Beware

19 Responses to Beware

1. conradg says:

   February 25, 2008 at 6:44 pm

   Where’s the evidence, even rhetorically, to support this?

   You’re not grasping the difference between Obama’s approach and, say, the necon approach. That difference is one that can only be described as “conservative”. In other words, Obama does indeed recognize that the world’s problems are interconnected, and that in some sense therefore all the world’s problems are our problems. The difference is that Obama recognizes that this implies fundamental limits in what America can do to change the world or solve these problems. This is why conservatives such as you ought to find some solace in Obama’s approach. He doesn’t expect that American hard power can solve the world’s problems. He doesn’t advocate the kind of military solutions that Republicans, and McCain in particular, advocate. He seems to be a strong believer in a modest, multilateral approach that does not require us to invest trillions in invading and occupying foreign nations. He wants us to recognize the realities of the world as it is, and use our influence in a way that actually can do something positive, rather than damage ourselves by overreaching.

   So no, Obama does not possess the same mindset that led us into Iraq. If he did, he’d have supported the war, which he did not. the fact that the world, and our position in it, is complex and interdependent, is not a sign that he proposes endless American attempts to control the world. Quite the opposite. He understands that such an approach cannot possibly work, because the world simply doesn’t work that way.
2. Daniel Larison says:

   February 25, 2008 at 9:03 pm

   I would suggest that his claim that our security is *inextricably* bound to the security of every other nation, aside from being a wild overstatement of the degree of actual interdependence in the world, implies that he thinks that our security interests are virtually limitless. He has also stated repeatedly a willingness to engage in unilateral military action against any threat to national security. If every threat to anyone’s security is theoretically a threat to America, and he reserves the right to strike at those threats unilaterally, he is not only recapitulating the Bush Doctrine but is going far beyond it. That his statements on Pakistan match up with what the current administration is actually doing with targeted strikes in western Pakistan is a concrete example of Obama and Bush being extremely close to one another. As for multilateralism, it did not make the war against Yugoslavia any wiser or more just. I have never heard Obama say anything to suggest that he did not support the NATO campaign in 1999. Look at the people who have praised his foreign policy–Kagan, Peretz, the Post editors–and tell me that doesn’t concern you at all.

   I don’t think he believes that hard power can solve all the world’s problems, and for his foreign policy to be vastly more ambitious and dangerous he wouldn’t have to believe that. Even the current administration hands don’t believe that. He has shown no aversion to deploying hard power and supporting the use of the hard power of our allies in every case except Iraq. The outline of his foreign policy that he gave at the Council on Global Affairs seems to me to be a blueprint for overreaching. The proof is in his own statements.
3. ChrisXP says:

   February 25, 2008 at 9:25 pm

   “If every problem is our problem, and everyone’s security is “inextricably linked” to our own, how can any President set priorities or address one crisis rather than another when all are potentially just as relevant and connected to American security?”
   ——————————————————————————-

   It’s a question Obama can’t answer, because his approach to world crisis is very much equal to the Neo-Conservative world view — of intervention by the boot, “is for their own good”.

   Not one of these current candidates have a foreign policy that isn’t much different that what Bush has used. They’ll relabel it as “humanitarian” or some other hogwash, but the principles are the same — use our military to press their Socialist agendas.

   They’ll repeat history, as previous Administrations, for interfering in internal affairs causing more misery years later, as yet another tyrant is raised on our tax dollars. The US can’t simply wave a magic wand and right centuries of turmoil, and get concensus with rivals more interested in blood feuds. It’s a delusional approach, and history proves anyone trying such a “wonder cure” will fail miserably. Dreams and reality collide, and reality always triumphs.

   Obama isn’t any different than Bush in world affairs, he’ll just concentrate more on African problems, and leave even more generations of mess for others to clean up.

