by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
The “doctrine of unstable alliances” in George Washington’s “Farewell Address” underpinned U.S. foreign policy for decades and is still considered wise, though mostly ignored.
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible,” Washington wrote. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Even the opposing party under President Thomas Jefferson continued to rely on that wisdom. He explained an “essential principle of our government,” in his inaugural address: “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
What a long way we have come, not only subjecting ourselves to hundreds of international agreements, treaties and multinational authorities, but now using them to impose legal requirements on American citizens that Congress would never vote for.
America’s founders felt strongly about the dangers of foreign alliances, and made such agreements very difficult, requiring treaties to be approved by a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate. Unfortunately, they neglected to define what constitutes a treaty, so the requirement has been worth less than the parchment it was written on from the start. Presidents since John Adams have been making and unmaking deals with foreign governments ever since. Especially since World War II, much of U.S. foreign policy, and a vast body of “international law” has been based on multinational agreements, most of them never ratified by the Senate.
