West Point cadets favor a values-based foreign policy

For much of the last 10 years, I’ve helped cadets at West Point ponder America’s place in the world, why states do what they do and what causes conflict and cooperation in the international system.

Much of the time involves working through case studies, many of which saw how the U.S. acted transactionally abroad, confronted international incidents as they occurred and responded in familiar ways that hamstrung enemies and aided friends, while untethered to an overarching strategy.

My students acknowledged this was a natural posture for foreign policy leaders to fall into, but these instances caused hand wringing and repetitive questions of if the actions taken were the right ones. Rather, it was the less common cases where the U.S. took actions anchored in principles and familiar American values that made my cadets feel the most proud and confident that our country had made the right choices — choices that reflect West Point’s own ethical framework of “Duty, Honor, Country.”

In their first encounter with ethics in international relations, I bring hard-learned lessons from my first deployment in Iraq into the classroom. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, I led a team training Iraqi interrogators at the recently stood-up Iraqi Intelligence Academy. There was an unsurprising level of skepticism at our insistence that interrogations needed to behave in accordance with the Geneva Conventions rather than extracting confessions from detainees by any means necessary.

We made a breakthrough when we used the fact that so many of the students had themselves been tortured under the prior regime to make the case that torture does not lead to reliable intelligence. The Iraqis had firsthand experience with telling an interrogator whatever he wanted to hear — not the truth — when they were under duress. Back in West Point classrooms, the cadets bristled at early American actions in the Iraq War not aligning with our values, and deduced that unethical behavior made our mission much harder.

In a separate instance, the cadets debated the merits of President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cadets weigh the argument that the bomb saved lives — both American and Japanese — against the immorality of deliberately targeting civilians.

Cadets roundly felt that, regardless of one’s views on the matter, Truman was admirable in holding true to his “the buck stops here” ethic where he would own the good and bad that spawned from decisions he took as president. Cadets took the important lesson that leaders who take responsibility for their actions inspire those who follow them, while those who shirk the mantle of responsibility inspire resentment. 

Later in the semester, cadets grappled with the humanitarian conundrum of whether the United States had a moral obligation to intervene in the crisis in Yemen. Building on lessons about civil wars and failed states, they considered the scope of American interests in a region where good options are almost always hard to find. Cadets came away from the exercise with an understanding of the limits of hard power, the challenge of working with partners and allies with interests that diverge with our own and why, in these tumultuous decisions, holding onto American values is most critical.

Since I began teaching cadets international relations in 2011, the importance of the U.S.-China relationship has come to dominate many of the lessons. From the domestic politics of trade to the balance of power in the international system, Sino-American relations are central to the future of America’s place in the world. Rather than having a materialist debate about who’s military or economic power is more dominant, what is often the focus is the role of each country as an ideal to which allies and partners might be attracted. The cadets often reach the conclusion that not only is a values-based policy toward China more ethical than a transactional one, but it is also likely to be more effective at achieving our nation’s most critical objectives.

Understanding America’s place in the world and the role ethics ought to play in American foreign policy are foundational to cadets’ future careers as Army officers. But the lessons are relevant far beyond the U.S. military. The military is a reflection of the wider society from which its members are drawn. The American public believes that our values ought to explain why America does what it does at home and abroad. They also rightly believe that those values should lead our nation in war and peace. West Point cadets prepare for the former, but hope for the latter. 

Brian Babcock-Lumish is an assistant professor of international affairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and a security fellow at Truman National Security Project. The opinions expressed do not represent those of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.