   P.S. — Thanks for a blog here, feel so alienated in a sea of Liberal and Neo-Con outlets (and my writing ability suffers accordingly). Even more thanks, for showing there IS a difference between Traditional and Paleo-Conservatism. So many lump us Traditionals into the Paleo sphere, when our ideologies are similiar, but not identical.
4. davegnyc says:

   February 26, 2008 at 12:45 am

   The small wars are a) cheap and b) easyt to get out of and c) don’t cost many us lives.

   And when the people get sick of those as well the Republicans can come back with their normal realist foriegn policy in 4 years.

   Also, looks like McCain see the war is the albatross around his neck.

   White House hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is accusing Democrats of “misrepresenting” remarks he’s previously made about U.S. troops being in Iraq for a century or more. McCain clarified Monday that the war in Iraq would be over in the near future.

   “My friends, the war will be over soon,” McCain said at a townhall-style meeting, “…although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis and not by us.”

   When you can’t convince, lie.
5. davegnyc says:

   February 26, 2008 at 1:49 am

   Here is the link to the story quoted above:

   Raw Story.
6. conradg says:

   February 26, 2008 at 3:31 am

   Daniel,

   I think you are opening yourself up to the charge that paleo-conservatism, as the name implies, is stuck in a romantic and nostalgic attachment to the past, to a pre-modern era in which our security interests truly aren’t inextricably linked to the rest of the world.

   What you seem to be criticizing Obama for is his willingness to deal with the modern world as it actually is, which is a vastly smaller place of fantastically accelerating technology and interconnectedness. As much as you might long for a world in which this is not the case, such a world has long since passed into history, and short of apocalyptic civilizational collapse, will never return.

   So I don’t see the debate about our national security policy as containing an option to pretend that our security interests aren’t vastly complex, interconnected, and inextricably linked to virtually everything else in the world. I see the debate as a question of how to approach this reality, which is only going in one direction, and not back into the 19th century. The neocons have the approach that we need to create a dominant empire that rules the world by military force, and imposes our will upon the world through brute force. Obama recognizes that some use of military force is necessary, but that it is limited to a very few cases. Yes, he approves of using unilateral military force to go after terrorists in Pakistan when we have actionable intelligence. That does not mean he has any interest in invading and occupying Pakistan, as the neocons did in Iran.

   Pretending there is no difference between Obama and the necons because both reject your nostalgic world view is a huge and narcissistic mistake. You are seeing everyone who doesn’t see the world the same way you do as being the same. They aren’t. In short, your view does not seem realistic to me, but a denial of realism. You seem to think that we can ignore the increasing interconnectedness of the modern world, and it will then just go away, and you judge foreign policies based on their ability to keep their heads in the sand. This doesn’t seem smart. I’m not saying Obama has all the answers. Obviously facing reality is merely one step, not the final one. The neocons have faced this reality to some degree, but are stuck in fantasies of ultimate power and mastery that are even more dangerous than sticking one’s head in the sand. But don’t confuse Obama with someone who entertains such fantasies. I see his approach as one that is trying to find a way through this thicket without becoming delusional. I don’t know that he’s succeeded in that, because I don’t know that I know what the best way is either. But I do think he’s going in a better direction than anyone else I see out there, including, so far, your own approach.

   There’s a lot I like in what you say, but I do see some rather serious problems on this issue of facing the realities of what the world has become, and is turning into, and I think it renders many of your criticisms of Obama suspect.

   BTW, do you have a link to that foreign policy address of Obama’s you refer to? I’d like to read it for myself.
7. davegnyc says:

   February 26, 2008 at 7:28 am

   Mr. conradg, while I, like Daniel, have more of a romantic and nostalgic view of what our foreign policy should be, you make a compelling argument. Kudos to you.

   That said, my question is:

   What are the comments so much better on this blog than at TakiMag?

