Burn the Straw Men
Michael Lind argues that we have "a serious philosophical disagreement" between proponents of 1945 Postwar liberal internationalism, which envisioned an international order based on a "loose concert or concerts of nonaggressive, but not necessarily democratic, great powers," and the Cold War model of liberal internationalism, which is "an attempt to universalize the norms of NATO and the EU."
Let's start with the history. I take it that Lind's postwar model refers to the UN, with the provision for the P-5 members of the Security Council, three of which were democracies and two, Russia and China, were not. That was indeed Franklin Roosevelt's vision of the "four policemen (+ France); he was realist enough, rightly, to recognize that you could not have an international order unless all the great powers signed on. But that was only one plank of the postwar liberal order, as John Ikenberry and many others have argued. The others, were NATO, the Marshall Plan to get Europe back on its feet as a group of democracies rather than watch various European states turn community, and the EU to keep it as a strong economic and political entity. That was the US strategy throughout the Cold War - in keeping with the second half of Kennan's containment strategy, which was to strengthen the West until the Soviet Union collapsed from within. So I honestly don't know how Lind is distinguishing between a "postwar" and a "Cold War" model here.
Second, and more to the point for the current debate, what affirmative model of an international order are Fareed and Michael putting forward here? I strongly support the UN and its associated institutions, but surely they must be reformed, along with the G-8, precisely to give Brazil, China, Russia, India, Mexico, South Africa and others a seat at the table. The IMF at this point is an institution without a mission; various Asian countries have given up trying to get more weight within it and are simply holding enough reserves so that they will not ever need to turn to it. Don't we all agree on that? And if we do, isn't that a vision of a 21st century international order true to Lind's characterization of the "postwar order?" That order is further bolstered by, contrary to Lind's account, near universal recognition of at least a weak version of the norm of the responsibility to protect, which was put forward by those nefarious liberal internationalists Kofi Annan and the Canadians, and ultimately passed by the entire General Assembly and supported by the majority of sub-Saharan African states.
Against this backdrop, the next question, at least for John Ikenberry and me, who put forward the Concert of Democracies in the Princeton Project's final report, is whether you could not also have a concert of the world's democracies to: 1) deepen cooperation among the world's democracies to tackle many of the vital problems we all indentify to go even further than the UN and regional organizations may allow us to go; 2) strengthen new and fragile democracies (See David Miliband's recent speech on The Democratic Imperative); and 3) engage democratizing countries (which includes China, by China's own self-characterization) in global dialogues about both the nature of liberal democracy and how best to achieve it. In John and my version, we would not support a Concert of Democracies unless it were supported by India, Brazil, South Africa, etc - the whole point is to have a group of democracies beyond the West. And those countries are not going to support anything that alienates China or re-divides the world into democracies/autocracies. Second, we oppose a global NATO, precisely because that would be an alliance that would have to be pointed against some other countries or group of countries. Third, we would design it with some positive economic and other incentives to strengthen the benefits of holding elections and upholding liberal institutions for countries that are already moving in that direction - countries like, say, Fareed's own model of capitalist autocracies in The Future of Freedom.
I don't see any great philosophical divide here. What I see is not enough positive ideas about how the liberal internationalist order of the 20th century can genuinely be expanded and updated to serve the world of the 21st century.
Comments (16)
Now that would be productive. You should spend more time engaging China in discussions about the virtues of liberal democracy. Doing that instead of advocating foe humanitarian war will be a big step forward. Convince some of your colleagues of this approach and you might even make a real contribution to world peace.
May 7, 2008 4:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
If my memory serves me right(Slaughter, of course has greater reason to want to forget her shameful and repulsive support for the aggressive unprovoked destabilizing war on Iraq) the same rhetoric was marshalled of the threat by the tyrant Saddam against the freedom-loving, and peaceful desires of both the Iraq people and the rest of the "civilized" world (OK so civilized was not the word used, although that meaning was there. Instead the rhetoric involved yet again the world's democracies needing to take steps to contain the tyrant's threats. If such a mindset is what the Slaughter's of this world use to justify acts that endanger the world by what is arguably the number one aggressor in the world, she and her Concert will have to play a long time and a different tune before anyone is convinced that the Concert is just another attempt to impose the order of Another American Century on the world. Whether Slaughter knows it or not, there is more that binds her to the Neocons than separates her from them.
