Is America’s Foreign Policy Too Woke? No.

If anything, it’s not woke enough.

On March 26th 2023, Conservative columnist Miranda Devine published an article titled White House’s push for woke foreign policy will backfire with our socially conservative allies.

As someone who definitely falls in the “woke” category with regard to my views on social issues and with an above-average interest in foreign policy and international relations, I simply felt the need to commentate on this article and the points it laid out.

DEVINE’S ARGUMENT

I should start by stating that I did not know who Miranda Devine was before reading this article and have not read her writing beyond this one particular article. As such, I will try to avoid making assumptions of Devine’s overall views beyond what one could reasonably infer from this article and her Wikipedia page, specifically addressing only the arguments presented in this article.

Now, Devine’s article contains quite a few misrepresentations, mischaracterizations, and factual inaccuracies. In the interest of keeping this article as short as I can (already a difficult task for someone like me), I will only debunk the ones that are specifically relevant to the point I am making.

Devine argues that the Biden administration is putting an inordinate focus on LGBT issues in its foreign policy thus alienating our would-be allies abroad who happen to have more socially conservative societies, such as Hungary or (in reference to the recent coverage of their new law) Uganda. Miranda also rails against the weaponization of American power to institute a pro-LGBTQ agenda on conservative societies, stating:

It’s one thing to fly the rainbow flag outside our embassies in Kabul and the Holy See.

It’s quite another to impose American social mores on traditionally Christian or Islamic countries.

The examples that Devine provides of this woke imperialism include National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby’s proclamation that “LGBTQ+ rights are… a core part of our foreign policy” which she translates as “Cross-sex hormones and gender surgery for your kids or you get no foreign aid?”

Other examples:

Kirby warning that the US will look into sanctions on Uganda in response to the law passed recently banning LGBTQ+ people.

Samantha Power “creeping around socially conservative Hungary, stirring up trouble with intersex activists over a law banning gender studies and the portrayal of LGBTQ content to minors.” and Power boasting on her trip a month ago that USAID “is spending taxpayer money to ‘help independent media thrive and reach new audiences’”.

The U.S. State Department funding drag theater performances in Ecuador.

Imposing gender quotas on Afghanistan’s government and military which “caused difficulties with Afghan recruits and cost the United States at least $110 million before the inclusionary aspect of the program was dropped.” according to Christopher Mott in a paper for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy titled ‘Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism’. Mott also said “Attempts to remake foreign cultures according to the mores of the 21st-century American (and, to a lesser extent, European) haute bourgeoisie cosmopolitanism are a form of cultural eugenics.” Mott calls this the “woke imperium”.

Devine finishes her article with this:

“All we are doing with this empty virtue-signaling is stirring up antipathy to the US in parts of the world where China already is making inroads.

China doesn’t care about the sexual mores of the countries it is co-opting. Neither should we.”

THE REBUTTAL

To start, I think the idea that the Biden administration’s foreign policy is “woke” or pursuing a “woke imperium” in any way that is detrimental to US strategic interests to be absurd.

First of all, I want to clarify something. The “woke imperium” that Devine is referring to is not the same kind of “woke imperium” that Christopher Mott refers to in his report that Devine cited. I read the report. What Mott describes is a broad push by elites in America to weaponize LGBT issues in pursuit of an interventionist foreign policy to achieve an internationalist global order concurrent with the idealistic foreign policy theory of Woodrow Wilson.

Devine portrays this as some sort of ideological commitment to wokeism by the Biden administration to the point of undermining US strategic interests. This is a key difference. In Mott’s report, this woke imperium is a cynical propaganda tool in service of the same pre-woke Wilsonian interventionism that dominated American foreign policy after the end of the Cold War. Devine argues that wokeism itself is the goal, rather than a tool. These two perceptions of woke imperium are, of course, mutually contradictory.

It is Mott’s narrative of the “woke imperium” that I find to be more accurate. To be clear, I take issue with quite a lot of things said in the paper, but it is certainly more representative of reality than the delusional writings of Devine who casts Biden and his administration as global SJWs.

Mott opposes what I’ll refer to as “woke Wilsonianism” on the same basis that he opposes Wilsonianism in general. I could not find a whole lot about Christopher Mott’s broader viewpoints without delving deep into his writings, deeper than is necessary for this particular article. Nonetheless, reading this paper on “woke imperium” and looking through Mott’s Twitter account, I have inferred that he is an opponent of idealism as a school of international relations (IR) theory in general, and I assume he subscribes more to a belief in the IR theory of realism given his explicitly stated opposition to “Manichaeism”, or, as Mott seems to be using that term, divorcing it from it’s religious implications, a black and white belief that the world is divided into good and evil. If these assumptions about Mott’s beliefs are incorrect, then I apologize, but my purpose here is not to write about Christopher Mott so I kept research on him to a minimum for the sake of finishing the article. All I’ll continue to say on this particular topic is this: I dislike realism as a theory, which may or may not be a topic for another article for me to write but for now if you’d like to learn more I’ll simply direct you to this video by the YouTuber Kraut, in which he critiques realism, creatively titled ‘A Critique of Realism’.

My disdain for Mott’s views aside, I’ll explain why his version of the “woke imperium” is more accurate than Devine’s.

Given Devine’s view that the Biden administration is pursuing wokeism as an ideological end goal, I must ask why exactly the Biden administration hasn’t taken a stand against certain countries that treat gay people far more harshly than Hungary, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan? Anybody with even a barebones understanding of the relationships between the United States and each of these countries can tell you why. It’s because Saudi Arabia and Egypt are among our most important allies in the region, and the relations between the US and Pakistan are cooperative albeit complicated and often strained. There’s no reason to use LGBTQ rights as a wedge issue against these countries.

Why then is it becoming a focus of the Biden administration’s relations with countries like Hungary? The answer is simple. Hungary has been actively opposing U.S. strategic interests. Hungary has spent the last 13 years since Orban’s election in 2010 undermining the EU and playing defense for Russia. And why has the Biden administration avoided any action against Poland akin to their actions against Hungary despite Poland being comparable to Hungary in their treatment of LGBTQ people? The answer is that Poland, while occasionally at odds with the EU, has done far less to undermine it than Hungary, and the Polish government has been staunchly anti-Russia.

Which brings me to the first point of blatant factual inaccuracy in Devine’s article. She describes Hungary as a liberal democracy and a member of the EU and NATO. Simply saying Hungary is a member of the EU and NATO is leaving out so much information as to be objectively misleading, and I would argue, lying by omission. In addition, her description of Hungary as a liberal democracy is blatantly false. Democracy, sure, but liberal? No way. Orban explicitly prides himself on turning Hungary into an “illiberal democracy”, one where independent media, an independent judiciary, and any checks on his personal power are all being actively dismantled.

But I digress.

It’s very clear that Miranda Devine has simply cherrypicked examples of the Biden administration promoting or even just verbalizing support for LGBTQ rights abroad, ignoring the many cases in which the Biden administration has ignored negative treatment, persecution, etc. of LGBTQ people abroad by conservative governments. And ultimately, all the examples that Miranda cherrypicked are examples of countries with a pre-existing opposition to U.S. interests such as Hungary or are strategically irrelevant to the administration’s foreign policy such as Uganda.

But, of course, all of that isn’t particularly relevant to the abstract IDEA of a woke foreign policy. Devine and Mott are both strongly opposed to the idea of a woke foreign policy regardless of whether that sort of foreign policy is even the actual goal of the Biden administration. And this is where I take the most issue with Devine and Mott.

A DEFENSE OF WOKE IMPERIUM

In a previous article I wrote detailing my disgust at the statement on the war in Ukraine put out by Florida governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, I explained why a defense of the liberal world order is strategically in America’s best interests. I’ll be reiterating some of those points here but with a focus on how social liberalism and LGBTQ rights plays into it, and like in the article on Ukraine I will also be explaining why it is a moral necessity in addition to being strategically important.

First off, it is important to emphasize that Mott appears to be coming from a clear realist position, and while Miranda Devine’s article doesn’t explicitly talk about her outlook on IR theory, her constant depiction of woke foreign policy as a strategic blunder does seem to put her in more of a realist camp like Mott. In both Mott’s report and Devine’s article, the moral failings of the “woke imperium” are more of an afterthought.

So, with that made clear, I will be addressing their points on strategic grounds and moral grounds.

IS WOKE FOREIGN POLICY A STRATEGIC BLUNDER?

Devine’s article expresses a view that a woke foreign policy, by isolating conservative would-be allies internationally, presents an opportunity for China to swoop in and reinforce their strategic position. This view conceives of international relations purely in terms of hard power, that is, military strength, economic strength, and the concrete leverage one international bloc holds against another resulting from those two variables.

Devine completely fails to understand the role of soft power. Ironically, this is exactly what Christopher Mott’s report was all about. More specifically, Mott’s report was about the soft power that the woke foreign policy has on the minds of the domestic audience, getting them on board with things they likely would not have supported. However, this concept can be applied to international audiences as well.

And quite frankly, Devine does not provide any evidence that the woke foreign policy produces much negative backlash. She talks about Samantha Power “creeping around Hungary stirring up trouble” and the State Department funding drag shows in Ecuador. Yet with the sole exception of the mild backlash against gender quotas in the Afghan government and military, she never demonstrates how any of these are turning those people against America (though in the case of Uganda, I will concede, it’s not hard to infer why sanctions would turn the Ugandan people against the US).

