John McCain, Mitt Romney, and America’s Insane Foreign Policy

John McCain recently held a press conference where he speculated on a third Mitt Romney presidential campaign. He said that Romney would be a “viable” candidate, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Just to show how good Romney’s foreign policy would be, he attacked Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

Welcome to the presidential campaign.

McCain stated about the debates between Romney and Obama during the run up to the previous election,

One of the rationales that Governor Romney is using, and I think it’s legitimate, is that the major factor in these debates was the issue of foreign policy. Obviously, the picture of the world that Barack Obama painted in those debates, Osama bin Laden is dead, Al-Qaeda core is decimate, on and on and on, the President of the United States painted a view of the world which has turned out to be patently false and more dangerous.

The word “obviously” sticks out to me. I’m not exactly sure what McCain means by “on and on and on,” but the fact is that bin Laden is dead and the Al-Qaeda core is decimated. Those are both patently true.

But if McCain’s larger point is that Obama’s foreign policy has been a debacle, I’d agree. I don’t think the world is safer than it was eight years ago. I think we are in a very dangerous situation and Obama bears some responsibility for it.

But let’s not kid ourselves, McCain and Romney have essentially the same foreign policy as Obama. Sure, presidential candidates will attempt to show how different their policies are, but I guarantee that their policies will be have the same essence.

And that essence is violence.

Just look at how “successful” Obama’s foreign policy has been. Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda has been significantly decimated. And yet the world is still a dangerous place!

I think it’s time to admit that the United States fundamentally has the wrong approach to foreign policy.

Violence and warfare are only creating more terrorists. Why have we been fighting the War on Terror for 13 years – with a Republican and a Democratic president, and yet we keep seeing more terrorists? Because, as René Girard has taught us, violence is mimetic. It never exhausts itself, but only fuels more violence. Girard states in his book Violence and the Sacred that, “The mechanism of reciprocal violence can be described as a vicious circle.”

The only thing that’s obvious is that America’s violent foreign policy is playing a significant role in creating a world where a vicious circle of violence rules the day.

America has options in our foreign policy, of course. The most important thing our political leaders can do is to critique violence – especially our own. We can blame “terrorists” all we want for their violence, but blaming them lets us off the hook for our own violence that only creates more hostility and violence in the world.

What’s the solution? As Jean-Michel Oughourlian says in his book Psychopolitics, we need a foreign policy that refuses to finance perpetual war and one that purchases peace:

Instead of spending astronomical sums on arms, let us spend instead on roads, hospitals, schools, houses, businesses, to create jobs and so on. Instead of financing war, let us purchase peace.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” America’s foreign policy is insane. We keep using violent methods, over and over again, and expect it will create a more peaceful world. It won’t. The only hope we have for a more peaceful world is to use peaceful methods.

If we don’t have a radical shift in foreign policy, our insane use of violence will doom us to a future of apocalyptic violence.

But we do have options and Oughourlian sums them up as well as anyone: “Instead of financing war, let us purchase peace.”