   Not that I am complaining…
8. Daniel Larison says:

   February 26, 2008 at 8:47 am

   I would never say that there are no differences between them. Obviously, they differ on Iraq, so if I were to say something like that I would rightly be laughed out of town. My larger point is that both have what seem to me to be wildly unrealistic and dangerous conceptions of the the U.S. role in the world. Both seem to assume that U.S. hegemony is not only the present reality, but a necessity, and both view other states’ sovereignty as ultimately irrelevant if our extremely broadly defined security interests require us to violate that sovereignty. Our security is not threatened by every Pakistani in a madrassa, nor is it threatened by a lack (or excess) of democracy in Latin America. Are we tied to the rest of the world more closely than we were fifty or a hundred years ago? Certainly. But the existence of these connections in no way obliges us to run an empire or to play the role of world overseer, and Obama seems perfectly happy with that role. I don’t expect that we will not be drawn in from time to time into foreign conflicts that do actually threaten our interests, but I am wary of anyone who would define those interests so broadly that there is no rational limit to them.

   The link to the address is here.
9. conradg says:

   February 26, 2008 at 3:45 pm

   Daniel,

   Thanks for the link. I’m still not sure what you are objecting to in Obama’s foreign policy. Could you be more specific? The only thing I saw that I’d object to is a cap and trade on greenhouse gases, but no one’s perfect.

   I really don’t see how Obama is advocating American hegemony. He’s simply trying to make use of our undisputed leadership in pursuit of peaceful goals that do NOT include American hegemony. I think he recognizes that the pursuit of hegemony by Bush and others has actually been counterproductive to our interests, and thus he is advocating another kind of leadership.

   Part of the problem with your argument is that it falls victim to the Orwellian destruction of language by Bush and the neocons. They seem to have made the word “leadership” synonymous with “hegemony”, as if there were no other kind of leadership possible. But of course there is. There are authoritarian dictators, and there are responsive, elected representatives. Bush’s style of leadership leans towards the authoritarian, and his view of foreign policy is of America acting as the authoritarian “leader” of the world, which is of course a hegemonic role. Obama’s use of the term leadership is of a very different order, and points at a voluntary form of leadership that many people in the world look to America to provide. I don’t think we can or should abdicate that role, but it is important not to let it turn us towards the authoritarian, hegemonic path, and instead towards a limited, “enlightened” role that is aware of what we cannot accomplish, and what methods cannot achieve results, but is also open-ended in what it can make possible through sustained diplomatic and cultural engagement with the world. Call that Kumbaya if you like, but it works a helluva lot better than what we’ve been doing so far.

   I can’t tell you how sick I am of how Bush and the neocons have poisoned our political discourse, to the point where even intelligent folks like you equate all notions of American leadership in the world with hegemonic aspirations to Empire. This is a huge part of the skepticism that Obama is facing, and I wish him a lot of luck with it. Personally, I’m more optimistic than you that this is both his intention, and something he can accomplish, but I don’t think skepticism is unwarranted.

   Also, though I’m a liberal I’m not unsympathetic to your paleocon views. Personally, I think we should pretty much call it quits in the Middle East and make energy independence our top priority, not just for ourselves, but the world. I don’t think the Middle East will ever resolve their problems, short of killing one another en masse. Africa is actually much more hopeful in that regard. I wish Obama would advocate taxes on all energy imports and use that entirely to fund alternative energy sources, particularly solar, which recent technological advances suggest can completely outdo oil and coal within five years or so. If we can drain the Middle East of their oil revenues, half of the world’s problems simply go away. Generally speaking, I’m with Karl Jung, who observed that most of his patients who got better never solved the problems they came to him with, they just outgrew them. I anticipate a similar “solution” to most of our present problems. Find ways to outgrow our problems, rather than solve them.
10. conradg says:

    February 26, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    I realize I didn’t directly answer the questions in your post, such as:

    “Our security is not threatened by every Pakistani in a madrassa, nor is it threatened by a lack (or excess) of democracy in Latin America. Are we tied to the rest of the world more closely than we were fifty or a hundred years ago?”