May 7, 2008 7:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely true! I might add that major conflict, which is coming with globalization, is between international elites and the rest of the humanity. I see no big difference between Chinese “new capitalist” and CEO of major US corporation, both reaping the fruits of labor of millions.
For all their pandering, there is no too much of the difference between “neo-cons” and “neo-liberals”.
May 8, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I felt that 9/11 created the pretext and the incentive to create a new Uber-Nato for dealing with the problem of extremist-Islamism.
The terrorist situation involving Islam is similar to a cold war scenario. It's an ideological war. (One that the extremist were losing - thus the need for 911).
The whole world stood behind America and waited for positive leadership. All Bush had to do was follow Truman's template and fill the void.
Bush could have formed a new Uber-NATO as a reaction to Islamic-Terrorism. Not all members of NATO were Democracies when they joined (Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey) but they are now. Membership list could have been global and included every nation that had a stake in keeping the intenational order thriving: that included NATO members, Russia, Ukrain, Japan, South Korea, China, India, most of S.E. Asia including Malasia, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and so on. NATO brings stability and forces rule of law to be normalized over time. That stability and consistency from rule of law facilitates economic growth by reducing risk and transaction costs - radically.
Behind this comes the E.C. moving east out of Europe. A big mistake was made with the fall of the Soviet Union: We should have organized a Marshall plan, sent in advisers from the EU to help them build their political institutions and advisers from Korea and Japan to help them build their Economic institutions. By now that Project would be done and the focus would move on to India and China.
Instead we offered them nothing substantial and sent them economic advisers from the Chicago school of thought that brought more than a decade of misery and wealth and power concentration amongst immature political and economic institutions. Huge blunder there. Despite the Republican need for enemies, there is still a chance to move Russia forward but it will take new international leadership.
The point of this organization should have been to first contain Islamic radicalism to Southwest Asia and then slowly develop health wedges into it's heartland.
If all our attention had been focused and comprehensive on Afghanistan, it would be a booming success by now. If we had spent half of what we've spent in Iraq, in Afghanistan, with our Uber-Nato and EU allies, Afghanistan would be a boooming success by now.
That would have created a democratic Archipelago of Islamic nations stretching from Istanbul to Singapore with only Iran and Pakistan as important gaps (and to a lessor extent Burma). The presence of successful India and Afghanistan on both Pakistan's east and west borders would create enormous pressure for Pakistan to follow suit. The presence of successful Turkey and Aghanistan on Iran's boarders would do the same - remember the Iranian people were with us after 9/11 and their was a strong internal reformist sentiment there as well. When those states cracked and moved forward their would then be a whole string of successful muslim (though non-Arab states) from Istanbul to Singapore and beyond.
From there its a matter of execution to coordinate similar developments in Arab Muslim states. Meanwhile the global economy is growing and its ability and knowledge for helping nations develop is growing too.
Behind the strategic waive of the Uber-Nato should have be attempts to move the EU east (say an Uber-EU) to include Russia and perhaps from there, Japan and Korea with the hope of someday folding in India, China, Canada and yes, U.S. and Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. These last states suffer from too much wealth and power concentration and that really is the problem holding them back. (What's needed isn't deconcentration, but free contract + even/fair bargaining playing fields - of which Japan has developed some fascinating new institutional arrangements that are both equitable, competitive, capatilistic and democratic).
Like the cold war precedent, the reaction to 9/11 should have been comprehensive. During the cold war, nearly every academic discipline was involved in the act of try to win that war. There should have been a rush to think through these problems.
