Let’s Return to George Washington’s Foreign Policy

(My Fleming.Foundation article; pass it around)

Let’s Return to George Washington’s Foreign Policy

By John Seiler

The Cold War involved keeping the Soviet Union and Communist China from spreading their murderous Marxist ideology around the world by force of arms. We mostly succeeded. Russia and China are post-Marxist. They don’t want to force every country to read Dostoevsky and Confucius.

The Soviet and Chinese Marxists were successful in getting American and European universities and cultural institutions to become Marxists, albeit nowadays Cultural Marxist. But that’s now an internal matter for us.

The fact is the United States now is in a pre-Cold War situation, where no foreign country seriously wants to conquer us, Europe or Japan. That doesn’t mean the regimes in Moscow and Beijing are nice; they’re not. But they don’t threaten us. To say otherwise is a Neocon fantasy.

The Cold War ended 30 years ago with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That means it’s time to return to the non-interventionist foreign policy of our greatest president, George Washington. A couple of years ago there were attempts to “cancel” Washington, but they largely failed. Washington, D.C., was not renamed Biden, District of Clinton. Washington State was not changed to Hillaryland.

That’s because it’s instinctively understood canceling Washington means canceling America. His generalship won the Revolutionary War. He could have become dictator, but declined the role. Instead, he presided over the Constitutional Convention, then became our first president. He could have been President for Life. Instead, imitating the Cincinnatus, he stepped down after eight years, setting a precedent broken only by Franklin Dictator Roosevelt.

In his Farewell Address, Washington outlined the perfect pro-American foreign policy, emphasizing how our prosperity and peace only could be kept by minding our own business. It was addressed “To the People of the United States,” not to the oligarchic swine who now run this country, getting us into countless pointless wars, including the current one in Ukraine.

He wrote, “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?”

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court, absurdly misinterpreting the First Amendment, has banned “religion and morality” from public life. So it’s not surprising our foreign policy would go astray.

Washington: “In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations [such as Russia] and passionate attachments for others [such as Ukraine] should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.”

Biden’s partisan policies have made all Americans slaves.

“It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy….

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.”

Get this: “And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”

The New York Times finally admitted the existence of Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop. The paper spiked the news in the runup to the November 2020 election to make sure the fix was in for their boy, Joe.

As Technofog just wrote, “This is the laptop that launched a thousand lies. The lies came from CNN’s Brian Stelter, who claimed the “real story” wasn’t the laptop (which he suggested was Russian disinformation), but the how the story was manufactured.

“Then there were the lies from Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, who argued that the Hunter Biden laptop ‘can’t be verified.’ Not that verification could or could not happen – but that it was impossible.”

Hunter, of course, received millions in payments from Ukrainian oil company Burisma. Supposedly for his vast expertise in the oil industry. Hunter and Joe are the epitome of “ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation),” instead of to America. Because of that, now America effectively is at war with Russia over Ukraine.

A president unattached to “the favored nation,” Ukraine, such as Trump, would have worked out a deal guaranteeing Ukraine never would join NATO, thus preventing the invasion. Instead, Trump was impeached because he wanted to delay arms shipments to “the favored nation” until he could make sure the Biden Family’s corruption wasn’t behind the whole mess.

Washington: “As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.”

According to Washington, the “the truly enlightened and independent patriot” is the one who opposes such entangling and corrupt wars, not those who support them.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.”

That paragraph is so powerful I suggest reading it again. Those who resist “the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” such as that which brought us into the Ukraine War, are the “real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite.” But they “are liable to become suspected and odious.”

We’ve just seen “tools and dupes” like Sen. Mitt Romney accuse real patriots, such as Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, of being “traitors,” when the opposite is true. Mark Levin attacks war opponents as “Putin Republicans.” But he’s one of the “tools and dupes” who “usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.” By the way, when are these guys going to go fight in the wars they back? Romney got four deferments to avoid the draft and be sent to Vietnam. Why doesn’t Levin charter a plane, load it with volunteers and guns, and fly it to Ukraine?

Washington’s general rule for U.S. foreign policy: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

We never had any “formed engagements” with Ukraine, which never was part of NATO, nor an ally.

“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.”

Sound familiar? That’s just what’s going on now. Does any European country have a more “remote relation” to the United States than Ukraine, which most Americans couldn’t even identify on a map until three weeks ago?

Eastern Europe is a mix of many different peoples, nationalities and religions. I feel sorry for the Ukrainians and the others there. But engaging in their “frequent controversies” only will end up bankrupting and destroying our own country.

Washington: “Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government [hah! that’s long gone], the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall counsel. Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?”

Today our “peace and prosperity” are in sharp decline. Gas soared to $6 a gallon out here in California. Food prices are rising, and will rise again because half the world’s fertilizer comes from Russia/Ukraine/Belarus, now under sanctions. Unlike in Washington’s day, now our country can be attacked directly, even destroyed, by nuclear weapons launched from the other side of the globe.

It's time to end not only our participation in the Ukraine War, but to get out of NATO, to bring home all our troops from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, not resting until the last galoot’s ashore. We need to concentrate on our own problems, beginning with the $30 trillion national debt, most of it run up by paying for all these wars; protect our now open borders; deal with the fentanyl crisis killing 100,000 Americans a year; and end the culture wars Biden and others have imposed on us.

Washington is the Father of Our Country. Only a return to his sage foreign policy can save us.

John Seiler writes at johnseiler.substack.com