David has sent me the following post. But first, let me weigh in just briefly on the progress debate.The most important point for me is how it intersects with Dan K's (and others') point about how folks like me may have let hope triumph over rational expectations in the run-up to Iraq, which in turn rests on deeper attitudes of optimism and pessimism in looking at the present and imagining the future. To move out of the purely theoretical realm here, this debate has two very concrete applications: 1) the American people respond far better to optimism than pessimism (remember Carter's malaise followed by Reagan's "It's morning in America"?); but 2)hoping for the best cannot mean not accepting and preparing for the possibility of the worst. In Iraq, fully internalizing that second point might well, as Dan K suggests, have led many of us (or at least me) to reach a different judgment. That is also what I think David is concerned about, but judge for yourselves.

"I'm sorry to have rekindled Anne-Marie's unpleasant memories of her leftist interlocutors at Harvard Law. I do not consider myself a leftist, though biographically speaking I suppose that I did imbibe some of the gloomier analyses of the Frankfurt School with my mother's milk. But the point I was trying to make about progress was not Marxist at all. Instead, it was to claim that historical pessimism is not incompatible with liberalism, or, more precisely, that one can practice liberal politics without believing there is much chance things will work out very well for our civilization. To subscribe to a Greek or cyclical view of history (or,if Professor Ober prefers, a Thucidydean view) is not to say progress is impossible. Anne-Marie has erected a straw man here.But it is to say that progress, like civilizations, wax and wane, are impermanent, in short, are mortal.

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As soon as I have a minute I will weigh in on Iraq and Dan K's very thoughtful response to my last post. But meantime, I consulted my wonderful classicist colleague Josiah Ober (who writes and consults on the lessons of ancient democracy for the present) on the Greek view of history -- not just to further my debate with David Rieff but more generally on the alignment of our classical heritage with liberal political and normative theory. He writes:

"It is always interesting to see the Greeks brought into real-world debates. In this case, I think David Rieff's citation is a red herring, in that I would not agree that there is a standard "cyclical" view of history among the Greeks. Some Greek views of change were linear and degenerative (Hesiod's "ages of man" beginning with gold and ending in his present, with iron). Others seem inherently progressive (Aristotle's teleological approach, which sees forms of government seeking and, in his own time, achieving, their telos). Plato does suggest, in some passages, a cyclical view, although elsewhere (the Atlantis narrative) he seems to opt for a degenerative view. Rieff's notion that the Greek view of history is cyclical perhaps comes from Thucydides' famous comment  (1.22.4)

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.

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David Rieff's response reminds me of my days at Harvard Law School, where I was constantly being attacked from the left for my old-fashioned liberal insistence on "progress narratives" (these attacks were always accompanied by an oh-so-sophisticated post-modern sneer). I have always thought that although liberals do not have to subscribe to a teleological view of history in which progress is inevitable, they do have to believe progress is possible, and if it is possible then they have to strive to achieve it. Thus I find it hard to understand how David can believe (as he claims, with the Greeks) that history is cyclical and hence real progress impossible and yet still call himself a liberal.

But let me turn to the substance of the debate over humanitarian intervention. First, the debate over the important question raised by Devon raises issues of legality and legitimacy, which as one of the international lawyers on the blog, I will try to clarify a bit. Second, a number of the posts object not to humanitarian intervention but to the risk that it becomes a cover for democracy promotion by force. That is a real risk, but it does not mean we throw the baby of genuine humanitarian intervention out with the bathwater of Iraq. Third is the deeper question of whether any intervention that involves the use of force can truly be humanitarian. At his most pessimistic, David is really claiming that it cannot be, that the use of force in the real world just makes matters worse. That I reject; the British intervened in Sierra Leone to stop some of the most horrific atrocities the world has ever witnessed (lopping off limbs of anyone who dared opposed the rebels) and succeeded in a way that suggests to me that a similar intervention in Rwanda could in fact have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and stopped a conflict that continues today in Eastern Congo. But even if I (and other supporters of intervention by force in Kosovo, East Timor, and Darfur today) am right, what liberals really need, as Bruce suggests, is a strategy of intervention by preventing conflict rather than wading into the middle of it once it has become so bad that we can no longer ignore it.

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I will weigh in next with my own thoughts on a very interesting and important debate over humanitarian intervention and international law, but meantime David Rieff sent me this response:

"I am extremely grateful for John Ikenberry's post, with which I by no means entirely disagree, as well as many of the comments that followed my piece, John's, and Ivo Daalder's (for whose intervention I am equally grateful though for more for the way it confirms my worst fears about liberal interventionism than from any meeting of minds between us). Of course, Daalder is right to note that I used to be a convinced liberal interventionist, though since I made a point of stating this in the first paragraph of my original post, I do not quite know what his point is here. But, to reiterate, I was indeed a partisan of what we somewhat misleadingly call humanitarian interventions throughout the nineteen-nineties. What changed my view was the sense that such interventions were being viewed, on both the liberal internationalist and the neo-conservative side, as a principal though not, obviously, the preferential response not just to genocide, but to oppressive regimes throughout the world. In other words, I began to think, and think now more strongly than ever, that we have moved from military interventions as an exceptional response to mass slaughter to a commitment to imposing democracies---by non-military means if possible but by force if necessary.

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