Disentangling Idealism
Henry Farrell, commenting on David Glenn's CJR review of George Packer's new book remarks:
The specific beef that I (and some others on CT, but probably not all of us) had with the Iraq war wasn’t that military interventions to unseat dictators or support democracy are inherently wicked or impossible, but rather that they should only be attempted when there’s a very good chance that they might succeed. At a minimum, this requires that the government undertaking the war should be competent, should explain truthfully to the general public and to the men and women who are in danger of losing their lives, why this war is justified and the commitments it will involve over the longer term, and should back down when the public isn’t prepared to support it. We were members of the anti this war now left. But this implies that there were and will be occasions on which military intervention to remove dictators, prevent genocide or mass human rights abuses will be justified, and where the government should make the case for intervention to the electorate. Kosovo is an example where the US should have intervened and did; Rwanda is an example where the US (and France) should have intervened and didn’t, with quite appalling consequences. There’s a temptation for the left to repudiate international intervention altogether, and to make nice with traditional realists; recent poll data says that more Democrats are against international democracy promotion than are for it. This is understandable given recent history, but it’s still, in my view, a mistake. Left-liberals and realists are not natural allies.
I'm very sympathetic to this and working on an article on some related issues, but I think it's important to draw some distinction here that Henry, like the liberal Iraq hawks he disagrees with, are glossing over. Most notably, democracy-promotion is one thing and democracy-promotion through forcible armed regime change is another thing. I sat in on a working group meeting on democracy-promotion as part of the America's Purpose conference yesterday, and this question provoked, at first, a lot of weird hand-wringing and beating around the bush. Earlier in the day, however, Joe Biden (who's significantly more hawkish than I) said what I think needed to be said about this in his speech. I don't have a transcript or my notes in front of me, but his point was that no president has ever advocated the use of military force purely in order to remove a longstanding dictator from office and create a democracy there. The idea that this is a policy option worthy of consideration is a pretty pure post hoc creation of liberal hawks embarrassed by the relevations of massive dishonesty involved in the WMD rationale.
Operations of that sort are clearly different from operations aimed at halting an ongoing genocide or preventing an imminent one. There is a huge amount of space, both practical and conceptual, between a genocidal government and a democratic one. The liberal hawks who've been trying to assimilate the Iraq case to Kosovo and Bosnia and being willfully obtuse about this. "Morally," wrote Leon Wieseltier in his article "Against Innocence: A Liberal's War, Too" (TNR 3/3/03) "there is no significant difference between Halabja and Srebrenica." And there isn't. There was, however, a huge difference between them chronologically. The United States did not have the option in March, 2003 of sending a couple hundred thousand troops back in time to prevent Saddam's genocide of the Kurds.
That's not to say that there's a statute of limitations on genocide, but the question of when the unilateral use of force is appropriate is intimately related to the question of what the unilateral use of force can be expected to achieve. Stopping a genocide is very different from avenging one. I don't believe I've ever seen a proponent of the "moral case" for invading Iraq write a proper response to Kenneth Roth's important essay "War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention". Roth, incidentally, is the head of Human Rights Watch, so the odds that he's a closet Kissengerian are low. Nor have a quite seen any such people cope with the fact that the primary reason there was so little political support for military action aimed at halting the actual genocide in Darfur is that hundreds of thousands of soldiers were busy dealing with the aftermath of the previous war they urged us into. Even if Iraq had turned out better than it has, that opportunity cost wouldn't have been worth it.
At any rate, this is all just to say that I think the way out of this thicket is pretty clear. If you have a good reason to invade and occupy an area, then, sure, you should try to build a good government there (that beats trying to build a bad one). Stopping an actual genocide is a good reason for war, as are genuine national security threats. Beyond that, promoting democracy is good. But there are way more democracies today than there were in 1945, or even 1975, and virtually none of that was achieved through forcible regime-change.
Left-liberals and realists are not natural allies. Henry Farrell
I agree with your very lucid critique, but I wish you'd pick-up on Farrell's peroration.
