Are Bush and Rice the New Liberal Internationalists?
One of the great ironies of the Bush administration is that Bush and Rice came into office as traditional realists – and now they are uttering pronouncements that would make Hans Morgenthau turn in his grave.
In fact, the key argument at the heart of the Bush administration’s new national security vision is more liberal than realist – namely, that the spread of democracy matters more to American security than the balance of power. Sovereignty and power politics are the old stuff of world politics. Weak and vulnerable societies are today a greater threat to peace and security than strong and capable ones. This, in turn, leads to Bush’s neo-Wilsonian proclamation in his second inaugural, that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
So are Bush and Rice the new champions of liberal internationalism? The short answer is no – actually, so is the long answer. They have learned that the spread of democracy may have a "peace effect." But they are still completely blind to the more general security advantages and opportunities of liberal international order – and so they keep getting into trouble. Democracy has a "peace effect" but it also has a "community effect" – that is, it creates opportunities for collective security and problem solving while also setting limits and constraints on the unilateral and heavy-handed use of power within that liberal order.
So there are two problems -- the zeal of the recently converted and the danger of the partially converted.
The Bush administration did not always look so neo-Wilsonian. Indeed, the "liberal moment" of the 1990s seemed to come to an abrupt end with the election of George Bush, the September 11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq. Basic liberal assumptions about world order were challenged. Bush campaigned for president and won in 2000 on a platform of a new realism, eschewing Clinton-era nation-building and humanitarian interventionism. A year later, the terrorist attacks jolted America and triggered a massive exertion of American military power. Bush launched the "war on terrorism" and the "national security state" returned to Washington. A grand strategy was introduced that combined a more assertive nationalism with a neo-conservative power-wielding vision that devalued the importance of the postwar system of allies, institutions, laws, and norms. Indeed, in Bush’s view, an effective war on terrorism required breaking out of these old liberal internationalist constraints.
So it is ironic that Bush and Rice have claimed that Bush foreign policy is following in the footsteps of FDR, Truman and Acheson – the great architects of postwar liberal order. Bush himself often speaks as an idealist who challenges realism. And in another irony, realist international relations scholars are decidedly hostile to Bush and the Iraq war. And so when we hear the Bush administration use the language of Wilson, FDR and Truman we confront the final irony – the Bush administration is embracing a liberal argument about security and world order and using it in a way that is subversive of the postwar liberal international order.
What is missing in the Bush administration’s new found liberal vision of security is an appreciation of the international order – and its norms, expectations, relations, modes of affiliation – that democracies create. Indeed, the rise and maturation of the world democratic community is one of the great silent revolutions of the modern age. Call it the Western security community, the democratic complex, or simply the community of democracies. This grouping has been around for most of the last century but it has been evolving, expanding, and deepening. Indeed, the most powerful and rich countries in the world are now all democracies.
This fact of democratic community has two important implications for world politics. First, it has the effect of creating a stable, cooperative, and interdependent core of major states. Democracies are unusually willing and able to cooperate. Led by the United States, these democracies built an international order around multilateralism, alliance partnership, strategic restraint, cooperative security, and institutional and rule-based relationships. The institutional underpinning of this order made America’s power position both more durable and less threatening to other states – rising, declining, or otherwise. It is the order that came to dominate the global system for half a century – surviving the end of the Cold War and other upheavals.
Second, the fact of democratic community sets some constraints on how powerful states can operate within it. Put simply, coercive domination and realpolitik behavior has its limits and liabilities in a world of democracies. Attempts at bullying or strong arming fellow democratic countries is likely to backfire.