Afghanistan did not fall to the Taliban because America was imposing wokeism on them. It fell, according to every expert and analyst, because of a combination of Afghan government corruption, military incompetence, and a lack of will to fight due to those aforementioned factors along many others. Likewise, Hungary, as previously stated, was already acting against the U.S. before the Biden administration was even in office. Devine doesn’t even mention any backlash against the funding of drag shows in Ecuador, probably because Ecuadorian society has been getting more and more pro-LGBTQ in the past decades.

Lets say, hypothetically, the Biden administration pushed pro-LGBTQ policy in the Middle East among our allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt the same way he has done with oppositional countries like Hungary. Ultimately, this would be an extremely light touch as in Hungary with merely some mild trolling. Resulting from their opposition to Iran in the ongoing Middle East Cold War, Saudi Arabia has a vested material interest in maintaining an alliance with the U.S. Otherwise, they’d end up internationally isolated. What we would see is an advance, however minor, in the country’s LGBTQ rights which, if recent history is anything to go by, would see Mohammad Bin Salman lifting restrictions while at the same time cracking down on activists in order to take credit for the progress, as he did with Feminists in SA at the same time he lifted the ban on women driving.

Fundamentally, LGBTQ or other “culture war” issues in most countries are simply not enough to trump the actual material interests of those in power. If the Biden administration pursued a foreign policy that is truly progressive on LGBTQ issues (rather than using them solely as a wedge issue against opponents for political points and propaganda purposes) I would expect some pushback from conservative societies but not nearly enough to warrant much concern so long as the material interests of the United States and our allies are in alignment.

This is not to say that the Biden administration should commit full force to a full on pro-LGBTQ foreign policy neglecting the reality of any particular situation. Obviously, long-term goals and idealistic goals should be pursued in a way that allows the ends to be aligned with what is possible in reality. Nevertheless, a pro-LGBTQ foreign policy agenda absolutely can be pursued to some extent without too much sacrifice in terms of our strategic position on the global chess board.

In fact, I’d argue that pursuing a socially progressive agenda abroad has strategic benefits. If we accept Devine’s premise that social values play such a strong role in relations between states, then surely the spreading of liberal values is a strategic benefit to the United States, which prides itself on its liberal democratic tradition. Having the countries of our bloc united in its values against the reactionary authoritarianism of Russia and China can only be a good thing.

THE MORAL NECESSITY OF SUPPORTING LGBTQ RIGHTS ABROAD

The fundamental reasoning for my support of a pro-LGBTQ agenda abroad is simple. It is the only logical conclusion from these simple and indisputable premises:

1. Gay people are human.
2. Humans deserve the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
3. Therefore, gay people deserve the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

It is very easy to look at the pro-LGBTQ agenda abroad as something absurd at first glance. Seeing rainbow flags at embassies, government buildings, military bases, etc. certainly looks very out of place. However, this instinctive reaction (that only some people have, mind you; many view it supportively) is only because this is a controversial issue in the modern day discourse.

But it shouldn’t be. Gay people are human. Humans deserve rights. Therefore, gay people deserve rights. I simply cannot make this any more clear. That obviously is reasonable domestically, but lets take this logic to the international arena.

If the United States is truly devoted to human rights abroad, they would protect human rights in all situations. Not just when it is politically convenient, but as a universal value. Unfortunately, the United States is not consistent in its concern for human rights abroad but that is a separate issue beyond the scope of this article.

And again, gay people are human. They must be afforded the same moral weight as straight people (same goes for transgender and cisgender people). There is no logical argument otherwise. And a commitment to LGBTQ rights is necessarily and incontrovertibly a logical extension of that commitment.

The idea, supported by both Christopher Mott and Miranda Devine, that the pursuit of LGBTQ rights in conservative countries by the United States constitutes “cultural eugenics” is as absurd as the belief that efforts to end female genital mutilation is “cultural eugenics”. Or, to take a more extreme example, that stopping the holocaust is “cultural eugenics”. In no other situation would it be considered reasonable to defend human rights abuses against select groups based on their intrinsic characteristics on the basis of it being a part of the country’s culture. That view is incompatible with the view that humans are granted, either by God, a constitution, or just by virtue of being human, basic rights and freedoms.

Now, to be clear, I myself despise the previously mentioned Wilsonian style of idealism as an American exceptionalist ideology that often serves to turn foreign people against the U.S. and cause chaos and destruction abroad (as in Iraq and Afghanistan). I am not advocating for regime change wars in Hungary or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else to protect LGBTQ people. That sort of overt use of force has historically been absolutely destructive in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am, however, advocating for a real commitment to LGBTQ rights (and, more broadly, human rights) abroad because, and I don’t know how to make this any more clear, gay people are people too.