy decision making is not particularly “democratic” — it is superintended by the relatively small community of a state’s foreign policy elite, who do not submit their policies to a direct popular vote — domestic attitudes loom large in a nation’s international politics, especially about the big questions of war and peace. If, for example, a large enough number of American voters favor adversarial relations with Iran, that collective attitude will carry considerable weight in Washington’s policies toward Iran, even if the Obama White House wants to keep talking. Conversely, however, if a large percentage of Iranians favor, as they do, friendlier relations between Iran and the United States, it is unlikely that that would carry much weight with the hardline ultrafundamentalist elite that controls Iran’s foreign policy apparatus (their repression and violence against Iran’s reformist leaders and electorate demonstrates this, especially since the disputed June 2009 presidential elections).
In another part of the Middle East, majorities among both the Israelis and the Palestinians still want to see formal peaceable relations established between them. Were this not so, it would be foolish for the Quartet and the League of Arab States still to be favoring a two-state solution, especially given the endemic violence that gnaws at the loom of peace. It seems to me that there is a gut-wrenching sense of wisdom at work, here, in the cry of these two majority domestic populations for a final agreement. Having recognized that neither side is going to attain perfect justice in a final agreement, both populations are nevertheless showing an inordinate amount of patience in being willing and able to absorb (so far) acute pain and suffering, tragedies of death, hope deferred, and more as a sign of their enduringly mutual commitment to an equitable peace. Where do they get this from? Not from any political ideology that I am aware of. There may be a clearer present-day illustration of two adversarial peoples relying on the wisdom norm of peaceableness. But perhaps not.