Robert Cooper captures this insight: "We live in a democratic era. . . . This has consequences for the international system. The realist world of rational policy making, equilibrium, alliances of convenience, and the balance of power, worked best when we were governed by rational, oligarchs – Richelieu, Pitt, Palmerston or Bismarck. Democratic ideas mean that policy requires a moral basis. The idea of the dignity of man will not go away; and policies have to be based on ideals and human sympathy as well as on interest. In a democratic world, the use of force becomes more difficult to handle. Wars need greater moral legitimacy than in an autocratic age. . . . The balance of power, which calls for the application of power with calculation and restraint, is no longer sustainable in a democratic age. Nor is the exercise of hegemony by force – which has been the other source of stability in the international system. In a democracy domination by the ruthless use of force ceases to be an option in the international field as it is in the domestic – as Gandhi well understood when he began the process of dismantling the British Empire."
This environment of democratic community has paradoxical effects on American foreign policy. On the one hand, it gives the United States the ready access to partners and the ability to pursue complex forms of cooperation. American power itself is seen as more benign and accessible. The United States is surrounded by affluent, capable, and friendly states. On the other hand, these democratic states are not likely to respond to domination or coercion by the United States. Indeed, they will expect the United States to operate within the rules and institutions of the democratic community.
It is this situation that appears to have caused the Bush administration so much grief. The Bush invasion of Iraq and general disregard for rules and institutions has triggered an outpouring of resentment and disapproval across the democratic world. Whatever pressure the United States can bring to bear on its democratic allies and partners is offset by the public opinion within these democratic states. The Bush administration has discovered the limits of its power in the age of democracy. It has gotten into trouble – losing credibility, prestige, respect, and political support – when it has been seen to side-step or disrespect the rules and norms of the liberal order. The fact that the Bush administration is now signaling a new interest in diplomacy and the reassurance of allies is evidence that costs do exist – and that they have been incurred – when the United States does not operate within the system that it itself shaped and led.
This depiction of postwar liberal international order puts the Bush "revision" of liberal internationalism in perspective. This is true in two ways. One is that Bush’s new focus on democratic promotion is only a small part of the larger liberal internationalist project. Second, it is possible to argue that the postwar liberal order is much bigger and more deeply rooted than often thought – and, therefore, its prospects of surviving Bush are greater than sometimes thought. Not all of the liberal order is under attack. The multilateral strategies of governance and the alliance partnerships seem to be most at risk but the economic dimensions are still operating.
But even if liberal order survives the Bush era, it is an order that rests on shifting and transformed foundations. The "liberal project" was brought into the postwar world with the help of a hidden hand – well, not so hidden hand – of American hegemony and Cold War bipolarity. The end of the Cold War, unipolarity, eroded sovereignty, and transformed security threats provide a less favorable environment in which to safeguard and manage liberal order. The liberal project itself has partly brought us to this impasse – its success has helped strip away the old realist foundations of the order. Liberal internationalism stands triumphant but also more alone and vulnerable.
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G. John Ikenberry writes: "In fact, the key argument at the heart of the Bush administration's new
national security vision is more liberal than realist..."
Why the pretense that there is a Bush administration national security vision?
There are a bunch of snap decisions made using his "gut" by the underbriefed
and incurious George W. Bush, and then there are a bunch of smart-but-craven
people working for him trying to fit them into some sort of coherent framework.
Count on the Bush administration being liberal rather than realist in the future--
count on it being anything other than inept--and you're likely to be disappointed,
right?
Brad DeLong
January 22, 2006 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Brad Delong's comment is pretty much on the money.
Look, Bush's insistence that he is "spreading democracy" must be taken for what it is: a post hoc political explanation attempting to justify his adventure in Iraq, which could no longer be justified by the demonstrably non-existent WMD. That, surely, is the ONLY reason we are now focused on "democracy" in Iraq.
Yet this provides Democrats with a unique opportunity, should they have the courage to take it: to go to the right of Bush on national security on the issue of when and how we deploy our forces.
Democrats can very reasonably argue that our military should NOT be committed to the "liberal" globalist, interventionist sort of actions, but instead should devote itself almost exclusively to the one thing it can and should do well: keep Americans safe.
One way to do this would be to insist that that we should remove our troops from Iraq as soon as possible, NOT because we are "cutting and running", but because they are needed to be used as credible threats to genuine perils to American security -- such as, for example, Iran.
Bush, caught up as he is in his phony "spreading democracy" justification, won't be able to leave Iraq without being able to maintain the pretense that its turning still another corner to stable democracy. He is the one who will lookas if he is weakening America's security by following some egghead, woolly, idealistic vision.
January 22, 2006 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
What interesting is that Republicans do the same thing in domestic policy. They talk about libertarian values or the "ownership society" but they totally ignore the need for a communal side to any society. Thomas Hobbes seems to permeate all their thinking.
January 22, 2006 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
"<span class="Apple-style-span">to insist that that we should remove our troops from Iraq as soon as possible, NOT because we are "cutting and running", but because they are needed to be used as credible threats to genuine perils to American security -- such as, for example, Iran."</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">This point is only valid if you actually want to credibly threaten Iran and maybe follow through on the threat. Do you? If so, what sort of threat do you have in mind, precisely? Because otherwise, it's shameless posturing. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span>
January 22, 2006 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ikenberry's "liberal project" is a phantasm of fevered minds. It doesn't exist now; it never has.
For the half century following WWII there were a number of developed nations whose elites chose to cooperate in Washington's geopolitical designs vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. They did so under Washington's threat to reduce its subsidization of their security costs and its willingness to keep its borders open to their trade.
But when it came to Lebanon, Nasser's Egypt, the Congo, Vietnam, and any other problems that didn't affect the self-interest of these "democracies," they showed no recognition that they were a part of Ikenberry's "liberal project."
January 22, 2006 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
<i>This point is only valid if you actually want to credibly threaten Iran and maybe follow through on the threat. Do you? If so, what sort of threat do you have in mind, precisely? Because otherwise, it's shameless posturing.</i>
Well, Heaven forfend that a Democrat might engage in "shameless posturing", and win some elections, right?
But, in fact, it wouldn't be shameless posturing. Remember the old policy, speak softly but carry a big stick?
Look, you DON'T have to say under what precise conditions you would use the troops, even if, say, you position them directly around Iran. You simply say that they are there in case they may be necessary, that you are leaving your options open, that they are all on the table.
In fact, this is precisely what SHOULD have been done in the case of Iraq. A credible threat was ample to get the remarkably stubborn Saddam Hussein to allow in nuclear inspectors. What makes anyone think that the same would not hold true in Iran?
Here's the real point: our military IS in fact very impressively good and effective at overcoming out in the open military forces, and deposing ruling classes. That is exactly what we did in extremely short order in Iraq. Iran would rightly fear that we might do so, and find and remove all nuclear facilities using troops on the ground. That is the SUCCESSFUL part of our war in Iraq. That is ALL we would have threaten to do in Iran, with the very important difference that of course Iran is a demonstrable potential nuclear threat.
And again, the poit is NOT to invade, but to use the threat of invasion to get Iran to back down. War, as always, should be the last resort. It's unlikely that Iran would force us to it, given our history of breathtaking success at this limited sort of venture, but if it did, we could most certainly accomplish it (assuming of course that we were at full force -- but THAT problem is BUSH'S fault, which Democrats should mercilessly point out).
January 22, 2006 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
In fact, the key argument at the heart of the Bush administration's new national security vision is more liberal than realist - namely, that the spread of democracy matters more to American security than the balance of power.
There's a balance of power? Please, explain the dynamic of this balance to me. It will be the first thing besides contempt for the people who post there that I've picked up from America Abroad in quite some time.
January 22, 2006 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you hear the violins on the deck of the Titanic?
We better wise up to the fact that the Bush and Condi are not having an honest discussion with us while we still have a “world democratic community” to worry about.
January 22, 2006 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
A year later, the terrorist attacks jolted America and triggered a massive exertion of American military power. Bush launched the "war on terrorism" and the "national security state" returned to Washington. A grand strategy was introduced that combined a more assertive nationalism with a neo-conservative power-wielding vision that devalued the importance of the postwar system of allies, institutions, laws, and norms. Indeed, in Bush’s view, an effective war on terrorism required breaking out of these old liberal internationalist constraints.
And yet it appears to be the case that the American public has supported and driven this turn toward assertive nationalism, obsession with security, paranoia, secrecy, unilateralism, nostalgia for postwar American supremacy, and tolerance for weakly checked and oppressive executive power – at least during the majority of Bush’s time in office. So much perhaps for the vaunted morality of democracies, and “democratic peace theory”.
As for the national security state itself, its characteristic behaviors may have intensified, but it did not “return”. It never went away. It has been snugly in place for at least two-thirds of a century now. All that has returned is a certain amount of anxiety about this state. In more complacent eras, such as during the Clinton administration or the Eisenhower administration, the public is content to allow the state to make its secretive foreign policy sausage without paying great attention to what gets ground up into it. All the nastiness is hidden from view, and the public lets the bastards get on with their hidden, ruthless business without much prying. It is only when the state launches wars, and thus becomes a threat to many of its own citizens, that people pay attention. They discover the Leviathan in whose belly they have been dreaming away for all these years. They compare their current perceptions with their earlier ones, and project their own prior innocence onto the fictive government they imagine existed back in those sweet and indolent times.
You make a heroic attempt, Mr. Ikenberry, to lay the blame for the damage to the cause of global governance and international order entirely at the feet of the Bush administration. Indeed the Bush approach has been peculiarly destructive and damaging. But there is a deeper bipartisan American cause of the failing health of, and prospects for, global order.
Since the end of the Cold War, hat has damaged the cause of global governance more than anything is the fanatical American insistence that any such governance is illegitimate unless it conforms to almost all the standard norms of American political and economic ideology. The liberal internationalist, conservative nationalist and neoconservative versions of this revelation are just three manifestations of the same uncompromising, triune political god. The nationalists say that foreign lands are all morally inferior to the United States, and that the United States is the last bastion of rectitude in a fallen world. Thus there can be no enduring basis for cooperation with them, and US foreign policy must be ruthless in its determination to preserve our national moral purity from foreign contamination. Some of the nationalists will allow that if we can convert some of the heathens to the service of our own god, through unilateral action, that is well and good. And the neoconservatives make of aggressive conversion a new, enthusiastic denomination of the old nationalist religion. But both argue that we must not enfeeble ourselves through attachment to an international legal and political order formed through compacts and compromises with all those unholy and degenerate non-Americans out there in the morally barren non-American lands abroad.
The liberal version of the religion is less bleak, but no less dangerous and uncompromising. Liberals are all for some sort of international order. But it turns out that that order must be “liberal”, and “democratic”, and based on American conceptions of human rights, and American conceptions of liberty, and American conceptions of the right way to trade, and American conceptions of the right way to finance governments and private enterprises, and American conceptions of the right way to deal with religious belief, and American conceptions of the right way to run newspapers, and American conceptions of the right way to make laws, and American conceptions of the legitimate and illegitimate forms of sexual activity, and American conceptions of the right way to tie one’s shoes and use the toilet. When the frail, but actual, international order fails to live up to their lofty and idealized Kantian conceptions of political perfection, they either grow petulant about the international order itself, or retreat into a fantasy world – imagining they live in a kind of international order that does not now, and never has existed.
A wonderful recent example of this blinkered liberal zealotry was on display in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent speech at the Woodrow Wilson Institute. In one breath she bragged ridiculously about how her husband Bill, a noted philanderer of legendary and world-renowned promiscuity, had gone to Saudi Arabia to speak before an audience of notables, and told the assembled multitude how to order their social lives, and what constituted politically correct relations between the sexes. In the very next breath she said that it was necessary for the United States to be “humble” in the exercise of its foreign policy. This stunning incoherence and absence of self-knowledge is typical of the monsters of revolutionary ideological fanaticism – standard fare since the American, French and Russian Revolutions - and is one of the things that make people like Hillary so frightening.
