ALIENS!

            If anything, including a flying saucer, were to travel through the restricted airspace surrounding the White House, it would be shot. It might receive a courtesy warning, but if it disregarded the warning a sizable portion of the United States Air Force would be unleashed upon it. By the time the flying saucer could land on the White House lawn, the president and his staff would be safely situated in an “undisclosed location” deep underground and our extraterrestrial visitors would be received by a 21-gun salute of the distinctly non-ceremonial, live ammunition variety.

            Of course, any flying saucer able to withstand a sustained barrage of anti-air missiles, as the conditions of the question dictate it must, would probably be able to withstand any weaponry brought to bear against it that would not cause widespread collateral damage and loss of innocent life. It seems reasonable to guess that protocol would call for an indefinite barrage of the flying saucer, but after several minutes practicality would prevail and the assault would halt. The military would evacuate and cordon off a five-block radius around the White House, and send in well-protected expeditions to determine the exact nature of the flying saucer. As time passes, the military would eventually find more pressing engagements, leaving a 25-square block camp of NASA and CIA bureaucrats in the center of Washington, DC. Eventually, over the course of centuries, the novelty would even wear off for them, and the flying saucer on the White House lawn would be just another Washington landmark.

            Anything to emerge from the flying saucer in the first few minutes of gunfire would probably be fired upon in an instant, instinctive reaction; the same thing might happen any time in the first few days. But as the guns cool, the reception our visitors would receive would slowly but palpably warm. The aliens would go from being a clear and present danger to a potential threat to a great enigma to a minor curiosity (well, probably not the last one. Space aliens are always very, very cool)

            Although writing science fiction is fun, and the illustrious Professor Jackson has been known on occasion to make use of fun things that only minimally tie into World Politics (see: Nationals game), one gets the sense that aliens landing on the White House lawn should somehow be connected to international relations, probably by explaining how each major theory of international relations would explain and evaluate the likely treatment of aliens. Unfortunately, at least for the sake of simplicity and conciseness, no single theory can claim a singular hold on explaining UFO-White House lawn interactions.

            Realists would point to, and applaud, the primacy of security concerns in addressing the potential threat of aliens landing at the White House. They mighr hold on to their guns and then their cattle prods for a bit longer than liberals and constructivists would, but they still wouldn’t hold on to them indefinitely. Realists acknowledge that states have limited resources with which to protect their security, and although that curious saucer north of the national mall would never cease to be a security threat, the magnitude of that threat would decrease gradually in relation to other threats the state faces. Realists probably wouldn’t enter an alliance with the aliens, who are more powerful than they are, but would recognize that fighting the aliens was suicide.

            Liberals would argue self-interest, as they usually do. Although realists, not liberals, usually discuss security, Maslow’s hierarchy would dictate that assuring physical security constitute is part of self-interest. Initially, the aliens would constitute a serious threat to the physical security of the president and his staff, and potentially the entire world. The rational response would be hostility. However, as time passese the aliens would seem to constitute less of a threat, and with immediate physical security protected rational humans could move on to address higher needs, such as the need to have really cool spaceships. Liberals would proceed cautiously in dealing with aliens than in dealing with other humans, because the behavior of aliens is less of a given, but would eventually (unlike the realists) pursuit a strong alliance with the extraterrestrial visitors, exchanging not only resources but cultures and technologies as well.

            Of course, the constructivists would point to our changing definition of the alien “other” as the spaceship continued to sit on the White House lawn…