Principal-Agent Problem in US Foreign Policy: Clipping the Wings

Twelve score and eight years ago, arguably one of the greatest leaps of faith in history was made. In a world where tyranny was the universal law that empires relied on for their grip of power, rebellion would eventually become a duty, as Thomas Jefferson once said. Houses were searched without warrants, and those found guilty of treason without a jury were given cruel and unusual punishment. The people banded together to rid the land of tyranny, and they would become one.

Our primary mission as the United States of America has been, and has always been, for roughly two and a half centuries, bringing democracy, peace, and stability to the world. We reflect this in many ways, particularly through the alliances we form. However, it goes to show that those who claim to swear by our fathers’ creed don’t always follow through with it.

But today, our politicians on both the left and the right sell to the American people that Israel is our greatest ally, when in fact, they are far from it. While we could say NATO promotes our mission of spreading democracy, and South Korea promotes both that and our solemn creed to contain communism, Israel does neither of these things.

In the twenty-first century, we live in a dark time in terms of how our leaders have gone about prioritizing the interests of so-called democracy. We gradually went from firmly backing countries such as South Korea that promote popular sovereignty and liberty for every constituent, regardless of creed, effectively fighting the oppression in the North. Today, we hold a state that supports ethno-religious sovereignty, with true liberty being filtered through identity politics, as our protégé. I am, of course, talking about Israel.

When someone wants an understanding of our role in foreign affairs, I always examine the tension that has existed on the Korean Peninsula for roughly a century now. Fundamentally, our role in protecting liberty played its first crucial role in Korea. And you may mention the two world wars we had been in before this; however, our involvement not only in these two wars but on a global scale generally was all reactionary up until the end of the Second World War.

Now, enter the Marshall Plan. Around the end of the war, we saw the Soviet Union not exactly liberating the countries occupied by the Nazis but occupying them. So, the remaining Allies decided to use a nuclear device for the first and last time in warfare. Needless to say, this was an impressive display of power to the Soviets. In 1947, as a response to what the Soviets had been doing to Eastern Europe, President Harry S. Truman gave aid to Greece and Türkiye to deter any influence from the Eastern Bloc.

This began the global policy of containment, which became the de facto credo of the United States. In simple terms, this meant we shall fight communism wherever it threatens free nations. And then this evolved into the Marshall Plan, initiated by the Secretary of State at the time, George Marshall. What this consisted of was us giving economic aid to everyone in Europe who was willing to embrace our democratic market system. This was a sure win, as many of these places had a very dire need to recover due to the war.

Going back to Korea, we had our first opportunity to step up to prevent one of these tyrannical regimes from taking over a region. And on July 1st, 1950, U.S. forces landed in South Korea to stop the North from reunifying the region under their oppression. This became our mission for years and years. But on December 25th, 1991, the Soviet Union formally collapsed, along with the Eastern Bloc, which had been made into an alliance known as the Warsaw Pact, democratizing years earlier.

When we look at our proudly established track record, we surely use this to establish a universal standard. However, we should come to understand that some use the supposed mission of democratizing a region or area as, in unfortunate reality, a red herring to achieve a means that is not in the best interest of Americans.

Before we delve deeper into the topic, we need to understand what a Principal-Agent problem is. A principal would be a central figure in an operation, which in this instance would be the operation of being a state in the system. An agent is something that associates with said principal but operates as its own entity; this would be virtually all of our allies that receive economic aid from us.

These issues range from simplistic examples, such as the agent’s values not aligning with the principal, reflecting in policy decisions. But this issue is a more advanced one, the most similar being the Phanariotes being able to govern parts of the Ottoman Empire when they were the agents in technicality.

Welcome to the extraordinarily complex role that Israel plays in our foreign policy. Amidst the ideological war we were fighting with the Soviet Union, we began to see the newly established Israel as another buffer between us and the influence of communism. However, unlike our other proxies such as South Korea and South Vietnam, these people weren’t fighting to contain communism but were fighting for an ethnocentric idea known as Zionism.

Initially, we had a stern policy in place to distance ourselves from this. When Eisenhower sternly told Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt in the 1950s, it was known that this wouldn’t help our mission to contain communism. Under Kennedy, we began to give military aid to Israel. This led to a massive series of misinterpretations that began the misguided belief that Israel was truly as valuable to our fight against communism as South Korea was.

In 1967, a research vessel that was not equipped to engage in maritime warfare, called the USS Liberty, which had roughly three hundred Americans on board, was attacked by a group of Israeli fighter jets that “mistakenly” thought it was an enemy vessel. If this were genuinely an enemy vessel, military intelligence at the time, while not as efficient as present day, was by no means inefficient to the point that they couldn’t speculate that it was a research vessel.

To keep every speculatory claim I have short, this was by all means one of the biggest acts of cowardice and betrayal in United States history, being up there with Benedict Arnold. From this point forward, we saw an issue evolve like no other before. We’ve always been told Israel is such a critical ally, while in reality, we need to ask ourselves if they promote the American principle of democracy, but most importantly, if they have done a lot for us.

And the answer at its core would be no. Especially when we contrast with South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, and countless others. However, we see that the Israeli government has a back door into the curation of public policy in the United States with AIPAC. While I have my critique of lobbying and the role it plays in our politics, we cannot deny that having a domestically run organization play to the interests of a foreign entity is nothing short of treasonous.

If we believe that we need actors within our political system that genuinely enforce allied stances, we should’ve considered a NATO or South Korean PAC years ago. While I still believe any country, regardless of allied strength, has no place in our politics, we need to operate under this logic to fight the curse the Israel Lobby has in our current political climate.

The separation of alliances and their role in foreign policy, as well as their impact on our domestic policy, should be a key mission of our policymakers to ensure that our people have laws that benefit them in the long run. But most importantly, we need to come to an understanding that an agent has overstepped their place in the relationship with the principal, because if we never properly address this, our sovereignty as the United States of America will gradually yet eventually go down the drain if it hasn’t begun doing so already.

We cannot stand for the agent acting in its interests if we want it to truly serve as a bold statement of American principles and identity. This shouldn’t be viewed as a mere personal issue, but an existential issue if we look at what a situation of this nature can truly do to a country. This isn’t something to be taken lightly, and if we ought to have our institutions act in the interest of American and solely American policy, this should be addressed more thoughtfully.

Sources:

BBC History – The Suez Crisis

George C. Marshall Foundation – Marshall Plan Speech Transcript

Office of the Historian (U.S. State Department) – Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations

Council on Foreign Relations – U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts

Naval History & Heritage Command – The “Six-Day War” and USS Liberty

Featured Image Source:
U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons – “U.S. Army Sgt. Mark Phiffer stands guard near a burning oil well in the Rumaylah Oil Fields, 2003.” (Link)