Build Institutions to Promote International Cooperation
I am very sorry to be coming in so late to this debate; I wanted to join it earlier in the week but simply could not. All the more so because predictably, as much as I respect Michael Lind, I disagree strongly with his characterization of traditional liberal internationalism and "new liberal internationalists" (he never makes clear how he would characterize us other than as neo-con fellow travelers.) In the first place, the liberal internationalism of Roosevelt and Truman believed both in having a concert of all great powers (the UN Security Council) and of democracies (NATO, the Marshall Plan, and ultimately the EU). They absolutely recognized the pragmatic necessity of talking to everyone, and they were right. But they also recognized that it was vital to develop institutions that would deepen cooperation among liberal democracies, both for strategic and moral reasons. That is precisely the position that John Ikenberry and I have taken with regard to our proposed concert of democracies -- we have made clear repeatedly that we would never want it in place of the UN but only in addition to. We also explicitly argued that it should not be a military alliance; indeed we proposed it as a much more informal alternative to a global NATO.
John and I had a very different idea in mind that McCain's League of Democracies, but understood that it would be impossible to get anyone to draw those distinctions in the heat of an election campaign. In fact, the G-20 is close to a Concert of Democracies in the way it will actually work -- 16 of the 19 nations are democracies and it has the great advantage of expanding the G-7, which are all Western advanced democracies, to include India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, as well as Australia and South Korea. The idea that anyone, at any time in U.S. history, calling themselves a liberal internationalist would not support increased cooperation among liberal democracies seems a contradiction in terms. It is absolutely right to say that Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman etc would have rejected creating a democracies-only club if it obstructed the necessary and pragmatic conduct of international relations at the same time; John and I hold exactly that position today. Indeed, we argued in the Financial Times this summer that a President Obama should not pursue a concert of democracies; that the only way it could ever work is if it were an initiative from developing country democracies. Interestingly, Indonesia will launch the Bali Democracy Forum next week, with Indonesian Prime Minister Hassan Wirajuda and Australian PM Kevin Rudd, to "promote democracy and enhance democratic institutions in Asia." Is that something, according to Mike, that traditional liberal internationalists would oppose?
On the other major pillar of "traditional liberal internationalism," the absolute norm of non-intervention, I again disagree. After all, the Preamble of the UN Charter says that one of the purposes of the Charter is "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the inherent dignity and worth of the human person, and the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small." What was that other than a recognition of the need to protect the individuals within states as well as the rights of states themselves. And of course Eleanor Roosevelt followed up as the head of the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which spelled out those rights in a way that allowed them to become binding obligations under international law. The "responsibility to protect" grows directly out of that tradition, both legally and politically. And as a brand new book by Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, and Stephen John Stedman, Power and Responsibility, makes clear, it is possible and desirable to strengthen the concept of sovereignty as responsibility and strengthen sovereignty itself -- e.g. the ability to withstand intervention -- at the same time.
There is much more I could say -- about the parts of Mike's book I agree with, particularly on how to support democracy (I also agree on the brilliance of Dan Deudney's book). And we could have a rousing debate on Wilson's legacy. But on that, John Ikenberry, Thomas J. Knock, Tony Smith, and I have a new book out this week from Princeton University Press called The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-First Century that addresses many of these same questions from a different perspective. Perhaps we can continue the discussion in a future book club.
Slaughter says: "The Preamble of the UN Charter says that one of the purposes of the Charter is "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the inherent dignity and worth of the human person, and the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small." What was that other than a recognition of the need to protect the individuals within states as well as the rights of states themselves."
So... we should invade Saudi Arabia?
December 5, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think she's planning on invading a couple of the more hide-bound eating clubs in her neighborhood.
December 5, 2008 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
She can do anything she wants in Princeton. So long as Obama doesn't offer her a job, I'm happy.
December 5, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. This debate about the bureaucratic structure of international organizations seems opaque, but we should keep in mind that Anne is a war monger and we should be very suspect of the agenda hiding behind her positions.
December 5, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
VLaszlo said it well three years, ago:
". . . when you feed off government and government sponsored academia as these fellows do, it is a way of life to start with the given premises and then work from there."
And the "given premises" seem so very often to lead to war.
December 5, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think she should get a job, Destor. Even when I have disagreed with her in the past, I have always found Dean Slaughter to be a paragon of civil discourse. She listens patiently and responds courteously and thoughtfully, even to people who ridicule and abuse her. The government needs people like that.
December 6, 2008 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Really? I'm kind of shocked to see you say something like that. I don't think she's been that courteous around here, or that engaged with her many critics.
December 6, 2008 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
My recollection is that Slaughter, unlike several of the other America Abroad writers, frequently engaged in the comments sections of her posts.
December 6, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Leaving a comment on a Slaughter thread is like playing Whack-A-Mole.
December 5, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I was being too charitable back then.
December 6, 2008 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I remember when I was learning to drive, someone very smart told me I should drive as if I were sitting, vulnerably, on my car's front bumper and not protected by a few tons of steel.
I think the same SHOULD apply to discourse on the Web.
Don't say anything you wouldn't have the balls to say to the person face to face.
December 6, 2008 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dean Slaughter,
Welcome back to TPM Cafe. It's good to see you again.
It seems possible in principle that there could be a strong concert of democracies and a strong UN-based concert of great powers at the same time. But I don’t believe such a combination is really possible in the actual world, given the historical situation we are currently in. The UN system is in trouble. We need to put all of our energies and focus into rebuilding it, reforming it and reviving it. We need to build new UN-based organs around that central body, and fast. The concert of democracies will not just be a distraction. It will be an overwhelming temptation for the great democratic powers and smaller democratic nations to defect form the larger body, compete with it, and go their own way. And that will further enfeeble the larger, global concert, and perhaps destroy its prospects for generations.
We just can’t afford that right now. The global challenges are too great. The global environment is hanging by a thread. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a nightmare. The global economy is in crisis, and the interdependence of that global economy has evolved to such a point that, whether Michael Lind likes it or not, we have no option but to move forward in the direction of greater cooperation and governance. The prosperity of a generation depends on it. The UN has had notable successes, but has never achieved its full promise, as it has struggled and underperformed during the long years of bipolar Cold War, and the short interval of post-Cold War unipolarity. We now have an historic opportunity to make the UN system into something close what it was designed to be, and what its founders hoped it would be.
Serious domestic crises of violence and genocide inside other countries can be handled, with stronger global governance, under the UN rubric of addressing threats to the peace. But where calls for broader, more extensive interventions on behalf of human rights are concerned, I worry about the “ask for an inch, take a mile” phenomenon. One starts with the obvious idea that people have a human right not to be slaughtered, and that outside intervention is justified in such cases. But soon enough, we are told that people have a human right to have two political parties rather than one, or three rather than two; that they have a human right to a press that is not owned by the government, but no right to a press that is not owned by a few corporate oligarchs; that they have a right to a free market, but no right to an equal share in society’s prosperity in exchange for making an equal commitment to work up to their abilities; that they have a human right to an independent and professional judiciary, but no human right to live in a society free of guns, etc. It quickly grows arbitrary, but zealously arbitrary. Like anyone else, I have my own ideas about what forms of government are optimal, and what reforms and innovations inside some countries might constitute progress. But I am very wary of the morally imperious tendency to elevate highly fallible and perspectival judgments about optimality into reified systems of “rights”, along with corresponding duties to intervene in other countries on behalf of those supposed rights.
Now, I don’t share Michael Lind’s fear of global governance, government, or whatever one wants to call it. But nor do I think the system of states is going to “wither away” under the forces of globalization either. I believe we are moving in the direction of integrated networks of governing units, with horizontal checks and balances to prevent peer institutions from dominating one another, and with vertical checks and balances to empower local governing units to address their peoples needs directly, without undue and overzealous intervention from broader governing units – to manage those larger institutions upward in a democratic way.
But I believe more governing institutions at the global level, more global government, is coming one way or another. And that’s a good thing in my book. I guess I’m not a classic American Revolutionary with paranoid fears of government, and obsessive phobias about absorption into some awful collective hive or pod. I don’t have zealous, uncompromising cravings for autonomy, independence, sovereignty. I celebrate government. Government is a great thing, done well, and it grows along with progress and civilization. Creating government is something human beings do naturally in response to their consciousness of living in an interdependent system, and in response to their awareness that that interdependent system is failing to achieve its potential due to strife and disorganization, and an absence of needed rules, compacts, boundaries and coordination. To propose to hold the line at some end state where people stop working to better organize themselves and better govern themselves, stop knitting themselves together, and rest with some final collection of sovereign units, is to imagine that the natural processes of civilization might stop and freeze. It will never happen. Not for long.
This country is still suffocating under a reactionary, introverted nationalism that afflicts the right, the left and the center. We have been moving as a country in the wrong direction, against the historical tide, and that movement is mainly a pathological response to the perception of inevitable historical changes and the awareness of the diminished power that is coming with those changes. It’s a reactionary desire to hold onto a moment in the sun as an unchallenged colossus, a moment that is not coming back. Where Americans should be lifting their heads over the barricades, reaching across borders, learning more languages, watching and reading the news from around the world, and cultivating a sense of belonging to the larger continent of humanity, they continue to look inward, gnaw of their fingers, build mental walls around their island, cling to nationalistic and tribal totems and icons, and deepen their ignorance and their inept response to the historic moment.
December 6, 2008 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dan writes: "But where calls for broader, more extensive interventions on behalf of human rights are concerned, I worry about the “ask for an inch, take a mile” phenomenon. One starts with the obvious idea that people have a human right not to be slaughtered, and that outside intervention is justified in such cases. But soon enough, we are told..."
Uncharacteristically for you, Dan, you appear to be throwing up your hands in the face of the slippery slope. Surely, if we can figure out how to cooperate to solve the world's global problems, we can figure out how to intervene to prevent the slaughter of millions without then automatically trying to dictate the details of a country's internal politics. Lines, even though they may be arbitrary in principle, can be drawn sensibly and adhered to.
America, at least until recently, has always been held out as the "democratic ideal"--the state toward which other countries should aspire. But a lot of what made America, IMO, was a matter of historical and geographical accident. For example, a temperate climate, abundant natural resources, few rivals of any strength, two oceans separating it from while connecting it to everyone else, a few good founding fathers and mothers.
Almost no other country in the world has those built-in advantages. Most countries are much smaller, have many fewer natural advantages, and are surrounded on all sides by other countries, often hostile. So they can't follow America's example, as it were. America's example is pretty much useless, unless it's DRAMATICALLY customized to fit dramatically different conditions.
December 6, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Tintin, I'm all for attempting to articulate some very explicit boundaries separating acceptable from unacceptable interventions by force. It's not an unsolvable problem. The problem is that many of the defenders of "Liberal Order" tend to address these problems with highly abstract and fluid concepts such as "human rights", which invite the slippery slope problem.
December 6, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
As to a concert of democracies, Ms Slaughter...
Don't the world's democracies cooperate pretty well already? Why is there a need for an additional organizing principle/organization?
December 6, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I continue to be puzzled about the intended purpose of the Slaughter/Ikenberry version of the concert of democracies idea. Granted, it is easy to run their idea together with other similar ideas offered over the past few years by other writers. But it seems to me that their statements have been vague, and not clearly consistent. Here, Dean Slaughter says:
That is precisely the position that John Ikenberry and I have taken with regard to our proposed concert of democracies -- we have made clear repeatedly that we would never want it in place of the UN but only in addition to. We also explicitly argued that it should not be a military alliance; indeed we proposed it as a much more informal alternative to a global NATO.
The COD is supposed to strengthen cooperation among liberal democracies. At some level, who could argue with such a proposal? It obviously all depends on what kind of cooperation is involved. We could be talking about small and modest forms of cooperation like cultural and educational exchange programs. Or we could be talking about really big forms of cooperation such as common currencies, integrated military establishments, etc. The existence of the former would just supplement and reinforce other forms of international cooperation. But the existence of the latter quite easily could interfere with, and weaken or threaten, other broader forms of cooperation.
