Toward the end of our first interview, I asked Rice whether the hopeful narrative of Arab countries holding free elections and moving forward toward democracy risks ignoring 500 years of tragic history in the Middle East.

“It’s not hopefulness,” she said crisply, interrupting me. “It’s a sense of what is possible, and optimism about the strength of democratic institutions.

“Let me ask you this,” she continued, wagging her head back and forth, taking pleasure in the clash of ideas. “Not that long ago—you said 500 years, but not that long ago, say, 1944, or maybe even 1946—would anybody have said that France and Germany would never go to war again? Anyone?” ~David Samuels

The more of this article I read, the more troubled I am.  I have assumed for a while that Secretary Rice just went along with whatever the boss told her to do, since there has not appeared to be any overarching or coherent theme to her foreign policy views between 1999 and today, but it becomes clear that she does have some sort of ideas about history and foreign policy and they are all terrible.  She used to be a great one for talking about balance of power and Great Power interests, and now she talks incessantly of democracy and forces of history.  Maybe the confusion was there all along and I didn’t see it. 

Just consider her response to Samuels’ question and reflect on how utterly ridiculous it is.  As a Cold War-era official, she must know that the reason France and Germany didn’t go to war again after WWII was that France and most of Germany were our allies against the far larger threat from the east, a little place Secretary Rice supposedly knew something about, the USSR, and that there was no desire and no reason for renewed conflict between Germans and French while the Soviets loomed large on the horizon.  This might have been reasonably guessed at once NATO was founded and West Germany joined the alliance.  In 2007, we are theoretically where the post-WWII leaders of Europe were c. 1949-50, and the main worry in 1949-50 was no longer a revival of Franco-German enmity but the power of the Soviet Union.  She would also presumably know that the EU has centered around a strong Franco-German partnership.  As Secretary of State, she would also have to know that France and Germany remain U.S. allies and are therefore not likely to start wars with each other.  Would anyone have predicted such a happy outcome in 1946?  Maybe not.  But the non-occurrence of major war between French and Germans was not some mythical hope that had never existed for long stretches of time in the past.  Between 1815 and 1870, there was never a shot fired in anger across the eastern frontiers of France by French and German armies, which was a situation created by the Congress of Vienna and maintained by the Concert of Europe.  What European warfare there was after 1815, with the notable exceptions of the wars of Italian and German unification, tended to center on the Eastern Question, whence came so many terrible things.  This is not an answer to the question that was asked, which is, to paraphrase, “How oblivious do you have to be to think that democratisation will succeed in the Arab world?”  The Secretary responded to a very serious question about the applicability of democracy to the Arab world (which actually understates the burden of history) with a total non-sequitur about peace in Europe that she and everyone else knows is guaranteed by U.S. supremacy and our nuclear arsenal.  In fact, the guarantee of peace through such deterrence is relatively easy and straightforward compared to the difficult task of introducing a rare and fragile orchid into the desert.  Secretary Rice is even more clueless than I had feared that she was.