Woodrow Wilson, George W. Bush, and the Future of Liberal Internationalism
Is George Bush the heir of Woodrow Wilson? This is the question that is at the core of this book by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Tony Smith, Tom Knock, and me. In the book, we have a lively debate - one with implications for liberal thinking about the world and Obama foreign policy.
The book's question is important because we all want to know what went wrong in foreign policy during the Bush years. Bush pursued a controversial security doctrine, launched a preventive war in Iraq, disrespected global rules and institutions, and brought America's standing in the world to a new low. Yet along the way, Bush also wrapped himself in the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson and the Cold War liberalism of Truman and Kennedy. In the words of his Second Inaugural address: "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." So did Bush foreign policy - and the Iraq war in particular - grow out of the Wilsonian tradition or was it actually an aberration or even the antithesis of this tradition? This is another way of asking if liberals share the blame for the Iraq war. After all, many liberals did in fact support the invasion. Was the Iraq war an outgrowth - at least indirectly - of an evolved Wilsonian worldview that is widely shared across the political spectrum in America, or was American foreign policy hijacked by a group of ideological outliers who hid behind Wilsonian ideas but were ultimately wielding a very different vision of America and the world?
In this first post, I will simply note the views of my co-authors - and focus the debate on the question of whether liberal internationalists are implicated in Bush foreign policy. But we want to go on during the week to look at the future of liberal internationalism - its virtues, flaws, dilemmas, and relevance to 21st century global challenges.
Tony Smith argues that the Bush administration and the neo-conservative architects of the Iraq war were the natural heirs of the Wilsonian tradition. Wilson and post-1945 liberal internationalists blazed a trail that Bush followed. In this view, it is America's commitment to promote democracy worldwide - a sort of liberal imperial ambition - that is at the core of Wilsonianism, and it was the animating vision behind the Bush doctrine. Thomas Knock and Anne-Marie Slaughter disagree, each arguing that the Wilsonian vision was not directly concerned with the spread of democracy but rather with the building of a cooperative and rule-based international order - an idea that the Bush administration actively resisted. Knock (a diplomatic historian and leading student of Wilson's foreign policy) emphasizes the centrality of the League of Nations itself and the construction of a collective security-oriented world order. Slaughter emphasizes the inherent multilateralism of the Wilsonian vision. For Tony Smith, the Bush administration's foreign policy was a natural extension of the ideas that liberal internationalists have developed over the decades, including in the 1990s by the Clinton administration. For Knock and Slaughter, the Wilsonian tradition and postwar liberal internationalism are about building rules and institutions that advance collective security and cooperation among democracies.
I will advance my own view in future posts. I do tend to side with Anne-Marie and Tom on this, arguing that Bush foreign policy (taken together) represented a radical departure from the liberal vision. At the same time, I think there are deep unresolved tensions and dilemmas at the heart of liberal internationalist thinking. In various ways, the liberal international "project" is in crisis. There are questions about how the "international community" actually makes good on its commitments to support democracy and human rights around the world. There are tensions between liberal ideas and the hegemonic power that has provided the supports for the postwar liberal international order. There are questions about whether the United States is willing and able to continue to provide global public goods and uphold rules and institutions of liberal order. There are worries about whether the United States is willing and able to let go of its dominant position in the global system, sharing power and authority with other states. There are questions about whether today's unipolar distribution of power and tomorrow's multipolar distribution of power are consistent with a one-world, liberal system. There are issues about how China (and Asia more generally) will embrace or resist liberal internationalist order. There are questions about America's domestic support for liberal internationalism and liberal hegemonic leadership. But we will explore these issues in coming posts!
In the end, I am optimistic that liberal international order will survive its current crisis even as it evolves in the face of global economic turmoil and a diminished American position. But I suspect that some of the discussants who will comment on our new book want to get their arguments out first.
I have become familiar with the views of Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter through their writings at TPM. I am less familiar with Tony Smith and Thomas Knock. Ikenberry writes "Slaughter emphasizes the inherent multilateralism of the Wilsonian vision." There is no surprise here, nor in Ikenberry's agreement with Slaughter. A fine phrase that "liberal internationalism". The search for fine phrases to provide cover for the pursuit of aggression and American international interests is not new. After all, Ikenberry and Slaughter and other prominent Princeton Project proponents such as Ivo Daalder (supporter of Bush's war in Iraq; in fact, cosigner of the Project for New American Century's letter of support for the Bush military "intervention" in Iraq (http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20030319.htm)) have been trying to create a "Concert of Democracies"... another fine phrase covering an uglier reality.. Now whatever the stated purpose of this organization is, I am certain that if created it would function to give political cover to military intervention by the US in pursuit of American global interests and to make military action easier. Remember the "Coalition of the Willing". All perfectly good phrases. The idea behind the Daalder-Slaughter-Ikenberry goal is to spruce up the Coalition of the Willing and make Western aggression more palatable here and abroad. We do not need to institutionalize further the war making prowess of the US and its partners; we do have a United Nations. There are many problems with it; many come from American security experts who want to reshape the global map and would prefer it out of the way altogether. The first step is to replace it by a more malleable "Concert of Democracies" That is why John McCain and Charles Krauthammer have been excited by the ideas of Ikenberry and Slaughter and liberal internationalism and the Concert of Democracies. Here is how the good Krauthammer strips the concept of all its verbal misdirection and gets down to its core purpose:
"Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it's got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it's all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you'd hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can't say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N." (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/27/krauthammer-mccain-un/).