Islamic nations are facing a crisis in confronting modernism that East Asian and India don't appear to have. The problem has to do with cohesion: Modernism is all about specialization of tasks and fair exchange. Islam is all about the opposite, cohesion: one god, one man, one thought, one community, one law, etc... Their are intellectual ways for Islam to deal with these problems constructively and we need to be able to understand the nature of their problem, help where we can, and leave them space and time to help them where we can't. Essentially they need to adjustments: Separation of mosque and state (which could only be recognized with true freedom of religion, something that didn't exist in Mohammed's time, but which negates the need for religion to control the state, and; acknowledging only internal Jihad (greater Jihad) the internal struggle to be better religious and disavowing external jihad where there is true freedom of religion. (I would go so far as to say internal jihad is the struggle against hate and for love, and manifesting 'external jihad' is capitulating defeat in one's internal jihad) This would create a sort of 'Transcendental Islam': an Islam that can live with the world and modernism and one that the world could live with (and may find very compelling).
9/11 was a gamble by the extremist to try to goad America into making strategic mistake, as the Soviet Union did in invading Afghanistan. No one bombs the world trade center without expecting a reaction. The reaction is what they wanted. As it turns out, the initial action was successful, but then the U.S. shot itself in the foot in Iraq and everything has been set back.
We missed a huge opportunity to lead the world towards peace and prosperity. But we can still work towards this model. We know what international institutions have worked and why. We know how to fight a longer term, multigenerational ideological war. We know these things. It just that we let private agenda's supersede over public agendas.
May 7, 2008 7:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I honestly don't know how Lind is distinguishing between a "postwar" and a "Cold War" model here. Anne-Marie Slaughter
How about between cooperation and antagonism?
The United Nations Charter was signed by all five permanent members as of October 25, 1945. The Cold War began 18 months later, sometime after March 1947: Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947); Kennan's Foreign Affairs article (July 1947); Marshall Plan (July 12, 1947); NATO (April 4, 1949)
Whether confronting the Soviet Union was best done in Cold War regalia is debatable. Whether there was a distinction between "postwar" and "Cold War" IR models -- as Lind notes -- is not.
May 7, 2008 8:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whether one calls it a great philosophical divide or simply greatly differing strategic calculations, there is a very important difference between an approach to a reformed and strengthened international order based on the creation of a Concert of Democracies and one that is focused on forging a more broad-based system of global cooperation which puts more emphasis on the practical global problems to be solved, and security threats to be addressed, and somewhat less on the internal political constitution of the states that need to participate in solving them. The defenders of the concert constantly suggest that we can have the former without endangering the latter. But this just doesn't seem correct to me. Surely we could have various kinds of clubs of democratic nations that could do some useful things. But strategies that put forward a Concert of Democracies as the centerpiece of the new liberal orders are bound to create a backlash among some very powerful countries that will lie outside the concert, at a time when we simply can't afford this sort of rivalry.
I think a lot of liberal thinkers remain stuck in the anachronistic 90's-era picture of "democratic expansion" rooted in post-Cold War triumphalism, where the US, Europe, the EU and NATO are the only major players that need be reckoned with, and the rest of the world is bound to dance to a tune that they call. They are not paying sufficient attention to what has changed, and are not putting the most important threats to peace, prosperity and security at the top of the agenda.
China is not Iraq, and cannot be thrown into the pile of "autocracies" that we can afford to address from a demanding position of haughty moral and political superiority. It is a country that contains a quarter of the world's population, and which play an increasingly important role in driving the entire global economy. An instrument for making major global-scale strategic decisions that locks China out of the decision-making is doomed to fail in the present context. China is simply too big and too important to allow us to indulge Kantian and Rawlsian fantasies in setting global policy.
John Ikenberry threw me for a loop with a recent article in Foreign Affairs. He seemed to suggest there that we had somehow transcended the problem of war, and didn't have to worry about that threat anymore as we build our "liberal order." That kind of complacent and deeply unrealistic attitude about human nature and human history really frightens me.
Ikenberry has a very tidy, philosophical mind. He seems to use the word "order" about 50 times in every article he writes, as if one could somehow call a Kantian or Rawlsian liberal paradise into existence simply by invoking its name over and over. But the world is a much messier and conflict prone place place than he seems willing to acknowledge, and we need to deal with the world we have, and not imagine that we already live in the non-existent dreamworlds we might conceive.