Sometimes, their hopes for the concert sound quite ambitious and far-reaching. They say the COD would participate in building a "global democratic order" and that "the Concert would be more substantial and exclusive than the already existing “community of democracies,” which is a broad but shallow organization that seeks to strengthen democracy within states." But how exactly will the COD be more substantial? One problem I've had with John Ikenberry's writing and proposals in the past, not so much with Dean Slaughter's, is a tendency to think in terms of highly abstract, academic dream castles, without filling in the concrete detail. It makes it hard to evaluate just what is being proposed. The absence of specificity in the vital area of economic cooperation and integration is particularly deplorable.
Dean Slaughter says that she and Ikenberry have explicitly argued that the COD should not be a military alliance. On the other hand, they have explicitly said that part of the COD's purpose is to strengthen security cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies. How do you strengthen security cooperation without extending military cooperation?
In this post, Dean Slaughter says they would never want the COD to function in place of the UN. But that "never" doesn't square with their previous statements. In those statements, the predominant image is of an organization waiting in the wings, preparing to act to fulfill the UN's purposes, if UN reform efforts fail. The prospect that the COD would step in and take over for an impotent UN is supposed to "spur" UN reform efforts.
And how long does the UN get to get its act together? They twice indicate that the time frame in which these reforms must take place is by the end of this decade, now only two years away!. Here is one of those statements:
The Concert of Democracies would not be – at least for the foreseeable future – a new alliance system or a substitute for America’s alliances in Europe and East Asia. Nor would it be a substitute for the United Nations or other global institutions, as long as those institutions can be successfully reformed. If UNSC expansion and reform proves impossible by the end of this decade, however, the Concert could become an alternative forum for the approval of the use of force in cases where the use of the veto at the
Security Council prevented free nations from keeping faith with the aims of the U.N. Charter.
Should this necessity arise, Concert members would undertake an additional set of agreements approving the use of force by a supermajority of member states, with no veto power. They would have to seek approval at the United Nations first, but they would commit to accept authorization by the Concert as an equally legitimate and acceptable alternative. In this sense, the creation of the Concert would follow in the tradition of the creation of NATO, which was seen as a means of achieving the goals of the U.N. Charter, rather than undermining them.
And in their proposed charter for the COD, they include these two "possible future amendments should Security Council reform fail":
7. Action pursuant to article four and consistent with the purposes of the United Nations, including the use of military force, may be approved by a two-thirds majority of the parties.
8. Action to enforce the purposes of the United Nations in the wake of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, may be approved by a two-thirds majority of the
parties.
But who gets to decide when these efforts have "failed"? This all sounds quite worrisome to be. My strong sense is that the commitments by Slaughter and Ikenberry to strengthening the broader UN-based order are just lip service, and that COD is being set up as a Trojan Horse to engineer a takeover of the international system from the inside. The strongest and richest countries in the world set up a "liberal order" inside the enfeebled global order, soon start declaring that efforts to reform that global order have "failed", and that they must now start performing the global security functions the UN can't.
The very existence of such a structure will hardly "spur" UN reform, but will much more likely diminish the commitment of the liberal democratic powers to the need for such reform, and redirect the focus of their efforts on the shiny new liberal order. It is a recipe for rotting and destroying the the global order from the inside, and giving birth to a pretty new liberal butterfly inside a degenerating global order pupa.
December 6, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
She's already told you -- Wilsonism -- which means foreign interventionism coupled with concomitant domestic repression.
December 6, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like Dan K I am puzzled about the intended purpose of your Concert of Democracies. What is it you hope to accomplish that cannot be accomplished through existing agencies? Maybe an example is in order.
What would your COD do about Haiti? According to Wikipedia, Haiti is the only country in the Americas on the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries and ranks 146th of 177 countries in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Index.