Whatever the intentions of Ikenberry and Slaughter and Daalder really are, the purposes of their proposed approach will be to give us more of what we have already been served up by Bush and Cheney (with Daalder cheering them on).
May 19, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush turned typical FP views on their head:
By borrowing, and abusing, some elements of liberal internationalist idealism, Bush has discredited some of that approach. People will be more sketpical in the future for some time.
The GOP is now more activist and aggressive internationally, and Obama is returning to a rather prudent foreign policy, less Clinton/Carter and more Dwight Eisenhower.
I suspect that egregious human rights abuses will be dealt with in a multilateral format. The problem, then, is that this hasn't worked well thus far. The international community frequently devolves into stalemate.
May 19, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
"After all, many liberals did in fact support the invasion [of Iraq]."
...the Wilsonian tradition and postwar liberal internationalism are about building rules and institutions...
The Iraq War was an unlawful war. This was reasonably evident at the time, it is abundantly clear now.
Now I am a lot less bothered about ideological background, what I do want to know is how we reconstitute a world order that prohibits wars of aggression. Because that was a cornerstone of the post-WW2 order that the Iraq invasion destroyed - with the open encouragement of certain liberals who endorsed a rules-based system of international law.
Maybe this isn't for you to answer, but it seems pretty important for "liberal" Iraq War fans to explain themselves.
May 19, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Does a delussional man jumping off a high building and flapping his arms follow in the footsteps of the Wright brothers? Bush's philosophy amounts to f***ing up his enemies and making his friends richer while posing as a tough guy. All academic debates that frame his rule as anything more than that just create cover for the morally bankrupt sociopath. More constructive would be to debate about a way of getting the monster before a court of law and from there into prison.
Wilson, Truman, Kennedy? Give us a bloody break!
May 19, 2009 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
At last, the very heart of the issue.
May 19, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said, fpie. And, if any rational thinking lurked in George's head - and that's a big if - it was his allegiance to the global spread of capitalism American-style (for which the 'spread of democracy' is and always has been the cover argument.)
(That said, I'm amazed that there are liberals who advocate Americantizing the rest of the world. I certainly don't know any and if I did I would recite the definition of a political, social and economic liberal.)
May 19, 2009 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The book's question is important because we all want to know what went wrong in foreign policy during the Bush years."
Why not ask Anne-Marie Slaughter, who supported enthusiastically the Iraq War, then came up with the idea of a "Concert of Democracies" (i.e. the US forcing other Western countries to join them in never ending wars) later adopted by McCain?
And now the appropriately named Slaughter is a high-ranking official at the State Department. Apparently failing upwards is not limited to conservative pundits.
May 19, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
and Daalder is the current U.S. Permanent Representative on the Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. and we all know about Beinart who managed not only to promote the war and the surge (how's that surge doing by the way?) but to actively lecture and slander liberals, Democrats and the left. failing upwards is a way of life with our elites.
May 19, 2009 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome, Mr. Ikenberry.
If there are unresolved tensions in Wilsonianism, they surely go back to Wilson himself, and beyond. Wilsonianism is a mongrel doctrine that awkwardly breeds genuine internationalism with Wilson’s evangelical, chauvinist and missionary zeal, his sense of a special American “mission”. The result is an ungainly Americanist form of “nationalist internationalism.” The outlook is pre-enlightenment and post-enlightenment at the same time. It frequently manifests as a dangerous, schizophrenic monstrosity.
What is genuine internationalism? Internationalism needn’t deny the reality, or even naturalness of national or tribal identification, and national or patriotic affection. But it looks at nationalism with a skeptical eye, and notes its dangerous inherent proclivities toward fanaticism and violence. Real internationalism at its heart is at least disposed to temper or counteract nationalism, and every form of tribal, ideological and sectarian identity. It seeks to check and resist the zealous spirit of national partiality and the superstitious cult of patriotic devotion; to promote reason, balance, restraint, human solidarity and universality; and to elevate the political concerns of peoples beyond their national borders. Internationalism is universalistic in spirit and looks askance at claims of a special apostolic order, a chosen people, an ideologically privileged aristocracy, a historical vanguard or a shining city on a hill.
Internationalism is an enlightenment outlook that applies the same skeptical approach the enlightenment took toward the claims and forms of religion to the claims and forms of nations and nationalists. It is wary of superstition and enthusiasm, whether these are found in traditional scriptural religions, or new-fangled cults of the nation or the homeland. It is a realistic perspective based on a keen awareness of the infirmities of human nature and the fallibility, ignorance, and emotional instability of human beings; on the inherent human proclivities toward self-destructive violence and hatred; on a lively appreciation of the natural process by which natural affection toward ones own friends and kind turns into a fanatical, murderous, chauvinistic regard for one’s own tribe; on the corrupting influence of unchecked power; and on the need to build governing constraints that check these wayward impulses.
Wilson as President was a sometimes dangerous missionary zealot who thought it was the business of Americans to “convert the world to the principles of America.” As with Wilson, so with his heirs. Among partisans of the contemporary Wilsonian outlook, there is a widespread and disturbing lack of consciousness – beyond idle lip service - of the very possibility of any inherent deficiencies in the established American way of life or characteristic American behavior. Wilsonians are conformists who believe in the established church. Wilsonians complain only that Americans have either not been zealous enough in their divinely or historically appointed missionary work, or that they have not been “American” enough here at home or abroad, as though the “true principles” of America are so inherently perfect that living by them is a guarantee of the good.
It is frequently suggested by Wilsonians that as long as America lives up to its “true ideals”, everything will be great. That is a frankly cult-like attitude. And it is an attitude that has persistently stood in the way of searching national self-criticism and progressive structural changes in fundamental aspects of the American way of life. Wilson and his heirs can be the most dangerous kind of people: the ones who believe they have been chosen to do God’s work on earth, that no other people could possibly be more Godly than their own special anointed flock, and hence that there is no need to learn anything from others, but only a need to instruct or correct others. They are frequently impervious to the “physician, heal thyself” message.
Internationalism is a useful corrective to this Americanist cult. It comes in different varieties, but internationalism in contemporary philosophical thought is often too much attached to Kant, and Kant’s successors like Rawls. This Kantian tradition is much too focused on debates over the structure of idealized end-states and neglectful and disdainful of real-world constraints and practical politics. This utopian tnendency in the Kantian traditions is behind much of the violent mischief these traditions have spawned. The emphasis is all on how peoples and nations will behave once they have constructed an idealized “liberal order”, and that leaves all the hard questions about how to behave now in suspense. Because they are driven by images of far-off ideological order and perfection, Kantian internationalists are impatient, and susceptible to the belief that progress must be advance by vanguard parties or nations. The 19th and 20th centuries saw all kinds of folks convinced that they must fight God’s war for peace or practice the violent civilizing of the barbarians.
There is a more utilitarian approach to internationalism based on practical efforts to build institutions that resolve and restrain conflict, solve clearly identifiable and tractable common problems, and contribute to the patient growth of intercourse among peoples, without being unduly meddlesome, partisan or prescriptive about where this all has to go ultimately, or what some idealized international “order” must consist in. It doesn’t obsess over grand visions, but attends to obvious needs. It emphasizes the preservation of peace and a practice of muddling through by the gradual expansion law, rules and governance where the introduction of law, rules and governance appears to be useful. It lives on homely rules of thumb - such as the rule that life is generally better than death, health better than sickness, happiness better than misery, beauty better than ugliness and prosperity better than destitution - rather than fixations on elaborate charters of perfectly ordered international societies of nations.
May 19, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with many liberal internationalists is the they believe in American exceptionalism. This belief in American exceptionalism makes them believe that the United States can do no wrong and whatever it does is right. This also makes them think that somehow the United States can led the world and create a "Concert of Democracies," that the rest of the world will want to join despite the previous US action in Iraq. The irony is that if the United States wants to gain a sense of moral power in the international system than it must abandon its notions of being exceptional and admit that it has committed mistakes in the past such as the Vietnam War, torture of detainees, and the Iraq War. Only then can America once again gain legitimacy in the international community when it comes to enforcing universal norms among nation states.
May 19, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, they believe in a twisted misconception of "American Exceptionalism".
May 19, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Bush's language exactly matched Wilson's.
Bush: “Freedom can be resisted, and freedom can be delayed, but freedom cannot be denied.”
Wilson: The United States is "ordained as a nation to lead all erring brothers towards the light of liberty and democracy."
But for both of them, it was mere rhetoric, belied by their actions. Bush's staunchest allies were kings and dictators. Wilson, after promising not to get the US into war, then belatedly conspired to get the US into a war it had no business in, then stood by helplessly in Paris while Britain, France, Japan and Italy planned to divide up entire empires among themselves , leading to another war. Democratic movements instigated by Wilson's rhetoric around the world were not supported.
Their imperialism was similar, too. Wilson invaded Mexico to overturn a government he didn't like, and imposed U.S. military occupation on Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in order to, in his words, "teach the South American republics to elect good men." He also added to the United States' own imperial possessions by buying the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
Domestically, Wilson cruelly punished Americans, like Eugene Debs, who didn't toe his political line. Even Bush with his Patriot Act didn't go that far.
So much for the Wilsonian tradition.
May 19, 2009 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink