Iran, and Foreign Policy more broadly

Foreign policy is an interesting thing, though perhaps not as complicated a thing as we make it seem. It is, at its core, the practice of human relationship. And most of that is learned in kindergarten…you know, when you first ventured out into the world to learn the unfortunate truth that it isn’t all about you.

I began to write this post before the missiles and drones began to fly in Iran. I started to sketch it out after listening to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos in January. It was an interesting perspective from the ‘middle market’ of countries. It was particularly interesting juxtaposed with some of the February speeches from U.S. leaders that seemed very comfortable both with espousing a Christian worldview and looking back with a weird longing at what others may view as colonialism. I seem to remember our founders instead threw off the yoke of colonialism and deliberately chose no national religion.

This isn’t my longest post. That title went to my post on guns. But this one isn’t short, I realize. I guess safety just gets me going. So apologies that this one is more of a read at the DMV than a read in line at the grocery store.

Before diving more broadly into my thoughts on foreign policy, let me first speak to the current war in Iran. First and foremost, my prayers continue to be with our brave service men and women. They are experts at what they do and come by that expertise through dedication and tireless training. The civilian leaders that place them in harm’s way should use the same level of care and preparation before putting them there, never assuming for themselves an ego inflated by the impressiveness of that military. Letting someone else’s sacrifice give you swagger comes awfully close to stealing valor.

My prayers are also with the families of those brave service members. They sacrifice just as much every day, but on these days bear the added burden of the anxiety that must accompany each ring of the phone or knock at the door.

My prayers, too, are with the citizens of Iran. We are all fellow human beings, each of us going through life searching for some of the same things – to be safe, to grow comfortable in our own skin, to find our soulmate, to raise a family, and to live a life of purpose, whatever that purpose may be. But some of us are more fortunate than others to live in a place that allows us to pursue all those things openly. I pray that whoever ultimately takes the helm in Iran allows all citizens the right of self-determination, free of oppression. But it is the Iranians’ right to choose that leader, not our prerogative to dictate it.

President Trump was not wrong in joining the attack on Iran. The timing, the preparation, and the end game may be questioned, but the world is the better without the Ayatollah. The world is better without a state sponsor of terrorism. The world is the better with a weakened Iranian military and without Iran’s proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

But the world would be better still with a plan for what comes next. Hope is not a strategy and expecting civilians to rise up because we launched a few missiles ignores the fact that many in the world have seen what happens when they count on U.S. support only to find it disappears in two, four, or eight years. Afghanistan is a recent example.

Absent a plan, we may end up with leaders in Iran even more fanatical with even more hatred toward us with even more distrust toward negotiating with us. Absent a plan, we may end up with more of the same, but with people less skilled or less restrained in their roles and, as a result, more dangerous. Absent a plan, Iranian nuclear work again goes into overdrive, as their only true deterrent against “The Great Satan.” Absent a plan, a weakened and confused Iran may lose track of some of its weapons; it seems to me the greatest threat isn’t necessarily a nation state with a weapon, but rather a non-nation state with one. But who knows, absent a plan, we may get lucky. I hope so.

Perhaps our founders gave the power to declare war to the Legislature, not the Executive, because they believed that U.S. foreign policy would be more consistent and war would be better planned, with more support from the people, if two large bodies of representatives and senators, rather than one president, had the responsibility to declare war. Perhaps they thought more cynically that an inability of that many legislators to come to consensus would, in and of itself, keep our nation out of war. And that would generally be a good thing. Perhaps, even more telling, the founders placed the responsibility to declare war not as the first enumerated power of the Legislature, but the eleventh. They had just emerged from war and knew its costs. One man or woman should not be able to commit the nation or the world to the economic and human costs of war.

War should require thought and debate. And even with that, a nation can still get it wrong. After all, the reason Iran has been able to become as dangerous as it became, sponsoring terrorism through proxies, is that the United States removed the one counterweight to Iran in the region…Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Bush 41 knew this and left Hussein in power. Bush 43 did not. If you break it, you buy it. Our leaders should be sure we can afford a thing before we deliberately break it.

I fear that this current endeavor in Iran will end as many of President Trump’s endeavors do. He takes flyers. And if they work, great. If they don’t, oh well. But either way he declares victory and moves on to the next shiny object mentioned to him at dinner or over the conservative airwaves by a person knowing if you stroke his ego, he will listen. He has now ruined two presidencies, that both could have been rousing successes, by being himself. We will spend decades fixing his flyers, patching the Constitution, rebuilding trust, rehiring subject matter experts, and our grandkids will take on the interest payments on his national debt. And this is to say nothing of whatever will happen to individuals as a result of our data stolen by DOGE contractors.

One of the saddest truths about war is that often war begins because good people didn’t do enough when they should have to stop a bad man, or even an unthoughtful one, from having an outsized impact on history. As they say, history may not repeat but it certainly does rhyme.

World War II cost countries over $4 trillion in today’s dollars for direct military spending alone. In 1945, the United States spent over 40% of its GDP on defense spending. The total cost of that war, including reconstruction, is estimated to have exceeded $20 trillion in today’s dollars. More importantly, the war took an estimated 60-80 million lives. And that is to say nothing of the damage done to our planet then and still, with upwards of 20,000 shipwrecks continuing to decay on ocean floors. All because no one stopped Adolph Hitler.

The current war in Ukraine has exceeded $1 trillion dollars including reconstruction estimates. It is over 30% of Ukraine’s GDP and over 10% of Russia’s annually. The war has cost over 400,000 lives. And we may never know how many more lives were lost because of the food insecurity caused in other nations by the disruption of food exports from Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia accounted for 30% of world-wide wheat exports before the war. All this because no one stopped Vladimir Putin.

War is expensive. Compare the GDP numbers above to the less than 4% of GDP that the United States spends annually on defense, foreign aid, and our UN contributions combined. By comparison that annual preventative spend is minuscule.

There are times for statesmen and times for generals. Good leaders know when to deploy each and when to tell each it’s time for the other to take over. But make no mistake, missiles in the air launched by a nation state are always a failure of foreign policy. That isn’t to say missiles in the air can’t be justifiable. But it is a failure none the less, and usually an expensive one, both in blood and treasure. And often the economic price regressively hits the lower half of the economic spectrum. For those Americans, the current monthly increase of 90-cents per gallon for gasoline doesn’t just hurt, it precludes them from making other purchases. It becomes a lifestyle change. War, even when justified, is always a choice. And bad choices have a way of breeding more bad decisions, like responding to a temporary surge in oil prices by removing U.S. sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil, allowing both those malign actors to fund their respective war efforts.

I know that waste, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Some may think that a great bottle of wine is waste, others think it a worthwhile pleasure. So too some believe excess government spending on entitlements is a waste. To be sure, there are degrees. But war is the biggest waste of all – billions of dollars in ordinance used over the course of one weekend and the billions more to rebuild compared to the investment of those same dollars in education or healthcare? It’s no contest. One is an expense, the other an investment. It’s just that one makes for better TV.

Foreign policy really is just the practice of human relationship. There is no difference between the interactions of two nations or of two human beings. Each has a right to pursue self-interests (or happiness) and a responsibility not to violate another’s in the process. Friction in human relationship, or war in international relationship, occurs when one puts its interests or wants above another’s.

Sometimes I think foreign policy is the geo-political equivalent of the ‘where do you want to go for dinner tonight’ conversation. Seemingly an easy question, but sometimes harder in practice. One can’t always pick the restaurant as that is burdensome or controlling. One can’t never pick as that shows indecisiveness and puts all the work on the other person. But one also needs to recognize when the other has simply had a bad day and can’t face making one more decision. Most times, though, both parties need to work toward consensus. And therein lies the challenge.

Just like in human relationship, neighbors are sometimes easier to deal with when their home is a mile down the road rather than 15 feet away. Foreign policy got harder when geography shrank. It got harder when ships were invented. It got harder when airplanes were invented. It got harder when their pollution could reach our shores. It got harder when intercontinental missiles were invented. It got harder when armed drones were invented. And AI will no doubt make it harder still.

And because foreign policy got harder, there is safety in numbers. As tough as one might be, no one likes walking down an alley alone in the wee hours of the morning. Around this big globe of ours, it is always 3 AM somewhere. Knowing other nations will answer the phone is indispensable. We shouldn’t be surprised when we push our friends around on tariffs that they don’t want to use their ships to escort oil tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz for us. We broke it; they didn’t.

Successful relationships, whether between people or nations, require consistency and, at least, the predictability of being present. That isn’t boring. It is security and comfort. In foreign policy it tells your friends you will be there in times of need and your enemies that you will always be watching. If I cannot rely on you in the small things, how can I believe you will be there for the big things. If you take me for granted in one way, you will certainly take me for granted in others. And that is true whether it is the United States feeling it does too much of the heavy lifting in world security or another nation feeling it is always treated as an afterthought.

The golden rule of personal relationship is to treat others as you would like to be treated. It is equally true in foreign relations. Don’t invade lest ye be invaded. Don’t be a bully as you don’t want be bullied. Don’t steal, manipulate, or coerce as you don’t want to be stolen from, manipulated, or coerced. Etc.

Meddling in the lives of others, even with the best of intentions, is also a violation of the golden rule. And it never works out in the end. Many of the mistakes the United States has made in foreign policy are from meddling, or the perception of meddling. And our meddling is sometimes hypocritical. If you preach self-determination, you should practice letting others determine their own course. To be clear here, I don’t mean allowing a malign state actor to develop weapons of mass destruction. Self-defense is not meddling, nor is seeking a world order that protects our own citizens. But our job is to be a democracy and protect the rights of all our citizens. And if modeling that behavior becomes contagious, particularly when bolstered by interdependent global trade and increased social connectivity in the world, then great.

Nations, like people, sometimes forget what they liked about one another or fall into the ‘what have you done for me lately’ trap, forgetting the cumulative good of decades of friendship to instead hold on to that recent slight. That is the transactionalism we have seen from our current administration. It is unseemly. But worse than that it opens the door for tit for tat. It says that whatever the issue of the day, that is larger than our overarching principles. And when principles stop being the navigational force, the moral pull, we are already lost. For even when we are pulled toward the moral, we still sometimes fail. How often would we fail without that pull?  

To be sure, sometimes there are irreconcilable differences, divorce in human relationship and war in international relationship. Sometimes there are simply bad actors that need to be cut out of one’s life. And sometimes, someone breaks into your home in the wee hours and deserves to be eliminated. But that is a last resort. You first yell, “Get out and stay out!” That’s the diplomat. When that doesn’t work you pump that shotgun. That’s the sanctions and repositioning of military assets. When that doesn’t work, then and only then do you pull the trigger. But much like a homeowner cannot legally chase that intruder down the street once he flees to gun him down, so too must a superpower use only proportionate force. Because nothing is a greater tool for radicalization than giving a terrorist the ability to turn to an unemployed young man who just saw his sister blown up at school and say that is the “devil” that did this to you.

Time will tell if President Trump was correct to take this aggressive action in Iran. But one thing he was certainly wrong about was to campaign on the idea of pulling us back from armed conflict. The world is full of evil actors as the Iranian regime proves. Campaigning on pulling us back from conflict is a naive premise that forgets the presidencies defined by the attacks on Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11. And voting for someone who campaigns that way, though our hearts may be in the right place, is equally naive. Peace should be our goal, but we don’t consent to be governed and we don’t spend $1 trillion dollars a year on defense because peace is the normal state of man.

The world doesn’t need less America; it needs more. It doesn’t need a less principled and more transactional America; it needs one fighting tooth and nail to cling to its better angels. It doesn’t need a more meddling America; it needs a more consistent, long-term focused one. It needs us, not because we know more than others but because we are the ones in the position to do it. To those much is given, much is expected.

Before wrapping up, I am reminded this week of a theory of behavioral communication I learned about in college called the Parent-Adult-Child model. The name can be misleading as it has less to do with those three actual roles we may play in life and more to do with the three different ego states under which any of us can operate. The first ego state is the Parent, sometimes authoritarian and sometimes nurturing. The second is the Child, reactionary and emotional. The last is the Adult, rational and logical and mature. Effective communication occurs when the two parties operate under their expected ego state. For example, if a parent is communicating to a child from the Parent ego state and the child is responding to the parent from the Child ego state, there is no issue. Issues can arise, for example, when the parent speaks to the child from a Child ego state – reactionary and emotional. Now you have two people in a reactionary, emotional state. It doesn’t go well.

The same can be true in foreign policy. Because while all negotiation goes better when both parties are operating in an Adult-to-Adult ego state (rational, logical, problem solving), too often one country is trying to operate as a Parent toward a Child and too often the other is trying to be treated as an Adult. Think a colonial power and a colony seeking independence. Think a nation that has existed for 5,000 years interacting with a nation that has only existed for 250 years. Think a nation with hundreds of years of grievance, justified or not. In all foreign policy, we need to operate in that Adult-to-Adult state or there will never be peace. Too often, now, nations leave behind a resentment born of treating other nations as children.

There is a funny thing about hurt and resentment. Sometimes future generations hold onto it more so than did the generation that endured the acts that created strife in the first place. And resentment will find an outlet.

There is another thing for which I am praying today. And that is that world leaders recognize that oppression in the name of religion exists on a spectrum. It doesn’t always look as severe as an Ayatollah or the most extreme application of sharia law. It can also be a U.S. Vice President far too comfortable using Christianity as a dog whistle. It can also be an Israeli Prime Minister turning justifiable self-defense into his own crusade. The laws of God and the laws of man are, and must remain, two separate books – respecting people’s beliefs but governing for those of all beliefs and of no belief at all. Too much harm has already been done throughout human history under the guise of religion. And too many people in our country who are pushing a Christian worldview are forgetting that nagging little tenet of our belief…loving thy neighbor.

The morning radio host Don Imus, flawed as he was, had great intellectual curiosity. That is what I loved about him and what I miss most now that he is gone. He spoke of religion using this analogy. Living and working in New York City, he would say that he knew which directions he would give someone to get to Central Park, but he also knew that wasn’t the only way to get there.

For those of us of faith, we were taught it. But no matter how fervently we believe it, we don’t know it for certain. That’s why it is called faith. Looking at world population by religion, 2.3 billion follow Christianity, 2.0 billion follow Islam, 1.2 billion follow Hinduism, 300 million follow Buddhism, and 14 million follow Judaism. But none of us has met our great prophet or deity. So there is a bit of arrogance in believing that one’s faith, above all others, has the corner on the truth and great arrogance in killing for one’s religion. Arrogance isn’t the best of human qualities; humility is.

There will always be fanaticism in the name of religion, unfortunately. But how we interact with other countries can either help lesson fanaticism or increase it. One doesn’t win someone over by telling them they are wrong. One wins someone over by asking them why they believe what they believe and talking to them long enough to find common ground to then build upon. Hatred isn’t born of nothing and it can’t be killed out of existence. Killing creates more hatred that is even harder to talk out.

I guess what I am saying is that one can be right about everything and hold everyone else to that standard. But ultimately that makes for a very lonely, frustrating, and even dangerous life. Community…what human nature craves…requires building consensus and sharing. You know, kindergarten stuff.