One of the things that seems missing is enough reality testing by either, or any, side.  The world that gave rise to the Wohlstetters and the Marshalls or the "Munich" model is gone. My counsin, a professor of Mid-East politics is fluent in Arabic has been to the Middle East and talked to many of the Islamists.  One does not get the feeling that is too true of anybody in the foreign policy establishment.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

"Globalists" are going to be invited to the foreign policy table?

Typical male presumptuousness.  Reminds me of the story of the flea floating downstream on his back sporting an  *****  and calling to the bridge master to raise the drawbridge.

I think we may be witnessing the short and pernicious influence of the neocon.  Hopefully the AEI is in chaos - it's certainly putting out self-destructive statements lately.  Clausewitz said it well.  The neocons are the stumbling block to cultural competence.  Their forebearers were followers of Trotsky whose mission was the world-wide liberation of labor.  They were singularly unsuccessful, primarily because they ignored group or national cultures.  Perhaps with the neocons out of the mix, the world stands a chance of surviving.

I commented at length here (must admit too much length, a bit of babbling included ) on your first version of this post which you put in the "Reader Blog" section.

I should say I think it a great post that it should inspire me to babble so much.

Would also like to note that I thought you might genuinely be trying to wade into participating in the Reader Blog section, rather than not mistakenly putting it there, and I thought that too was interesting. Professor Blackton has used Reader Blogs in the past as sort of trial balloon places  to good effect, mho.  

Yep on both accounts!

p.s. Would like to add to my babbling comment on the other thread that I found the Fukuyama article a very impressive piece of work, one that was obviously long thought out and long worked over (the latter making it flow well and look deceptively simple to scanners who did not read it with deep concentration. That's a permanently usable free archive link I just gave, so if anyone didn't read it well, you have another chance!)

It was obvious to me that Fukuyama was in part doing a C.Y.A. by saying that "they didn't read my work correctly". He could have objected much more strenously before to the misinterpretations. But he let them run with his ideas in the direction others took them, possibly because he did not have complete confidence in his own interpretation?

That which immediately caught my eye about the piece and that relates to my comment on the other thread is this:

He is still glossing over the end of the Soviet Empire and not thinking about that in the context of what he is saying. He simply used it as an example of where intervention and meddling works. He's not admitting to himself that Reagan and Carter meddling was in itself a big risk.

For example, he's not looking again at how East Germany has still not assimilated well into "Germany," and how it could cause future problems. Had he studied how those decades under a totalitarian welfare state ended, he might not have been so eager to think that intervention in Iraq would go so swimmingly.

Just because it worked out well, what makes him think what they did was a sure thing? How do you know at this stage in history that you effected anything, that "the people" might not have caused the same thing to happen? I think the essay shows he is coming around to seeing it Cal Coolidge's way, i.e., American common sense folk culture wisdom foreign policy,  but that he is not confronting all the demons.

Finally would like to add a summary thought concluding all: when are more American foreign policy think tankers going to confront their own culture? As I see it, deep in American culture is rejection of all the old meddling ways of "the old country." The founders, the waves of immigrants, all wanted to start a new world that didn't do things the way the old world did, that just stuck to the business of building an alternative that would be an example to the world, perhaps to make the old world change because they are jealous of you, rather than trying to use manipulative power over others to do things your way. This is actually a narrative in many individual families , it goes like this: my great-grandfather gave up everything in (fill in the blank) and came here with $2 in his pocket to start a new life. Among other things, implicit in that is  a rejection of interest in what other countries are doing. Some call it isolationism; I don't think that's a correct label.

Mr. Wilson, 

I'm very interested in learning more about the cultural split you describe between the globalist culture and the traditional national security culture.  Could you tell us more about this?  I have some rough notion of what you mean, but I'm not sure I get it completely.  Is it roughly the same as the distinction between "internationalists" of either the left or right and "nationalists"?  You say:

Each has its own journals, think tanks, conferences and watering holes; each has is own norms and lingo; each has its own foundation sugar daddies.

If you have the time, will you please spell it out and name names here?  And how does the distinction, as you see it, cut across the debate about neoconservatism?

From where I sit, the conflcit between neoconservatives and liberal internationalists is just an in-house debate among a broadly like-minded elite.  Both are profoundly culturally chauvinistic.  Both are determined to spread a neoliberal economic system based on the dominance of American capital.  Both preach virtually identical cultural and social values.  Both are hostile to any sort of leftist economic systems - though the noecons more passionately and fanatically so. Both are enamored of the same narrow range of political systems.  Both are allies of corporate power, and work to expand its role.  And both seem seized with the recurring nightmare that somewhere in the world there are people who are not yet Americans.  And above all, both are possessed of a deep conviction in their own entitlement to rule.

The only serious difference is over means.  The neoconservatives favor a more openly aggressive and revolutionary strategy of global transformation, while the liberals prefer to rely more on tact and diplomacy, and hope we can wheedle our way to dominance.  The liberals, it is true, have more hope for the UN - but mainly for a reformed and thoroughly westernized UN that does the west's bidding  and helps put an international seal of approval on western policies.  The neoconservatives, in the past, seemed inclined to dispense with the UN altogether - but seem increasingly drawn to the liberal approach.  In the past, there was also a significant difference between liberal internationalists and neoconservatives regarding Europe, with the liberals having a much more favorable attitude toward the continent, and envisioning a sort of Euro-American liberal imperium.  The neoconservatives once had a deeply hostile attitude toward the continent, but seem to be drawing closer to it of late.

So the gap between Wilsonian liberal internationalists and neoconservatives has been shrinking - and the writings of people like Fukuyama and Timothy Garton Ash seem symptomatic of this trend.  The gap between these opposing camps in the foreign policy elite doesn't seem nearly as large as the gap between that elite and the rest of us in America, who seem to have precious little influence over the direction of foreign policy.

I found much to agree with in DMO's comments, although I would demur somewhat near the end.  DMO says:

But, the globalists, drawn to UN-centric diplomacy + HR, humanitarian and environmental NGO activity, fail because their cosmopolitanism is not rooted consciously in an American identity. Their international politics model is banking on the erosion of state sovereignty -- particularly the American state that they believe stands in the way of their utopian dream of a global regime.

The globalists do have a utopian image of a global regime.  And it does seem committed on the whole to the erosion of state sovereignty.  But I disagree that the erosion is intended to include the American state.  Rather, their vision seems to depend on expanding US sovereignty, which follows the march of globalization and progress of American capital.  They see a path in which some states get stronger, and fill the vacuum left by the erosion of other states.  Or perhaps we can say that they are attached to a vision of expanding Euro-American sovereignty.  That is perhaps why so many US globalists are invested in the fate of the European Union, and see the eastward expansion of that union as the march of progress.

I suppose they are very impressed with global philanthropists like George Soros, who might use their unaccountable power to spread "liberalism" or "civil society" or some such thing.  You find that when they are pushed, "democracy promotion" is a euphemism for liberal capitalism or the "American way".  Soros, by the way, has made common cause with a wealthy gang of outlaws who seem fanatically committed to the destruction of the Russian state, along with their own self-enrichment.  He funds a lot of NGOs though.  In this way, Soros's own personal obsession with, and hatred of, Russia has become the policy of a whole bunch of global "liberals".

I think the globalists are just as chauvinist as the most ardent Jacksonian nationalists, and practice a politics that is just as much rooted in an American identity.  But their sense of what America is idifferes substantially from the Jacksonians.  By "America", the globalists mean a society forged in the enlightenment, on this continent, which is the avatar of global liberalism, and is universal in its aspirations and presumptions.

It is interesting that the neoconservatives and liberal isolationists have managed to sell their neoliberal, globalizing agenda as a form of "democracy promotion".  Whatever the virtues of neoliberal globalization, it is certainly not compatible with democracy.  The much-ballyhooed erosion of sovereignty they discern and promote is a fundamentally anti-democratic movement.  It consists of of wresting power from the hands of regional governments, and putting it in the hands of unaccountable multinational corporations, financiers and global NGO's - and also in the hands of a few powerful foreign states in the US and Europe.  But no people can possibily hope to be self-governing if they are not in possession of a strong and coherent state, dedicated to looking out for their own peoples' interests. 

I actually have substantial global ideals of my own, and hope along with the liberal globalists for the building of a system of global governance.  But, in my view, you can't have global government of any kind without a community of strong states that are capable of acting as coherent and reliable agents in the system.  And this is especially true if there is any hope for the government to be democratic.  So I tend to view the neoliberal undermining of many states, in favor of the unregulated rule of corporations, financial centers and a few states, as a long-term threat to both democracy and peace.

At the time of the Monroe Doctrine France and Spain were also quiet active in the carribean. You are mistaken the United Staes role withthe British. The United States Nave was often used with the British navy to quell revolts around the world.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

In the Pacific. Our small fleet was often pressed into service by the British to assist them. I will get back to you with details.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

The Moment of Truth - NeoCons Jump Ship

While their first cousins, TPMC's foreign policy elite in exile, the Muscular Wilsonians, rail against the dangers of "too much realism", the US faces the greatest strategic disaster in its history, and yet not a peep, not one concrete proposal for what to do about the mess they helped create.  What is wrong with this picture? Their silence speaks volumes, and Ken Pollack still has a job at Brookings.

