Henry Kissinger’s death reminded me how little I know about foreign policy.

            By know I mean understand. I know the names of most countries – though new ones are always popping up – and some of the capitals – and a few of the leaders. I can name the continents and reiterate their woes. I’m familiar with the cliches used to characterize the major powers. But in truth I’m only parroting what I’ve picked up from pals and pundits. I don’t know the world’s workings as I do a paragraph’s – or poem’s – or symphony’s – or our moral responsibilities to others and ourselves. By “know” I’m not claiming my view’s superior or determinative, only that I’m pretty sure of better and worse in these departments and can defend my opinion without relying on another’s say-so.

            Foreign policy puzzles me. Do we treat other nations as friends to embrace or foes to defy? Should we trust or distrust? How much firepower should we buy and keep cocked? Is a treaty a lasting promise or temporary convenience? Is the United Nations nirvana or nonsense? Is pacificism possible? Is selfish self-interest or strategic self-sacrifice the worthier rule?

            Kissinger worked mostly for the other team, so I wasn’t a fan. He bombed the hell out of Cambodia and Laos, which didn’t seem nice. A devoted Bismarkian, he didn’t seem to care if we were loved as long as we were feared. He was smart and wily, sure, but headed in the right or wrong direction? I spouted the party line about such matters, but in truth I had no idea. (The noisier the proponent, the shallower their comprehension – vide, today’s Republicans in Congress.)

            If I believed in the essential goodness of mankind, this thought process would be easier. I used to. Like America’s Founders, I assumed that most folks would want what was best for all and would nudge the nation in that direction. Deep down I was a Rousseauvian optimist. Trump fixed that. His and his adherents’ behavior hurtled me into Hobbesian gloom. I’m no longer convinced democracy can work in America, much less the world. Maybe Western Civilization was a momentary aberration in the history of our species, not our gleaming destiny. The jury’s still out.

            Nice or nasty, human nature must subdivide into smaller units for its survival and those units are bound to compete and that competition is sure to lead to friction, shifting alliances, and bad blood. We will never be one happy family, because happy and family constitute an oxymoron. Families at best are complicated contests, with winners and losers; at worst, killing fields. Ditto the family of nations, presently numbering 195. Each nation is jockeying for its advantage, playing the cards they’ve been dealt; 194 of them would like to supplant the United States on the summit of the world’s pyramid. (Maybe not the Vatican or Tuvalu – I told you new ones keep popping up.)

            I checked on the Golden Rule, to see if that might inform my foreign policy. Aristotle, Jesus, and Dickens agree: Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. But then there’s the other camp. “Do it to him before he does it to you” (Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront). “Do others or they will do you” (saying, American). “Do unto the other feller the way he’d like to do unto you, an’ do it fust” (Edward Noyes Westcott, whoever he was). Savvy precepts all, but hardly concurrent.

            My nature inclines toward what seems the Biden principle: treat everyone as a potential pal and when they prove otherwise, pummel them with all you’ve got.