Kennan vs Bush: Interests vs. Values
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.
Trolling through the Internet, I found this good piece on George Kennan by Lee Congdon. He writes:
Many evils exist in the world, but Kennan did not think it the responsibility of the United States government to root all of them out. “Government,” he wrote in an essay on morality and foreign policy, “is an agent, not a principal. Its primary obligation is to the interests of the national society it represents, not to the moral impulses that elements of that society may experience.” Interventions in the affairs of foreign governments in obedience to some moral imperative could only be defended, he insisted, if the practices against which they were directed were “seriously injurious to our interests, rather than just our sensibilities.”
I tend to think that dividing "morality" and "interests" cedes too much ground to those who insist the nation be guided by "morality." There is nothing immoral about limiting the scope of government action. Indeed, governments tend to overreach when they have a broader mandate and nothing pushes the government to overreach like appeals to morality, which don't admit of compromise.
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