‘The Godfather’: A guide to foreign policy

By KEVIN HORRIGAN

The other night I flipped on the television looking for an NBA game. But when the picture came up, it showed the interior of a bedroom in early morning light, rumpled gold silk sheets on a king-sized bed. I knew what was coming next.

John Marley, playing the movie producer Jack Woltz, slowly wakes up. There is blood on the sheets, on his hands. He kicks back the sheets and there is the severed head of his prized racehorse, Khartoum. He screams and screams, and I never did get to the NBA game.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen “The Godfather,” but I can’t not watch it. One of my colleagues, a woman, said, “You know how I knew you liked ‘The Godfather?’ You’re male.”

It’s true. Guys like “The Godfather.” In the chick-flick “You’ve Got Mail,” Meg Ryan e-mails Tom Hanks, “What is it with men and ’The Godfather’?” And Tom Hanks replies, “‘The Godfather” is the ’I Ching.’ ‘The Godfather’ is the sum of all wisdom. ‘The Godfather’ is the answer to any question!”

Still, as much as I like “The Godfather,” I never thought of it as the guide to American foreign policy options in the 21st century. Fortunately, two other guys did.

“’The Godfather’ has always been a joy to watch; however, given the present changes in the world’s power structure, the movie becomes a startlingly useful metaphor for the strategic problems of our times. The aging Vito Corleone, emblematic of Cold War American power, is struck down suddenly and violently by forces he did not expect and does not understand, much as America was on Sept. 11, 2001. Even more intriguing, each of his three sons embraces a very different version of how the family should move forward following this wrenching moment. The sons approximate the three American foreign policy schools of thought — liberal institutionalism, neoconservatism and realism — vying for control in today’s disarranged world order.”

Little book

This is the heart of a cute little book (it’s really a magazine article repackaged between four-by-six-inch hard covers; it looks like a prayer book) called “The Godfather Doctrine.” It’s a version of an article that appeared last year in the journal The National Interest, published by the Nixon Center, a Washington think-tank founded by former President Richard Nixon.

The authors, John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell belong to the “realist” school of foreign policy — see the world as it is not what you’d like it to be — made famous by Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. By what I assume is sheer coincidence, “The Godfather” debuted in 1972, the high-water mark of Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik.

Hulsman and Mitchell posit that the part of liberal institutionalism (the Jimmy Carter school of institutions and strategic restraint) is embodied in Tom Hagen, Don Corleone’s adopted son and consigliere. Tom believes that “it’s business, not personal,” that peace can be worked out among the warring Mafia families and force can be used only as a last resort.

Meanwhile, Sonny Corleone is the neoconservative school that believes in the unilateral, pre-emptive use of force and muscular diplomacy. “Sonny cannot begin to comprehend that the era that made his military strategy possible has come to an end,” Hulsman and Mitchell write.

And then there’s Michael, the youngest son and the realist. “Using the realist tools that have been around since the time of Athens, diplomatic carrots and sticks, Michael whacks several of the leaders of other families to maneuver these rising powers into a more malleable position,” the authors suggest.

But once he’s got their attention, he can coax them into a new era of prosperity. “Michael’s preference is for a onetime, comprehensive settling of accounts, after which the new system can settle into a stable — and peaceful — period of equilibrium,” the book suggests.

“The Godfather Doctrine” has its faults; mainly, who wants to think of the United States as a criminal enterprise without a moral core? But displayed on racks at checkout counters in bookstores like other gimmick books, it probably will outsell more serious books by 10-1.

‘Barack Corleone’

Still, it makes you wonder how the Godfather’s illegitimate son, Barack Corleone, would have reacted to the threat posed by Sollozzo and Barzini, or how President Barack Obama should react to the post-9/11 world.

“Michael would know what to do,” Hulsman and Mitchell suggest. “By engaging such states (China, Russian, India, Brazil, etc.), by looking at their genuine interests, the United States can make accommodations that pave the way for a more stable, more decent world.”

Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

X Kevin Horrigan is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.