The UN is currently providing a peacekeeping force as police and foreign aid makes up 30-40% of its budget and still 80% of its remaining population continues to live in poverty and many flee to more prosperous regions.
Haiti has to be close the the top of a list of countries that have experienced interventions. We even occupied it and its island mate the Dominican Republic from 1915-1934.
It seems to me that seeing a proposal for bringing the development of Haiti closer that of the Dominican Republic would be a good way to evaluate the COD. What would you do that other agencies are not.
December 6, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Slaughter still hasn't really been able to show what a Concert of Democracies would be FOR.
Think about it--we have the UN, and she & Ikenberry still want that. We have NATO and the G-20--so the military and economic issues are taken care of. And just as Slaughter insists, every democracy is still free to enter into agreements and take pragmatic action to secure their self-interest.
In fact, America is free to promote democracy using every tool at its disposal. So what do we need a "Concert of Democracies" for then?
Slaughter still hasn't said.
And her record on the concept leaves some gaping holes that can easily be exploited in ways that can't be condoned abroad or at home . . . unless the point of a COD is to evade domestic and international governance structures in hot pursuit of an illegitimate war.
DanK provides the money quote from Slaughter-Ikenberry's past statements:
Nor would it be a substitute for the United Nations or other global institutions, as long as those institutions can be successfully reformed. If UNSC [UN Security Council] expansion and reform proves impossible by the end of this decade, however, the Concert could become an alternative forum for the approval of the use of force in cases where the use of the veto at the Security Council prevented free nations from keeping faith with the aims of the U.N. Charter.
But who decides this? Recent history shows all too clearly that America cannot keep faith with the aims of the U.N. Charter--let alone our own Constitution.
Despite Slaughter's protestations that we need the UN and a Concert of Democracies won't replace it, the asserted need to establish--and expand--a Concert of Democracies is still predicated on the unsuccessful "reforming" of the UN.
But reforming the UN to suit our ends isn't just reckless, it flies in the face of Anne-Marie Slaughter's above-posted claim that she is intent upon maintaining the UN as an inclusive body that brings all nations to the table--and substantively takes into account their security interests. Permanent seating of Russia and China on the Security Council is precisely what makes the UN work. Fiddling with it, under the guise of 'reforming' it, will not only backfire, but transparently damages American interests. It isn't Realpolitik at work, but an ill-considered recklessness. Which is why a Concert of Democracies isn't any such thing, amounting to a stilborn concept at best.
The Concert of Democracies is just a tool to end-run the UN, when the United States does not have the moral authority or just cause to pursue war via established channels--and can't be bothered to a) supply valid intelligence, b) apply any persuasive reasoning at all, or c) pick a just cause. Slaughter is attempting to construct an institution, external to lawful US decision-making processes, capable of signing off on a war--a war that can't be justified under legitimate measures. America cannot adequately contribute to an international democratic order until the Congress can adhere to its Constitutional obligation to debate the merits of war, and then issue a Declaration of War. Running after the President with a rubber stamp simply doesn't suffice: a resolution supporting Executive usurpation of legislative powers is by definition IR-resolution.
Which is more disturbing--that Anne-Marie Slaughter doesn't understand Realpolitik is or what the UN Security Council is for? Or that she understands both, but is willing to throw away Realpolitik, and sacrifice American interests & security to undo the makeup of the UN Security Council?
December 6, 2008 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
This isn't rocket science.
The US needs a cover, one that avoids the chance of a Sino-Russian veto, for foreign military interventions. Oh -- only if the UN can't be reformed, that is, to permit a majority vote in the Security Council for such interventions.
December 6, 2008 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another aspect to consider. Note that Anne-Marie Slaughter's reasoned words and spritely intellect just don't offer much in the way of, you know, addressing the issue. What's not calculatedly non-controversial--is plainly dangerous.
Consider:
Slaughter expends much ink explaining that a liberal internationalist would "absolutely recognized the pragmatic necessity of talking to everyone .. ."
And that "they also recognized that it was vital to develop institutions that would deepen cooperation among liberal democracies, both for strategic and moral reasons."
