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After Weehawken

As a realist and self-proclaimed “moderate hawk” (a gosling, perhaps?), James is also not happy with the term Hamiltonian to describe his foreign policy views. I can hardly blame him. Offhand, I’d say a chastened Hamilton looks rather like Hamilton post-duel, but that would be cruel. On a more serious note, James said this: Of […]

As a realist and self-proclaimed “moderate hawk” (a gosling, perhaps?), James is also not happy with the term Hamiltonian to describe his foreign policy views. I can hardly blame him. Offhand, I’d say a chastened Hamilton looks rather like Hamilton post-duel, but that would be cruel.

On a more serious note, James said this:

Of course, people get antsy when you won’t cough up a grand ideology to match your grand strategy, but that’s sort of the point; and now I’ll make what looks like an about-face and suggest that, for someone not tethered to realism or neoconservatism as a matter of ideological principle, the Iraq war was not terribly chastening, even if it was formative, because some of us suspected from the beginning that there was really only one Iraq, and that the perfect storm of possibility, capability, timing, interest, and passion developed there in a way that simply won’t appear in any other country any time soon — especially given the way Iraq went down. Yes, for a minute there it looked like we could tip the extremely weak and craven regime in Damascus out of power, but in all the really serious cases — North Korea, Iran, Burma, or even Zimbabwe or Sudan or Somalia or Pakistan or Venezuela or Cuba! — the Iraq model of foreign policy simply won’t, because it can’t, apply. Iraq was a world-historical one-off that should offer a host of wisdom about what sort of businesses the US should and shouldn’t be in. But in the main I think the “lessons learned” in Iraq are ones we already knew or should have known, and that includes the lessons that could have made the occupation of Iraq far more successful.

Well, that’s one answer to my question, and it is just as unsatisfying as I thought it would be. It’s true enough that the Iraq model won’t ever really apply again, because the many contingencies that made this war possible will not recur. There will never be quite the same confluence of a pompous Baathist dictator, unchecked American power, a decade-long, U.N.-approved siege of an entire country, an equally long propaganda campaign to get the public used to attacking Iraq and an opportune moment to wrap a random invasion in the mantle of antiterrorism and non-proliferation. That doesn’t rule out making similarly awesome blunders in different ways in another part of the world. The next great blunder will probably not be a preventive war, but will be some other inadvisable form of power projection in a region Americans poorly understand (i.e., any region outside of the United States). The central problem with the argument for the war in Iraq was not the particulars of the case regarding WMDs, Al Qaeda or even the supposed Iraqi threat to its neighbors, but that it took for granted that our government essentially has the right to shape and dominate the politics of other parts of the world and to use force to quash resistance to its efforts.

Bearing that in mind, several items on James’ internationalist agenda seem to me to have the potential to be quite calamitous in their own ways, and most of them partake of the same mistaken pursuit of hegemony. To the extent that his agenda does not endorse the pursuit of greater hegemony, it assumes that the means exist to accomplish some remarkably ambitious goals. As Freddie objects, James’ agenda includes quite a few items that entail the United States managing, dominating or otherwise dictating terms to the rest of the world:

I count one two three four five of the eight that are simple questions of imposing American wishes onto foreign shores, and I’m not confident the other three can possibly be undertaken by this America without become [sic] yet more excuses for military aggression, destructive espionage and adventurism.

James protests that there has to be something in between what he calls “foreign policy autism” and “globo-cop faux imperialism.” Indeed there is something, since no one actually defends the former and I am fairly sure James wants nothing to do with the latter. More important, there are many different alternatives between the (non-existent) foreign policy autistic and the “faux-imperialist,” and some of these would involve not confusing management of/interference in other states’ affairs with engagement with other states. The trouble that I and Freddie are having with realist internationalists is that they tend to treat their alternative as the only thing available besides reckless jingoism and terrapinesque withdrawal, which is a foreign policy debate way of saying, “We’re the only other game in town” or “Don’t throw your vote away.”

There are items on James’ agenda with which I am somewhat sympathetic. Not wanting Russia to be our enemy is good, albeit entirely negative. Wanting India to be the leading power in its region is not necessarily a bad idea, but it is something that will happen with or without our “help” and it is not obviously in the American interest to entwine ourselves too closely with India, or else we could wind up as an outside guarantor of Indian interests in a way that commits us to supporting New Delhi in future conflicts. There is a separate problem that “managing” China’s rise and helping build up India are create a dangerous dynamic where India becomes our front-line state in an anti-China containment policy (indeed, this has been more or less the stated reason for improved relations with India over the last decade), which tends to make it more likely that China’s rise will be undermined and that in any case it will not be peaceful.

Looking at some of the other items, Europe may or may not take on the role of a “global assertive power,” but once we get beyond euphemisms about “burden-sharing” what this means is that the U.S. will try to get Europe to become stronger internationally than it already is to supplement continuing U.S. power projection rather than replace it. Contra James, I think building up Europe as a “robust, self-respecting, great-power” will ensure that Russia becomes more hostile to the West. When we talk about preventing Pakistan from doing or becoming anything, we have to bear in mind that Washington has little leverage or is unwilling to use it. In South America, we would not need to support Morales, but simply stop pretending that Morales and Chavez matter and cultivate normal, productive relations with the states that do matter.

As I have been, Freddie is understandably frustrated by the narrow range of options that are considered viable alternatives, especially when we are told time and again that the only other real alternative to this and the perpetual war crowd is to shrink inside our shell. Clearly, there are other alternatives, including those offered by different kinds of conservative and libertarian realists, that are much more restrained in their goals.

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