Why Our Enemies Think the United States Is Weak
Project Federalism: Paper 4: The Case for Our Constitutional Government Summarized With a Modern Perspective
“The Same Subject Continued: Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence”
by John Jay
History has proven that nations can tend to war for the slightest perceived benefit, or even, in the case of absolute monarchies, completely personal benefit.
Our economic rivalries with other nations prompt those other nations to hope we are less successful so that they might benefit more. Our economic strength makes them protectionist.
It is possible that war could arise out of these circumstances and become justified by both sides, and a national government is best served to prevent that possibility.
Safety “cannot be provided for without government,” and one federal government can best provide safety as it can be made up of the best people and can act uniformly.
For example, in terms of treaties, it will be able to regard the interests of parts of the country as parts of a whole. It can also apply the resources of the whole to the defense of any part, and organize each part of our military under one commander and goal.
Would a unified army not be more effective than a group of state militias, even if they all agree to accomplish the same task? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Say one state is attacked. Wouldn’t there be different interests of the rest of the states preventing them from acting quickly and in accord to come to the one’s defense? Even if they all agree, where will the money come from? Who will lead the allied armies? Who will negotiate the terms of peace? One government, acting in the interest of all the states, would already have answered these questions.
But furthermore, the perception a national government affords us to foreign nations is itself a valuable deterrent for war. A strong, unified, and efficient government will not so easily be provoked or taken advantage of as a number of governments, each with their own alliances and goals and actions.
This essay, like the last, is about safety, though specifically, safety afforded by a federal government. Two parts stuck out to me and I will address them in turn:
First, the idea Jay includes that safety “cannot be provided for without government.” I believe most of us take that idea for granted these days, but back then it was under contention.
This means that protection, specifically, from foreign threats, is one of the main purposes of government, especially the federal government.
Nowadays, there is debate about lowering our military defense budget. I don’t know what the right answer is there, and I don’t think we can interpret Jay’s position from his essays either. But, what he does say is that the federal government is necessary to provide safety, therefore that is one of its main jobs.
Perhaps, as it is their job and not, as Jay points out, the job of the states or individuals, we should afford a bit more trust to those parts of the federal government that protect us from foreign threats.
Believe me, I don’t often tend to support the amount of power the federal government has, and especially not increases to that power. Read some of my other essays and that will be clear.
But, when it comes to national defense, I trust there are people with better info, better analytics, and more experience than me working on it. Maybe we should be a bit more lenient with those who make the unified and efficient, though undoubtedly hard decisions to protect us.
The second part that stuck out to me was Jay’s last point about the necessity of our country appearing strong. Strength deters confrontation and conflict, especially when it comes from a national government.
These days, our national government is not unified, is not efficient, and does not seem strong; all things it should be as they contribute to our protection.
Now I don’t mean we should have a single-party government, and the founding fathers certainly didn’t mean that either. But compromise, what the process of governing should be, makes us unified, makes us efficient, and makes us strong.
Compromise is what we have lost and that’s making us weak, and we’re already seeing the consequences. Russia and China, the two biggest threats to the US, have seen this divide and are exploiting it; they’re dividing us more and making us weaker while they continue to gain strength.
This is part of what Jay feared. Almost two and a half centuries later, it’s coming true.
Let’s bring back compromise and bring back our national strength. Let’s face the foreign threats together, as a unified people, and make a country worthy of the ideas our founders had.