It is this situation that appears to have caused the Bush administration so much grief. The Bush invasion of Iraq and general disregard for rules and institutions has triggered an outpouring of resentment and disapproval across the democratic world.
I think you should pay more attention: the resentment and disapproval are just as prevalent in the non-democratic world. You don’t need a “liberal democratic order” to generate an outcry in the face of ideological aggression and belligerent interventionism.
"... Wars need greater moral legitimacy than in an autocratic age. . . . The balance of power, which calls for the application of power with calculation and restraint, is no longer sustainable in a democratic age. Nor is the exercise of hegemony by force – which has been the other source of stability in the international system. In a democracy domination by the ruthless use of force ceases to be an option in the international field as it is in the domestic – as Gandhi well understood when he began the process of dismantling the British Empire."
A funny thing seems to have happened to this theory of Cooper’s on its way to confrontation with the empirical facts. It turned out to be not quite true.
Democracy is a better system overall than other systems – but that’s not because the people living under a democracy are any more moral and virtuous than people living under other systems. When a democratic public is driven by fear, then they are perfectly capable of authorizing their governments to act both ruthlessly and irrationally. They then become a panicky democratic mob, and their influence over the ship of state becomes for a time as much a danger to the world as it is a benefit during more serene times.
January 22, 2006 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Bush rhetoric is vaguely Wilsonian, liberal and internationalist, because they know that the use of such rhetoric effectively disarms their liberal, internationalist opponents. It is a Rovian political strategy, closely related to Rove's trademark strategy of projecting your own weaknesses onto your opponent. It works, because "The President is a liar" has so little resonance. When the President is mouthing your rhetoric, it is hard to find the words to contradict him.
The truth is the President is an authoritarian -- what the Greatest Generation was accustomed to calling a fascist. He serves the interests of large business corporation and holds rational policymaking in contempt, because, not to put too high a gloss on it, he holds all intellectual, rational effort in contempt. His foreign policy consists of generating lots of graft and a stage-managed swagger -- that's it.
He's not getting liberal internationalism wrong; he's getting fascism, "right". Build an empire; kill brown people; tax the poor; tolerate and encourage corruption everywhere your base wanders.
January 22, 2006 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush was in "trouble" before he assumed office. He has always been in trouble; he is a dim-witted, arrogant bully. When has the Bush administration not been seen to side-step or disrepect the rules and norms of the system the U.S. has shaped and led? Bush is not a visionary thinker or leader; he is a rank nihilist. He is a nihist because he doesn't know any better. He seeks to destroy existing social, political and economic inate greed and the need for filthy lucre. He is afflicted with that parochial and provincial need to dominate which is endemic to west Texas males. Foreign relations like individual relations require trust and consistency to survive and thrive. Bush and Rice offer neither; instead they criticize, lecture, bully and hector. So who is gonna trust them?
January 22, 2006 11:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The community of democracies is larger than one state; the fact that a superpower can weaken its commitment to its own democracy does not disprove that there is a community of democracies or that this community elevates norms of behavior between states.
Your characterization of Ms. Clinton's speech pretty viscerally sums up everything that's wrong today with America's public discourse and especially with today's crop of right intellectuals. This prating ideological horseshit whose style cops the Daily Worker, is a testimony to the debasement of your intellect at the throne of ideology. Get a grip, man.
January 23, 2006 5:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Which ideology do you have in mind mcolgan? Instead of simply affecting outrage, and likening me to both the Daily Worker and contemporary right intellectuals, why don't you offer your own altrernative characterization of Ms. Clinton's speech?
January 23, 2006 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dan K:
Your comments are among some of the most intellectually coherent ones on the Net. I can't imagine anyone denying that your taxonomic orderings are just about flawless, judging from my readings of your posts. I applaud them. And they reflect a rare humility.
Thanks for them!
SD
January 23, 2006 6:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only reason why the threat forced Saddam to back down over inspectors is because it was clearly credible, in that the U.S. was really willing to invade. If you want to threaten Iran fine, but you should know that you cannot do so successfully and not run the risk of either having your bluff called or having to follow through.
I would also be careful about saying it's unlikely Iran would force us to it. If we're all honest about it, the truth is none of us have any idea what they will do.
I'd make one final point. A lot of people on this site jump at the opportunity to get to Bush's right on some security issue, like terrorism, the dprk, or Iran but are downright queasy with many of the consequences of such a position (nsa wiretaps, worsening relations with iran, and so on). now, one could answer that by saying that this wasn't what was meant by getting to the right but may also does reveal something important-- much of the criticism may be opportunistic.
January 23, 2006 6:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
The term "legendary promiscuity" is laughable when applied to a man with two known episodes of non-reproductive sex.
It is appropriate to Genghis Khan, a ruler that must have been loved by God since his genetic markers are found in millions of Mongolians.
January 23, 2006 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you sdanielles
January 23, 2006 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know Brad! I i can locate the intellectual underpinnings/original purveyor of just about each snap decision, or otherwise, made under this and the previous administration.
I would characterize the current vision as including the voices of individuals and groups who are aware of the ignomies of prejudice and control orientedness in this society; and so reflected in Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's speech at Georgetown when she referred to her conception of the future composition of the State Department and the role of her own heritage in arriving to that conception.
January 23, 2006 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're certainly right that if one issues a threat, such as I'm suggesting, then you may be obliged to follow up on that threat.
That is indeed exactly what Democrats should advocate, and support, if indeed it comes to that.
Look, most Democrats in Congress are, in effect, already on record supporting such intervention, if absolutely necessary. That was the precise meaning, in their eyes, of the Iraq resolution for which they voted. For them to pursue the same policies with respect to Iran is simply a logical and principled extension of that very vote.
Now, you seem to imagine that invading Iraq, in the extremity, is something we would never be willing to do. But I think that it is wrong. While people want to draw the lesson from the Iraq war that it was a massive failure, that fails to look at the obvious "detail" of what the Iraq experience really tells us. Effectively, the Iraq war has two phases. In the first phase, we were knocking out Iraq's military, deposing its ruling class, and trying to locate and destroy WMD. In the second phase, we were and are trying to establish a democracy.
What we have found as a result of that experience should guide American foreign policy into the indefinite future. One, in the first phase, we were enormously successful. In the second phase, we failed terribly. Both lessons must be learned. What this means is that we should never engage in "spreading democracy" by military means, but that we can, and I would argue should, use our military for limited objectives having to do with eliminating threats from other countries.
No one seriously asks the question nowadays, what of democracy in Afghanistan? If Afghanistan reverts to control of warlords, but warlords not actively supporting threats against the US, that is OK, from our point of view, because we have eliminated a threat to us in the form of al Qaeda training camps, etc.
IF we had found, say, a nuclear program in Iraq, and had eliminated it, no one would much care whether or not Iraq was becoming a full blooded democracy, so long as the threat had been removed.
And if we are obliged to invade Iran in order to locate precisely and remove surgically the nuclear program (and perhaps its political leaders), then leave, it would be a quite acceptable outcome. The entire effort could be well circumscribed, and our withdrawal swift. This is what our military is simply remarkably good at, and using it to this effect would have the salutary effect of putting other nations with nuclar ambitions on notice that they had better think about whether they want to pursue them.
Now, again, this is only in the extremity that Iran refuses to allow inspectors and put on hold its nuclear program. I hardly expect that that would ever come to pass, if we make a credible threat.
But Democrats have to ask themselves if they ARE willing to use our military under these conditions. I think a very good number are -- certainly any Democrat who supported the Iraq war, or would have done so had it been led by a rational, competent President, certainly should support a like war against Iran, if absolutely unavoidable to back up a threat. This point is especially compelling because, again, Iran is a demonstrable potential nuclear threat, not a fabricated one.
But it is certainly true that if a Democratic politician wants to "get to the right of" Bush on Iran, they had better believe in their bones in a robust assertion of American power when it comes to eliminating potential nuclear threats to the US and the world.
Such Democrats exist, for sure, but they need to find their voice on Iran.
January 23, 2006 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Legendary promiscuity is laughable-------
Well it sure finds application in many commentaries. I mean many more unlegendary and missionary positions have held court over in those countries. So that is one reference that I might have X'd out of Dan's post because I don't think any of us can easily escape the problem of holding to one double-standards when it suits our own standing/interests.
In that sense, most of us are not careful or mindful enough in our selection of the causal antecedents in an explanation; and, in the process, we may find ourselves highlighting an anomalous antecedent which will be picked on to diminish the efficacy of the broader argument.
January 23, 2006 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: <span class="Apple-style-span">secretive foreign policy sausage </span><span class="Apple-style-span">-----------</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">Ssshhh! Don't let ANYONE suspect that it may contain pork.</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">I am generally the only one that is in stitches over my own jokes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">Just kidding around! My apologies</span>
January 23, 2006 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
The term "legendary promiscuity" is laughable when applied to a man with two known episodes of non-reproductive sex.
Two? I suppose you mean to suggest that because Clinton only dropped his pants in front of Paula Jones, and failed to consummate the romance, he only loses points for Jennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky. Yet his friends, enemies and independent observers have all attested to the string of grossly irresponsible sexual indiscretions, the "bimbo eruptions" that threatened his several campaigns, the pimping and lookout services provided by the Arkansas Sate Police, the gropings, and the tactics of pressure and payoffs that were used to guarantee the silence of the parade of consorts.
My point is not to rake poor Bill Clinton over the coals again for his moral and prudential lapses, but just to point out the absence of self-reflection and clarity in some of our foreign policy makers.
People like Hillary are capable in all seriousness of believing that the US can carry out a "humble" foreign policy while at the same time lecturing other cultures on the details of their personal and social morality. Not only that, but in this particular instance the lecturer was distinctly ill-suited to make that case, given the fact that his own personal behavior in the area of gender relations is notorious - both here at home and around the world. If some public figure takes on the role of ambassador for progressive gender relations, he really ought to be someone with a reasonably respectable personal record in this area.
Perhaps we should feel free to lecture and moralize to our heart's content in our dealings with other countries. But let's not make the mistake of imagining that this strident moral confidence is a variety of "humility".
January 23, 2006 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Frankly,
I am in disagreement with the way you have couched the framework for your argument because I have been working my way through the democracy promotion literature, spanning a couple of decades.
The overall conception bore practical application before 2000, albeit in ways that were viewed as less than promising by democracy promotion experts.
The rhetorics about the 'War on Terrorism', have constituted the complicating feature, a point that has been raised here before-although not exactly as I have stated it.
They are engaged by subsets within all parties.
In reality, they get a lot of attention of the media, which, in turn, has led to generating multiple & unique sources for terrorism. They are essentially producing markets. So I'm not sure just how your proposal for the Dem position can correct for a problem which privileges any one or a number of actors who are adept at stoking the fires of ethnocentrism and ethnocentrism. This is part of a much broader problem of the pervasiveness of ethnocentrism and ethnomorphism.
January 23, 2006 9:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know what happened in the comments here, but what a brilliant post. Any chance this is fleshed out more fully in a journal article somewhere?
Perhaps the biggest idea here is the revolutionary impact that deepening democratization in countries around the world has had on the practice of diplomacy. As much as global economic integration or connectivity (lowering the barriers for spillover effects of disease, conflict, trafficking, financial crisis, and other public ills from one state to another), this promises to be a defining principle in this still unsettled post-Cold War age of international relations.
January 23, 2006 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
John, thank you for your article.
It is comforting to read you believe that the Liberal/Democratic countries will survive the Bush era. Many political messages or "movements" instigated by our present government say exactly the opposite of what they imply or are meant to do: Clear Sky, No Child, etc.
When Bush and Rice are promoting democracy by employing first strike and tactics that freely target non-combatants, (women, children, elderly etc.) in Iraq, they are really promoting something else. When "W" uses the word "Crusade" right from the beginning of all this, he not only inspires our enemies, he defines his real intention, and it doesn't seem to be spreading "Democracy".
We really need to define each situation we encounter today using the real words for them, not the "spin" we're being fed.
January 23, 2006 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the key problems with the alleged advantages of the liberal international order is enforcement. For the most part, nations other than the US are completely unwilling to initiate (and often even support) enforcement. This has been the history of all the nuclear proliferation agreements and has recently been highlighted with respect to the anti-genocide treaties. The international order is always willing to negotiate new treaties, but they are rarely willing to enforce them. This offers an excellent opportunity for serious seekers of proliferation because they can always distract the international community with pseudo-negotiations while continuing their nuclear programs.
And the international non-response to the still ongoing genocide in the Sudan is just pathetic. But if the US won't stop it, no one will. And what little the US has tried to do about the Sudan France stopped the first three times, Russia stopped then next two, and China is stopping now.
January 23, 2006 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"demonstrable potential nuclear threat" . . . Highly useful notion, FranklyO! Perhaps it's even a demonstrable potential imminently looming threat.
January 23, 2006 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it would be both appropriate and important to keep the distinctions clear between authoritarianism, imperialism and fascism.
January 25, 2006 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a common and serious mistake to believe that Bush or the Bush administration has gotten into trouble. While it of course is true, such beliefs conceal the more profound problem: It's the U.S. system of government that has gotten into trouble. Other nations, governments and peoples alike, don't know where to find America behind these different strains of thought competing to represent America and seemingly in constant strife with eachother.
National unity and policy-stability ought to be called for to make it possible for other ideologically kindred nations to regain some trust for the Americans.
[Yes, I've read WR Mead's Special Providence. ;-)]
January 25, 2006 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, let's not nag about terminology. The concepts are ephemeral anyway, but yes, there most certainly existed a project that went hand-in-hand with the democratization of Europe. It was no new thoughts in 1918, but they were suddenly very popular, and have remained so despite the set-back of the Abyssinia Crisis. The Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations and the United Nations all come from the same current. The U.S. have been more or less on the train sometimes, and jumped of at other times. But the project exists regardless of American ambivalence.
A key idea has always been that of peer pressure, on the level above the national, i.e. multilateralism, although it hasn't always proved as effective as generally hoped for.
Thanks to the unifying effect of the Soviet threat 1918-1991, and the favorable conditions Pax Americana offered 1945-1991, this project was maybe unfairly and deceivingly successful. But in any case it was and remains far more than an elitist project.January 25, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a little naive if we believe that the feints by Bush and Rice on 'democracy promotion' are little more than a cover for their unilateralist, realpolitik approaches of the last 6 years. At best, this is an effort to achieve the same narrow goals using a slightly broader portfolio of tools, or ones that might work slightly better.
Just because the Vulcans use the language of liberal internationalism does not indicate a change of heart.
To alter the metaphor, we shouldn't be distracted by them adding a pinch of democracy and a splash of liberalism to their same old-same old neo-conservative stew.
January 25, 2006 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
National unity and policy-stability ought to be called for to make it possible for other ideologically kindred nations to regain some trust for the Americans.
How do you propose we achieve that unity and poilicy-stability Laurila?
January 26, 2006 4:57 AM | Reply | Permalink