Economics is far easier to measure if you are successful. The interest rate, unemployment rate, growth in GDP, distribution of income, national debt, inflation rate, and a host of other measurements that keep economists gainfully employed can paint a relatively clear picture of our economic health.

Economics has a sociological dimension and a mathematical and logical dimension.  While ideology may color the perspectives of economic analysis, there are some areas that are relatively easy to understand.  We know that raising marginal tax rates may decrease economic activity.  We know that a weak dollar may encourage exports.

I do not mean to make out that this is simple: it isn’t.  Like the hard sciences, many economic theorems are assumed in a vacuum- sometimes a moral vacuum.  But we know that such a vacuum does not exist.  There is more of an art to understanding how economic principles will react in a different environment than they were in the last time they were tried.

But there are very few absolutes in foreign policy, and success is much harder to define.

When we began to analyze the cause of 9/11 we had to stretch back decades.  The marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1984 under Reagan showed bin Laden how quickly we would retreat.  Who could have known that our withdrawal after that bombing would lead to an attack on New York City?

In foreign affairs success is not just hard to measure , it is hard to recognize, but failure is easy to find.  It is as if every decision has several solutions and none of them are good.  Good foreign policy is most often recognized as the absence of problems.

If Neville Chamberlin had fought  Hitler in 1939 instead of proclaiming “peace in our time” after allowing the Germans to occupy Czechoslovakia, he may have prevented WW II, but he never would have been recognized for that success because WWII would have never been.  He may have in fact been deemed a war monger.

Foreign affairs lack the clearly recognized repeatable principles of economics.  Every country and every culture brings a different dynamic.  Power is a reluctant but required commodity.

Blustering about proposed reactions to foreign threats ahead of time is often a useless exercise: reality in foreign affairs is often far less clear and rigid.  Recognizing and apologizing for past mistakes may be a noble gesture but it may not do anything to resolve current problems.

An ally to serve a purpose in 1960 may become an enemy in 1990.  Insurgent rebels armed to defeat an occupying force may turn those weapons on the providers when the rebels become rulers.  A ruler may be a tyrant by our standards but a stabilizing force by the standards of the region he is in.

Still, we need to recognize and identify our enemies and allies.  A weak foreign policy is one where your allies can not depend on you and your enemies do not fear or respect you.  Such positions may cause some short term problems such as when the Arab world boycotted oil sales to the US because fo their aid to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The results of our diplomatic efforts today is much harder to predict than the results of our economic policy.

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