THE
FOREIGN POLICY OF REPUBICANISM:
A Free Society in an Unfree World
We are good; they are
evil. The sense of this statement is
misleading, innocent of all regard for circumstance. It cannot possibly be true in the sense intended by post World
War II moralists who discovered collective responsibility. Nor can it be true in the sense of those who
ascribe some character to a people as opposed to individuals. Nor, again, can it be merely relatively
true, in the sense that the statement is true for all and, hence, only
nominally exclusive. Nonetheless, the
burden of this essay is to prove that the statement can be true, somehow. For, what hinges on that proof is the proper
understanding of a just security policy in a republican regime.
In 1796 French Minister
Pierre Adet labeled George Washington a “Machiavellian” on account of
Washington’s articulation of a proper foreign policy for the United States in
the famous ““Farewell” Address.” Adet
was concerned that Washington was willing to ignore America’s defense
commitment to France for the sake of America’s advantage in the world, thus
ignoring higher principles for mere self-interest. Washington, however, believed that a republic needed to enjoy
just as much freedom of action in the world as do monarchies and
principalities. The issue was not
whether the free society could carry out the needs of diplomacy and security
policy, but how it could do so consistent with the moral principles
underlying the regime.
Twenty years ago Harold W.
Rood argued that free societies have an obligation to protect the rights of
citizens. He appealed to the
“traditional obligations” of government, so as to suggest that free societies
inherit the obligations common to all states whatever their form. Appealing to the “nature of the world at
large,” he saw every society’s duty to defend the weak against the strong as
extending into international affairs the grounds of domestic association.[1]
It would be difficult to belie
this understanding of “justice,” substituting the rule of law for the right of
the stronger. But we are entitled to
pause upon considering the praise of Henry II, that he caused “ravening wolves”
to “dwell harmlessly with the sheep.”
The suggestion that Henry II achieved through “fear of the law” what
Christian gospel expects from agape raises the possibility that the
“traditional obligations of government” are an alternative to the prospect of
goodness. That is to say, where justice
is well enforced by law, there is less necessity to attempt the conquest of
hearts with love.
Similarly, the plus que Hobbesiian version of “do unto others as you would have them do
unto you,” whispered into the ear of Queen Elizabeth, “in order not to be
struck, strike,” makes the anticipation of evil a prior concern to, and
condition for, the desire to be good.
In Professor Rood’s terms, no one can freely entertain motivations of
charity and justice where they confront the choice of safety or
submission. Submission comes at the
cost of all the tools of free choice.
Conversely, therefore, a
free people sets the horizon of peace, justice, and defense as the protective
shadow for the exercise of liberty. It
is rather this conclusion, than principles of goodness, which we readily
discern “in the nature of politics and of the human condition.” This, I take it, is the key to his
theory. It justifies his call for an
“instinct” of defense like to the instincts of “justice and right.”
Finally, the foundations of
“justice and right,” so far as I can discern them, seem to be the penchants
citizens have for the pursuit of their interests. This accounts for the competition between the instincts. Rood,
however, argued that the competition is misguided, since citizens should find
in defense the grounds for assuring the pursuit of individual interests.
To this point, the argument
does not further our search for a meaningful version of the statement, “We are
good; they are evil.” It rather
suggests that that question is not central to the question of defense. That is the reason the obligations, as the
problems, of a free society, seem not to differ from those of any other state
or society. I submit, however, that on
these grounds one is unable to judge whether to prefer the safety which his own
government assures or that which a would-be conqueror must ultimately promise.
We still require, therefore,
a means of distinguishing one form of safety from another, as a precondition
for the discovery of the conditions of safety for a free society. We need to discover the implicit rule of
necessity upon which Rood relied to foreclose the possibility of choosing
between states as a viable means of securing the pursuit of individual
interests.
Such a philosopher’s stone
must be political, insofar as it informs not merely theoretical discussions but
the actual grounds of political decision.
For that reason, I will employ a practical example, as an illustration
of the difficulty. If we rehearse the
relationship between the United States and the erstwhile Soviet Union, I think
we will find grounds for considering obligations of states beyond those
introduced by Rood. The outcome of the
struggle between the two super powers suggests that this example is a realistic
appraisal of circumstances that affected the United States and Soviet Union.
To begin with, war with the
Soviets was necessary for the United States, and the American policy that
closed the struggle was predicated on that foundation. That fact did not result
from the differences between them and us, albeit those differences were grave
and irreconcilable. The fact is,
arguments based on peoples’ systems of thought cannot invoke the rule of
logical contradiction as a principle of natural necessity, for those arguments
stand upon the shifting sands of the human propensity to change.
The necessity of which I
speak is entirely different, though not unrelated. Our teacher in this is Thucydides, among others. We fought with the Soviet Union not because
they were communists, but rather because their power, which they were not free
to abandon, was for us the cause, the necessary cause, of a resistance in the
form of military preparations they rightly regarded with fear.
The Soviet’s power lay less
in their tyranny over the Russian and confederated peoples than in their
projected or potential ability to rule yet other peoples by their will. The preservation of their power, including
the tyranny over their own peoples, depended utterly on their exercise of that
will. And that is the same thing as to
say that they needed to frustrate and counteract all other ruling forces,
including the political, which could diminish the force of their will (ergo the
Polish problem). Their empire was so
constituted that they had either to spread their power or to die (abstracting
from the limit which nature places to their power). Unlike the Romans, who destroyed themselves by destroying
(spreading too broadly) Roman citizenship, the Soviets destroyed themselves by
developing too narrow a base of Soviet citizenship.
I am not refining the
containment theory, though some of its elements are recognizable here. I am saying that Soviet hegemonism, its
spread, was the key to preservation of dubiety about Soviet citizenship and,
hence, internal questions about a public good which might serve to coalesce
opposition to the regime on the basis of a conception of the needs and ideas of
a particular people. Gorbachev’s
emergence and flirtation with domestic grounds of Soviet citizenship (however
exiguous the economic necessities were) eroded the stability required to
project Soviet power.[2]
Thus the importance of
resistance to Jewish emigration; thus the importance of exiling or disposing of
Solzhenitsyns, far-sighted dissidents who aimed to crystallize a view of a
Russian if not a Soviet people which did, in fact, become a law to the nation’s
tyrants (ergo, the end of the tyranny).
Until then, there were no Soviet citizens, properly speaking, and by
consequence no other citizens anywhere (as far as they were concerned). Testimony: the Berlin Wall.
The spread of Soviet
hegemonism was not a strategy, or law of geo-politics. These things must be taken into account (for
without them there could have been no Soviets). The hegemonism was a necessity for the defense of the
regime. Whether the conquered peoples
became communists was secondary; they served the aim of the policy with equal
effectiveness when destroyed. What
counted was that their fates were decreed as far as possible by Soviet will.
From this it follows that
the Soviets could only have survived if they were or became stronger. Otherwise they could not impose their
will. No ballot box could substitute
for the evidence of Soviet sovereignty (the world-historical fait accompli). No co-lordship could substitute. Mao awoke from his dream only in time to die
a desperate man: There was and is no such thing as a Marxist-Leninist people.
Marxist-Leninists must unpeople the world.
Yet, the Soviet Union’s bid
for superior strength was ever in jeopardy.