    This is a fallacious method of argumentation. Of course we are not threatened by every Pakistani in a madrassa, but this in no way suggests we are not threatened by the overall Islamic Fundamentalist Jihadist movement, in which Pakistani Madrassas play an important part. Now, I’m of the view that the general threat of Islamic terrorism is overblown, though perhaps not in the long run, as technology makes mass terrorism more and more feasible. I’m even willing to admit that the threat of Pakistani Madrassas is made worse by many of the ways we engage the Muslim world, and not made better. But it certainly is true that how far flung parts of the world develop is of growing significance, and promises to be of much greater significance in the future than it is today.

    Likewise, yes, the poltical dynamics of Latin America does affect us, and will do so more and more. I do understand why you would like to not engage these matters as we have in the past, as in the hegemonic mode of installing dictators who do our bidding, and the bidding of our corporate sponsors, but I don’t see why that is the only way we can engage them. The problems of illegal immigration into the US are directly related to the political and economic problems of Latin America, and so helping those countries progress politically and economically does indeed matter to our security and cultural integrity.

    So yes, we are much more tied to the world than we were fifty or a hundred years ago. You also seem not to be aware of how this trend is accellerating exponentially, tied directly to our technological progress in communications, transport, and the dispersion of ideas and technology to previously backwards nations. I repeat – the world is not going backwards to your nostalgic past – that is dead and gone. How we will move forward into this new world is the question at hand, and you seem to be avoiding it, or denying it.

    BTW, do you have anything you could link me to which roughly summarizes your views on these matters, so you don’t have to repeat things you’ve already written? It could save us both a lot of trouble. I don’t want to falsely characterize your views if they are different from the loose impression I’m getting here.
11. Daniel Larison says:

    February 26, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    I don’t know where people keep getting the idea that I’m advocating foreign policy by nostalgia. If it’s nostalgic to hope for a government that does not embark on aggressive and illegal wars, then, okay, I’m trapped in the past and proud of it.

    Neutrality and non-intervention are policies that perfectly modern, globalised states are capable of pursuing. The complement to non-intervention is trade and exchange. It perplexes me how returning to the mode of a normal commercial power represents some disengagement with either the modern world or reality.

    Obama’s statements on Kosovo and Russia this evening were appalling, and they confirm just what I have feared about his “multilateralism.” To my knowledge, this was the first time he has spoken publicly about his views on Russia, and he got it very, very wrong, and dangerously so. He implied, or certainlt left the impression from what I heard, that he would go to war alongside NATO to repel a Russian intervention in Kosovo.
12. conradg says:

    February 27, 2008 at 1:32 am

    Daniel,

    Your nostalgia is present in your desire for a world of yesteryear, in which the world really wasn’t interconnected, and we really can ignore what’s going on in most of it, and pretend that American isn’t leading anything. Come on, dude, “interconnectivity” is a cliche precisely because it is so obvious.

    Your reaction to Obama’s remarks on Kosovo and Russia simply befuddle me. What in heck is dangerous about suggesting that this is something for NATO to deal with? I mean, preventing Russia from dominating Europe is precisely why NATO was formed. You seem to think that it’s perfectly fine for Russia to intervene in Kosovo, but somehow if NATO tries to prevent Russia from intervening, that’s not okay. In any case, I see nothing that Obama said which suggests any reason to fear that his policy would produce anything remotely like a war in Kosovo. Quite the contrary, it would prevent that from ever developing.

    You say that non-intervention means trade and exchange. Fine, until someone comes along who wants to disrupt all that by intervening. I seem to recall Russia having just such a policy in Europe which interferred with the ability of Eastern Europeans to conduct rrade and exchange. Some kind of “intervention” I believe it was. Before that, Germany somehow intervened as well. And we intervened to stop both of those interventions from succeeding. Not a bad policy in retrospect.

