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Leveraging International Cooperation
by Bret Kincaid

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Living Water

The World Health Organization anticipates contaminated water to be one of the greatest threats to long-term health and recovery in Haiti. Living Water International, with the motto "providing a cup of water in Jesus' name," is working to restore water systems damaged by the earthquake, as well as continuing initiatives to expand access to clean water in Haiti and around the globe. One immediate goal is to repair 500 incapacitated handpumps in Haiti during 2010, serving at least 250,000 people.

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The Matthew 5:21-26 Project document, produced by 20 evangelical leaders and signed by over 140 people, establishes a biblically rooted argument for international cooperation as the way to national security. Resembling a papal encyclical format, the 7,000-word document includes seven claims, such as "Overcoming the Nuclear Threat Requires International Cooperation," and a lengthy discussion of and rationale for each based on biblical ideas, historical experience, and some political science research. Last week we demonstrated that Senator Obama's approach toward North Korea and Iran comes closer than Senator McCain's to the spirit of the document. But is the document a sound measure of good foreign policy?

The document has its roots in Glen Stassen's 1998 edited work, Just Peacemaking, a groundbreaking book that ploughs middle ground between the views of Christian pacifists and just war supporters. Stassen and others argue for peacemaking initiatives that tend to support and create more justice in the world. Christian pacifists and just war supporters worked together on The Matthew 5:21-26 Project document, arguing that the pursuit of international cooperation is imperative to achieving not only national security but also good results for a range of issues, such as human rights, world poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Given the long history of conflict between these two Christian camps, this collaborative effort is both encouraging and promising for future work.

The Project's authors ground this foreign policy exhortation in the portion of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in which he implores his hearers to reconcile with an adversary before worshipping God. It is a complicated matter fraught with hermeneutical peril to draw explicitly on Scripture to make a faith-based argument for policy, domestic or foreign. Predictably, then, there have been at least two critical internet responses to the Project's document, one by Assemblies of God President George Wood and the other by Lane Douglas, Senior Associate Pastor of Cornerstone Church in Bowie, Maryland. Both can be found at AGThinkTank.com. There will surely be more. Paul Alexander, one of the Project's key initiators, responds to these interlocutors at the same site.

The most fundamental issue concerns the biblical grounding of the foreign policy proposal. How does one discern from Matthew 5:21-26 a foreign policy prescription favoring international cooperation? It is unlikely Jesus intended his teaching here to suggest a foreign policy approach. However, if one takes the Matthew 5 passage as an orienting normative word for human relations, it is reasonable to accept that international relations should be characterized by a cooperative spirit at the least and reconciliation at the most. Of course, there are also plenty of other corroborating words of Jesus and passages of Scripture that point to gracious, conciliatory, and cooperative relations as the proper leading edge of human relationships. Jesus' command to love even enemies and Jeremiah's exhortation to the exiles to pursue the well-being of their foreign captors come immediately to mind.

But most heads of state and diplomats already accept international cooperation as a legitimate means to secure and protect their states' interests on a world stage marked by competing interests. So, what's new? The document's bold point is that international cooperation is not merely one tool in international relations. It is the primary tool, the primary disposition states should take as they relate to one another. Furthermore, international cooperation is more than just getting what you want by getting along with other states. It requires recognizing one's own shortcomings while stepping into the other's perspective of oneself. The president and other US diplomats, according to the Project's authors, should look for ways to address the obstacles blocking cooperation, which may include such things as dropping unnecessary preconditions for negotiations, making other unilateral concessions, or publicly acknowledging one's own foreign policy mistakes. Fortunately, the authors are not so naïve as to believe international cooperation is a panacea; they recognize the complexity and pervasive clashing of interests in the international arena. But it is the deliberate initiative to cooperate rather than first slapping on sanctions, for instance, that is most likely to provide opportunities for agreement among states in conflict.

However, dialogue-even dialogue in a cooperative spirit-is rarely sufficient. Without some other influence or confluence of other factors, states in conflict are not going to move toward agreement by sheer dialogue. In "It's All About Leverage," Thomas Friedman makes the instrumental case for talking, highlighting what is often the most important factor to successful diplomatic dialogue: leverage. In his criticism of Obama's willingness to talk to Iran, Friedman rightly points out that the US needs (but lacks) "power and credibility" to make talking with Iran successful. Friedman's otherwise good point about the efficacy of leverage is overstated and ignores the empathic kind of international cooperation the Project's authors describe. Nonetheless, leverage is often critical and takes many forms. Which kinds of leverage are consistent with proper human relations? This is a difficult, essential question to answer. But the Project's authors are largely silent on this score.

I, for one, hope one or more of these authors plan to develop a biblically based argument pointing to the proper factors that make international cooperation not only an effective diplomatic approach but also a witness to the Lordship of Christ.

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