It needed to be maintained at all costs, but it was resisted at every
turn, whether openly or covertly, whether by natural forces or political
intentions. I leave the natural forces
to the side (along with the human propensity to change ideas). Is it not manifest, in the end, that resistance
in the form of political intentions reposed on the strength and ubiquity of a
United States whose own presence on earth had and has still consequences as
far-reaching as those of the Soviet Union?
Now consider America. Had it no concern for its own
preservation? The answer is clear. What options did it have to express this
concern? Here was the rub! It became clearer day by day that the United
States had been reduced to its last card, or nearly so. And that was military might. What that meant is that American efforts
(like those of the Soviets) aimed by means of superior force to make the
American will the arbiter of other peoples’ existences. That is, it aimed
directly to frustrate the one thing most needful to Soviet survival.
There are differences: the
American will did not require to supplant indigenous principles and interests
in order to achieve its end. It is
therefore hugely ironic that American policy makers have become squeamish about
developments in Afghanistan after the Soviets have been expelled. In fact, so long as there were
independent, particular peoples in the areas of critical importance to Soviet
expansion, the United States succeeded in frustrating Soviet plans and necessities. In this, the Soviets stood at a tactical
disadvantage, for they needed literally to bring to bear on each situation
force superior not only to that of the target state but also to that of the
United States. In the end, the Soviet
Union could not sustain such superiority.
The United States repaired
the breaches in its defenses, knowing that a successful defense of the United
States meant defeat for the Soviet Union!
Often, policy makers curried favor with democratic opinion by pretending
that US military moves were only counsels of general prudence and had no
particular target, no enemy. The
Soviets saw the American efforts for what they were. Once American resolve became clear, they had to fear for their
very existence. Necessity required that
they choose either war or surrender. In the end, they gave in, or perhaps one
should say, caved in under the pressure.
They did not so much conclude, “Better westernized than atomized.” Rather, they lost the gamble through which
they aimed to reinvigorate themselves to realize the goal of their ambition.
The Americans were not less
ruled by necessity. I do not emphasize
ideological struggle. It has its
significance (exclusively as a consequence of the nature of our regime). But human nature and not ideology is that
which submits men to the rule of necessity.
Human beings are not free to reject war, the proof of which is the
ubiquity of politics. Politics is the
very expression of the necessity that humans have something to fight for and do
so. No, I’m not among those who imagine
that, without war, politics would have no end.
To them, men having no reason to fear attack, they would never band
together. Whether we employ “war” or
“conflict of interest,”—foreign war or civil war—the reasoning is the same.
It may in fact be the case
that no men are ever without war or the need to prepare for war. But might there not be, even in the presence
of war, a reason for politics independent of war? Thucydides seemed to think so, for he took great notice of the
different ways people live and the different aims they have for themselves
regarding a way of life. That, I think,
is the great necessity. Humans cannot
retire from the task of seeking the human way of life. For that, they have no means other than
politics. Politics—the city—means being
a particular people, distinct from another.
The very existence of another highlights the importance of the task
itself and defines, not the necessity of war but, the condition under which the
necessity of war emerges.
Applying Thucydides’ rule of
necessity to our example, then, we must conclude that, with respect to the
United States, the rule said nothing about the Soviet Union or even communism,
in particular. That struggle resulted
from historical accident—a different kind of necessity. It is well, therefore, to remember that the
names of other states and systems would have replaced these in changed
circumstances.
Circumstances, perhaps,
contribute far more to the selection of an enemy than do differences in
political systems. For the United
States, war with Britain was no less likely than war with the Soviet Union, if
we consult only differences in political systems. But circumstances teach us much, and I’ve
tried to adduce such examples above.
Also instructive is the fact that, long before there were Soviets or
even communists, no geopolitical prophecy was more common in the 19th
century than the emergence of Russia and North America as the great rivals of
the future.
Such prophecies arose at a
time when the two great military engines, Britain and France, were contesting
the lordship of virtually the whole globe—France having been then such a power
as the Soviet Union was in the twentieth century. Still, prophecies of a vastly different future were
possible. Fisher Ames opened the
century with such a prophecy.
Tocqueville gave it its finest expression before mid-century. And Mahan closed the century with poignant
reminders. The Bolshevik revolution
came in 1918. What made such prophecies
possible prior to the emergence of the ideological difference, it seems to me,
is that these commentators consulted Thucydides’ rule of necessity, and it
appears they did so correctly. I submit
that the deliberations of any free society must depart from the same grounds.
What, then, does Thucydides
mean by the rule of necessity? At one point he offers an interesting hint:
men resent injustice more than violence.
The one appears to them as rapine, because coming from an equal, the
other but necessity, as coming from one stronger.[3] According to Thucydides, in other words, men
accept the rule of the stronger as necessary and independent of questions of
right. We see, then, that questions of
right, justice, and injustice take place within the horizon of necessity.
The leading example of
necessity in the Peloponnesian War was the true cause of the war, which
Thucydides declared to be Sparta’s fear of Athens’ growing power. Once this fear took hold, Sparta could not
avoid opening the war, although it suspected its own injustice in doing
so. Men may resent injustice more than
violence, but they seem to prefer doing injustice to suffering violence. The question, therefore, is whether this is
indeed a choice which humans face, of necessity? (Cf., II, 63).
An alternative expression of
the opposition between doing injustice or suffering violence is acting in
accord with one’s will. Doing injustice
is preferable to suffering violence, then, in the case in which doing injustice
is the only means of acting in accord with one’s will. The other circumstance in which men act in
accord with their will, peace, is when men are “better minded,” for they act by
choice rather than under necessity (III, 82).
The choice in the latter case, clearly, is choice that involves the
possibility of consulting the good, the preferred deed rather than the
necessary deed. One does not the less
choose between doing injustice and suffering violence, but he is said to act
under necessity when he is not at liberty to choose with reference to distant
as opposed to “present occasions.” When
all alternatives properly lie within the range of one’s will, only then does he
truly choose. This is true of cities as
of men.
We find the classic
statement of the rule of necessity in the Melian dialogue (VI, 84-116). For reasons internal to this essay, however,
it were well rather to glance at the speech of Diodotus, which led the
Athenians to spare the lives of their revolted satellites, the
Mytileneans. Diodotus maintained two
points. First, the Athenians were not
under a necessity to exact revenge from the Mytileneans, but were rather at
liberty to consult their best interests. Secondly, he urged that they regard
not the present but the future. The
city’s deliberation, in short, affirmed that every alternative it faced in the
case could accord with its will. Thus,
its will, being undetermined had to be enlightened by a true view of its
interest.
Didotus explained necessity
as the power, nay the violence, of passion in reference to hope or
hopelessness. What men desire, and
either hope to have at modest cost or have no hope of living without having,
moves them with all the power of necessity.
So, too, with cities. Thus,
crimes can be deterred neither by too mild nor by too stringent
punishments. Moderation of the
punishment is a means of playing the motivations, fear and profit, off one
another, in order to assure one’s own both profit and safety. This gambit, Diodotus suggests, is open to
them that are free to respect profit as well as fear.
Finally, Diodotus counsels
the city that the specific means of pursuing profit, as contrasted with the
condition of doing so, is through deliberation upon the just and the
unjust. The city which limits itself to
dealing with other cities by means of violence, the right of the stronger,
loses the capacity to favor justice and win gratitude. Because all cities comprise diverse
interests and men differently affected toward their antagonists, however the
subject city may act, their citizens are always men deserving of different
treatment because doing, some justice and others injustice.
