American Charity begins at home

"Taking care of your own kind first" is one of the great dilemmas of modern politics. While a national leader has a mandate to protect the interests of his constituents, he and his country risk appearing selfish if they refuse to intervene when foreign powers commit atrocities or start unjust wars.

At the same time, and right of self-deter-mination is perceived as the key to empowering marginalized ethnic groups, which is why (at least in America) even the dominant groups often accept the accentuation of differences even at the price of losing a greater cohesion.

But nations are not individuals, and the moral epithet "selfishness" shouldn't be applied to both in the same way, as it too often is when America's role in foreign crises is discussed. Both the trouble in eastern Europe and our response to it provide examples of the wrong approach to the idea of "taking care of your own kind first."

In Bosnia, the notion of "one's own kind" is the operative force in the disastrous conflicts. Enmity between Serbs and Croats, Christians and Muslims, makes each group feel that the other must be destroyed so that what belongs to "us" can be taken back from "them." to us, it seems clear that the Serbian aggressors are in the wrong--but might not this conviction stem from guilt over America's own attempted to subsume minorities into a larger whole?

This comparison fuels our present defense of self-determination and causes us to gloss over the fact that ethnic separatism is what turned Yugoslavia into a mess of warring states to begin with.

In America itself, the rhetoric of separatism and vengeful reclamation has brought rioting and prejudice whose worst consequences affect the disadvantaged people whom the rhetoric was supposed to empower. Nonetheless, many still act as if a self-centered and divisive Balkanization were better than the ethnocentrism of combining different groups into a single entity in which some group is likely to predominate.

In this spirit, America has joined several European powers in sending non-military aid to besieged Croats. This is a mistake.

While the Balkan countries we supply with aid, and the warring groups within America, aren't afraid to look to their own people's interests first, our government has never shaken the image of itself as global police officer, or at the least, global parent. If Dan Quayle sees government as a sort of big father than the American government has obviously become the sort of social-activist parent who neglects his own kids because he's busy saving the world.

The fact is that while we vigorously support others' self-interests, we're ashamed to talk about our own when other countries come asking us for aid to settle their internal disputes, preserve their environment, or rescue their economy. Our government should face the fact that America just doesn't have the money to give to the Croats, Russia, or other trouble spots in which we have no immediate stake. We need money first for the millions of homeless, the one in five children in America who are starving, and the victims of unemployment.

"Taking care of our own kind first" in this sense isn't selfishness but rather what politicians owe to the people who put them in office. What's more, if we don't take care of our economy first, we soon won't be able to help anyone, and will be close to requiring a global welfare check ourselves.

There's no double standard here. I'm not advocating complacent isolationism for America and selfless commitment to Yugoslavia unity for the Croats. Rather, I want to show that there are two ways of "taking care of your own kind first": the way that puts the interests of one's own group first and last, and the way that involves taking care of one's own responsibilities before assuming those of others. America's foreign policy needs more of the latter.

Now that the Cold War is over, we Americans have to change our idea of what it means to be a leader of the free world. The familiar balance of powers scenario is no longer accurate, and therefore American greatness may not be synonymous with having a finger in every pie.

The countries that emerge as leaders in the twenty-first century might well be those which take care of their own problems first and conserve their resources until they're needed for self-defense. As the old bromide has it, charity begins at home. Politics should too.