For me, the difference between left-liberals and realists is not substance but rather, procedure.
Realists wish to instruct the Emperor when he may and may not make war; left-liberals wish to tell him that he may make any war he wishes to but only if before embarking thereon, he can honestly convince the nation (through its elected representatives?) that his proposed war is good, just, or necessary.
Practically, (Rawanda as an example) he can start one on his own but only if he has a plan to pull out after 60 days in the absence of having received permission from the "people."
September 7, 2005 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Complicated, messed-up, shit, and unlikely to find a solution from further foreign intervention. I have no idea what would have kept the situation in Rwanda from scrambling rapidly downward, I do not believe for a heartbeat that American occupation is doing a damn thing for the Sunni (or that it could). Further, I doubt that American intervention long run could have done much other than exacerbate the criminal genocide that occured in Rwanda.
We aren't God. It should be worth remembering that we didn't even stop the Nazi extermination project. The Soviets halted that by liquidating the main leadership and establishing a death squad type dictatorship across Poland and East Germany. We showed up a day late and a dollar short and we just hung a couple of them and let the rest pull down the picture of Hitler and rename the local party HQ as Christian Democrat.
September 7, 2005 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Sunni-Tutsi analogy is unusual and interesting, although I suspect very few Americans believe we're in Iraq to protect the Sunnis.
If, treating the comparison seriously, we were to hear hourly calls on the S.C.I.R.I. radio and television stations for the Shia to kill all the Sunnis and thereafter, discovered large numbers of Sunnis lying butchered in the streets, what -- recognizing that we're not God -- would you recommend we do, if anything?
September 7, 2005 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
To observe that the only rationale that holds up for the Iraq War is the unstated one--i.e., to exploit a perennial wedge issue among potential Dem voters for the 2002 and 2004 elections--isn't exactly to refute the case for war. Conceivably at least, there might be some populist foreign policy wisdom embodied in the public's very susceptibility to this appeal.
In this case, however, that populist wisdom pretty much boiled down to taking indiscriminate revenge on Arabs. At least that's all the sense I can make of the blithe nonchalance with which the war's supporters have discarded each rationale and taken up the next.
September 7, 2005 8:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I'm concerned, Matt's arguments don't quite hold up.
I remember hearing over and over again from left liberal quarters during the status quo ante bellum that our policy toward Iraq amounted to "genocide by sanctions" and that the sanctions were "weapons of mass destruction." Now perhaps the stories about malnutrition and nonexistent health care among the Shias in Iraq leading to lives cut short in genocidal proportions were based on, let us say, poor intelligence.
You never know. My problem was that I believed them. I just didn't believe the nonsense about the solution therefore being to do away with the sanctions and let it be, let it be (sing along with me, please), with Saddam and his regime still in the saddle.
I also believed the stuff about Saddam having viable and dangerous WMD programs as suggested by German, British, and American intelligence. It could very well be that Saddam instead was a consummate bluffer, or that others, to save their skins, were bluffing him.
At the time, however, it did not seem wise to base one's decisions on the hope of a bluff.
It's true that it is not standard practice for "third parties" to go in and knock out a regime just because the regime is overseeing genocide within its borders. That's why we stood by idly so long in the case of Liberia, and why we stand by idly in the case of Zimbabwe and Sudan and North Korea today, to the extent that other, national security interests do not also come into play. And even if we had otherwise in the case of Bosnia and Rwanda in theory, in practice we stood by, UN or NATO troops in place, as genocide took place.
Apparently Matt is in agreement with standard practice, and fears rationales for regime change based on ongoing genocide. I know he doesn't come out and say it that way, but I suggest what he argues for amounts to the same thing.
Otherwise, if he were consistent, he would be clamoring for an "all options are on the table" approach to Sudan, for example.
You can make a fine case from international law for bringing about regime change based on the perpetuation of genocidal practices, by military force if necessary.
But really, who wants to do that? Live and let die has always been the de facto position of the "international community."
I expect better from Matt.
September 7, 2005 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm more inclined to think the populist rationale is "we haven't been hit,so Bush must be doing something right".
the obvious counter to that is that apart from oklahoma city and the first WTC bombing, there were no terrorist attacks on American soil during the Clinton administration. Terrorist attacks on American soil simply haven't been very common, though the collossal failure to prevent 9/11 temporarily blinded us to this fact.
Though pointing out that terrorist attacks haven't been common in the past is not to say that terrorism might not be much more important and dangerous in the future. Depends how many motivated terrorists there are, whether they're able to get their guys inside the country, and what kind of explosives and weaponry they can get their hands on.
September 7, 2005 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt, I think a good example of the distinction you raise is the case of Egypt.
Some imagine that Egypt's recent moves toward slightly greater openness, and its decision to hold a phoney-baloney "election" have something to do with the implied threats created by Bush's aggressive move into Iraq. But that seems very implausible. Despite the administration's hawkish policies, there is still no chance in hell that the US would ever invade Egypt, and Mubarak knows it.
The small changes inside Egypt are not due to military intervention abroad, but are due to the fact the US simply now chooses to exploit the non-military leverage over Egypt that we have always possessed - that is, the dependence of Egypt and Egypt's regime on US money and other material support.
I'm entirely in favor of the judicious use of that kind of leverage in order to bring some pressure to bear toward incremental political change in other countries. But this is very far from advocating militant, country-smashing regime change schemes.
September 7, 2005 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
What about Haiti then?
Should we intervene to take out dictators who have recently risen to power by overthrowing a democratically elected leader?
I also question how effective it is to try to stop genocide without regime change. We caught a break with Milosevic falling. We might not be so lucky with Sudan. We could end up in a long war with a government we aren't willing to touch for God knows what reason.
September 8, 2005 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some very simpleton type addled thoughts I have had on this for several years. Maybe sophistry but I can't shake them, they still seem to work for me, in nearly every instance I come across.
You can change a regime but you cannot force a culture to change with force. If you manage to install something to your liking by force or by law, you will get blowback, but most probably of the type you might not expect, and maybe of enormous proportions. That's because humans cannot predict the future.
The only rule of law that works without blowback is one that takes into account the beliefs and attitudes of the majority as they are in reality.
The only way to affect culture change to change such a system is through communication and/or trade.
George knew this. Why doesn't anyone listen to him to this day? Everyone just labels the speech "isolationist" and doesn't really read it.
Physical integration, living side-by-side usually works but usually one has to live through enormous tensions for many years, maybe generations, with that method, especially if forced (school busing.)
And for when it doesn't always work, see, oh, Yugoslavia. (That takes me into this side thought: why do we find the word "balkanization" so useful? Is it because its helpful to describe when cultures are artificially merged before they are ready? Ask any former SSR?)
When the pre-emptive doctrine came out, I was quite puzzled why the Neo-Cons thought that Iraqis would great a capitalist democracy with sweets and flowers when they had been under the thumb of a cradle-to-grave welfare dictatorship for decades, and when the Neo-Cons had the example of East Germans staring them in the face, disgruntled and dis-satisfied with the idea of a quick switch to happy capitalists with a myriad of life choices and the associated risks.
Taking it down to a micro level, lets do gay marriage in the U.S. Here we just saw the blowback principle on forcing the issue legally in effect in Ohio in the election.
Meanwhile "Hollywood" was working diligently and effectively on this culture change issue:
All the lawsuits of several years and protests and lobbying and rants trying to force the culture to change before it is ready are not worth the effect of one episode of "Queer Eye for The Straight Guy" or one Rosie O'Donnell coming out, much less a Mary Matalin crowing about how wonderful her gay couple neighbors are on "Meet The Press" and Dick Cheney protectively growling about his daughter's biz in a vice-presidential debate.
Back to macro. As to effecting more democracies, the most devastating thing to happen in the last couple of years is the losses in the area of the myth of American exceptionalism in the mind of "the other." (Ah, Hollywood again? George's trade and communication, to be sure.)
Sure you can stop genocide or create an semblance of order with forceful intervention. But you cannot change culture so fast.
More and more every day, I see simple hubris in most International Relations theory; it strikes me as mostly just hocus pocus of those that think one can predict future reaction of a physical action. George was right. (And Clinton 2nd term Rubinomics was going there! Very sad Mr. Gore was not able to continue on that road and that he was afraid to even advertise it.)
Quagmires. They happen when you try to force cultures to change without truly winning the majority of hearts and minds first? If you want to do the force thing, be prepared for decades of surprises.
September 8, 2005 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew:
The liberal hawks who've been trying to assimilate the Iraq case to Kosovo and Bosnia and being willfully obtuse about this.
Amen. However, I think there is point you (and everybody else) is overlooking when comparing Kosovo and Iraq, both in terms of social issues and in terms of troops needed: Had Clinton attempted to deal with Yugoslavia along the lines Bush dealt with Iraq, he would have invaded and occupied (long-term)...Yugoslavia. That is, he would have occupied Croatia, Bosnia-Hegozovinia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, when our forces available were about the same size as they are now. AND the area occupied would have had roughly the same population, with a slightly smaller area (we aren't occupying Kurdistan). AND the area would have been split three ways between hostile groups with some things in common. (The Kurds are Sunni. The Sunnis speak Arabic as do the Shia. The Serbs speak Serbo-Croatian, but use Cyrillic and are Orthodox, the Croats are Serbs that are Catholic and use the Latin alphabet and the Bosnians are Muslim Serbs. And the different groups of Serbo-Croatians are all mixed up in the middle.) Both place sprinkled with assorted minor minorities.
If Clinton had done that, I would bet that he would have experienced exactly the same problems (not enough of us, too many of them). The correct analogue for Kosovo would be our intervention in Kurdistan to keep Saddam from running the Kurds over, OR we could acted similarly to Kosovo by protecting the Shia when they revolted in 1991 without occupying Bagdhad or the Sunni areas of Iraq. Meanwhile bombing Iraq until Saddam quit, died or was thrown out.
Bush essentially reran Yugoslavia (where Clinton's actions were muchly criticized by conservatives for being pointless, wasteful, expensive, stupid and dangerous) as a full-tilt invasion. Which means the R's were not smart enough to take their own advice.
Imagine Wes Clark trying to govern/democratize all of Yugoslavia except Macedon and Slovenia with the same number of troops as we have now. Hello, manpower meltdown and calls for a draft!
Everyone just labels the speech "isolationist" and doesn't really read it.
I had this great notion this line reminds me of: make a Nolan diagram for foreign policy. The X-axis is Interventionism (-10, on the left, see French Revolution) versus Isolationism (10). The Y-axis is Internationalism (10) versus Nationalism (-10). The true Troskite Internationale is at (-10,10). Hitler is (-10, -10). The anarchists are at (10,10) (The sloset states I can think of in this corner are the Phoenicians, Venice, Hong Kong and the Swiss, all of which are nationalist to some extent). Japanese after they gave up the gun are at (10, -10). You could introduce a Z-axis measuring pacifism versus militarism, if you wanted. At any rate, US policy over the centuries has tended to wander around the middle for the most part, gradually shifting mildly left. Once you plot everybody from Washington to Clinton, all this Roman empire/Empire of Democracy stuff is way over on the left, since it is much more interventionist. (Bush isn't promising to exterminate the Iraqis and replace them with Americans, but he also isn't trying to integrate it into an world-spanning Internationale, either.)
ash
['Anyways.']
September 8, 2005 3:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
In this case, however, that populist wisdom pretty much boiled down to taking indiscriminate revenge on Arabs.
Kudos, man.
As Thomas L Friedman wrote:
And, of course, he thought it was a great idea too.
September 8, 2005 3:46 AM | Reply | Permalink