When “guilty and innocent
alike” suffer the same fate, all become equally the enemies of the
antagonist. Indeed, Diodotus argues,
even the unjust, as men, who are otherwise friendly to the antagonist city,
deserve to be encouraged in their friendship so as to further the profit of the
accusers. Not cities but men are guilty
or not guilty. Necessity requires that
cities be dealt with strictly in terms of profit. That could require that one city, free to do so, voluntarily
suffer the injustices of men when doing so conduces to its profit. It is within a city’s right and in favor of
its honor to destroy another city injuring it, and that means just and unjust
men alike. But it is not to a city’s
profit to do so, when necessity does not compel it. (III, 41-48).
Diodotus, then, defines the
rule of necessity as the consistent pursuit of the city’s true interest, from
which no city is free to defalcate however certain it be that doing so will
lead it either to suffer or impose violence on other cities. This true interest differs from the
interests of individuals. It raises the
possibility that the interests of individuals point toward a preference for
something more than the safe quest of enjoyment, thus foreclosing the
possibility for individuals merely to consult prospects for their own
safety. Otherwise, the rule of necessity
would lose its force.
Still, because any city may
deal with every other city as if its citizens need only consult their safety,
or the opinion that they are safe, there is the further implication that the
city which succeeds in foreclosing to its citizen the reflex of merely
consulting their individual safety establishes itself as good beyond all other
possibilities. Necessity, the rule of
necessity, is bound up in the discovery that one city, our city, is good, while
others are evil. What remains is to
learn how men arrive at that conclusion from a beginning that emphasizes
interests, indeed, self-interest.
The Federalist Papers
describes the manner in which the idea of necessity comes to be distinguishable
though not separate from interest.[4] Their account closely resembles the results
of Thucydides’ catalog of the allied forces in the Syracusan War, in which he
distinguished motives for entering the war on grounds of compulsion and
voluntary choice (“as profit or necessity severally chanced them,” VII,
57-58). The Federalist urge that
the first line of necessity is for government itself (#2). From that (the existence of particular
cities) there follows the possibility of “causes of war” in proportion to the
number of states (#3). Thus, the American
states, poised between becoming separate nations or a single nation, are
admonished to consult the second line of necessity by forming a single entity
in which all are at peace with one another rather by design than by chance.[5]
The Federalist maintain
that a principal cause of war is desire for profit, and that free states are as
liable to the push of that motivation as are unfree states. All states, therefore, “regard with
uneasiness” the existence of any state in a position to obtain through strength
the objects of its desires. The
“uniform course of human events” shows nations disposed to employ war as policy
above the call for defense. Among infinitely many motivations to war, some move
collective bodies: “Of this description are the love of power or the desire of
preeminence and dominion—the jealousy of power, or the desire of quality and
safety” (#s 4 & 5). The unjust and
just alike, acting on what Thucydides called pretexts (which can only be
grounded in their understanding of the opportunities or necessities of their
circumstances), pose the specter of war as essential to the landscape of
politics (#6).
While “true interest” would
counsel a “benevolent and philosophic spirit” in all nations, the operations of
ordinary interests bar its reign (#6).
The very factor which makes government necessary exposes the city itself
to the rule of necessity. Men place
their safety even above their liberty.
“To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of
being less free.” Still, they do not
express the ardor for safety in anything other than the attempt to preserve
their society, if not their government (#8).
Following this introduction,
the Federalist Papers demonstrate the architecture of the regime based
squarely if not wholly on self-interest (#9).
The argument is familiar, though curiously enough its conclusion is less
so: The design aimed explicitly to make the interests into which the society
would be sundered amenable to a constitutional order that would make the United
States above all “one nation in respect to all other nations” (#42).
The significance of this
turn is that the individual interests, in one respect free, had to be
innocuous, impotent in their influence on the operations of government. Thus, the Constitution which liberated the
pursuit of self-interest chained that pursuit to the protective umbrella of the
Constitution itself. The interests were
not permitted the liberty to retain their protection while simultaneously
remaining open to every conceivable seduction.
. . . nations pay little
regard to rules and maxims calculated in their very nature to run counter to
the necessities of society. Wise
politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions,
that cannot be observed . . . every breach of the fundamental laws . . . forms
a precedent for other breaches, where the same plea of necessity does not exist
. . . (#25).
Full provision against foreign danger required
confiding “to the federal councils” requisite power; that power prevailed over
the society as over prospective enemies.
With what colour of
propriety could the force necessary for defense, be limited by those who cannot
limit the force of offense? If a
Federal Constitution could chain the ambitions or set bounds to the exertions
of all other nations; then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of
its own government, and set bounds to the exertions for its own safety . . .
The means of security can only be regulated by the means and danger of
attack. They will in fact be ever
determined by these rules . . . (#41).
Internally, however, the
Constitution does precisely this: It chains the ambitions and sets bounds to
the exertions of all interests. This is
how the Constitution succeeds in limiting its forces for offense, while it
cannot limit the force for defense.
The constitutional design
intends a marriage or union of diverse interests in the pursuits of peace but
one nonetheless capable of strong defense.
Thus does it define the free society, as the defense of the “republican
guaranty” reveals (#43). The interests,
that is, the citizens, have had foreclosed all possibility to pursue
alternative forms of safety – short of exercising the right of revolution.
This absolute freedom for
defense, based on the marriage of interests and pre-supposing the rule of
necessity, is sometimes regarded as Machiavellian, because it does not extend
internal constitutional guarantees to other nations. Noam Chomsky frequently offers such a charge, based on the notion
that the free society is just like any other.
A typical case:
Typically, the ‘defense of
the national interest’ policy is disguised with high-sounding rhetoric, which
we dismiss with contempt when the official enemy ‘defends freedom and
socialism’ by sending tanks to Berlin, Budapest, Prague or Kabul, while solemnly
reciting it when our own state acts in a similar way.[6]
I have shown above the
manner in which Chomsky is correct, that all cities are in the same boat as to
the rule of necessity. He failed to
see, however, that the rule of necessity is not a justification, per se. Thus, he misses the distinction so carefully
drawn in the Federalist between the free society and others. He does not understand how it is true that
we are good, while they are evil.
To understand that latter,
alone, relieves the recognition of the rule of necessity from the charge of
Machiavellianism. There is, however,
but one full and fully conscientious response to that charge, at least in
American experience. It is Washington’s
“Farewell Address.” It requires patient
analysis to discover the response, which is proved by the fact that the
“Farewell” itself has not infrequently been charged with Machiavellianism:
. . . a piece extolling
ingratitude, showing it as a virtue necessary to the happiness of states,
presenting interest as the only counsel which governments ought to follow in
the course of their negotiations, putting aside honor and glory.[7]
Washington, on the other
hand, understood himself to have defended principles of “justice and
humanity.” It would be worthwhile to
consider the case of this disparity in detail.
The most significant
commentary on the ““Farewell” Address” was published by Samuel Flagg Bemis in
1934.[8] Bemis demonstrated how, in the midst of
belligerent, overpowering states, the newly established, free republic of the
United States wended a course designed to secure its liberty. He read the “Farewell” as an expression of
Washington’s strategic conception, given the circumstances. As he argued, “to comprehend Washington’s
point of view and feel the weight of his advice, it is necessary to consider
the historical setting . . .”
The point is well
taken. A strong case can be made for
taking the “Farewell” in context. It
would be a mistake, however, to read the context too narrowly, as did
Bemis. Bemis himself pointed out the
striking fact that “the orthodox phrase Federal Union” occurs not once in the
document. Washington preferred the more
daring “National Union,” suggested in the critical essays of the Federalists.[9] This is sufficient to suggest that the
“immortal document” aimed beyond the immediate era of the 1790s, in which
“federal union” were not only more natural but in some respects counseled by
prudence.
As companion to Bemis’
narrow view, then, I suggest a further approach, regarding the “Farewell” in
its own terms. This reading explains
the posture required of any free society, under any circumstances, in an
unfree world (the French Minister, Adet, was that far correct). The address, however, is distinguished by
Washington’s conviction of the possibility of an honorable policy. A theoretical consideration, as opposed to
one simply historical, will respond to the charge of Machiavellianism, and also
answer the question, how might a free society make consciousness of its
goodness the instrument of its defense?
The “Farewell Address” sets
forth a complete account of the work of founding a free society and the
conditions of its preservation in a world that offers no sinecure for
freedom. It was meant to be a complete
account. Not only did it undergo
manifold and massive preparations and alterations for a period of some thirteen
or fourteen months over the space of four years, with the assistance of two of
the nation’s finest minds, but it also provides specific indications of its
completeness.
In paragraph five Washington
invokes his first inaugural address, in which he sets forth the ends of the
government. And in paragraph seven he
invokes his 1783 “Circular Letter to the Governors Upon the Disbanding of the
Troops,” in which he urges the consummation of the modern revolution within the
United States. In this manner, Washington
makes those two crucial documents a part of the “Farewell.” Together, they give a complete account of
the regime then being instituted in America.
The importance of giving so
complete an account in the “Farewell” may be learned from the claim that the
free society required building. The
principles of its architecture alone could provide the basis for judging the
uses and practices to which it would be put.
In this essay it is not required so completely to analyze the founding
of a free society. We are rather
concerned with the conditions of its preservation. Thus, we will recur to the first inaugural and the Circular
Letter only to a limited extent. But
before undertaking the account of Washington’s version of the rule of
necessity, it would be well to notice two aspects of significance in the
discussion of the founding itself.
First, in his first
inaugural address, setting forth the ends of the government, Washington makes
perhaps the most puzzling remark of his career. Referring to the “great assemblage of communities and interests”
represented in the institution of the government, he discerned a pledge that
the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable
principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of a free government be
exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affection of its citizens
and command the respect of the world.
When this rare, this daring
repose on “private morality” is joined, as Washington joined it, to the call
for a “national morality,” one experiences the full force of the paradox. If the foundations are “private
morality,” what is the place of “national morality”? Can Washington expect to give to “national morality” the full
force of “private morality”?
In the same address
Washington described the hand of God as “that Invisible Hand” which authors
“every public and private good.” To
merit the “propitious smiles” of the “Invisible Hand,” however, the nation must
show regard for the “rules of order and right.” These rules establish a strict relationship, “in the economy and
course of nature,” between “virtue and happiness” or “duty and advantage” and
between “the genuine maxim of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid
rewards of public prosperity and felicity.”
Washington, in other words,
regards the public good as the reward of “private morality,” as opposed to
considering virtue a means to the end of the public good. The question becomes, what is the nature of
the reward? Once might recall Bernard
Mandeville’s seventeenth century “private vices, public benefits.” Washington’s “private virtues, public
benefit” is treated by him as a reward for private interests. How is it that “private morality” acquires
this reward? It creates the conditions
for a form of government which need not aim at virtue, which need not restrain
individual interests by principles of command.
That is the thrust of the remark in the “Farewell” that “public happiness”
occasions virtue. The pre-eminence of
free government stems from its immunity to resort to principles of command.
What, then, has this
government to do? And whence arises
“national morality,” if not from principles of command? These questions lead to the second
significant aspect of the discussion of the founding, as Washington saw it, and
demonstrate the difference between “private morality” and “national morality.”
The order of the paragraphs
in the “Farewell” Address constitutes ascending and descending scales that
pivot on the central notion of the representatives bound by the
Constitution. Twenty-five ascending
paragraphs primarily describe limits on and dangers to the people’s power. While the limits and dangers are found in
the nature of things, they correspond with an emphasis on the enormous
influence and power of the founder in building the republic. The people’s initial impotence, a reflection
of their own proclivities besides, parallels Washington’s initial power.
Twenty-five descending
paragraphs, while culminating in the praise of Washington’s deeds, primarily
described the conditions of preserving the republic, given the enormous and
growing power of the people. Not only
does the motion toward the founder’s withdrawal symbolize the eclipsing of his
power by the people. These paragraphs
also correspond to the actual emergence of the people as ruler.
When Washington declared
that the people need a national morality, he began the chain of arguments that
show the effect of their love of being one people. The very first condition, an artificial rule of necessity, for
the preservation of the republic, is that the people preserve within themselves
an equivalent to the founder’s prudent reason.
Washington ultimately calls it “enlightened opinion” but initially,
national morality. National morality is
the means whereby a powerful people secure the pursuit of private
morality. But national morality is less
a code of conduct or principle of command than an habitual attitude toward the
real rule of necessity. The people’s
growing power parallels a diminution in the influence of Washington’s prudent
reason, because they, as he once had, became capable of following duty over
inclination.
Bearing these aspects of the
founding in mind, it becomes expeditious to analyze the “Farewell” in terms of
the circumstances affecting a free society in an unfree world.
The people are unable to
read the rule of necessity.
Nevertheless, their society is subject to it. In order to attain the needed degree of political dexterity,
recommended by Diodotus and Washington, they must employ rules of intercourse
derived from and consistent with the principles by which they rule.
The transcendent interest,
the product of these principles, sets the tone of those rules of
intercourse. It preserves the people’s
liberty by setting limits to and authorizing the actions of representatives. It also preserves the nation’s liberty,
which is nothing but as great a degree of freedom of action as necessity
allows, by dis-allowing principles of supra-national fidelity.
The people’s independence of
ties of fidelity is not rooted in Machiavellianism, or the ready will to do
what serves one’s momentary interest.
This is so because the transcendent interest is not allowed to be
transient. Their independence, then,
becomes an expression of the permanent quest for justice. It regards justice as incompatible with the
subordination of the transcendent interest, and hence of the nation, to any
other interest whatsoever. Reason,
parties, and foreign interests are treated in identical terms: wills competing
with the “will of the society.”
The will of the society
comes to mean nothing more than a free people’s interest in self-preservation
as a people. Similarly, the term,
“nation’s will” comes to light as a purely technical term; it suggests that providing
for a free people’s interest which is achieved by means of regularized
governmental operations.
The free society deals with
the rule of necessity by means of foreclosing to itself the option of
redefining its interests. Its policy of
strict impartiality is by definition non-imperial. It is not fee to consider advancing its interest by means of
permanent alliances or unions with others, since that raises the specter of
redefining the transcendent interest and altering the “assemblage of
communities and interests” on grounds incompatible with the “foundation of
national policy.” In that respect, the
French, who were wrong to criticize Washington in 1796, are quite justified in
criticizing American policy at the World Forum for Democracy held in Poland in
2000. In doing so they echo the policy
of Washington in 1793, enunciated in the “Proclamation of Neutrality,” which
denied or canceled American obligations to France under the Treaty of Defense
entered into during the Revolutionary War.
Given the revolutions in France and importance of defending American
interests, Washington was justified. Similarly, if French fears of the course
of American hegemony are reasonable, then the French are justified to resist
improvident pressures toward global democracy.
The free society’s pursuit
of its interest, guided by justice, is dependent upon the assurance of it
safety. That means assuring the
freedom to choose peace or war. To
do so, the free society must become the agent of necessity vis-à-vis others,
rather than being forced to suffer it (as in the Melian dialogue). Washington implies that the tragedy of
political life (which inheres in foreclosing supra-national fidelity) may be
resolved, insofar as the choice that is required is compatible with the end in
view. But this requires a political dexterity
which democracy may not command—or does it?
The problem is to avoid unnecessary claims on public faith; it arises
from the fact that the claims, which a Machiavellian policy could dispense with
easily, are enforced in a free society by the requirements of the regime itself
(which mainly means through the agency of public opinion). A free people, therefore, is not capable of
the treachery of Alcibiades.[10]
A free people must preserve
their Constitution above all.
Necessity, however, is no respecter of constitutions. This is the reason it is necessary to
surmount necessity as far as possible.
The avoidance of regime changes under necessity is not less important
than avoiding speculative regime changes.
Those imposed by necessity, however, are evitable only to the degree the
rule of necessity does not turn itself against the free society. The Spartans endured the worst of ills,
change of regime, by reason of the necessity which made it Athens’ enemy. The war closed with Sparta in command of an
empire its regime could not sustain without change. It changed.
The life of a people,
therefore, is a life of cares, dangers, and labors. They traverse the snares of an unfree world—where all comes at
cost—by means of right, duty, and interest.
Washington’s symmetries can be mesmerizing.
A free people require, and
may consult, their right. For it is
manifest in the impotence of other states to deny their claims. They require to follow duty, which is to
savor peace and to defend their just claims wherever they may be
threatened. And they require to pursue
interest, which is above all the preservation of the free society.
The care expended on this
goal will reconcile particular interests to the interest of free society. The labor required for its successful
completion will be determined both by the rule of necessity and the
Constitution of the regime.
The people will have every
chance to keep their Constitution, if they once receive it whole through the
initial dangers. Otherwise, they can
never be quite certain of the goodness of their way of life. The fate of Carthage is perhaps the best
example of a people who lacked any cause to identify their interests with the
goodness of their way of life.
Before Carthage was effaced
from the face of the earth, the Carthaginians had occasion to reflect on the
value of the city to their respective lives.
Montesquieu considered the Washingtonesque but doomed efforts of
Hannibal to give them a whole constitution.[11] How could that city have preserved
itself? he asked. Hannibal, the praetor, sought to stop the
magistrates pillaging the republic. And
what did they do? They went to arraign
him before the Romans. “Unfortunate
ones, who wanted to be citizens without that there might be a city!”
In sum, the rule prior to
the rule of necessity identified by Rood is a people’s recognition of its own
way as good, and deserving defense against all dangers. That, in turn, leads to insistence upon the
rule of law in security policy (and fosters even oxymorons, such as the
“international community”). Where a
people’s way admits no transcending interest, the course of policy is plain. It is
founded not upon deliberating distinctions of good and evil but upon
distinguishing forms of safety necessary to the free society. George Washington
made this implicit rule explicit, and in doing so he provided enduring guidance
for the foreign policy of a republican regime.
For the sake of convenience,
I attach two appendices. The first is a
resume of the “Farewell” Address, keyed to the actual paragraphs of the
Addendum, substituting sentences for each of Washington’s fifty-one
paragraphs. Some few sentences will be
more cumbersome than I could have desired, but faithful to the argument. That is followed by a second appendix, a
brief commentary designed to clarify the terms of Washington’s argument. These may serve as references for the
interpretation provided in the text.
* * *
The period for a new
election to the presidency is drawing near, and Washington chooses to further
the public’s deliberation by declaring his unavailability. (1)
Having carefully considered
every implication, he judges this the path of duty as well as inclination (2)
Heretofore duty has always
compelled inclination, as in the case when the critical posture of “our affairs
with foreign nations” prevented his retirement in 1792. (3)
At this juncture, the
people’s “external and internal” concerns are compatible with releasing him.
(4)
He had explained in his
first inaugural address the end that he had in view and now retires thinking
that he has succeeded. (5)
He is grateful for the
success of “your” efforts and wishes that “your union” and “brotherly
affection” may be perpetual; so that the free constitution which is the work of
“your hands” may be sacredly maintained; and so that “the happiness of the
people of these States, under the auspices of liberty,” may be made complete by
“so prudent a use of this blessing.”
(6)
He should stop on this note,
save that, desiring “the permanency” of “your happiness as a people,” he offers
some disinterested advice similar to that he urged when disbanding the army in
1783. (7)
Liberty is secure in the
hearts of the people and does not require his encouragement. (8)
Further, the “unity of
government which constitutes you one people” now “is dear to you,” but while,
mainly, securing the promise of the preamble, it is also the point most
vulnerable to the attacks of enemies, foreign and domestic; thus, a correct
estimate of the value of “national union” is fundamental to private and public
happiness, to be considered the sacred cause of “your political safety and
prosperity,” ever to be defended. (9)
“Sympathy and interest”
should move the people to this, as their common country ought to “concentrate
your affections,” elevating America beyond ordinary appellations. (10)
Considerations of interest
alone, however, are still more compelling.
(11)
One regime feeds and sups at
the prosperity of another, wedded in “an indissoluble community of interests as
one nation.” (12)
Assembled thus, all find
greater safety from foreign dangers while simultaneously minimizing the need
for dangerous military establishments. (13)
By itself the benefit from
the prospect of union should authorize the experiment in governing “so large a
sphere” by means of free government. (14)
Sectionalism, a tool of
destruction serving the interests of party, can undermine this collective
strength, making aliens “of those who ought to be bound by fraternal affection.” (15)
Your union requires an
effective government, chosen by you, upon due deliberation and on principles of
liberty; it is erected on the strength of the people’s right to make and alter
their constitutions, “the fundamental maxim of liberty,” which claims from the
people’s respect for the authority of government and obedience to its laws. (16)
Political undertakings which
interfere with the “regular deliberation and action” of this government destroy
its fundamental principle and provide artificial scope and energy for the
influence of faction, effectively substituting the independent “will of a
party” for the settled “will of the nation.”
(17)
Such parties may
occasionally amplify the public choice, but will ultimately serve the
“unprincipled” in overthrowing the people.
