Squabble Furiously and Pop Balloons: A Weak Position for American Foreign Policy
By Gregory Wada | He/Him/His | Orange County Buddhist Church
Scrambling fighter jets to pop balloons. Photo-ops at an ostentatiously ineffective border wall. America is giving off big crumbling-empire vibes.
It’s clear through these actions that the targets of political ire are not foreign adversaries, but domestic ones - those idiots that we have to beat in the next election. To other countries, America may still be a big dog, but it's one that will predictably take the bait like a video game boss that you’re supposed to defeat and move on. Like professional wrestling, we are willing to buy into the fantasy of our military might, but I think that most of us, if really pressed, would admit in our hearts that the chair was designed to break on impact. As satisfying as it may be to rattle a saber now and then, the lessons of the twentieth century, not yet recessed from our mind, should remind us that war is not a good option. As a modern war rages in the Ukraine, where our military capacities are engaged in proxy, these exorbitant displays of our own weakness and inability to come together to solve problems as a country or diplomatic community only serve to weaken the dreams we might otherwise achieve.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” a proverb President Theodore Roosevelt attributed to West Africa,1 was the guiding message behind a foreign policy strategy that explicitly put diplomacy front-and-center. The point of the big stick was to not have to use it. Somehow this sentiment has become so perverted that some Republicans think that bald-faced (and empty) Trumpian threats are what somehow keeps the world order. And let's not forget that Democrats are also culpable in the drone-strike diplomacy that fueled strong anti-American sentiments.
A key component of “speak softly and carry a big stick” also recognized the need to allow foreign powers to save face.2 When the CCP says that “it’s just a weather balloon,” we know it’s theater, but like a good screenplay, we need to think two scenes ahead and not just Marvel-punch their balloons into oblivion and then try to find wreckage in the ocean. When they admit that they lost it in the wind3 (not a strong position), we could have accepted their save of face and moved towards a diplomatic resolution. Of all the creative opportunities to demonstrate “big stick” diplomacy (balloon capture, jamming, information gathering, or just being cool and not lurching at everything), we shot down a Chinese balloon and three randos that we can’t even explain.4
Public furor makes reasoned diplomacy difficult and sacrifices our ability to make calculated executive decisions for trite ballot-box issues. We know that balloons were tracked (in US airspace) by the Pentagon since before the current administration, but instead of allowing for a calculated diplomatic strategy, Americans will be fighting over who should have shot what and whose candidate is relatively stronger, all while our foreign power wanes into the din of the furious opinions of a crumbling nation.
It would be pithy to just end there. I don’t want to see democracy fade; I want to see this country transform, not be reduced to rubble. The social-technological forces of a given era may, like the climate over geological time, favor certain adaptations of government over others, and the current era of mass media and rapid communication has brought a much more unstable climate than optimistic pre-Internet social theorists predicted. Peer-to-peer communication, once thought as a boon towards more egalitarian politics, has given rise to rampant misinformation and interpersonal insularism, allowing us to find echo chambers as much as genuine discussion. The current techno-cultural environment may lean, in fact, towards authoritarianism.
Instead of submitting fatalistically to another era of autocrats, we must learn to modify the landscape to sustain democracy and human rights.
What, in this calculus, can we control? Certainly not access to information. The paradox of freedom is that it allows the option for its own removal. We cannot force the media to be less dramatic, nor limit what our neighbors complain about. This is perhaps where the more spiritual side of policy must be reckoned with - laws are only as good as the people who uphold them. The Constitution is only a piece of paper, as Japanese Americans learned when their rights as citizens were stripped during Incarceration. The moral body of law requires understanding, and for democracy to truly function, it needs compassion. You must wish for the freedom of others (not only yourself or your own group) and for the easement of their suffering, or the laws become just a rulebook by which one party gains victory over another (i.e. the current state of America).
America needs a moment of compassion, of learning to see other humans as fellow travelers. The goodwill that is necessary for democracy to function is the spring from which solutions will flow. Wishing justice and peace for only American-born and naturalized citizens betrays a position that knows no justice at all. It should be entirely obvious, but it is worth stating that protecting American interests (economically, militarily, geopolitically) does not directly equate to protecting democratic interests or humanitarian interests. It is crucial that we recognize the latter as the fundamental calling, but we are too used to comic books and movies where the former stands in as a proxy.
As the United States points its finger at China, is it doing so in the interest of liberation or the alleviation of suffering? Will shooting down balloons bring relief to the poor and oppressed?
Does it notice the three fingers of its own hand pointing back towards its own intelligence programs?
We need leaders with the grace and composure to de-escalate and work in the greater interest of peace. (We may also need China as an ally in stopping Russian aggression.)