Sorry Ellen please take a breath. First off I can't lose you, you make me think and do a bit of reading. The books I want to look at wil not be in my possession until Wednesday evening.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Not to belabor the point - the point isn't that Bill Clinton's policy is a twin of Bush's neocon adventurism  They are "first cousins" - the elder prepared the way and in the event, Ken Pollack's  a perfect example as is Ivo Daalder's embrace of Fukuyama the Penitent

BTW Dan, Pollack was a hardcore cheerleader for war. I followed his antics closely. He was an important piece of the Bush warmongering in fact because he provided both link and credibility to the Bush WMD claims.  Why I remember Josh Marshall's TPM interview with the guy and my nasty-gram to Marshall..Cannot abide that man Fukuyama was on Keith Oberman tonight doing penance. I want Brookings to fire Pollack. He's a shill

P.S. This short one I just ran across going through old papers is fun on the culture issues. Our father empire is having an identity/ideology crisis that I would say we gave up on long ago. We picked a Constitution, flag, an anthem and moved on, not just allowing change, but expecting it. They're still seeking a ideology for their culture because change is so hard to deal with?

 Letter From Britain

Under a Big Tent Umbrella, but What Else Do They Share?

By Alan Cowell from London, Feb. 1 New York Times

.... Is Britishness just a plum-colored passport, or is it something else?....

 

I recall an email exchange with a British columnist, I think he was at the Guardian, about similar, when he wrote on some citizenship issues that were at the fore right after 9/11, it was something about the possibility of a pledge of allegiance. It's like the majority feel that they are non-ideological, but because there is no constitution there, is no there  there, and they can't be proudly non-ideological. I don't know how else to explain it. The idea of a pledge of allegiance bothered him, and he said something like, what do have to pledge allegiance to, what does the flag mean? What do we really have to be proud of or adhere to? I wrote, what are you nuts? The Magna Carta, et. al.? Can't you see it? It's all intertwined with their damn monarchy thing, that's why they have a hard time seeing it?

Why I remember Josh Marshall's TPM interview with the guy and my nasty-gram to Marshall..Cannot abide that man Fukuyama was on Keith Oberman tonight doing penance. I want Brookings to fire Pollack. He's a shill.

 

Just curious.

This level of anger about talking heads and scholars in institutes and similar in the media (such as the recent string of comments elsewhere here about Chris Matthews being partially at fault for the Iraq war) simply amazes me, and has often struck me as ridiculous. It sounds almost as if it's very personal, like you know them.

Are you really that angry or are you being facetious? If you had money invested in Brookings or something, or were a colleague, now that level of rage would make sense to me.

But just putting the anger towards idea mongers? Reminds me of bar fights over nothing. Or as if it is just all another professional sports game.

The problem is we do have free speech here, we're not like Germany where the Neo-Nazi rock band has to submit their lyrics to the police before the big political event. And I do realize how powerful meme spread is, through talking points and the like, I do. I just don't think attempting to censor spread of any and all political ideas are intended in the First Amendment, that one has to not just live with it, but support it.

Shouldn't such anger be directed towards those who implement policy? And to the political party or coalition with which you might wish to affiliate? Instead of attacking thinker that have had success spreading their ideas, isn't it better to learn to spread one's own better?

P.S. I never liked or respected Pollock either. I gave him a fair hearing on the tube a couple of times and read a few pieces here and there. Since then, I switch the channel and I don't read and I don't pay attention. That's the way it's supposed to work.

According to Zakaria's essay I was wrong in thinking that Britain had, by 1895, acquiesced in America's Monroe Doctrine pretensions.

As the British prime minister said of the doctrine at that time, "no nation, however powerful, [is] competent to insert into the code of international law a novel principle which was never recognized before, and which has not since been accepted by the government of any country."

Artappraiser

I think in your combined posts make to very important points.  As Bernard Bailyn has pointed out the ideology of the Founders was  the losing ideology of England.  it was an ideology skeptical of power concentrated in any hands and also of enthusiasms.  They created a system in which you need do nothing but owe allegiance to the Constitution. 

 When that is combined with capitalism you have a country that is not ideological in the European sense and which does not have a sense of nationhood that is based on blood or soil. 

One of the many things that has made Bush so different and scary is that he has put these truths on their head.  He has been trying to use fear to drive an ideologically based set of policies and, unitl the port deal, a idea of what it means to be an American.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

artappraiser,

I don't know why you're amazed.  

If an intellectual in a position of prominence at a major institution like Brookings or CFR decides to publish an argument in favor of a particular policy course, then they should expect that their argument might actually succeed in influencing people.  And if, in fact, their argument does influence people and plays a contributory role in a policy's enactment, then they are themselves partially responsible for the success or failure of those policies, and should be willing to accept  that responsibility.

I would say that Pollack's book, in particular, was enormously influential in its effect on US opinion leaders, and thereby contributed substantially to the success of the administration in selling the war to the public.  The winning over of opinion leaders played a very significant role, in turn, in securing Congressional authorization for the war.  And Pollack clearly intended to have an influence, releasing the book at the onset of the major public discussion over Iraq.

I actually respect Pollack, because his book was very clearly written, avoided most of the stupid arguments for the war that were floating around, and made the best case that was available for the war in an organized, logical manner.   And where he was wrong, I think he was sincerely wrong - that is, I tend to believe Pollock himself believed the case he was ma