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Who speaks for America in world affairs?, January 25, 2001
This review is from: Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy (Hardcover)
More often than not, argues Tony Smith in his new book, Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy, it is special interest groups guided by narrow ethnic, racial, or religious interests. In a chapter devoted to confronting the ideas of multiculturalists, Smith warns of the dangers of a growing number of people within the United States whose identification with our national entity is somewhat tenuous - a phenomenon being fueled by mass immigration.
Smith argues forthrightly, if somewhat naively, that U.S. foreign policy (and presumably domestic ones as well) should be made based on "national interest." He concedes that defining the national interest can be a tricky proposition. Smith ultimately declares that in speaking for the U.S. in world affairs, the dominant voice should be "those who think of themselves first and foremost as Americans."
The phenomenon that Smith describes with regard to foreign policy is essentially no different from the role of special interests in virtually every area of public policy. While no one would disagree with the concept that the interests of those who are most firmly committed to the common national enterprise should guide U.S. foreign policy, no one is surprised in the least that it rarely works that way.
The nature of special interest politics is that a minority, with a direct economic, political, or emotional stake in the outcome almost always prevails over the majority. In the area of immigration policy, for instance, the benefit to the immigrants themselves, their ethnic group elders, or the businesses that want to hire them, is greater than the harm that might be experienced by the rest of society. Each individual winner in the immigration game has more to gain than each individual loser in the society at large has to lose. Similarly, the logging company that wants to cut pristine national forests senses a more immediate benefit than the public's sense of loss at the destruction of a wilderness most have never visited. Hence, old growth forests are being razed an alarming rate.
This same principle is true with regard to the undue influence many ethnic groups wield with regard to U.S. foreign policy, Smith eventually concludes. "The stakes for [a particular ethnic groups'] kinfolk abroad may seem so commandingly important, and the price to the United States so marginal, that they may perceive no conflict between foreign commitments and national ones."
Smith is no more able to offer viable solutions to the grip of special interests in the area of foreign policy, than those who have grappled with special interest influence in other areas of public policy. He does, however, do an excellent job in deconstructing many of the liberal arguments for immigration-generated multiculturalism, and the politics of ethnic grievance. There is nothing especially new about his insights, but he clearly and succinctly exposes the tactics and the arguments of those who methodically place group rights ahead of national interests. "[M]ulticulturalists seem to bite the hand of the very nation that gives them their democratic due," charges Smith, "refusing necessarily to value their national as highly as their ethnic identity or to recognize obligations of national citizenship with priority over their ethnic attachments."
Smith breaks the multicultural assault on American national identity into three categories: the hyphenated Americans, post-national citizenship, and diasporas. Each asks for special considerations that undermine the United States both in world affairs and domestically.
Hyphenated Americans are determined to maintain two (sometimes more) identities from which they feel entitled to pick and chose at their convenience. When it is to their advantage to exert their American identity that is the persona they put forward. Quoting Michael Walzer, one of the leading voices of multiculturalism, the hyphenated American "is someone who in principle, lives his spiritual life as he chooses, on either side of the hyphen." In other words, being an American is a matter of convenience, a condition that Smith correctly observes to be destructive.
The second phenomenon is that of "post-national" citizenship. In the post-national world, "concern is not so much the traditional one of extending [immigrants] rights in their adoptive country...as it is to celebrate their unadulterated right to benefit from multiple loyalties." A leading proponent of "post-nationalism" Yasemin N. Soysal argues that "national citizenship is losing ground to a more universal model of membership, anchored in deterritorialized notions of persons' rights." In the view of this school of thought, people automatically acquire the full rights of participation in whatever society they choose to live, even if they are not citizens.
One of the glaring omissions of Smith's assessment of "post-nationalism" is that he completely passes over the very powerful business pressure to erase national borders and identities. Particularly with the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, these interests are likely to acquire even greater strength. While the multiculturalists push for right of individuals and ethnic groups to seek the benefits of American national identity, while shirking the responsibilities that go along with it, there is an equally powerful push to imbue economic interests with the same privileges.
The third force undermining the independence of U.S. foreign policy are those who consider themselves to be living in a diaspora. Chief among this category today are Cuban "exiles." Whether they will ever go back to Cuba even after the demise of Castro is irrelevant. In their minds their "homeland" is Cuba and their "host" country is the United States. The notion that people who cannot overcome the mental barrier of calling the United States their homeland, should have such enormous influence over our foreign policies, is seen by Smith as another danger of an immigration policy that does not demand the "Americanization" of newcomers.
Smith provides no real satisfying answers for those who want to restore a national interest component to U.S. immigration policy. What he does provide is an excellent analysis of the political left's case for open borders and tactics for countering their arguments for immigration-generated multiculturalism.
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