In which the cat is set among the pigeons...

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What is a rational US Foreign Policy? Part One

A taste of the Transcript

AHMAD: I think the most basic assumption of US foreign policy which has prevailed among Democratic and Republican administrations alike is that the United States is and must remain the world's most powerful preeminent country. This applies even to the allies, such as the EU or Japan or something, that the US superiority must be maintained even over them.

JAY: I think it's even actually been stated in US foreign policy documents that there needs to be one superpower in the world, and action should even be taken to stop the emergence of any other superpower.

AHMAD: Absolutely. It is in the official documents and it is in the writings of the most influential people who have been involved in foreign policy formulation. It's as true of the neoconservatives as of Brzezinski, for example. It is an absolutely consensual position.

JAY: Our rubric of our conversation was a rational policy. So your suggesting that there be a single-superpower-dominated world is irrational. Well, what would be rational? What would be a good starting point for a principle for US foreign policy?

AHMAD: The starting point for a rational foreign policy should be that the United States is one sovereign country among many others and has no imperial preemptive right to intervene in the affairs of other nations any more than other nations have the right to intervene.

JAY: So no more chanting we're number one.

AHMAD: No more chanting we are number one. And this I think has to be done very methodically from top down, because years and years and decades of chanting this has sort of seared this notion into the souls of a lot of Americans that this is how it is and this is how it must be.

JAY: It's very difficult. I grew up both in Canada and the United States, and the idea that as Americans we are the best in the world goes to sort of the core of a national psychology.

AHMAD: What's very interesting is that there is a tie between "we are the best" and "we are the most powerful." And because we are the best, we have the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations to make them act according to our priorities and our principles, and in doing so we have the right to use the power that we have, so that there is a kind of a peculiar kind of Protestant tie here between power and virtue.

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