A Victory for American Power

At first glance, an agreement that will send hundreds of deployed warheads back into their silos might not seem like a boon for US power. But by restricting America’s hard power, the “New START” treaty recently signed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will amplify America’s soft-power capabilities. Soft power is the amalgam of economic, social, and cultural influences that a country projects to improve national prestige and to increase its influence on other nations. Footage of the President of the United States signing an agreement condemning hundreds of missiles to the scrap yard is a powerful way to show that America is not an aggressor nation. This symbol is even more powerful considering that, twenty years ago, Obama and Medvedev would have been at each other’s throats. Although the treaty alone will not convince Jihadists on the river Euphrates—or even fellow-travelers on the river Seine—that America does not aspire to global hegegmony, voluntarily reducing our arsenal could strengthen the international consensus for tough sanctions on Iran by demonstrating that our purpose is reducing the threat of nuclear war, not toppling the Iranian government and setting up a neo-colonial oil venture. And should worst come to worst, our newfound credibility will allow us to vigorously check Iran’s aggression if and when that country acquires nuclear weapons.

This strategy of voluntary arms reduction could reinvigorate the tradition of the morally humble liberal hawk. Better suited to conduct foreign policy than either the pacifist left or the Manichean, interventionist right, the liberal hawks have suffered over the last decade due to the polarization of the post-9/11 era. An anti-proliferation agenda would help to improve America’s flaws while ensuring peace and safety around the world—precisely the principle upon which the liberal hawks base their ideology. Reciprocity is the key; any attempt to improve the world must begin by recognizing that America itself is not morally pure. Cutting our nuclear arsenal while acting to reduce proliferation abroad will put this principle into practice; enhance the internal consistency of America’s defense policy, and re-establish the foundations of a foreign policy tradition that should not have been allowed to atrophy.

ALEX JONES