James,
Street gangs and Police might be the two most powerful groups in the inner cities, but I don't want the Police to align with the gangs. I want the police to fight the gangs on behalf of the weak. If the police can't do it themselves, they should align with other police.

Maybe I am just a simple idealist, but it bothers me that America has to get in bed with countries that do things we find morally repugnant on a regular basis. I realize America isn't a Utopia, and that China isn't Nazi Germany, but I'd like to live in a country that tried to push China in the right direction.

The problem with realism, to me, is that it gives you nothing to believe in.

James,

Obviously I don’t expect you to discuss all forms of international cooperation. And I know you were just exaggerating for effect. My point was to get some sense from you as to what you judge to be the major problems facing the globe today. My assumption is that whether some major new international initiative or alliance is wise or unwise depends on exactly what the problems are, and what are the likely consequences of that initiative given our actual historic circumstances. So I just wanted to understand how you view the current global scene, taken in the large.

Here, for example, is one popular 90’s-era neoliberal vision: it is a vision that emphasizes a rapidly globalizing world in which the developed powers have more or less solved the problem of war and violent conflict among themselves, have knitted themselves together in a self-sustaining network of economic interdependence, and have entered an end-of –history phase of enduring liberal business as usual. War among developed states is highly unlikely, on this view of things, because states are rational actors and war is simply not in their interest given the high levels of interdependence. The remaining security threats, according to this picture of neoliberalism triumphant, are mainly posed by a rump of rogue states, failed states and non-state actors that must be brought into the civilized fold to ensure the final victory of global democratic capitalism. Beyond that, the main challenge is the spread of political virtue.

I tend to be highly skeptical of this optimistic picture, and believe it is an ahistorical fantasy projected through the distorted prism of only the most recent of historical events. I continue to believe that competition among large, heavily armed states remains the greatest threat to US and global safety and security, despite our current obsession with sideshows like the war on terror. The globalized situation today is not at all unlike the highly interdependent economic scene of the Belle Epoque, and many of the same optimistic themes were voiced in those times. Yet those unfortunate, fated Europeans were just a few years away from the most devastating of wars.

My own vision of the contemporary a world is one in which a deteriorating environment, expanding populations and dwindling energy resources are likely to push large states into more and more direct forms of competition, and ultimately violent competition – unless bold and decisive steps are taken to head this off. At the same time, a multipolar dispersion of hard power, the widespread availability of small arms, growing global resentment over rising inequality and the rise of fiery populist leaders whose voice is magnified and given global reach by developing media, threatens us with outbreaks of revolutionary violence on a global scale.

I also have a somewhat more pessimistic view of human nature. Human beings are not fully rational actors, but are wayward semi-rational creatures. They count many among their number many who are avaricious, irritable, paranoid thrill-seekers or romantic crusaders. Some are simply cruel sadists and psychopaths in suits. Truth be told, many human beings actively seek violence because they enjoy it, and are bored by peace. So to maintain peace, you need to work hard at it, all the time.

I don’t have a lot of faith that the free market and private enterprise will solve the problems of resource competition on their own, and in fact I see them as part of the problem. I have proposed several times in the past what I called an “Energy Transition Treaty”, something I won’t describe again. The fundamental point is that I believe some sort of global compact and regulatory institutions are needed to manage the resource crunch and prevent warm competition from growing into a hot resource war. Given the diverse nature of the world’s largest producers and consumers of energy products, this is also not an issue that can be addressed in the context of a Concert of Democracies. And again, I tend to view a Concert of Democracies as potentially damaging to this effort, since at the very time we would be negotiating a via vivendi with China in the energy sphere, the concert would likely be at work in the world advancing the factional interests of its democratic members.

I also see a world in which the current trends are in the direction of further nuclear proliferation, and believe that unless these trends are reversed, the coming century will likely see major nuclear exchanges between nuclear-armed states, exchanges that will lead to the deaths of scores of millions of people. Again this is an issue which requires extremely broad-based cooperation among democracies, non-democracies and quasi-democracies, among Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews. It is going to be a very hard job, and will require much compromise. I don’t see that a Concert of Democracies will be particularly helpful here. And my fear again is that it will actually hurt the situation by exacerbating ideological divisions.

You are skeptical that the formation of a Concert of Democracies would spark a new Cold War. But I believe a revived Cold War of sorts is already under way, with the US/Europe engaged with Russia in strategic competition for clients and strategic influence across a belt of states in Russia’s near abroad, with control of vital resources in the balance. There are large private fortunes, and the people those fortunes control, involved in this game as well. The same sort of competition will become increasingly evident between the US and China in Africa.

I have already lived through one miserable Cold War, and don’t want another one. I don’t want my son, and eventually my grandchildren to have to live in the terrifying shadow of fearsome states, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, at perpetual loggerheads. But I hear calls from many corners – including liberal corners - for stepped-up strategic competition with China and/or Russia, a comptetition which will surely lead to a global struggle similar in kind to the Cold War struggle. And while my modified Hedges title might not describe your own sentiments, I believe there is a certain amount of Cold War nostalgia afoot – as evidenced in Peter Beinart’s The Good Fight, which paints the Cold War in very heroic terms.