May 7, 2008 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
In addition to China beeing the country
I would like to add that Eastern Asia also is a lot more present in America today than, say, 20 years ago. For a European like me, Chinese or East-asian cultural influences are particularly obvious on the U.S. west coast, in California, Oregon and Washington.May 9, 2008 5:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just don't see a Concert of Democracies ever happening as some sort of organized, institutionalized international organization. The world is full or UNs, EUs. etc. Yet another one just isn't going to be taken seriously.
Now, to have a specific policy of trying to work with other countries that "share" our "values" to "make the world a better place" is more logical but not exactly a blindingly original idea. I just think Slaughter et.al.are trying to get more sizzle than there is in this cube steak.
May 7, 2008 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
If any country wants our help establishing a democratic form of government they'll, um, ask for it, won't they? Or somebody within their country will ask for it. Maybe they'll ask us, maybe they'll ask France. So what do we need a "democracies only" club for, anyway?
Oh, and China says it's democratizing and you believe that? It's capitalizing. It's Singapore on a larger canvas -- a dictatorship that stock traders think is a free land because they measure democracy by the ability to find stocks on E*trade.
Slaughter makes one good point -- there is no philosophical divide in the foreign policy community. On Iraq, Slaughter is indistinguishable from McCain. She'd have us there for a 100 years, whether she's willing to admit it or not.
We use the phrase "echo chamber" in all of the Bill vs. Hillary threads but I think the real example of an echo chamber is in this book club. The Internationalists, whether they call themselves liberal or neocon all seem to get us into the same botched quagmires. The neocons will do it for influence over oil markets. But with somebody like Slaughter advising a Democratic president I can see us getting into a trillion, life-wasting boondoggle on behalf of some humanitarian cause.
May 7, 2008 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Strengthen Fragile Democracies Aboad? What About Here?
The UNO, the Marshal Plan, and NATO, but, next, the DoD, the CIA, and the Treaty of Miami were not a nice stew of "liberal internationalism" then, of Anglo-American hegemony at the time, or of anything but chaos today.
Each was hasty and ad hoc. All were soon a near-total break-down of the New Deal/WWII order and what proved to be an easily subverted dream of liberal internationalism.
"Freedom of the skies" was killed right off. Will Clayton and J. M. Keynes retreated to Bretton Woods and played no part in the international order anybody but a few bankers were aware of and Robert Roosa soon trashed for his own account. G. F. Kennan joined Einstein at Princeton. It was sad.
And, it was Edward Teller, Douglas McArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Joe McCarthy, Bill Donovan, Prescott Bush, Ayn Rand, Wm. F. Buckley, and so on ... who became the darlings of Anglo-America as right-wing, neo-isolationist reaction set-in big-time.
In the UK, the reaction was isolationist and left-wing.
I get the time-lines a bit mixed up, but, hey, it is just a blog post, OK, not an excerpt from a real journal article.
Nostalgia for all of that seems like a bad idea today, just a pretext for adhering to domestic support for and financial legacies of the Cold War model of domestic US institutions: Let's see that would be The Pentagon Parody of Horse Guards Parade, The Admiralty, Whitehall, The Circus, Fleet Street, and so on.
Oh, and recently there has been the back-stairs military and intelligence cooperation of Bush and Blair, kinda like Churchill and Roosevelt, as well as, now, a Washington-London Working Group on Capital Markets where Bretton Woods used to be but Basle, Frankfurt, and Paris wish they had never heard of.
This is not "rule-driven" it is ad hoc clap-trap, self-serving, self-dealing and deeply subversive of any international order, liberal or otherwise. Oh, it is wildly unpopular all across the spectrum of ordinary opinion.
Only Darbyites, Trotskyites, and Thatcherites could love this, and ... they do!
But, hey, it is elite and glamorous, so they love it in Princeton, too, even if such ad hoc clap-trap is neither republican nor parliamentary democracy, just legalistic, pseudo-aristocratic, and chicken-hawk humbug.
So, let me know when they hang a bond-lawyer, merchant-banker, or defense contractor from a yard-arm in the Washington or Portsmouth Navy Yard. Oh, and can we put some Anglo-American war criminals in Spandau? Maybe Spandau could be a debt-ridden public/private partnership between the Four Powers and KBR!
How's that for your rule-driven, meaning lawyer-ridden, liberal internationalism?
Then, I might be more impressed with the Princeton Project or the Party of Davos or the WTO or any other attempt by the crony and mafiya capitalists to restore and project their latest version of the real old Cordon Sanitaire, not the merely old containment. Otherwise, all I see is hokey reaction complete with just a hint of Edwardian navalism and Victorian evangelism for a little pomp and circumstance. All I hear is lawyer-blabber about "networks" with no clue as to the "Seven Laws of Identity" or "IPv6" or admiralty law as it applies to cyberspace and other important actually newfangled aspects of oldfangled liberal internationalism.
May 7, 2008 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
First, AMS, it's too bad that TPMCafe can't spell out your last name (at least on my browser). That's insulting.
Now, you say we need a Concert of Democracies to (1) Deepen cooperation among democracies (2) Strengthen new democracies and (3) Engage democratizing countries (like China!).
But I say (1) There are enough organizations in the world, we don't need another one (2) The USA has a poor track record of cooperation, preferring unilateral action (including military) and law avoidance (3) American exceptionalists would use such an organization to maintain US world hegemony and (4)China is the now where the smart money goes.
The pervasive danger of US militarism continues, with the Dems calling for an expanded ground force. Why have more troops if not to invade more countries? What these warmongers need is a better cover for their aggression -- and I fear that a Concert of Democracies would give that to them. Perhaps that's what you want too.
The world balance of power is shifting. Taipei and Tokyo have recently moved closer to Beijing. New Delhi, the Stans and Islamabad are falling into step. China is thereby consolidating her political power even as she expands her military power and of course her economic power is increasing to world levels. China is big in Africa and Latin America while the US bleeds in the ME sands. China is a lender nation while the US is a big-time debtor. It would be much smarter for the US to have a Concert With China than to have something else which American exceptionalists would use to oppose her. Strike up the band!
PS: Are you still planning on a sabbatical in China (seriously)? Be careful, that might change your outlook.
May 7, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Er, isn't the difference that "postwar" was the intention and "Cold War" is what actually happened?
I haven't followed this discussion very closely, but using "Cold War Model" as if somebody sat down, thought it up and then picked it as the best way to run the world for the next 50 years sounds really strange to me.
May 7, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, the Cold War Model was not "thought out", that's perfectly correct, but a major point in this debate ought to be how the lacking understanding of the Soviet Union in the United Kingdom and the United States became a reason for why the thought out Post War Model evolved inte the Cold War.
The mistake was not unique, but it is an interesting and important question if such mistakes possibly can be avoided at some time in the future.
p.s.
Erica, I did finally comment your question about Western Peace Activism at http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/30/reagan_or_mondale/
May 9, 2008 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
May 12, 2008 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Be careful what you wish for.
news report -- LA Times:
China's next-generation nationalists
They're educated, richer and more aggressive toward the West.
As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics' torch relay around the world, as supporters of Tibet condemned the violent crackdown in Lhasa, and as Darfur activists demanded change in China's Sudan policy, Chinese young people worked themselves into a different form of righteous anger. In online forums and chat rooms, they blasted Beijing's leaders for not being tougher in Tibet. They agitated for boycotts against Western businesses based in nations that object to Beijing's policies, and they directed venomous fury against anyone critical of China.. . .
In the long run, this explosive nationalism calls into question what kind of democracy China could be. Many Chinese academics, for example, believe that, at least in the early going, a freer China might become a more dangerous China.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kurlantzik6-2008may06,0,3394254.story
May 7, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
What strikes me about these comments is that some liberals on the right such as Anne-Marie Slaughter support abandoning the UN in order to promote the advancement of American interests by force, and those on the left such as Don Bacon and Dan Kervick who seemed to admire China's turbo-capitalism, poor enviromental and human rights record, just because they appear to be not part of the West. Kervick and Bacon appear to act a number intellectuals in the thirties, who seemed to admire Stalin, just because the Soviet Union did not seem part of the West.
May 7, 2008 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink