DB1.

Interests vs Values in Foreign Policy

There are two poles to the American foreign policy debate. One is values, essentially the quality of life within a country's borders. And then there's interests. Interests, if you will, tend to be matters of economic or security or diplomatic importance. So, interests could be such things as investments. Interest can be access to raw materials. Interests can be stability. When you speak about values really runs arrange and it deals mainly though with the quality of life, the degree of opportunity, the degree of freedom. It can be the basic ability of people to survive, say, against a tyrannical regime. But it can also affect political freedom or religious freedom. Could also involves things about economics, standard of living, certain types of economic opportunity. This fault line of interest versus values can really be traced back over a century ago, say Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of World War 1. How much again should the United States focus on the right of so-called self-determination as opposed to it where to draw lines and how to keep countries from going to war. And if you look at so many of the current debates about American foreign policy, you deconstruct them. But you see someone essentially arguing, we should focus more on interests or more values. In this period of history, I would actually argue that it's one of the more complex, that there's more countries that are neither, if you will, permanent friend or permanent foe, that it places a real premium on diplomacy in ways that we haven't seen, say, in our earlier periods of history, which tended to be more fixed and less dynamic. And foreign policy again, you can't choose, if you will, what it is that's out there. The behavior of other countries, the nature of other countries simply arrives in your inbox. You've gotta decide what to do with him. Take Egypt today, should the United States be focusing on the restoration or movement towards full democracy in Egypt. But she'll be concern ourselves most with how the Egyptian government acts against terrorism, which willingness to embrace peace with Israel. So, there is always, I would argue, something of attention or tradeoff between interests and values.