    So basically, what Obama is suggesting is that we prevent countries from intervening and preventing the world from engaging in trade and exchange. If we let such countries do that, we won’t have anyone to trade with ourselves. That’s why collective security arrangements are so essential to us, and why we need to pay attention to such matters as Kosovo to keep such things from getting out of hand. This isn’t a way of creating excuses to invade and dominate other countries, as Bush used such rhetoric, it’s a way of actually trying to keep such situations from developing into wars.

    Your idea of “returning to the mode of a normal commercial power” is what I mean by nostalgia. There is no such return possible. We are not a normal commercial power. We could become one if we cut our GDP by two-thirds and had one-sixth the military budget, but I doubt we would actually be safer for it. Power abhors a vaccuum, and in the present reality if we do not use our power to create stability in the world, the world will not create something to replace it which will be favorable to us. That’s just the facts, sir. This doesn’t mean we have to be a hegemon, but there’s a huge playing field in between hegemony and the modes of “normal commercial powers” that allows us to carry out a sane and responsible foreign policy.

    So really, it seems that you just take the worst possible interpretation of Obama’s remarks on such things as Kosovo and run with it to places I can’t really understand the connection to. You don’t seem to understand that the purpose of NATO isn’t to fight wars, but to prevent them. Have you never heard of the principle of deterence? The best way to guarantee a war in Kosovo is to announce that NATO will never intervene there, whereas the best way to prevent one is to assure the Russians that if they invade Kosovo, NATO will fight them. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Why is it you imagine the opposite to be the case?
13. Grumpy Old Man says:

    February 27, 2008 at 2:37 am

    NATO won’t fight; only the US and England fight, and France when she can beat up post-colonial puppets. Why would it be in our national interest (if noncontiguous Russia actually sent troops to Serbia) to send our young men to die for a bunch of church-burning gangsters in a mini-state that was born failed?

    I don’t think Daniel is quite so unrealistically nostalgic as you think. We can have a strong military without having troops and bases strung out around the world. We can protect our trade routes with a strong Navy. Being militarily strong doesn’t mean we have a dog in every distant fight, and it certainly doesn’t oblige us to prop up little kelptocracies far from our shores.

    Why is there a NATO now? Russia may drive hard energy bargains, but there’s no global revolutionary movement that looks to Moscow. If Europe has an enemy, it’s the Muslims who are flooding in because the enervated Europeans have become sterile.

    Unfortunately we have a national security state and folks who have economic and ideological interest in creating new enemies. Neither party wants to dislodge them, and instead speak different dialects of the same interventionist language.

    I could rabbit on, but it’s the middle of the night and Daniel can speak for himself far better than I.
14. Daniel Larison says:

    February 27, 2008 at 1:35 pm

    The world c. 1917, prior to our first major interventionist war, was as interconnected by commerce as it had ever been and was more interconnected than it was during most of the 20th century. Even if I wanted to “return to the world of yesteryear,” which I know better than anyone isn’t coming back, the world of yesteryear was not much less globalised than the world today. The chief difference is in the speed of travel and communication, but structurally significant interconnectedness has been the reality for at least a century.

    “So really, it seems that you just take the worst possible interpretation of Obama’s remarks on such things as Kosovo and run with it to places I can’t really understand the connection to. You don’t seem to understand that the purpose of NATO isn’t to fight wars, but to prevent them. Have you never heard of the principle of deterence? The best way to guarantee a war in Kosovo is to announce that NATO will never intervene there, whereas the best way to prevent one is to assure the Russians that if they invade Kosovo, NATO will fight them. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Why is it you imagine the opposite to be the case?”

    The purpose of NATO *was* to prevent wars through deterrenace, and its existence was tied to the Soviet threat, which no longer exists. Without the threat of Soviet expansionism, there is no longer a need for an anti-Russian military alliance that includes us as a member. Once upon a time, it was a defensive alliance. Then they bombed Yugoslavia and became the armed posse for humanitarian interventionism. NATO started an international war in 1999. I don’t know how this can slip anyone’s mind.