What a grand idea! Who could be against cooperation among liberal democracies? Talking to everyone is such good idea! Except if we don't like them. Then we shan't allow them to join the 'community of nations.'
The banality of the narrative evades grappling with those who've called the COD on its core failure: how does Slaughter propose to carry out all these bracingly first-order requirements while simultaneously setting up an exclusionary institution and working like hell to undermine the United Nations?
Pouring assets and energy into the COD will deprive the UN of stature and resources. And we already have the capacity to do everything a COD could. Which raises the question: why hasn't the United States actively promoted democracy abroad? Why did Brent Scowcroft & Co. send billions of dollars in "agricultural loans" to arm Saddam Hussein with high-tech weapons, some of them with chemical or wmd capacity? Why did we overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mossdegh, in 1953? Why did the CIA train Savak 17, the Shahs' secret service to torture Iran's own citizens?
The point here is that American foreign policy hasn't been directed to support or uphold democracy, let alone "deepen cooperation among liberal democracies." It's dishonest to wonder why we meet resistance abroad, and evasive to post, above, protestations unresponsive to the criticisms raised about the COD concept.
A Concert of Democracies is just a stalking horse for an interventionist agenda that inexplicably insists it isn't subject to the rule of law, at home or abroad. Apparently it's no longer good enough to make a fool of Colin Powell at the UN, waving his ridiculous photos and telling obvious lies in the service of yet another illegitimate war.
The most abjectly untenable and injurious rationalization Slaughter offers is the notion that this is all about "the need to protect the individuals within states as well as the rights of states themselves."
Slaughter disagrees with the "other major pillar of "traditional liberal internationalism," the absolute norm of non-intervention." But this is a straw man. Renewed understanding that the reckless and malign interventionism of the past 60 years doesn't call for absolute non-intervention. It calls for sanity. It calls for just wars, declared wars, and wars that are smart and in the national interest.
But recent events and a rapidly coalescing national consensus does not call for "spreading democracy by force." It cannot rationalize offensive wars or other misadventures because we are a democracy. And it certainly cannot use "human rights" as an excuse to invade sovereign nations, shatter civil society and auction off national assets and resources, as Kissinger-&-Bremer did in Iraq.
Slaughter cites "the Preamble of the UN Charter, which "reaffirm[s] faith in fundamental human rights .. [etc.] asking, "What was that other than a recognition of the need to protect the individuals within states as well as the rights of states themselves."
And this is Slaughter's fatal error: "The 'responsibility to protect' grows directly out of that tradition, both legally and politically."
Is America now the self-appointed "protector" of every individual and every nation? Is that it? Because we've hardly been acting on that premise. It's a vain and dangerous notion, that each nation and each person actually has the US as their protector, for it sets America above its peers.
Second, it's dishonest. Do our ends now justify our means? American Presidents have been all too eager to cite grand but abstract ideals to put a happy face on another bloody war. Those ideals were never the reasons for those wars.
But worst of all for Anne-Marie Slaughter, America has never predicated its foreign policy or wars of choice on the need to "protect the individuals within states as well as the rights of states themselves."
Consider the intellectual bankruptcy there, hanging both cheeks right out there to moon the collective TPM readership. The Unites States does not have the authority to "protect the individuals within [sovereign] states," nor do the "rights of states themselves" flow from the United States, and so by definition we possess no power to protect those rights either.
We can avoid violating those rights, but between the Phoenix Program, strategic hamlets and free fire zones in Vietnam, our direction of death squads in El Salvador, and the torture & Salvador Option wielded in Iraq--not to mention turning Bagdhad into one big strategic hamlet---
---it is, shall we say, implausible to believe that Anne-Marie Slaughter is leading American policy in a humane and enlightened direction. With George Bush's process malfeasance re Iraq as backdrop, there's no reason to believe that a structured end-run on the United Nations will achieve any just because it's got a Concert of Democracies Happy Face slapped on it.
