What He Said
I think the discussion has moved in a very interesting direction, closing the first day's set of posts with Michael Lind. Rather than steer us onto new ground, I wonder if the other members of the panel would address Lind's interesting thesis.
Specifically: He argues that we waged the Cold War against two great powers -- Russia and China --because they refused to accept core rules of the road that would preserve international peace and stability. Now that they both do so (I would put in a few caveats about Russian behavior), we have pushed the bar higher, insisting that they sign onto a whole new set of core principles. For some people these two countries really have to do nothing less than reconfigure their domestic politics.
Well, regime change in the short term in unlikely in either country, Is this kind of maximalist US policy seems designed to produce great power tension and conflict. I have some elaborations of my own to make and responses to various points that Anne Marie and David made (and to praise Matt's perspicacity) but I don't want to sidetrack the conversation just yet.
I have some elaborations of my own . . . .
I very much hope these "elaborations" will touch upon issues that affect real people rather than add to the abstract and theoretical mumblings that you all have been engaged in so far.
For example --
1. How do we get cheap drugs to poor populations?
2. How do we make food-short nations relatively food sufficient?
3. How do we restrict small arms sales to warlords and military weaponry to national police forces?
4. How do we prevent mercantilist nations from dumping their output and driving down the wages of recipient nations?
5. How do we break the stranglehold international finance has over the internal policies of individual nations?
And finally, why are the ruminations of you and your cohort worth more than a warm bucket of spit?
May 5, 2008 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
THIS IS STUPID WORDSALAD
What is the point of this post if there isn't any Hillary bashing? I'm cancelling my subscription.
Sincerely
M. Obama
May 6, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding China, the US-imposed bar has always been out of reach. While Chinese people had built much of the US transcontinental railroad and participated in the California gold rush, they were subsequently barred from entering the US and Chinese-Americans were even barred from marrying whites. Later we saw, and still see, the denigration of "Red" China. Even the language is oppressive: While the US has poor farmers China has peons, and while the US has prison industry China has forced labor, etc.
So I don't buy that we're asking China to "sign onto a whole new set of core principles." Nothing so high-minded. The US is just using China as a whipping post. While many US business people have a good working relationship with China (think WalMart) the US government seems to have a constant sense of China's inferiority. President Bush insulted President HU several times during Hu's visit to Washington in 2006, and the Dem presidential candidates are calling for an Olympic boycott if China doesn't meet certain conditions, which are really none of the US's business. I mean Tibet is recognized to be a part of China, and China, just like any other country, has a sovereign right to repress internal revolts. China doesn't get involved in US internal affairs, after all.
The Pentagon carps about China's "lack of transparency," which means that the puzzle palace doesn't know how many submariners Chins has. Tough.
So there's no attempt to enforce core principles, nothing so fine as that, but only a continuing reliance on American Exceptionalism, that comes most easily when China's involved. That leads to problems, because China is a five thousand year old empire and it has its own form of exceptionalism, and it ain't American. China doesn't call itself Tsung Kuo, Middle Kingdom, for nothing.
May 6, 2008 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
My contention is that the bar has been raised not because of some idealistic reasons having to do with democracy and other internal matters of these countries.
My cynical view is that the bar has been raised as a pretense to engage in vigorous competition with these countries over energy resources.
Wittness the Caspian Sea jockeying going on right now.
It is all about who will get to live the "good life" in this century and who is going to be dismanteled (as Zbigniew Brzezinski wants to do with Russia)
May 6, 2008 2:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Zbigniew Brzezinski wants to "dismantle" Russia? Nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about or don't care to.
May 6, 2008 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well you boast a lot. You are known for it. But you rarely provide any evidence for your assertions. Here is some of the evidence for my assertion. Where is yours?
This is the link
www.eurasiacenter.org/Archive/1990-1999/9%20Brzezinski.doc
This is your rash statement on the matter:
Zbigniew Brzezinski wants to "dismantle" Russia? Nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about or don't care to.___Kozmic
It is no secret in Washington that Brzezinski is a known Russophobe with a long history in this regard.
Apparently you are not aware of the geostrategic moves NATO is making vis-à-vis Russia (missile defense), encirclement of Russia by admitting new memberships into NATO etc.
Here are some other snippets
and this
Zbigniew Brzezinski is all in favor of Chechnian separatist terrorists finding sanctuary in Washington DC.
Apparently you are the one who is clueless.
In fact Obama is simply a vehicle for the Brzezinski foreign policy machine to come into power just as Bush was just a machine for the neocons to come to power.
May 6, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
My question to Lind was going to be, how sure is he of this? My sense is that both country's acceptance of the 'core rules' is shallow and unstable. I am glad you singled out Russia, as this editorial points out their acceptance is quite in doubt based on their behavior in Georgia and elsewhere in the near abroad.