(18)
Just as individual happiness
requires the Union, and the permanency of the Union requires an effective
government, so, too, the preservation of government calls for resistance to
“irregular oppositions” to its authority and for rejection of specious
amendments. (Governments, like other
human institutions, build their character through time and habit, and the
people must not hazard that vigor which provides a “perfect security of
liberty.”) (19)
“Liberty itself will find in
such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest
guardian. It is, indeed, little else
than a name, where government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of
faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by
the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the
rights of person and property.” (20)
Apart from the danger of
sectionalism, there is a broader threat in factionalism. (21)
The spirit of faction cannot
be excised, as it springs from the profoundest “passions of the human mind,”
and it assumes its worst form, and opposes its worst threat to human happiness,
in popular government. (22)
Government by means of
alternating recriminatory intolerances produces horrors of despotism which are
ameliorated only by the ascent of a permanent, absolute despotism. (23)
These are the extremes which
are visible in the embryos of party strife. (24)
Such strife introduces
impurities into public councils, subjecting the “policy and will” of the
country to the independent “policy and will” of some members only or of a
foreign power. (25)
The prevailing idea that
parties “keep alive the spirit of liberty” in free countries is true to the
very degree constitutions incline more toward unfree forms; whereas in popular
government the spirit of party is too apt to prevail and ought to be
restrained. (26)
Similarly, officers of
government ought to be restrained to constitutionally defined paths of endeavor,
to which they will be held when the people’s habits of thinking require it;
officers ought to endure even incapacity or imbecility in office rather than effect
any change by other than prescribed modes.
(27)
Lastly, the people, who must
guard the sanctity of their constitution, ought to provide themselves with the
religious and moral habits necessary to sustain a “national morality,” and thus
to rule the conditions of public service, or the tie between “public and
private felicity” will perish. (28)
It is true “substantially,”
that virtue or morality is a “necessary spring of popular government.” (29)
Public opinion, therefore,
insofar as “the structure of government gives force” to it, ought to be
“enlightened;” knowledge should be generally diffused and institutions promoted
for the purpose. (30)
Public opinion, reconciled
to the necessities of civil order and future peace, must sustain the power of
government to preserve public credit, spare debt to future generations, and
supply revenue sufficient to the purposes of government. (31)
Our virtue, occasioned by
our public happiness, constitutes the ground of just relations with other
states—an experiment “to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example
of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence”—in which,
free, enlightened, and (“at no distant period”) great, we follow “every
sentiment which ennobles human nature” while hoping that its vices won’t
discountenance the experiment. (32)
Key to a policy based on
this principle is the aversion to all “habitual hatred” or “habitual fondness”
for any other nation, which should remove slight causes of conflict. (33)
As antipathies compel
policies, so, too, do “passionate attachments” create “the illusion of an
imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists;” it
gives rise to unequal treatment of similarly situated states; and it allows the
corrupt at home to betray their nation under the cover of popularity. (34)
These are but so many
avenues to foreign intrigue, which alarm the “enlightened and independent
patriot.” (35)
“History and experience
prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican
government” and counsel popular jealously against foreign insidation—an
impartial jealousy, unaffected for one or another and itself proof against
foreign wills. (36)
The great rule of our
conduct in foreign relations is extensive commercial connections and contracted
political connections. (37)
Europe’s primary interests
only concern us at this juncture; her frequent wars are foreign to our
interests and we must not become implicated in them. (38)
Our geopolitical situation
authorizes us “to pursue a definite course;” building our might as a united
people, we might ultimately “defy material injury from external annoyance,”
when we may “choose peace or war, as our interests, guided by justice, shall
counsel.” (30)
Why should we lose this
prospect, only to “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition?” (40)
“Honesty is the best
policy,” but let us hold to an absolute minimum the number of cases in which
foreign states may exercise any claim to our fidelity. (41)
Let us provide adequate
defenses, and temporary alliances will serve our needs in “extraordinary emergencies.” (42)
“Policy, humanity, and
interest” all conspire to urge “harmony” and “liberal intercourse” with all
nations: harmony cannot be commanded so much as induced by means of careful
regard to advance the aims of an even-handed policy, even a commercial policy;
for “disinterested favors” exceed the powers of nations—no error is greater
than “to calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.” (43)
In offering these counsels
“I dare not hope” that “they will prevent our nation from running the course
which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations;” it suffices for Washington
to “moderate” the ills which the nation would otherwise experience in their
full force. (44)
The deeds of Washington’s
public service will serve to measure his adherence to these principles, but he
attests that he fully intended to follow them.
(45)
The cornerstone of his view
is manifest in the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality. (46)
He found that right, duty,
and interest combined to justify the Proclamation, therefore he maintained it
with fortitude. (47)
In the place of describing,
urging the right, it were sufficient to note that the belligerents conceded
it. (48)
The duty may be deduced from
the requirement of “justice and humanity” that, necessity permitting, each
nation should “maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity toward other
nations.” (49)
The people, he thought,
would recollect best how their interests justified his course, but he nursed
the design of assuring the country’s ultimate capacity to rule its own fate, to
pursue its interests without let or hindrance.
(50)
Washington’s errors were
unintended, and he would have God vouchsafe their insignificance, while the
people indulge them as obscured by the light of his service. Thus he retires,
to enjoy in the company of his fellow-citizens the “benign influence of good
laws under a free government, his favored aim and the fit reward of “our mutual
cares, labors, and dangers.” (51)
* * *
(1)
Washington’s
opening paragraph acknowledges his consciousness of the pre-emptive role he
played in the political life of the founding—contrasting strongly with his
self-deprecatory acceptance of the initial election mandate. Public deliberation, the essence of free
government, will not proceed freely for so long as any chance of his own ruling
remains.
(2)
On
the same grounds, he assures the people that his action is thoughtful, reflecting
the counsel of duty as well as inclination.
(3)
This is the first time in the founding when such
agreement has reigned; the first time Washington was free was when he could
declare his people free.
(4)
The
people are free not only in formal terms but by a happy concatenation of their
affairs,
(5)
conducing
to ends which Washington had specifically set forth upon his first
inauguration.
(6)
The
people’s freedom can only be understood as the result of their own efforts,
raising a question as to Washington’s specific contribution. To disentangle his own responsibility from
that of the people seems to involve disentangling the free constitution from
the conditions for its preservation.
(7)
Else,
he would have no further need to speak.
Now, however, as he had in 1783, he judges the people in some danger
with respect to which they do not seem especially alert.
(8)
Washington
is not responsible for the people’s love of liberty,
(9)
but
has contributed to their love of being one people. The former is the foundation of the free society, but the latter
is the means of preserving the free society against foreign and domestic
assault. He goes further: the love of
being one people is above all the cause the people’s “political safety and
prosperity.”
(10)
The
people must vaunt their particularism, the love of the American, to give
assurance to individual liberty. Forces
of “sympathy and interest” suggest this course.
(11)
Interest in itself, however, rational
self-interest, suffices to justify this course.
(12)
The
diverse interests of Americans from differing regions and occupations prosper
most when nurtured in the national community.
(13)
Thus
united, they can provide greater safety from foreign danger, while also
controlling the need to resort to defensive forces vis-à-vis one another. Without the national community, in other
words, not only are they prey to outsiders, but those self-same interests serve
to divide them. The power of rational
self-interest changes with changing political circumstances.
(14)
The
benefits of wresting concord from interests subject to discord—heightened prosperity and safety—authorize the
experiment of free government on a large scale. Whose experiment is it, the people’s or the founders’?
