One might disregard that the New York Times published a savage review of a well-meaning book. However, one cannot ignore -- especially as we about to face a changing of the guards -- a call for a foreign policy that ignores moral considerations and is built on costs and benefits. Killing people is very often much more efficient than helping them build a life for themselves, but helping people is clearly the right course, and happens to be what the book at issue calls for.

The book is A Path Out of the Desert by Kenneth M Pollack, the head of research of the center for Middle East policy at Brookings. Granted, Pollack's record is not without blemishes. His previous book made a case for invading Iraq, which by now most agree was at best the right war in the wrong country. And his current book is sociologically naïve to the nth degree. Pollack believes that a sort of Marshal Plan for the Middle East could provide jobs, education, and political reforms for the region, which in turn would drain the swamp in which terrorism breeds. However, the record shows that the conditions in the Middle East make such efforts much more difficult to advance than they were in Germany and Japan after WWII. In addition, terrorists and their supporters are more numerous in nations that have a higher level of income and education than in those with low ones. I do believe that we should provide help to nations for humanitarian reasons, although the Middle East is swimming in oil revenue and hardly needs our cash. However, to expect that such foreign aid will stop terrorism is simply a profoundly mistaken notion.

None of this, however, justifies the kind of abusive barrages Max Rodenbeck, a reporter for The Economist, unleashes on the book and on its author. Among the nicest things Rodenbeck has to say about the book is that it's full of errors and "outdated generalizations," and that it's "disingenuous" and offers false or misleading assertions. Pollack is said to have "a shaky grasp of history"; he is "oddly unaware of history's motivating forces," and makes "absurdly cockeyed assertions."

Only in the last lines of the review does Max Rodenbeck himself become clear about that which troubles him--what he labels the United States' "strategically burdensome" support of Israel which is "driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies" rather then "cold cost-benefit geopolitics." Even if one accepts for a moment the notion that there is such a thing as "cold cost-benefit" foreign policy, it would suggest that abandoning Israel, after decades of close alliance, would undermine the already shaken confidence of whatever allies the US has left. The US just demonstrated in Georgia how meaningless its declarations of support are. The Bush Administration repeatedly declared that "we shall stand with Georgia" but in effect has shown itself to be powerless to do anything meaningful about protecting it. (I am not arguing that the US should have rushed to Georgia's defense, only that it should not promise support which it cannot back up with action). If Israel would be left to the same fate, it is hard to see that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan, or any other nation would still consider the US a viable ally.

More profoundly, public life at home and overseas cannot be disassociated from moral considerations. People are not willing to die for whatever cost-benefit analyses determine should be paid for. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for the promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms, to stop an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo because it is morally reprehensible, even if it does not have oil or serve any other strategic interest of the US. The US saved Europe from the Nazis at huge human costs, although it could quite readily have retreated behind its borders. I am not saying that nations do not or should not pay mind to their narrowly defined interests. I am merely suggesting, as have many others, that in this day and age doing what is right also plays a key role in shaping a nation's foreign policy. Anybody who does not understand this most basic fact of contemporary international life should not call others ignorant.

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Micro-blogging
Rodenbeck is not alone. Don Wycliff refers, in the May 23, 2008 issue of Commonweal, to a "daily diet of images of [Israeli] soldiers shooting at [Palestinian] rock-throwers and of homes being bulldozed." Actually such confrontations have become extremely rare. Better yet, Hamas has stopped attacking Israel with missiles for now and Israel has ceased killing militants in Gaza.

Edited to add:
In response to the comment by destor23, "...Etzioni never deigns to answers his critics here. The professor is here to lecture": I would be happy to respond to all serious criticisms from all those who will give up their aliases and own up to what they are saying -- just the way I do.

Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu. www.securityfirst.com