“This is an act of aggression …. It’s really 19th-century behavior in the 21st century. … You just don’t invade another country ….” — John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, Meet the Press, March 2

Although it drips with arrogance and ignorance, which makes it easy to discard in frustration, there is enormous value in Mr. Kerry’s remark. It’s valuable for the profound insight it furnishes into the worldview of America’s leaders and the fatal mentality at the heart of America’s foreign policy.

The arrogance stems from the obvious supplanting of empirical fact with personal opinion. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the hours and days prior to John Kerry’s statement, showed that indeed you can in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion. But that didn’t matter. Instead of being rooted in evidence, historical or scientific, the “truthfulness” of Kerry’s remark derives from the eloquence and confidence with which it is delivered, and most importantly, the authority of the source. It was quintessential Obama administration: This is the truth because I say it’s the truth.

Then there’s the obvious ignorance, both of the nature of this crisis and the character and strategy of Vladimir Putin. But, most fundamentally, of human nature. The Obama administration apparently believes that because we live in the 21st century, because our leaders have Ph.D.’s and were educated at Oxford and Yale, because the world is highly globalized and our leaders engage in erudite diplomacy, because human civilization is more sophisticated and advanced, that we have evolved beyond the era of invasions and wars. This is the 21st century, they seem to reason, we’re too smart, too progressive, to invade nations and start wars.

It’s a pleasant thought, and one we all wish was true. But it ignores a basic reality: The 21st-century human heart is exactly the same as the 19th-century human heart, and the 10th-century human heart, and the 1st-century human heart. It’s true that 21st-century man is smarter (at least in the sense that we have more knowledge), is more sophisticated (or at least it seems), and has better technology. But our added intelligence and sophistication comes with a handicap.

It has blinded us to the fact that our human nature remains the same!

Behind the flash suits, iPads and iPhones, behind the culture and sophistication, behind the private jets and eloquent diplomacy, exists a heart that is inherently selfish, a heart that is inherently vain, a heart that pursues power and preeminence, a heart that is fatally deceptive and wicked. Embedded deep inside Vladimir Putin, as it is in all men, is an innate desire for self-preservation, for self-advancement and an innate proclivity to put self-interest and the interests of one’s own (family, state, country) above the interest of other nations. This is the fundamental flaw of Mr. Kerry’s remark, and of America’s foreign policy: It has a perverted view of human nature!

When it comes to human nature, mankind today is the same as it was in the 19th century, or the Middle Ages—or the garden of Eden! Some of our actions are different, they might seem less simple or barbaric. Scientific and technological advancements have resulted in superficial progress. Yet, on both an individual and collective level, our motives and attitudes—the nature underpinning our behavior—is exactly the same.

Everything I’m talking about is summed up in Jeremiah 17. In particular, verse 9, which ought to be carved in granite and hung over the entrance to the U.S. State Department.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

This is worth thinking about. Your heart, and mine, and Barack Obama’s, and Vladimir Putin’s, and Xi Jinping’s, even the pope’s, is “deceitful” and “desperately wicked.” The Hebrew word translated deceitful means sly, insidious or slippery. Wicked means sick, frail, woeful or incurable. Notice, our hearts are not just sick or woeful, they are “desperately” sick and woeful, to the point of being incurable. That’s not easy to read, and it’s even harder to sincerely accept, but consider the impact this truth would have if it informed and shaped America’s foreign policy.

If Jeremiah 17:9 were valued, foreign-policy strategies and decisions would take into account the tendency in other governments for lying, deceit and trickery. America’s leaders would be cautious about investing their trust and hopes in the promises and platitudes of others. Aware of the inherently selfish human nature within their counterparts in other states—and knowing that other states are advancing their own creed and pursuing their own ambitions—Washington would develop a foreign policy replete with cautious realism. This may sound cynical and pessimistic, but such an outlook would inform a more resilient, stable and effective foreign policy—one less likely to be caught off guard by lies and exploited by deception.