    NATO has no reason to exist today, and so goes looking for things to do,, which tend to be the things that Washington wants the alliance to do. Kosovo was “in hand” in 1998-99, and then we and our allies attacked a sovereign country that had done nothing to any of us. It has gotten out of hand *because of* interventionism, and will continue to get more and more out of hand the longer Western powers back the illegal partition of Serbia.

    Now Western powers are violating international law *again*, and creating the conditions for a crisis in the Balkans where none should exist. Pledging support for a country that we presumably have no real intention of defending undermines deterrence, since it reduces our pledges to an empty threat. However, if Washington were insane enough to authorise a mission to defend Kosovo against invasion, they would not be deterring a conflict but *widening it* to include major powers, which could escalate out of control. Kosovo does not belong to any alliance of which we are a member, and we have no treaty obligations to this non-viable statelet, so how is it even possible to speak of “obligations” to a state that shouldn’t even exist?

    Russia was not able to deter Austria from attacking Serbia in 1914 with its threats of intervention and its mobilisation of forces, but it did make sure that the war became a continental and global one. If we claim that we will repel or reverse an invasion of Kosovo through collective security, we will either have to do the crazy thing of backing up that claim, or the Russians will call our bluff. Brinksmanship with the Russians over an irrelevant part of the Balkans is insane, so there should simply be no talk of “obligations” to Kosovo.
15. Daniel Larison says:

    February 27, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    Also, leadership and hegemony have literally identical meanings. If you want to lead the world, you want to be a global hegemon. Whether this is done through formal or informal imperial relations is almost beside the point, since it is hegemony itself that is undesirable and detrimental over the long-term to the national interest. Everyone who wants to try to preserve some semblance of the radical imbalance of power that prevailed in the post-1945 world is to some degree an hegemonist, and it is they, far more than I, who are trying to recapture a lost past. It is particularly in a globalised world that preserving state sovereignty is so important to maintaining some level of international order, and it is hegemony that repeatedly and routinely tries to chip away at other states’ sovereignty. It is particularly in the modern world with the rise of major non-Western powers that hegemonic ambition needs to be scaled back. Obama does not propose such a scaling back, contrary to whatever some of his would-be detractors may say, but proposes to put hegemony under a different kind of management. His statement on Kosovo fits that perfectly.
16. conradg says:

    February 27, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    First, I’m a little flabbergasted that you can suggest that the world of 1917 was just as “interconnected” as the world of 2008 – most of all, that you have the audacity to make this comment on an internet blog. Yes, you admit there are some minor differences in the areas of communication and travel – as if there were some other measure of interconnectivity – but all in all, not much has changed. Hmmm. Is this really a rational argument, or just willfully choosing to stick one’s head in the sand and ignore the bleeding obvious?

    Yes, NATO was formed to deal with the Soviet threat, but it continues because collective security was proven to work in dealing with the Soviet threat, and thus we have good reason to think it works in dealing with lesser threats. And yes, it did work in 1999 in Serbia. You might have noticed that the military intervention of NATO there was brief and effective, and did not result in a larger war, as was the case in 1917. Why? Because the interconnectivity of these events was so glaringly obvious to everyone, and the collective strength of NATO forced Milosevic to back down.

    So if there is a threat of Russian intervention in Kosovo today, which we and other nations have already recognized as a sovereign nation, NATO can deal with that as well. Once again, this is not a way of starting a wider war, but of preventing one. Whereas allowing a pattern of Russian intervention in eastern Europe to develop only threatens the overall security situation in Europe.

    Your notion that it is NATO that is bluffing rather than Russia is what is really naive and absurd. Look, Russia is not going to risk ruining its relations with Europe over Kosovo. It’s just trying to push the envelope a little, seeing what it can get away with. Your argument that we should back down at every step of every contested situation has got to be the worst way of dealing with foreign policy conflicts imaginable. I don’t mean to make this into another Hitler analogy, but I mean really, wouldn’t have it been better to put down one’s collective foot against Hitler at the Sudentenland rather than after the invasion of France? You seem terrified that every little confrontation, such as Kosovo, should be avoided by giving in, rather than made an opportunity to set security limits, because somehow if we really do have to back up these words, it means WWIV, which we don’t want to fight over Kosovo. Well, that is an argument from extreme results, which makes no sense in the real world. You might just as well have argued that we should have let the Soviets take over all of Europe to avoid a nuclear holocaust. The truth is that setting limits is just as necessary for nation-states as it is for young children. If you don’t set limits, they tend to run all over you. If you do, it creates stability and harmony.

    Now, I think it could be argued that WWI was a result of a lack of interconnectivity, communication, and mobility, and just as importantly, a lack of awareness of just how interconnected the world had become. People were living in the past, thinking that a small event in the Balkans was NOT connected to the rest of EUrope or the world, when in fact it was. That lack of awareness is what allowed this minor situation to escalate into the catastrophe of WWI. Likewise, it is a lack of awareness of how vastly more interconnected we are now that is the real danger, not the knowledge of our interconnectedness. Getting rid of NATO would be a way of pretending that the world has gone back to “normality” after the end of the Cold War, normality meaning a less interconnected world. Sorry, it’s much more interconnected than it was even 20 years ago, not less so. Knowing that, and emphasizing that, is the first step in making the world more secure, not the opposite.

    Now, in reality, Kosovo is a complex situation that is difficult to resolve by brute force. Which is exactly why NATO needs to be there, to prevent outside agents like Russia from using brute force to impose its will, and to protect the rights of a people to self-determination. The actual resolution of the Kosovo situation is going to take time and a balancing of interests, which is not exactly what the Russians have in mind. But withdrawing ourselves from the situation does not create a peaceful balance, it creates a dangerous imbalance which does indeed have the potential to affect Europe and ourselves. Best to deal with such things sooner rather than later.
17. Adrian Martin says:

    February 27, 2008 at 11:30 pm

    Mr. Larison is perfectly capable of defending his statements, but let me point out that he did not say that the world c. 1917 was not as interconnected as it is now, but was “as interconnected by commerce as it had ever been and was more interconnected than it was during most of the 20th century.” I also think that writing comments longer than the original post ought to count as some kind of breach against blogging etiquette.
18. Daniel Larison says:

    February 28, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Thanks, Adrian. I don’t mind long comments, and I’m glad to have them, but I do mind misreadings of my statements. As Adrian noted, I did not say that the world in 1917 (or, to be even more accurate, the world just prior to WWI) is “just as” connected as today. That would be absurd, and if I said that you would be right to mock. In terms of economic integration, the global economy was more integrated and connected in 1914 and, to some extent, even during the war more than it would be for almost eight decades afterwards. It is really only in the ’90s that we begin to see that level of global integration again. The speed of communication and travel matters, yes, but it does not necessarily change geopolitical concerns fundamentally. In the end, the needs for access to raw materials and markets and the projection of power to defend vital interests (if any exist overseas) are largely the same as they were a century ago.

    I won’t dwell on the Kosovo point much more, since we seem to be talking past one another. I will simply restate what seems to me to be quite obvious: America has no stake in who rules Kosovo, or whether Kosovo is independent, and to make promises to defend a place in which we have no interest is exactly the kind of recklessness I fear from Obama. The problem with offering pledges to Kosovo is that we either have no intention of redeeming them, in which case we weaken our reputation and endanger real allies elsewhere, or we find ourselves painted into a corner in which we must defend Kosovo, which is dangerous and unnecessary. Incidentally, this is why expanding NATO to include countries we will never actually defend is foolish, since it undermines the value of the entire alliance (if you think it should still exist) or it puts us in an absurd situation where we must risk war for the sake of Estonian independence. Nothing against the Estonians, but that’s not our business, just as Kosovo is not our business. Had we minded our own business and left it to Serbia, to which it belongs, we would not now be talking of whether to defend a part of someone else’s country from the government of that country.

    Self-determination is the political dynamite of the last century, and it is very dangerous to be promoting it in an age when the nation-state is already weakening.
19. conradg says:

    February 28, 2008 at 11:58 am

    All right, I stand partially corrected on misreading your assertions about 1917 vs., today. But even your suggestion that the world of 1990 was less interconnected than that of 1917, or even on par with it, is also absurd. There’s no comparison, on any level I can think of, between the two eras.THe level of commerce and trade alone is phenomenally different. The level of military logistics is simply incomparable. In 1917 one could argue that WWI was not of our concern – and be wrong, mind you, but one could at least argue it. Not so in WWII. And when ICBMs can reach America in twenty minutes, it’s virtually impossible to suggest that the world of the 60′s, much less anything past that, is even remotely comparable to 1917.

    I won’t go into the endless detail necessary to destroy your notion that all the metrics of the world and technology, commerce, military power, communications, etc, don’t make the world much different in its fundamentals. I simply point out that the notion that our geopolitical concerns are not deeply affected by these matters is a rather romantic fantasy. What is the measure of our concern except what can quickly and immediately affect us, and how is that not changed by a quantum leap in the ability to move and communicate with others? In the middle ages, the average person never travelled more than 5 miles from his place of birth, and thus his concerns pretty much ended about there. Need I point out that technological and political changes since then have widened the sphere of our concerns?

    Now, I agree that in Kosovo we are not going to agree on much. I am getting the picture that this issue is a big deal in paleocon circles. I just don’t see it as a big deal. I agree with you that it is a minor matter, but I also see making commitments to Kosovo is also a minor matter, as it is to Estonia. Yes, these are minor concerns to us, but as I said, preventing minor concerns from becoming major concerns is what foreign policy is all about. You haven’t acknowledged that stopping Hitler at the Sudetenland, which clearly was of very minor significance, would have been much smarter and less costly than stopping him after the invasion of France. I’m not suggesting that Putin is Hitler, but he’s not exactly a benign figure either. What I challenge is the idea that Kosovo is not our business. We should have made the Sudetanland our business, don’t you think?

    That’s the messy business of an interconnected world. If the world of 1935 was actually more interconnected than people at the time thought, such that a minor matter of Hitler occupying the Sudetanland actually could have led to the largest war in history if left unchallenged, suggests that in the vastly more interconnected world of today we need to be attentive to all kinds of minor matters before they escalate to levels of major concern. We don’t know exactly which minor matters have that potential, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore them and put our heads in the sand. Even the sand is interconnected these days.

    Yes, self-determination is indeed political dynamite. But squashing self-determination is what makes it so. It’s easy to say self-determination doesn’t matter when you already possess it. It matters a great deal to those who don’t have it, and those people make the world very dangerous indeed. But you are not going to disempower self-determination by pretending it doesn’t matter and suppressing it. That just makes it worse. You defuse the dangers of self-determination by granting people the right of self-determination. Once you do so, the dangers are done. The Russians are clearly trying to suppress as much self-determination as possible, because their own little empire, shrunken as it is, is still held together by such suppression, as in Chechnya, so they want to suppress it anywhere it pops up, as in Kosovo. This is a failed policy that simply cannot survive the 21st century. We need to be on the right side of history.

    BTW, sorry for the longs posts. I appreciate your responses. I should mention that I really do share your concerns for the growing “national security state” that our position in the world has created for us. I’m not sure how to undo that creation, or if it is even possible. My sense is that it’s going to take a while, well past my lifetime. But I don’t see a way to get there that doesn’t involve a major spiritual transformation of humanity, translated down into the nuts and bolts of our daily politics, even at the macro level. Loving one’s neighbors is hard to do.

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