(15)
The
people’s liability to emphasize their interests as principles of difference
rather than community hints that they are not wholly aware of the nature of the
experiment. The founders, responsible
for forging e pluribus unum, own this experiment of defeating alienation
among the citizens and denying to party this “tool of destruction.”
(16)
The
people require, the experiment requires, a government compatible at once with
the people’s responsibility and that of Washington. While the government must provide assurance to liberty, it must
also be constructed on principles of liberty, on the people’s right of
revolution. The government will exercise
only such power as the people condescend to suffer; they owe it to themselves
to suffer it gladly.
(17)
The
right of revolution, “a fundamental maxim of liberty,” has its full influence
only when the operations of government are regularized, follow channels. Otherwise, given irregular patterns or
exercising of political power, it can never be certain against what, or whom,
the right of revolution may be exercised.
Parties or factions external to the branches of government compete with
the nation’s will.
(18)
The
public opinion which might sometimes be expressed by means of external parties
receives no guarantee of regular, faithful expression by this mechanism. They may become instruments of oppression or
subversion.
(19)
With
this argument Washington has created the basis for a political definition of
liberty. Liberty is expressed by means
of the very operations of government, when they are regular and based on
habitual expectations rooted in the people’s love of liberty. The character which government will acquire
through time is nothing less than development of the power to, and the expectation
that it will, confine individuals to the pursuit of rational self interest,
“enjoyment of the rights of person and property.” The developed character of the government resists the impulse to
apply the right of revolution, to refound, and hence substitutes the rule of
law, the nation’s will, for the rule of raw interest.
(20)
The
government itself is threatened by interested partisanism, as the community of
interest is.
(21)
The
“spirit of faction”—Washington still means an emphasis on interests as
differentiating rather than uniting—is native to the “human mind.” The love of one’s own, the particular, does
not merely, nor even primitively refer to the city or country. In fact, the struggle to make the city
everyone’s own, the founder’s aim, almost seems a mismatch. For the greater scope which popular
government affords to the expression of one’s loves but heightens the prospect
of interests conflicting with the community of interests which sustain the government. To Washington, what undermines popular
government undermines human happiness.
(22)
The
alternative to popular government—to the love of the community of interests—is
that men and their parties take turns using one another for their own ends.
(23)
The differences among parties always reflect
at least the germ of these extremes; or, what makes parties in fact parties is
that their aims, like their interests, are by definition mutually exclusive.
(24)
But
no community can recognize interests mutually exclusive within itself without
thereby diluting, poisoning, its wholeness.
It can have no will; its voice will always speak the will of another,
whether a mere part of the community or some power external to it. It is possible neither to love, nor to defend
a city which has no voice, which is only a city in name.
(25)
Washington’s
argument begins to become clear as it approaches its center in the twenty-sixth
paragraph. He chose to speak of the
people’s power, their responsibility, as a means of continuing the practical
task of defining the republic and carving out its space in the world. The crucial definition is not, as we might
expect, the Constitution; it is rather that transcendent sense of difference,
distinguishing one city from another, which serves to obscure if not eliminate
the very real differences among men within the city. The particular city seems to be as far as mankind are able to go
in the work of eliminating the power of interest as an obstacle to human
happiness, even when one’s efforts are based on universal principles and the
counsels of interest. While parties may “keep alive the spirit of liberty,”
their power to do so is inversely proportional to the degree of liberty that
the constitution supports. In that
sense, the people’s liberty is better defined in terms of political
opportunities than in terms of an obstinate insistence upon rights.
(26)
Restraint of parties, as obstacles to a
community of interests, goes hand in hand with restraint of governing
officials. Their respect for constitutional
demarcations is, in fact, but a concession to the ruling force of public
opinion and to the opportunity which the people exercise jointly to determine
the form of political power even at the expense of substance.
(27)
The
people enjoy this opportunity not as a result of their liberty, for which they
are responsible, but as a result of their “national morality,” for which the
founders are responsible in the first instance. On the strength of this transcendent expression of interest they
are able to marry “public and private felicity.”
(28)
“Virtue or morality” does not tell the whole
story of the motive principle of republican government. It does in large measure serve to provide
its necessary motion, however.
(29)
While
the aim of this government is human happiness, the public opinion which its
structure enthrones conduces to the end only when it is nurtured in principles
of decency based on the transcendent expression of interest.
(30)
Stated
in practical terms: civil order and future peace are subject to necessities to
which public opinion must be reconciled, else government will lack such
ordinary powers, even, as that of raising sufficient revenues.
(31)
This
might suggest an instrumental account of virtue. That virtue, however, only becomes possible in the presence of
“public happiness,” or the consummation, before heralded, of a transcendent
expression of interests. Thus, the
virtue which preserves the power of government is at the same time the expression
of principles of humanity and civilization as the basis of the people’s
relationships with all other peoples.
The consummation of a transcendent expression of interests makes it
possible for America to deal with others, not on considerations of mere
interest, but on the basis of sentiments “which ennoble human nature.” This must work as follows: the people, whose opinion must rule but will
do so only insofar as they repress the sense of interests as differentiating,
will in turn regard other peoples not in light of their lesser interests but
rather in light of their transcendent interests. Their mutual relations will not be as parties within a whole, but
rather as distinct, self-sufficient wholes.
This will be the case, at least, if the power of human nature, with
respect to its vices (the sense of interests as differentiating, alienating) do
not overwhelm the perspective of transcendent interest when it operates outside
of the protective shadow of constitutional habit.
(32)
The
foreign policy which would be consistent with this outlook would deny that
there are ever grounds for “habitual hatred” or “habitual fondness” between
this nation and others, since the lesser human interests do not determine that
policy.
(33)
A nation, above all, a free people, is not
free to treat another nation as its own, a thing which, if it could happen,
would create obstacles to public happiness as great as those which private
interests pose to private happiness. To
imagine that another city can be one’s own, as one’s fellow citizen is, creates
an “imaginary common interest” where “no real common interest exists.” It introduces injustice in foreign
relations, but, still more, threatens the true transcendent interest of one’s
own city. For, the imaginary common
interest, to be secured, would impose the necessity of obscuring the interest
of one’s own city.
(34)
It is clear, therefore, that such an illusion
does no more than create an opportunity for those who are not comprehended by
one’s own city to undermine its transcendent interest and hence weaken its
authority over lesser interests.
(35)
Washington
resorts to those ubiquitous teachers, “history and experience,” for the only
time in the essay, as if to underscore the universal force of this account of
particularism. What all may say and do,
saith Aristotle, is true. To
Washington, impartiality towards all foreign cities is the obverse of the consistent
preference for one’s own.
(36)
A foreign policy of impartiality towards
foreign cities—not to be confused with mere neutrality—one based on an equal
readiness to harm or benefit any other state as circumstances require, is a
thing unheard of. What kind of policy
would it produce? One based on
interests, Washington answers: extensive
commercial connections and the narrowest political connections. That is,
(37)
a
foreign policy based on secondary interests, since “Europe’s primary interests”
concern American but remotely at the close of the eighteenth century.
