Lessons of Freedom From 20 Years of War Against Jihadism

[Valin]

Real Clear Politics

Peter Berkowitz

Sept 5 2021

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The better conclusion, however, is that to serve the nation’s surpassing interest in securing the conditions conducive to freedom at home, U.S. foreign policy must responsibly identify opportunities to advance it abroad. In support of that conclusion, the two decades since the Sept. 11 attacks furnish several lessons of freedom, paid for with blood and treasure.

 

First, the conventional categories of foreign policy analysis — realists vs. idealists, isolationists vs. interventionists, and nationalists vs. globalists — should be set aside because they reflect hidebound dichotomies that derail clear thinking about America’s role in the world. The challenge is not to choose one of the poles but to secure American freedom by striking a reasonable balance among competing imperatives. U.S. foreign policy should begin with a clear-eyed assessment of the motives, aims, and geopolitical logic that drive nation-states while never losing sight, on the one hand, of how customs and ideas shape regime conduct and, on the other hand, of the rights inherent in all human beings. U.S. foreign policy should be grounded in America’s needs and priorities, which include the preservation of a free and open international order, while fashioning plans to act abroad — from speeches, educational initiatives, and foreign aid to (always as a last resort) military operations — to defend U.S. interests. And U.S. foreign policy should insist that sovereign nation-states are the fundamental political unit of international affairs even as securing freedom at home compels America to cultivate a diversity of friends, partners, and allies and to maintain — and reform — international institutions to promote comity and commerce among nations.

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Fifth, the United States must rededicate itself to educating Americans for liberty. Citizens indoctrinated from grade school on up with the notions that oppression is pervasive in the United States, that government and society must allocate rewards and burdens based on race, and that America is a uniquely iniquitous nation will be in no position to safeguard freedom at home, let alone understand the limited means by which America can advance it abroad. Instead, from K-12 through college the core curriculum must explore the principles of freedom on which the United States is based and the constitutional traditions through which those principles have been institutionalized — an exploration that includes the nation’s tragic betrayals of those principles and the heroic struggles to set things right. Individual freedom, human equality, the consent of the governed, limited government, and a foreign policy dedicated to securing American freedom should be seen for what they are — not a set of partisan commitments but the nation’s precious heritage and the basis on which right and left in America can constructively debate, and cooperate in determining, what’s best for the nation.

The debacle in Afghanistan coupled with the magnitude of the China challenge make the learning of these lessons of freedom from America’s 20 years of war against jihadism a vital national interest.