I can still see John Bolton screaming on every TV channels that "the French & Germans should just shut up and follow orders!" Like that reference to the Nuremberg Defense could ever be lost on either nation. Bolton's point was that WE are the one's who are giving the orders now. In that context, the Concert of Democracies is just another tool to ensure that America can give orders without the UN Security Council around to provide a reality-check to our unmitigated hubris simply by upholding the rule of law.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is smart, but the idea that 'reforming' the UN Security Council doesn't meddle with the requirement that the security interests of the biggest and most brutal nations be front and center is just laughable.
For me, the most damning giveaway for Slaughter's paltry offering, was a major conference she convened on how to remake/repair American foreign policy going foward, about two--three years ago. Given the interests at stake, the establishment assumptions, and the execution--all of which had erred badly in handling Iraq--what was to be the vital, effective, game-changing way forward? But then, no answer could ever be generated from Slaughter's event: it was wholly funded by the Carlyle Group. She invited the same old policy people and officials who'd gotten us into this mess, all of whom are continually seen on the same venues, blind mouths selling the same line, every time. Exhausted minds, tired ideas, stale outlook, faulty logic, dissolute character--they have no solutions to offer. And Slaughter had invited no new faces. Despite having an entire nation and many excellent scholars and political leaders to draw on, Anne-Marie Slaughter could not find one new thinker--every attendee was a veteran D.C. figure who'd planted his backside in the revolving door of the D.C. policy establishment and superglued himself in place. A conversation among themselves, about their own failed ideas, bought and paid for by the Carlyle Group. Is it any wonder a Concert of Democracies is widely viewed as an Orwellian hoax, with the potential to wreak more harm than good?
December 6, 2008 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, well written.
December 9, 2008 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
"She invited the same old policy people and officials who'd gotten us into this mess, all of whom are continually seen on the same venues, blind mouths selling the same line, every time. Exhausted minds, tired ideas, stale outlook, faulty logic, dissolute character--they have no solutions to offer. And Slaughter had invited no new faces. Despite having an entire nation and many excellent scholars and political leaders to draw on, Anne-Marie Slaughter could not find one new thinker--every attendee was a veteran D.C. figure who'd planted his backside in the revolving door of the D.C. policy establishment and superglued himself in place. A conversation among themselves, about their own failed ideas, bought and paid for..."
Oh, no. Oh, my. Everytime I visit TPM, the scandal of the Obama transition rises up before my eyes.
So much for the skills one allegedly acquires editing the Harvard Law Review.
December 7, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
JTF,
"Everytime I visit TPM, the scandal of the Obama transition rises up before my eyes."
Not so. I don't see how anyone can describe Obama's appointments as a "scandal." Though the criticism is valid in both cases, the circumstances in which Obama and Slaughter operate are very different.
Obama is entering office at a time of national crisis--economically, militarily and environmentally. His immediate actions are critical, make-or-break decisions, and it's far better to maintain continuity and have the best possible appointees in his administration, than to quibble over ideological points. Even Larry Summers is moving leftward to embrace a recession-worthy stimulus package.
Obama is driving the policy, and his recent statement on MTP supporting striking Chicago workers who've been denied pension and paychecks on the say-so of the Bank of America should underscore his ability to maintain clarity and steer a steady course.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, though, has no such constraints---and every reason to embrace the widest possible range of political scholarship--believer that she is in academic inquiry and democratic debate. Yet that's not what she did.
Slaughter could have invited the best and the brightest from across the country. She could have brought in leading scholars representing widely divergent views, and initiated a conversation with veteran officals of past administrations. There would've been no cost to her whatsoever for igniting a debate between a a social circle that talks to no one but themselves and the rest of the nation's intellectual leaders. Instead, it turned into a self-indulgent exercise in confirming the comfortable assumptions of the status quo. You can't get beyond groupthink, or generate game-changing ideas, unless you broaden the discussion to include better and more original thinkers. But then, that was Slaughter's point.
December 7, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
When will people realize that the only way to build international co-operation, is to stop building institutions that promote exclusivity?
December 9, 2008 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink