When I ran for president, I summed up my thinking on foreign policy with the term “peace through strength with clarity.” To help demonstrate what this meant, we created a map that clearly labeled certain nations. Britain was a friend. Russia was a rival. Various nations in the Middle East represented threats.
As you might expect, the political media mocked this as simple-minded, which I still believe is hilariously ironic coming from some of the most simple-minded people you will ever have the misfortune of meeting. But what’s happening now helps to demonstrate why I believed then, and still believe today, that clarity is so important to America’s approach to the world.
The terrorist attack in Nice, following the one last fall in Paris, is only one among many as the world grapples with the attacks in Orlando, San Bernardino and elsewhere. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the recent attack in Mogadishu, nor the continued threats posed to the sovereignty of Iraq.
Terrorism is rearing its head with a frequency and ferocity we haven’t seen since 9/11. That’s an important marker of time, because 9/11 clarified some things for us – most significantly that radical Islamic terrorists were at war with us, and the only acceptable response was to go to war with them, and to destroy them.
When Americans understood who the enemy was, and what it intended to do, we had a fairly strong national consensus about what we needed to do about it.
Today that clarity has largely been lost. Our leaders refuse to call the enemy by name, which means the public doesn’t receive any sort of clarity about why this is all happening. The truth is that the most radical adherents of Islam hate us and our way of life, and they want to intimidate us into giving up our own beliefs and principles in order to fall into line with theirs.
Speaking clearly to the American people about this should be a given – a basic fundamental to any effort to rally the public behind the effort to defeat this enemy. When Obama was challenged on his refusal to cite radical Islam as our enemy, he became noticeably irate and impatient, and insisted over and over that merely saying “radical Islam” would do nothing to help make any strategy work. In fact, he went so far as to suggest that it would hurt the effort, because so-called “moderate Muslims” we need supporting us might be less inclined to do so if we name any variation of Islam as our enemy.
That should tell you something. When you’re clear about who your enemies are, and that bothers some of your allies, you have to wonder just how committed these “allies” are to the effort. If they will only help us if we muzzle ourselves about the truth, then you have to wonder what other conditions they place on their support.
Likewise, the U.S. is often afraid to name certain nations as our friends – particularly Israel. Being clear about our friendship with Israel tends to annoy Arab nations, and the instinct of career diplomats is to downplay this friendship for that reason.
That. Makes. No. Sense. If the United States is the most powerful nation on Earth, then it is they who should be kowtowing to us and trying to curry our favor. If they don’t like our friendship with Israel, they should be told that this is too bad because we are America and they need us more than we need them. That’s what you do when you are clear about what you believe and you’re strong enough to stand up for it.
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I advocated clarity not just as a rhetorical tool, but as a way of helping everyone understand what we believe, where we stand and what we will do. And why.
Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton hate this type of clarity. They prefer wishy-washy dissembling that never require them to really make or keep a commitment – perhaps because if we embrace a friend we might have to stand up for that friend. Or if we clearly label a rival, we might have to stand up to that rival. Obama, Kerry and Clinton would rather issue meaningless bromides about even-handedness or whatever, and then do nothing serious about evil.
That approach to foreign policy is getting us nowhere, and it’s helping to give rise to these ever-increasing terror attacks. That’s the value of clarity. Know your friends. Know your enemies. And treat them all accordingly. Today, no one fears being an enemy of the United States. There are no consequences to being one. And no one values being our friend. There are no benefits to being one.
Peace through strength with clarity would change that. Which candidate for president do you think is most likely to bring that about?
When I ran for president, I summed up my thinking on foreign policy with the term “peace through strength with clarity.” To help demonstrate what this meant, we created a map that clearly labeled certain nations. Britain was a friend. Russia was a rival. Various nations in the Middle East represented threats.
As you might expect, the political media mocked this as simple-minded, which I still believe is hilariously ironic coming from some of the most simple-minded people you will ever have the misfortune of meeting. But what’s happening now helps to demonstrate why I believed then, and still believe today, that clarity is so important to America’s approach to the world.
