The Rancid Basis of Foreign Policy

Defining the Problem

There is one underlying assumption that undergirds all of US foreign policy. To be fair, it underlies every nation’s foreign policy, but God planted my ass in the US, so it is in this context I will address the problem. The base underlying idea is that the inhabitants of other nations are a complete “other”. The concept is known as “othering”. I know this sounds like a squishy “woke” term, whatever that means. Nonetheless, it is an important concept, especially for followers of Christ. It should be quickly apparent that this is not a concept that should be comfortable to Christians.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Othering as “To view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself”. We should immediately see the problem. If there is one consistent message throughout Jesus’s teachings, it is that we are all children of God. Jesus time and again goes out of His way to lift up the alien, the foreigner and the outcast as being in the image of God. From His first sermon in Luke 4:14-30, to the parable of the Good Samaritan to the story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus holds up the principle that others are just as valuable as we are, and that they can perform just as many acts of service and sacrifice as we can. This of course enrages many who hear it, but that is part of the point, to challenge our assumptions. That we all far short of the glory of God, as Paul reminds us, is not the greater part of the problem. The greater part of the problem is that we fail to recognize this othering instinct in ourselves. This manifests itself in failing to see the same behavior in our own nation as we see in others.

Surely Not Us

We like to think of ourselves, especially in the United States, as being more evolved than to act so primitively. We have followed the moral arc bending toward justice, right? Have we though? Consistently we see coursing through discussions about foreign policy (it happens regarding domestic policy, just not as obviously) the notion that those who are enemies of the US are different. I will consider just two examples from current debates, Russia and Gaza.

Every discussion in mainstream conversation regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine starts with the assumption that the Russians think differently than we do. They only understand force and will only respect someone who stands up to them. They are the quintessential bully who will not stop until they are punched in the face. They simply do not look at the world the same way we do. This becomes the crux of the response demanded by so many, and I mean so many Christians. I know because I have argued with many Christians who fall into a neoconservative pattern of advocating the use of US force to stop the Russians, at the risk of direct war between nuclear armed nations. It is all predicated upon the notion that they are just not like us, and are alien, that they are “other”.

This is demonstrable nonsense. It is the US that has troops on Russia’s border, not the other way around. It is the US that advanced an adversarial military alliance to encircle Russia, with the open goal of breaking apart the Russian Federation. Then there is the fact that the Ukraine the US supports is hardly a paragon of virtue (no government is), and the even greater fact that the US has a long, rich tradition of fomenting violence all over the planet. The point is not that Russia’s foreign policy is justifiable; it is clearly not. The point is that the United State’s foreign policy looks just like any other great power in history, malevolent, aggressive and hideously bloody. There is no difference between the US and Russia, for good and for ill. The US is capable of great good, and great evil, just like the Russians. They are not different; they are not “other”.

Then there is the even more damaging and stomach-turning case of what the US is doing in Gaza. The United States is directly aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip. It is clear they intend to clear the entire strip, by removal or by murder. Few if any in the Christian movement have spoken out against this. In fact, Christians voted mostly for Trump or Harris, so they voted for genocide. How does a genocide get perpetrated? How do supposedly civilized people participate in the moral atrocity of our time? By treating the victims as other, that’s how. This flows through the assumptions, sometimes directly and with vile clarity, other times more subtly. The Palestinians are not like us, they are all terrorists, animalistic, all seething with hatred of Israel. They are collectively guilty, and worthy of collective punishment. Israel must defend itself from these barbarians. They stand opposed to all that is civilized. Israel is guarding the gate of western civilization from the forces of animalistic barbarity. How else can you get up every day, being ok with your government doing this:

This is a child of God starved to death because the majority in this country looks upon them as something less than human, as other. In this regard most people in the US are no different from most Germans during the Holocaust.

Again, this is not to deny that there are bad actors among the Palestinians, and that Hamas did indeed commit crimes in targeting noncombatants in Israel. The Palestinians are like those in the US, capable of great good, and great harm. We veer disgustingly close to the awful when we fall prey to the notion that an entire group of people is other and not worthy of our human concern.

Can We Learn the Lesson

The open question is, can we learn the lesson that Jesus has given us. Can we fully understand that we are all made in the image of God, and are all loved children of God? If we cannot then things will go on as before. We will blindly and thoughtlessly bounce along with the smug assumptions that our enemies are other and can therefore be treated as less than human.

To take the position that they are other is to treat them as something less than human, and to ignore the log in our own eyes. This does not even get to the serious practical damage that basing a foreign policy on such a view does. We turn our back upon our Lord and what He taught us when we do this and beget a wholly unacceptable response to the Good News.

If, however, we can learn the lesson, and take to heart what Jesus has given us, then there is hope that we can change things for the better, if only by giving witness to what we believe. If we can learn this, then we can begin to speak against the blind hatred and acquiescence to such bloodlust that othering begets. We can resist the consent that is manufactured on the back of our silence. This is not a risk-free thing to do. We open ourselves up to ridicule and ostracism that comes with going against the majority. But then again, whoever said following Christ was easy.

Only by viewing all humanity as loved children of God, worthy of our care, concern, and protection can we rise above the values of this world and aspire to respond to God’s Good News in a more fully human way. We must reject those who proclaim a Church Tribal. And instead, we must proclaim the Church Universal. It is certainly no easy path we are called to walk, but it is the only path the followers of Jesus have before them.

Praise Be to God