The Case for Our Constitutional Government Summarized With a Modern Perspective
Project Federalism: Paper 3
“The Same Subject Continued: Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence”
by John Jay
People rarely accept living under bad policy for a long time; so there clearly is some merit to the people’s choice to have a federal government.
The first topic that wise and free people seem to consider is safety, but it is easy to define “safety” in many different ways. I use it do describe “the preservation of peace and tranquillity,” specifically from the dangers of “from foreign arms and influence.”
Wars have causes, “real or pretended,” so the question is would a united America have more or less just causes for war than a disunited America.
These just causes of war would mostly be “from violation of treaties or from direct violence,” and America already has many alliances and trade agreements with nations that could pose threats to us.
America should act lawfully towards these powers and a united government would be more likely to do that than separate states or confederacies.
A national government will attract and require people who are wiser and more talented than state governments will, people who will best know how to act towards foreign powers and therefore keep us safer.
Also, making treaties will be a nightmare with separate governments with different agendas and different judicial methods to inspect and uphold them. For example, a few states may find advantage or prevent disadvantage by “[swerving] from good faith and justice,” but the other states, and therefore the national government, won’t fall into those temptations and will continue to act justly.
A collective is also less likely to directly act with “unlawful violence” than the parts that make it up. The current federal government, weak as it is, has never provoked war with the Indians while the “improper conduct of individual States” has.
In conflict, a national government will also be able to act more moderately and dispassionately than the states in resolving conflict. This is because it will be less affected by pride. “Acknowledgments, explanations, and compensations” are also more often accepted if by a powerful nation than a disunited, less powerful one.
I find international relations and war very interesting so I thought this was a pretty cool paper. We’re still on the “unity is a good idea” part of the Federalist argument which seems the most obvious part nowadays, but this is a unique argument for why unity is a good idea.
I actually wrote an essay in January about Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and why it’s necessary for the executive to have military powers outside the scope of war. It’s essentially a modernized version of what Jay is arguing; that unity, efficiency, and foresight are what’s needed to defend America; I just took that idea further, from the federal government to the executive branch.
A point that Jay gets at that I didn’t consider back then, however, is that dispassion is also necessary to defend America. That is actually my new favorite argument for why they gave Congress sole authority over declaring war and it is making me rethink the position in my essay.
The very reasons why a president is good at taking military actions to defend the country could also be the reasons why he shouldn’t be allowed to take those actions. He’s efficient and unified and can predict threats because he’s the only one making decisions; but because he’s just one person, he’s possibly too compromised by personal interests to make the right decision.
Politics really is a balancing act, isn’t it? And it just keeps on getting more complicated; new weights keep being added as you’re looking for the balance point. That’s why it’s so much fun!