Yes, Kid President Biden shouldn’t have been goaded into shooting at balloons with his good-old Scranton, never-back-down attitude. He shouldn’t be bragging or exaggerating how cool his stunt was. (It was aight.) But, fundamentally, we really shouldn’t be egging him or other elected officials on like that. I think both sides of the political divide should be able to see the pragmatic reality of this - that our foreign policy can’t be based on what gets the most views on the 24-hour news cycle.
The United States and European powers have long portrayed China as a “sleeping dragon,” betraying a fear more about power than about justice, which China now uses to its advantage in its case against US hegemony. China’s foreign minister Qin Gang used the balloon saga as an example of an avoidable diplomatic crisis, further stating, “The US claims it seeks to compete with China but does not seek conflict. But in reality, the so-called 'competition' by the US is all-round containment and suppression, a zero-sum game of life and death.”5 We must reckon with which complaints levied against the CCP are made in the name of human rights, and which are made in the name of geopolitical interest, and our current rhetoric is often confused. If we cannot separate the two in our minds, how can we hope to affect change?
Nurturing compassion and rekindling the desire to uplift the rights of all people will be the challenge for democratic nations moving forward. Mr. Big Stick himself, Theodore Roosevelt, is not globally beloved for his expansion of the Monroe Doctrine,6 and his treatment of many Latin American countries was paternalistic at best. While world powers writhe in embarrassment (though often fail to act) from colonialism and apartheid, the notion of “progress” that Roosevelt adhered to has clearly become passé and there is a large theoretical void in how and why the U.S. should be involved globally. The war-hawks even changed tune from “spreading democracy” to the blatant “we’re keeping the oil7” during the withdrawal in Syria.
Despite his flaws and the flaws of his nation, Roosevelt had a clear goal of “contributing to the progress of civilization,”8 and while the underpinnings of that may be outmoded, the fundamental position of seeing America as not the ends, but a means by which greater good could be achieved, may be exactly what our current foreign policy is lacking. If we don’t wish to replicate the chauvinism of an earlier era, this might be done through a more refined diplomatic agenda that acknowledges past mistakes and current inequities while seeking multilateral resolutions between different levels of government and organizations. This is such a big barn door to aim at, it feels a bit silly saying it, but when so many of our expensive missiles keep missing this target, it’s worth reiterating.
For America to act in this manner, such desires for peace, prosperity, and the freedom of all people must begin at home.
We must become smarter, better consumers of information.
We must become more tempered in our responses and more patient in our temperaments. We should be investing in the education of our youth, allowing and even hoping for them to evolve beyond the boundaries we have known. Elders should use their age and experience to curb the tempers of the youth, not exacerbate them - guide them from anger, not bicker about the color of their hair or their mannerisms.
Though its meaning has changed, we need to believe in progress again. Though we are disgraced, we need to get back on the world stage. We need to deal with our own anger and division and learn to speak softly again.
1Letter to Henry L. Sprague (1900) by Theodore Roosevelt, then-governor of New York.
2Price (1997), pp. 103
4The United States and Canada gave up the search for the three unidentified objects on February 18th, showing that they are either technically unable to learn anything from their rash actions or politically unwilling to admit their mistake. (see Romero, 2023)
5Gan, Nectar and CNN’s Beijing bureau (February 7, 2023)
6More on the Roosevelt Corollary see works cited under National Archives
7Then-president Trump told a gathering of police chiefs (because of course) the following in 2019. “We're keeping the oil — remember that. We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month? Keep the oil. We've secured the oil.” (Welna, 2019)
8Price (1997), pp. 107
Works Cited:
Brumfiel, Geoff. “Militaries have sought to use spy balloons for centuries. The real enemy is the wind.” NPR. February 17th, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157589985/militaries-have-sought-to-use-spy-balloons-for-centuries-the-real-enemy-is-the-w (Accessed February 17, 2023)
Gan, Nectar and CNN’s Beijing bureau. “China’s new foreign minister warns of conflict with US, defends Russia ties.” CNN. February 7, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/china/china-two-sessions-new-foreign-minister-us-rebuke-intl-hnk/index.html (Accessed March 8, 2023)
National Archives. “Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1905)” https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/roosevelt-corollary (Accessed February 17, 2023)
Price, Richard. "Ethics and Statecraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs." American Political Science Review 91, no. 3 (1997): 778-780.
Romero, Dennis. “U.S. ends its search for remnants of aerial objects shot down over Alaskan airspace and Lake Huron.” NBC News. February 17th, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-search-remnants-aerial-objects-shot-alaska-lake-huron-ends-no-resul-rcna71303 (Accessed February 18th, 2023)
Theodore Roosevelt to Henry L. Sprague. January 26, 1900. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss38299.mss38299-322_0787_1168/?sp=300&r=-0.495,-0.117,1.958,1.155,0
Welna, David. “If U.S. Takes Syrian Oil, It May Violate International Laws Against Pillage.” NPR. October 30, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774521472/if-u-s-takes-syrian-oil-it-may-violate-international-laws-against-pillage (Accessed February 17, 2023)
