VOTE YOUR INTEREST

As elections draws near and the momentum for campaign is increasing, the youth of this country are and will be target of all politicians. We will be used as agents of propaganda and possible violence or societal unrest. This has always been the case, not limited to Liberia. We are manipulated to serve the interest of politicians and soon forgotten after election.   

In Liberia, many would say “vote right” “vote Liberia” “vote wisely”, but I would say “politics is interest, VOTE YOUR INTEREST”. If politics wasn’t based on the personal interest of standard bearers and political parties’ key member, there wouldn’t be so many presidential aspirants in this our beloved country. They will all just work in collective effort.

Liberia today has so many unnecessary political parties. 2005 general and presidential elections gave birth to a new democracy after a long civil war. Freedom of participation has been exercised by all Liberians. The youth of this country were the ones who decided the fate of this country during that election. We constitute majority of the population. Now again, we have to decide the future of this country, a power that any group of people should maximize positively.

As youth of today make decisions of who to vote in office, vote your interest.  We are in majority and the politicians fear us.  If we stand together in Unisom, we will move this country forward. They say “we are the future leaders” but the future never comes. If we are the future leaders, our interest then is the” future”.  We must adequately assess the all political parties, their platforms, policies, objectives, goals and how it benefits in the future we look forward to claiming.

As we prepare ourselves academically, morally, and socially, we must start to think of what year or when we want to take over the leadership of this country. With this in mind, I say we start to outline what we want and at what level we want Liberia when we inherit the responsibility to moving this country forward.

Let us lend our support to someone who we believe can take this country to the point or level at which we want when it is time for us to inherit it. Someone who can lay the foundation for us to build upon. Someone who shares a vision and passion similar to ours. This should be our interest. Let us start to think of what we want, our priorities, and who or which candidate can lay that foundation us. Let us not be blinded by the conning ways of politicians or just our loyalty to a particular political party.

We must now use this election as the beginning of our endeavor to inherit this country. I believe our future starts for us as its leaders after this year’s election. I believe in a generational change, one that depends on our actions and decisions of today, our preparation, our vision and our ability to work along with the older generation; for their guidance is needed.

The change we seek will not be given to us on a silver platter; neither will we achieve it through violence. We must unify ourselves and think seven to fifteen years ahead.  

We must vote our interest.

Morality and the Pursuit of Foreign Policy

Introduction

Over centuries, there has been an ongoing debate about morality versus foreign policy.
The electorates give their leaders the power to protect and lead the state. In as much as public opinion or views is very relevant, in the actual execution of democracy it is difficult to always seek public opinions or take into consideration public sentiments.

Every nation is driven by its foreign policy and the actions carried out while seeking or pursing a vital interest should not be considered right or wrong based on the morality of that action, but on the relevance, importance or how prudent that interest is at the moment. The first goal of a government is self preservation. Saving the day and the securing the future for the future generation encompasses the essence of government’s decisions and present course of actions.

Sometimes the right or wrong of an action is not determined at the beginning, but the end justifies the means. Human rights and other advocacy groups are key players in attempting to enforce morality in the pursuit of foreign policy. Camillo Benso, who unified Italy, in the Count of Cavour, stated that “If we were to do for ourselves what we are doing for Italy, we should be great rogues."

Owen Harries once said in a lecture in Sydney on October 29, 2004, "there is something intrinsically nutty about using one's claimed moral superiority to justify one's adoption of lower ethical standards. To insist on the right to double standards - as American neo-conservatives like Robert Kagan are explicitly doing today - or to operate blatantly in terms of them, is to undermine one's own moral position and to store up trouble in the form of cumulating resentment and lack of credibility. Neo-conservatives often charge realists with exercising `moral equivalence'. `Moral equivalence' is a charge that has to be invoked with great care if it is not to become simply a device for deflecting criticism and stifling debate" ("Power, Morality, and Foreign Policy"; Orbis, Fall 2005).

Morality vs foreign policy

Morality is the rightness or wrongness of something as judged by accepted moral standards or a conduct that is in accord with accepted moral standards. (Microsoft Encarta 2009).

