President Obama believes that his decision to shake hands with
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at a summit of Latin leaders in
Trinidad was the right thing to do. He dismisses critics who
accuse him of sending the wrong signals, of projecting an image
of weakness, and of apologizing too much on his trips abroad.
“It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or
having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are
endangering the strategic interests of the United States,” Obama
said.
President Obama is wrong. Like his bow to Saudi Arabia’s King
Abdullah at the G-20 Summit in London, his cordiality to Chavez
does real damage American interests, because it demonstrates that
the honor of the United States is not something that matters very
much to him. And that is a very bad and dangerous thing.
Charles de Gaulle famously observed that “states are cold-blooded
monsters” — but de Gaulle was only half-correct. What redeems
states from total monstrosity is their sense of honor. An
“honorable” state is very touchy about its sovereignty, its good
name, and the treatment of its citizens abroad, but it also
follows through on commitments to friends and allies — even when
doing so is inconvenient — because not doing so would be
“dishonorable.” A head of state without a sense of honor is also
unlikely to have a sense of dishonor, and is therefore more
likely to behave dishonorably — to betray allies and renege on
his promises — in an hour of crisis.
“Honor,” observed Winston Churchill in The Gathering
Storm, “is often influenced by that element of pride which
plays a large part in its inspiration.” While Churchill deplored
an “exaggerated code of honor leading to utterly vain and
unreasonable deeds,” he believed that a proper sense of honor was
an essential component of enlightened statecraft. Indeed, he
denounced the architects of what he called “the tragedy of
Munich” (when, in 1938, England, France, and Italy abandoned
Czechoslovakia to the not-so-tender mercies of Nazi Germany)
because they behaved so dishonorably. A proper sense of honor,
Churchill maintained, induces a nation “to keep its word and to
act in accordance with its treaty obligations to allies.”
An American President imbued with a proper sense of the honor and
dignity of his country would not shake hands with a leader like
Hugo Chavez, who said, on the day after 9/11, that “the United
States brought the attacks upon itself, for their arrogant and
imperialist foreign policy.” An American President imbued with a
proper sense of the honor and dignity of his country would not
bow to a feudal despot whose kingdom’s vast financial resources
and intransigent brand of Islam provide much of the impetus for
Islamist terrorism. And a President with a proper sense of the
honor and dignity of his country would realize that his every
word and every gesture is carefully scrutinized both by America’s
friends (who want to know whether he can be trusted to honor
America’s commitments) and America’s enemies (who want to know
how much they can get away with, before encountering resistance).
At another point in The Gathering Storm, Churchill
observes that “it makes one flush to read in [Italian Foreign
Minister] Ciano’s Diary the comments” that Italian
officials made about “our country and its representatives” during
Prime Minister’s Neville Chamberlain’s 1939 visit to Italy — and
he provides the following excerpt:
“How far apart we are from these people [Ciano writes]! It is
another world. We were talking about it after dinner to the
Duce. ‘These men,’ said Mussolini, ‘are not made of the same
stuff as Francis Drake and the other magnificent adventurers
who created the Empire. They are after all the tired sons of a
long line of rich men.’”
I am very much afraid that Latin and Arab despots — who are
shaped by cultures that take matters of honor very seriously
indeed — will not be more favorably impressed by Obama than
Mussolini was by Chamberlain. “This is no President Bush,” they
will say with a sigh of relief. “Nor is this a Reagan or a Nixon,
a Kennedy or a Truman, or any of the other formidable American
presidents who helped win the Cold War. This is a Jimmy Carter —
and we know just how to handle folks like Jimmy.”