(38)
How
might “Europe’s primary interests” ever concern America? Only as necessity, the threat to America’s
existence, might make a political connection the means of defense. But the absence of such necessity at the
close of the eighteenth century creates a necessity of its own: that America may so strengthen herself as to
be ever independent of political connections for her defense. That eventuality would make permanent the
aim of pursuing the course of humanity in foreign relations; that is, America
could pursue her own interests, “guided by justice.” The nation is at liberty to make justice its guide in choosing
“peace or war” to the degree that it suffers no compulsion in regard to the
safety of its citizens.
(39)
Then
is the morality required for its preservation not a burden upon its shoulders.
(40)
It is preferable that public faith, honesty,
never be sacrificed to expediency. But
the nature of political life is such that sacrifice is avoidable only to the
degree a city is parsimonious in pledging its faith.
(41)
It must do so only under the rule of
necessity, relying primarily on the adequacy of its own defenses to assure its
liberty in a world which offers no political guarantees for a city’s liberty.
(42)
“Disinterested favors,” or which is the same,
a common interest among states, exceed the powers of nations. Washington offers a political definition of
self-sufficiency for the city.
(43)
Having
completed the account of America’s place in the world, Washington disclaims the
sin of utopianism. No nation may be
permanently exempted from the rule of necessity. Its counsels, however, prudent counsels, may aim to place it in
the best position to submit to that rule with hope of profiting by the
result. Necessity has no respect for
constitutions. The chief ill it occasions
is the loss of a constitution, and thereby the express hope of assuring human
happiness. If he can succeed in
moderating the ills necessity imposes, whatever else befalls the city, it would
presumably preserve its free constitution.
(44)
Washington
appealed to his deeds in closing, as he appealed to his speeches in opening the
address, as serving to affirm the degree of his success in pursuing these
principles. But pursue them he did, in
speech and deed. The relation between
the two is that only the latter, vitiated by chance and the very necessity he
sought to manage, will demonstrate how the end inheres in the principles.
(45)
He
indicates the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality as his central deed. In that, he refused to come to the aid of
France against Britain, though a plausible reading of the 1778 Treaty of
Alliance seemed to require it.
According to Washington, that treaty served its purpose in the
Revolutionary War; without it American may have died aborning. But the refusal to apply it in France’s hour
of need in 1793 also served its purpose; it both preserved the fragile, infant
republic from ravages of war which may have been fatal to it and preserved to
it British commerce which was vital for it.
The breaking, as the plighting of faith preserved the transcendent
interest of the United States.
(46)
Washington justified this deed by evoking the
evidence of “right, duty, and interest.”
(47)
As to right, however, he claimed that, since the
belligerents acknowledges it, he need not develop it. That seems to mean that they recognized the standards of their
own deeds in the Proclamation, whatever the unique character of a free
constitution might require. The duty was nothing less than the teaching of
peace, deducible from “justice and humanity.”
This teaching urges “relations of peace and amity” with every state,
whatever their circumstances, for as long a necessity allows. In fact, then, Washington derived the duty
from the fact that necessity either did not compel the United States to fight,
as he might say, or rather compelled the United States not to fight.
(48)
(49)
As to interest, Washington indulges the sole,
intentional ambiguity of the essay. One
might imagine that interest is nothing other than the pedestrian name for duty,
as that has just been described. But
Washington means something yet different, and also different from right. First, he tells the people that they would
best remember the interests which justified his courses. The implication is that it satisfied their
interests. British commerce was already
implied. It had the obverse of American
navigation and agriculture, among other things. There was West Indian trade as well, and the vital navigation of
the Mississippi at stake (which Washington especially considered before deciding,
not whether to uphold the treaty, but whether to join with Britain against
France or remain neutral), and other discrete, lesser interests. In all this, what is striking is that it
seems unlikely that he expects the people to remember the transcendent
interest, which his address labors to develop.
By allowing the people, as opposed to himself, to supply a view of
ordinary interests as justifying his course, Washington does not claim
responsibility for the appeal to that justification. By doing so, he reminds us of the earlier need to disentangle the
people’s responsibility for the free constitution from Washington’s responsibility
for their “love of being one people.”
Then, he described the need to wrest concord from interests subject to
discord. The particular interests to
which the people might appeal to justify his Proclamation were just the sort as
were subject to discord, and certainly not all agreed in finding their profit
from British trade. It is also true,
that, at the time of the Proclamation, Washington was responding to substantial
public fervor on behalf of the French “ Republic.” That was the error of the rise of the pro-french, democratic societies. The people, then, knew their particular
interests and, as yet, but dimly perceived their transcendent interest which
would have counseled impartiality. The
people were not wholly aware of the nature of their experiment in free
government. Washington was so. Thus, he offers a different justification,
in light of interest, for his Proclamation of Neutrality. He had a design, he admitted, to assure the
country’s capacity to rule its own fate, pursue its own interest. That design depended on two things. The country needed time to build strength
sufficient to pursue its interests freely.
But secondly, it also needed to discover the interest it had as a
country, its transcendent interest. The
ambiguity in Washington’s account stems from the fact that the interest which
justified his course, to him, was not altogether compatible with the interest
which justified it to the people. The
latter, however, did contribute to the justification, inasmuch as they provided
the necessary condition for Washington’s pursuit of the former.
(50)
Having
admitted so much, Washington closes the address boldly. He reminds the people of his customary
self-deprecation. He must have
committed some errors, but he prays to God that they be held to little
consequence. In any case, however, he
would have the people, as distinct from God, regard them as insignificant
compared to his successes.
(51)
It
is on a self-congratulatory note that he retires: His people are happy, and so
is he. The experiment was complete,
affording Washington the opportunity to enjoy the reward of his, and his
people’s “mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”
Mutual cares, labors, and dangers are appropriate only in the
circumstances of a common interest—a transcendent interest.
[1] Rood, Harold W. Kingdoms of the blind: how the great democracies have resumed the follies that so early cost them their life (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1980), xv, 294 p.
[2] I have discussed the implications of “citizenship” in detail in a separate essay, "The Truth About Citizenship: An Outline," Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative3 Law, vol. 4 No. 2, Summer 1996, pp. 355-372.
[3] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, 77.
[4] Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (numerous editions available, but the numbers used herein corresponding to the Cooke edition, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961).
[5] This argument is presented in detail in Part II, “The Constitutionalism of The Federalist Papers,” in The Federalist Papers: A Commentary “The Baton Rouge Lectures” by W. B. Allen (with Kevin A. Cloonan), Peter Lang, Inc., New York, 2000. (Hereafter, Commentary.)
[6] Wall Street Journal, 24 June 1981, p.11.
[7] Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791-1797, Frederick Jackson Turner, ed., Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1903, p. 954. I have provided a full explanation of the counter-Machiavellian tendency of the American founding, or at least Washington’s founding, in “Machiavelli and Modernity,” in The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, translated and edited by Angelo Codevilla (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
[8] Samuel Flagg Bemis, Washington's farewell address: a foreign policy of independence (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934), p. 250-268; reprinted from, The American historical review, vol. 39, no. 2, January 1934. Includes bibliographical references. A recent commentary significantly advances Bemis’s work, and particularly expands upon the fundamental principles underlying the politics of the “Farewell” address: Matthew Spalding and Patrick J. Garrity, A sacred union of citizens: George Washington’s farewell address and the American character (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), xviii, 216 p. Includes bibliographical references and index.
[9] Cf., W. B. Allen, Part I, Commentary.
[10] Cf., Thucydides, V, 45-46.