Informed by Jeremiah 17:9, the wise statesman would be wary of obfuscation and lying, and he would invest his faith and hope in action, not pious promises or rhetoric. Policies of appeasement and compromise would be practiced slowly, with caution. And while the foreign policy that takes Jeremiah 17:9 into account would not actively or willingly incite conflict, it would understand that conflict is inevitable and would always be ready for it.

Today, as Mr. Kerry’s statement shows, the guiding moral standpoint of many in the West, particularly liberals—and especially America’s president—is diametrically opposite to that taught by Jeremiah. Today, Mr. Obama and his staff in the State Department have developed a foreign policy founded on the belief that the human heart is fundamentally good. Although humans experience conflict and conflagration, Mr. Obama firmly believes that the “interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner has termed this the “Obama doctrine,” and he describes it this way (emphasis added throughout):

[I]ts very objective is to undercut America’s preeminent global role, reducing its great-power status to that of a multilateral partner equal to Russia, China or the European Union. At its core, the Obama doctrine maintains that all societies and cultures are morally equal. More important, promoting democracy and human rights has been abandoned in favor of “improving America’s standing in the world.”

Convinced that all societies, cultures and governments are “morally equal”—in other words, believing in the fundamental goodness of the human heart—Mr. Obama’s goal is to redefine America as merely a nation among nations.

Observing the messiah-like role Mr. Obama seems to see for himself in the international community, Charles Krauthammer wrote: “Traveling the world he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding.”

It all sounds so wonderful, and we all wish it could be true. But it’s not. Driven by a fatal misunderstanding of the human heart, America’s president is practicing a foreign policy in which America shuns its traditional moral, political and military role in the world, puts itself on par with its enemies, and hopes to walk hand in hand with them to the “sunny uplands of comity and understanding.”

The consequences will be fatal for America and the rest of the world. As we’ve just witnessed, Vladimir Putin (as well as Bashar Assad, Iran’s mullahs, Harmid Karzai and Islamist terrorists) is motivated by an entirely different worldview—one marked in many instances by the desire for power and the desire to destroy America! Failure to recognize this results in a suicidal foreign policy.

American author Joseph Conrad wrote about human existence: “I have never been able to find in any man’s book or any man’s talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world. … The only remedy for … us is the change of hearts.” Many today would ridicule Conrad as a cynic. But he was simply looking into human history and making a realistic observation. The human heart does not know the way to long-term peace, happiness and stability. We simply don’t know how to forge a world without conflict, unhappiness and destruction.

Conrad was absolutely right: The only remedy for mankind is a “change of hearts.”

Believe it or not, that moment is nearly here. Few people have understood the depths of Jeremiah 17:9 like the late Herbert W. Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong was an expert in the human heart, and knew exactly why it is so deceitful and wicked. Employing the authority of Scripture, Mr. Armstrong explained that God did not create the evil, selfish state of the human heart and mind. He explained that the reason the human heart is desperately wicked is that virtually from birth it has fallen under the influence of Satan the devil, also called the “wicked one” (1 John 2:13-14) and the father of lies (John 8:44). “[T]he selfishness, hostility, deceitfulness, wickedness, rebellion, etc. that we call ‘human nature’ is actually Satan’s nature,” he wrote. “It is Satan’s attitude. And broadcasting it, surcharging the air with it, Satan actually now worksIN the unsuspecting all over the world today! That is HOW Satan deceives the whole world today” (The Incredible Human Potential).

Although the human heart is terribly sick—incurable in human hands—there is a cure. The cure lies in the Spirit of God—the divine power by which mankind was created, and by which converted Christians produce the fruits of peace, joy, gentleness, longsuffering, etc. That Spirit will one day—in God’s time—be made available to all of mankind. At that time, when the Spirit of God enters the minds of men, the human heart will be healed of its infirmity.

Until then, it would be wise for Barack Obama and the stewards of America’s foreign policy to study Jeremiah 17:9.