It is difficult to pursue a national interest on the basis of abstract moral principles. Professor Patrick James said in an article (For U.S. foreign policy, self interest is Morality)  that “The path toward human freedom is best pursued by pragmatically making the most of the opportunities that come along, rather than trying to figure out the “right” thing to do”

There are some vital interest that are worth stealing, lying, confiscating properties and killing for, it will be morally wrong not to risk morality to achieve that national interest. An example of whether an action is morally wrong on not is that of Liberia liquidating properties of German nationals and waging war on Germany. At the outbreak of World War I, President Howard attempted to maintain the country's neutrality, though he tended to support the Allies, whose colonial territories in Africa surrounded Liberia.

World War I resulted in the trade between Liberia and Britain, France and the United States being reduced to almost zero due to the German submarine blockade. Income from customs revenue was disrupted, when Germany, Liberia's major trading partner, withdrew from Liberia. This situation forced Liberia to postpone payment on the $1.7 million loan, and led President Daniel E. Howard to seek a $5 million loan from the Woodrow Wilson Administration. This attempt had a quicksand effect. The United States Congress refused to approve the loan.

Despite German protests, Howard allowed the French to operate a wireless station in the capital, Monrovia. Realizing that their complaints were in vain, the Germans sent a submarine to attack the city in 1917, forcing the reluctant Howard to side with the Allies and declare war on Germany on January 12, 1918.

Liberia then liquidated the property of German nationals in Liberia. The money generated from this liquidation was deposited into the Liberian government bank account to compensate for loss of revenue from the blockade. The war ended in 1918, and Liberia's Legislature ratified the Treaty of Versailles. (Timelines.com, Liberia declares war on Germany, August  8, 1914)

The German American political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau in his book Politics Among Nations (1948) perhaps best summed up the ideal of modern diplomacy: (1) Diplomacy must be divested of its crusading spirit; (2) the objectives of foreign policy must be defined in terms of the national interest and must be supported with adequate power; (3) diplomacy must look at the situation from the point of view of other nations; (4) nations must be willing to compromise on all issues that are not vital to them; (5) the armed forces are the instrument of foreign policy, not its master; and (6) the government is the leader of public opinion, not its slave. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009.)
Morgenthau waned in 1957: "No statesman could pursue indiscriminately a policy of protecting democratic governments everywhere in the world without courting certain disaster."

He also stressed that "The realist recognises that a moral decision, especially in the political sphere, does not imply a simple choice between a moral principle and a standard of action which is morally irrelevant or even outright immoral. A moral decision implies always a choice among different moral principles, one of which is given precedence over others. To say that a political action has no moral purpose is absurd; for political action can be defined as an attempt to realize moral values through the medium of politics, that is, power. The relevant moral question concerns the choice among different moral values, and it is at this point that the realist and the utopian part company."

He also stated that "There is no escape from the evil of power, regardless of what one does. Whenever we act with reference to our fellow men, we must sin, and we must still sin when we refuse to act; for the refusal to be involved in the evil of action carries with it the breach of the obligation to do one's duty. No ivory tower is remote enough to offer protection against the guilt in which the actor and bystander... are inextricably enmeshed."

Conclusion

To conclude, not withstanding, morality must be encouraged in pursuit of foreign policy for it is relevant but should not be a decisive factor either. The world has become a global village and the idealism of isolationism will be difficult to pursue. America needs the rest of the world as much as it needs them. The myth that America will not buy into the idea of “pessimism and defeatism” sets them apart from other nations, but it also shows that their political expediency overrides morality. The diplomatic information released by Wikileaks exposed the courses of actions taken in diplomacy. The morality of some actions of the information release has been question by many. Asked if the WikiLeaks of 2010 would damage American relations with other countries, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted that "governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets." (Wikipedia) The advocacy for morality in the pursuit of foreign policy has led to less deadlier or brutal wars through technological advancement of precise weapons and casualty evacuation strategies. President Roosevelt in a famous Chicago speech of October 1937 said that "national morality is as vital as private morality."  In the most famous work of Edward Hallett Carr, he quoted President Woodrow Wil­son's argument in an address to the Congress of the United States on the declaration of war in 1917 that "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.”