The Search for an Enemy
I've actually heard that Francis Fukuyama has said this before, but that information didn't come to me in reportable form. During a BloggingHeads.tv appearance with Robert Wright, Fukuyama says of Bill Kristol and his circle at The Weekly Standard that during the 1990s "There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn't do as well" when foreign policy wasn't on the issue agenda. The obvious candidates were either China or something relating to Islamic fundamentalism and, as Fukuyama notes, what they came up with was China. Then 9/11 changed things around, at least for a few years. I think this is very telling, and reveals a great deal about the mentality that's been guiding America's foreign policy during the Bush years.
Looked like Fukuyama was there under distress. Was someone holding his family hostage?
April 23, 2006 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ya know, I fear that Fukuyama's obvious distress won't look good on his record of rehabilitation. Someone should point him to Broder's recanting.
It is good to see that both Fukuyama and Broder are just about re-educated and rehabilitated.
Life is sweet in pundit land!
April 23, 2006 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn't do as well" when foreign policy wasn't on the issue agenda"
This is Kaiser Wilhelm's electoral strategy. Works well for a while. If you haven't done so, you should read Lieven's America Right or Wrong for a nuanced comparison of US and pre-1914 Germany.
The obvious candidates were either China or something relating to Islamic fundamentalism and, as Fukuyama notes, what they came up with was China. Then 9/11 changed things around...
Not sure that this was ever an either/or situation.
April 24, 2006 5:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
So they really are like the Nazis after all.
April 24, 2006 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why isn't this on the TPMCafe front page?
April 24, 2006 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The fact that Francis Fukuyama states the obvious is not THAT newsworthy.
What amazed me most was the considerable effort put into making France our arch-enemy. The idea had a considerable appeal -- it is much easier to paint the liberals as traitors for being "pro-French" than "objectively pro-al-Qaeda". Easy to compile all liberals praising French health system, ingesting French cheeses and wines, contarsting favorably French dirigiste methods of producing electricity with the mess we got here, etc. Some go to such lengths as drinking BELGIAN BEER! (During the anti-French campaign it was established that Belgians are every bit as bad as the French).
April 24, 2006 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
"La Provence, elle n'est pas en France, si?" Richard de la Perle
April 24, 2006 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even in domestic policy, I can't think of a single Republican policy in the Bush-Cheney era that hasn't come with some bogeyman with which to tar opposition. From trial lawyers to activist judges, Hollywood elites to Massachusetts liberals, homosexual agendas to the secular war on Christianity. Meanwhile, as Republicans come up with ever more Americans to fear and loathe, a comfortably deregulated news business questions the patriotism of opposition Democrats.
April 24, 2006 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
William Kristol was Dan Quayle's chief of staff. Perhaps the neo-Con label really disguises various opinions and partisan commitments.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
April 24, 2006 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do the trains now run on time? I didn't think so. So, just what has the country gained by having these obvious traitors in charge? And, I mean that. People who deliberately lead us into wars just to win elections are traitors by any definition and deserving of fates similar to that which met he who did make the trains run on time.
Hoppy in Sacramento
April 24, 2006 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Though neil brought up the inevitable Nazi comparison, I'm suprised no one brought up the noted German jurist Carl Schmitt, who is now the philsophe de jour of much of the new left ( see works of Chantal Mouffe, Giorgio Agamben, Glopal Balakrishnan, the journal Telos since the 80s) He theorized that the state needed an enemy, some kind of existential other. As Schmitt himself put it the enemy must be defined "in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible." He thinks that this enemy will allow the state to avoid having civil conflicts reaching the level of "the political" where civil war is inevitable.
Of course, i'm not the first one to see post COld War GOP foreign policy as disturbingly Schmittian. Balkinaztion brought this up here, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/return-of-carl-schmitt.html,
It was just interesting to see a noted academic like Fukuyama, whom i like a lot, describe the way the GOP operates in such a classic Schmittian way.
April 24, 2006 9:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got a kick out of Fukuyama's comments about William Kristol toward the end.
A complete f*cking idiot.
And absolutely none of this is a surprise.
July 5, 2007 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink