InterRelations

[tcepsa]

blushing_grace raised some very good questions in a recent post, especially at the end of her post:
"What should America be responsible for? To its own people, to other countries? Explain what we should be doing, what direction or structure our government should take on. Give me domestic, foreign policy outlines-even just a general philosophy. Criticizing and critiquing is all well and good, but what DO you want? What do you expect?"

I ended up writing this post while thinking about it. I wish I had answers that I felt were more practical... It's so easy to come up with how it should be. America should be responsible for its citizens first, and then once it has ensured life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of them, it should think about taking care of the rest of the world.

But it never seems to be that simple ;)

Given the way that our world has developed it seems that international relations are, in many ways, very similar to interpersonal relations. If you want to ensure your own security, then you need to make sure you are on good terms with the people around you. If a country wants to ensure its own security, it needs to make sure that it is on good terms with the countries around it. So now its responsibility has expanded to include taking care of its relationships with other countries. One way to help strengthen those relationships (like with people) is to help them out when they're in trouble.

Of course, you made some great points about motivation. Giving something (help, presents, anything) only strengthens the relationship if the person receiving it perceives that it is given out of care for them and not (as you mentioned) to "show me to be better than my neighbor," "rack up heaven points," "make you owe me one," or to "show my other friends how generous I am." Something that I find very interesting about that is that true motivation doesn't really factor in, as far as the relationship is concerned--it's all about what they think your reasons are, what they expect from you, how they see you. For example, even though we have offered several million dollars in aid and assistance, many people probably feel that we are being stingy considering that we've spent several billion dollars on the recent war.

Actually, this relates very closely to another dilemma that I feel is extremely important: Should you act the way that other people want you to act, or should you act the way that you want to act? What should you be responsible for? In a perfect world, the way other people would want you to act is the way that you want to act (in fact, that's probably my favorite definition of love) but sadly that isn't the case here. If you only do what other people want you to do, act how they want you to act, and say the things they want you to say, then you run the risk of leading a very unsatisfying life. On the other hand, if you do what you want to do regardless of what other people want you to do, then you run the risk of leading a very short life. So most of life is an attempt to find a balance between expressing oneself without endangering oneself too much. Take that and apply it to the country, and you end up with an answer for your question... only finding that balance is really, really hard because as an individual, you have a good deal of flexibility in who you hang out with, and if you know that expressing yourself would bother certain people more than is healthy for you, you can avoid those people. Countries are pretty much stuck with the countries that exist. To make matters worse, most of us only have one or two drives inside us ("I want to play video games" "I want to read" "I'm hungry") that we have to deal with. The country has to deal with a severe case of multiple personality disorder ;) So not only does it have to make sure that its relations with other countries stay good enough, it also has to be careful not to tear itself apart.

I guess this all falls more under the "general philosophy" but as far as I can tell, that's pretty much what it boils down to. I have no idea what that means for developing an outline for domestic or foreign policy. I think it would do the world a lot of good if we could start by getting the leaders of every country together--and I mean every country--and sit down and acknowledge that 1) we are all human beings and have intrinsic value, 2) we do not hate each other, 3) we're all in this together and 4) we all want to work together for the best interests of every country as that country perceives their best interests. If we could get every country--or at least the people in charge of making decisions for thier country--to agree on those things and really mean it, I think it would be a great start. After that, it would become a process of trying to get all of the citizens of each country to agree to those things as well, and to start acting in accordance with them.

Alternatively, perhaps it could work the other way as well. Start by getting individual people to acknowledge those four ideas, until it spreads enough that entire nations begin to act in accordance with them.

I still have hope that someday something like this could happen. With enough people, it might :)