A safer, democratic world

In America’s interest, and within its reach

By William Tu
From the March 2005 Print Edition

In his inaugural speech, President Bush promoted a foreign policy focused on spreading liberty and “ending tyranny in our world.” This is not a new policy, nor does it require us to undergo any fundamental change. Our nation has been carrying out this promise for more than a hundred years. The pages of history have faithfully proven that the United States has done more than any other nation to further world peace and prosperity.

In 1917, though an ocean apart from the fires of war, the United States chose to sacrifice many lives on foreign soil to save Western Europe from German domination. Starting in 1943, Americans once again scattered their bones throughout Europe, saving millions from Nazi oppression and genocide and then rebuilding the continent. In the next half-century, the American people stood face to face with the communist giant until its dissolution in 1989, when the extent of communist tyranny was matched by the extent of jubilee throughout Eastern Europe. Though the American people have long forgotten, the people of South Korea still remember the 54,246 Americans who gave their lives in their defense in 1950, ensuring South Korea the chance to become one of the most prosperous and democratic nations in Asia, while North Korea starves under a brutal regime.

Overlooking the millions who would have perished without American intervention, critics of America often dismiss such noble sacrifices as dark machinations with ulterior motives. It is true that most people are not totally altruistic (the communists discovered this the hard way), and the American people are no exception. We were willing to make those sacrifices because we recognized that we were not only helping oppressed foreigners, but also helping the world, and consequently ourselves.

Should we have abandoned Europe in its hour of need and let the Third Reich triumph over the Jews and Slavs, we would have been witness to the greatest pyre of books and human beings history has ever known. The entirety of Western European civilization would have been wiped out, the equality of men replaced by a racial caste system. By stemming the tides of Nazi expansion, we were doing our moral and self-preserving duty. The same can be said of the expansion of communism, which mirrored the Third Reich in its mass murders and its tyrannical denial of free speech and thought.

As nations become increasingly intertwined politically and economically, no country can be truly isolated. Any event will cause ripples affecting the far corners of the world. Poverty in the Third World results in waves of immigration, both legal and illegal, to more prosperous Western European countries and the United States. Dictators not only oppress their own people, but threaten other countries with annihilation. Gone are the days of the 19th century, when Americans could be oblivious to what went on in other parts of the world.

Spreading liberty will not only benefit the directly liberated people; it will benefit the rest of the world. Liberty is not just about freedom to elect leaders — it’s about freedom to dissent and improve one’s life. Most Third World countries are poor because their people are hindered from development by totalitarian dictatorship or militant extremist Islam. Both of these tyrannical models are hostile to free speech, free thought, and individuality — essential elements for scientific and economic progress.

Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia all have significant Muslim populations, yet the open nature of their democratic societies has allowed them to develop booming economies despite relative paucity of natural resources. In contrast, many Middle Eastern nations have tremendous wealth in natural resources, yet their people live in abject poverty because extremist Islam and military might are used to enforce inequality, isolating people from Western ideas of freedom and innovation. The only “freedom” they have consists of the freedom to blame the West and Israel, rather than their own oppressive governments, for all of their troubles.

Lands of oppressed people will be a permanent source of tension and bloodshed. To leave the fate of millions shackled by dictators and extremist Islam is akin to burying time bombs of anguish in the dark earth of apathy. When they explode, the shrapnel of unrest will leave few countries undisturbed. That these people should have the freedom to improve their lives is in the best interest of every nation, including America.

It was not a free nation that carried out the mass murder of millions in the concentration camps, nor a free nation that sent millions of its people to their deaths in gulags. The people who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center, bombed commuter trains in Madrid, and beheaded civilians in Iraq never grew up free. Had they not been under oppressive rule, perhaps they would have chosen economic development rather than hatred of the West as the way to improve their nations. Because oppression halfway around the world can have such global consequences, it is in our best interest to combat it at its root.

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