America Cannot Take Much More Of Such “Responsible” Government
Ross:
Nor do I think that a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian “coalition of the introverts” could govern the nation responsibly unless the United States actually withdrew from its current quasi-imperial role, which almost certainly isn’t going to happen.
Following up on my earlier remarks, I should make another point here. There may be some political and even psychological reasons why a “Jeffersonian-Jacksonian” coalition would not succeed (the people who are called “Jacksonians” tend instinctively to support military action and executive power, and “Jeffersonians” tend to question both as a first impulse), but to the extent that both are interested in an America First politics I am not exactly clear why such a coalition could not govern responsibly. Unless, that is, we are defining responsible government here in such a way that includes aggressive, illegal warfare and military overstretch as responsible but excludes respect for other states’ sovereignty and international law as reckless. What Ross is saying in this aside is that such a coalition probably would not govern the empire, or quasi-empire, terribly well, because such a coalition would see no reason to keep the empire. If you have already decided, as the “Hamiltonians” have apparently decided, that the empire is non-negotiable and essential but in need of better management, the idea of giving up on it would seem inherently irresponsible. This has nothing to do with governing America as such, and has everything to do with America attempting to govern large swathes of the rest of the world. It is unlikely that America will give up on having a quasi-imperial role, in no small part because what Bacevich calls the “power elite” does its best to define the good of the nation in terms that maintain the national security state and U.S. hegemony, to which their own interests are closely tied.
3 Responses to “America Cannot Take Much More Of Such “Responsible” Government”
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I think that it’s fairly likely that, if pressed, Ross would indeed state that giving up the quasi-empire would be a mistake. But you are reading more into this particular statement than is there. In the quoted sentence (and the post as a whole) he ventures no opinion as to whether the quasi-empire is a good thing; he merely states (correctly in my view) that it isn’t going away any time soon.
Which another way of saying that (in this particular case) you and Ross are … pretty much saying the same thing. I think you project your knowledge of Ross’ views from other posts onto this post.
Of course I’m taking into account his views from other posts. How could I not?
Why isn’t the quasi-empire going to go away? Because it is going to be defended by all those people who insist that dismantling it is irresponsible and we need someone to manage it responsibly, which is what Ross is implying here. He doesn’t need to say that he thinks the quasi-empire is basically a good thing. Even if I didn’t know his views from other sources, his stated preference in this post for the realist-internationalist perspective already tells me that he thinks this. It’s as if I wrote a post arguing that non-interventionists should direct the future of the foreign policy debate on the right, but never said explicitly that I think the empire needs to be scrapped. You would conclude from what I did say that this is what I think, and you would be right.