common sense in foreign policy: a manifesto

Inspired by the ravings of the Euston pub crowd, LI has made up a manifesto our own selves. It isn’t a manifesto for the left, whatever the fuck that is. This manifesto is, modestly, a Common sense in Foreign Policy manifesto – named after old Tom Paine’s pamphlet, and taking as our motto his phrase: “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right…”

So, here it is, ladies and gents. Pass it around, print it out, and please, don’t handle it with greasy fingers: that is sooo gross.

1. Democracy. A democracy cannot be divided into a monarchy with regard to foreign policy and a democracy with regard to domestic policy. It must be one thing all the way through. Thus, foreign policy that is contrived in a tricky, low, or fraudulent matter by the executive, and pulled off like a trick on the body politic, is immoral to begin with, and will not result in any good thing. Instead, foreign policy options, especially when they involves extreme violations of the sovereignty of another nation, must be presented straightforwardly. There must be no skewing of or hiding of intelligence. There must be no unjustified threatmongering. A democratic foreign policy cannot be run like a crooked casino. There is no excuse in running it in this way to a good end, any more than there would be in cheating at cards to donate the winnings to an orphanage.
2. Transparency of options. If an “intervention” is contemplated by any democratic power, we must have good faith projections as to the cost of it, the human resources required, the need for it, and the timeline by which we can judge whether it is a success or not.
3. Transparency of human means. No intervention can be considered moral that seeks to foist fraudulent proxies for the intervening power on the conquered state. Any alliance of multinational democracies that seek to enforce norms of human rights or governance upon another state by violence cannot, rightfully, double that violence by elevating pawns whose loyalty is to the intervening state(s) to positions of power.
4. Transparency of interests. All states have interests. Not all interests are the same. States may have widely varying economic, political, and ideological interests. A coalition of states that intervenes in the affairs of another state must take care not to merely bend the subjugated state to the interests of the occupiers.
5. Occupational forces – checks and balances. Multinational coalitions call for multinational governance. Unchecked executive power cannot reside in the most powerful state in the alliance.
6. Occupational means. No occupying force is justified in making sweeping changes to the occupied state’s infrastructure that are not a direct result of the state’s previous inhumane behavior. A state, for instance, that has an interest in free trade cannot use the opportunity of occupying another state to enforce economic codes to its liking. Nor can it denude a state of its entire defense structure, or destroy its social welfare system.
7. Transparency of occupational means. Occupying powers cannot seize the funds of the occupied state to do with what they will. Elementary rules of transparency must apply.
8. Timeliness. Occupation should occur with a clear timeline and conditions for exit from the very beginning. Sincere efforts to enroll the occupied in self-government should be enacted from the very beginning. No occupied state should become the scene of mere opportunism by the occupied powers military forces in terms of siting military headquarters, using the territory of the occupied state to attack other, neighboring states, and so on. All of this is, again, to bend the occupied state exclusively to the partial interests of the occupier, which violates the spirit and letter of humanistic intervention.

There you go. Much shorter, for one thing, than the gasbagging of the Euston pubcrawlers.

To top it off, a little grandiose language. If these conditions are not met, we, the undersigned,. will try with might and main to sabotage those efforts that are undemocratic or fraudulent by peaceful means, such as working to deny the military the manpower it needs to continue, working to cut off funding for the occupation, and propagandizing against it to the best of our abilities.