Similiarly China's behavior in Sudan is more in keeping with pre-1945 big power behavior than Liberal Internationalism. I suspect we'll see that more and more as their economy grows, particularly if the regime connects resource control with its own continued survival.
May 6, 2008 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd also add I hope our foreign policy gurus are deft enough to come up with a policy between regime change and don't worry be happy, which seem to be our options. It should be possible to hold two thoughts in one's head at once, that the lifting of millions of Chinese and Russians out of poverty is a good thing, and that the increased power in the hands of two authoritarian irredentist regimes isn't exactly optimal.
As to how to deal with it, I am fully for the Liberal Internationlist order. However, to maintain that we need to have our eyes open about the new kids.
May 6, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Bush Administration has squandered our moral, physical and economic authority to produce change in this world on a grand scale. Until we get our house in order, the idea that we will gain anything meaningful from trying to isolate and provoke Russia and China is absurd. Both Russia and China can happily continue their current political backsliding if we enable them with our own backsliding on international agreements, free trade, human rights, etc.
They rightly scoff at our moralizing, and our thinly veiled aggression in foreign policy. We are at the precipice of a possible sea change in the way we conduct foreign policy. The differences between an Obama and McCain Administration would be striking, with McCain looking very much like an extension of the last 8 years. I think the result of this election will go a long way to filling in the blanks of this discussion....
Thanks for a great discussion. I look forward to the contributions of these very smart people in the future of this country's foreign policy, we could use more debates like this one inside the White House. I will feel much more confident when a group of advisors convenes and actually engages and embraces disagreement, then I do about the process in the Bush White House, where a group goes in a room a hashes out ways to sell a predetermined course of action and undermine those that oppose their viewpoint....
May 6, 2008 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Generally I enjoy Mr. Zakaria’s work, both its style and its content, and so I would like to respond to his formulation that we are living in “scarily peaceful times.”
Mr. Zakaria’s challenge is his audience, the general public in the U.S. He is in the position of a man who wants to explain the success of Christopher Columbus voyage of discovery to a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. For the flat earthers Columbus must fall off the edge unless, of course, he sailed in a circle. For the general public, any journey away from the binary Cold War construction is unthinkable. There is no America without “the other.” So how to explain what Mr. Zakaria calls “the nature of the world out there?” In this circumstance, he uses the tried and true method of re-inventing the world in American terms. Russians, Chinese, Brazilians are just Americans with a few idiosyncrasies that prevent them from being just like us. Rename Persia to Iran and the people lose their five thousand year history and become one regime change away from being like Holland.
“No great power has an alternative model of modern life that has any real attraction?”
I don’t fault Mr. Zakaria for using this approach. He is trying to convey an understanding of reality to the Flat Earth Society. Nevertheless it is fatally flawed. I submit the experience of New Orleans. This “great power” was faced with a challenge and failed miserably, despite its “real attraction.” Institutions, technology, wealth all failed the people of New Orleans. It descended into the chaos of catastrophes where ancient hatreds took control, bodies floated in the streets, and uncounted thousands of refugees trailed off into the oblivion of the displaced. Speaking of Holland, do you think the Dutch would want the Army Corp of Engineers in charge of their dike system? Of course not. And no more so than the French would want the American health care system or the Germans would want our national security state and so on and so on. The only “real attraction” of this “great power” is its wealth, a product of serendipitous geography, geology and the failures of other once “great powers.” But you can’t drive a bar of gold out of a flood zone and you can’t get Exxon to help you with your medical bills. The world is looking elsewhere for a better way.
For those of us, including Mr. Zakaria I’m sure, who can sustain the idea that the world is multifarious and complex, this re-invention is not helpful. It would be better to think of this “scarily peaceful” moment as the beginning of another Middle Ages, this time on a more global scale. The U.S. is an empire whose trajectory is on the downward slope of its arc. When it is gone the world will not see the emergence of another “Rome” for a long time. In the interim there will be a period not unlike the medieval world of Western Europe’s past. It was a time of relative peace, significant economic security and was far more liberal that our last century. It had its plagues and its other difficulties. It also had remarkable material and cultural successes. And all of it was based upon a far more diverse and idiosyncratic collection of polities than characterizes the current political landscape. If one would wish to be hopeful, which I take is the mood of Mr. Zakaria’s effort here, then the “nature of the world out there” may be like the world after the fall of the Roman Empire. Rather than being the triumph of the American empire, it is the freeing of the world to try many different and new ways to live and to understand. The key to grasping this possibility is to embrace diversity in all its forms.
May 6, 2008 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink