The American Conservative

John Bolton must think this is a clever line:

Despite a three-year effort to press the “reset” button with Moscow, Russia has pocketed one Obama concession after another, on missile defense, arms control, and proliferation. Now, top Russian defense officials are threatening pre-emptive military strikes against U.S. missile-defense facilities in Europe.

If this is what we get for bending the knee to Moscow, one can hardly conjure what “bad” relations with Russia would mean.

Since the U.S. had extremely poor relations with Russia as recently as four years ago, it isn’t difficult to imagine what they are like. The period of genuinely bad relations included Russia’s suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty in response to Bush’s missile defense plans. In addition, there was Moscow’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August 2008 war in imitation and response to the U.S. and European recognition of an independent Kosovo. It’s interesting that Bolton places so much importance on what is essentially an empty bit of blustering, but he ignores the real damage that resulted from the previous administration’s more confrontational policy towards Russia. Of course, Bolton is now flacking for Romney, and he has to make the return of such a failed policy seem desirable. Unfortunately, his stated Russia policy is one of the more obvious reasons why Romney can’t be trusted to conduct foreign policy responsibly.

Ted Galen Carpenter comments on the inversion of the proper constitutional relationship between Congress and the executive in the conduct of foreign policy:

Unfortunately, conservatives have been most adamant about such deference when it involved chief executives who launched or sought to maintain presidential wars. The view that Congress should tamely acquiesce in such conflicts is a perversion of the Constitution. Both the language of the document and the history of the revolutionary and early national periods in U.S. history make it clear that the founders intended Congress, not the president, to determine whether the republic should go to war.

Conversely, the founders did intend the president, rather than Congress, to manage the day-to-day foreign policy of the United States. We now, quite literally, have the opposite of what they and the Constitution envisioned. Congress has totally abdicated its responsibilities regarding the war power, while it increasingly tries to micromanage key features of the nation’s diplomacy.

It’s telling that all of the measures that Carpenter cites in his account of Congressional micromanagement concern efforts to provoke another major power with useless military sales, increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and to rule out containment and deterrence as acceptable future responses to an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, all of these measures show that there is even less foreign policy restraint among most members of the current House than there is in the executive, which suggests that restoring the proper constitutional limits on the executive’s ability to wage war might not do much at all to prevent future unnecessary wars. Almost all of the political incentives in contemporary America still point in the direction of supporting more aggressive and confrontational policies abroad.

Nicolas Myers’ account of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church is lacking:

The role of the Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire diverged significantly from that of any Western Christian denomination after 1648. The Tsar’s authority over them was derived from the Tsar’s authority over the Church.

In the 1650s, Patriarch Nikon sought to reform Russian Orthodox services and rituals by making them more true to historical Byzantine ceremonies in line with Moscow’s claim to be the “Third Rome.” And in the early 1700s Peter the Great further consolidated control over the Russian Orthodox Church by replacing the Patriarch of Moscow with the Holy Synod, a council of bishops overseen by a civil servant. The church effectively became a government ministry under the Tsar’s personal authority.

I agree with Myers that Peter’s policies proved very harmful for the life of the church in Russia. The unfortunate history of the Russian Orthodox Church after the Petrine reforms is one of the better examples of the distortions that were introduced into the relationship between church and state in the Orthodox world by the conscious adoption of contemporary Western models. The same treatment of the Orthodox Church in newly independent Greece followed the pattern of turning the church into a department of the state, which represented the imitation of the widely-followed pattern in Europe, especially in Protestant states. The subordination of state churches to their princes was the post-1648 norm in Europe, not the exception.

The Nikonian reforms both enhanced and weakened the tsar’s authority in Russia. Because Tsar Alexis originally allied with Patriarch Nikon and supported his reforms, the enforcement of the reforms increased the power of the tsar and strengthened ties between the ruler and the church. However, because of the popular backlash against the reforms it also alienated a large part of the population from both church and state. One need not be an Old Believer to understand the enormous pastoral and spiritual damage that these reforms caused. These reforms were essentially all liturgical changes, which copied contemporary practice at Constantinople and were technically of more recent invention than some of the Russian practices they replaced. Because Constantinople was perceived at the time to have lost some of its status on account of 15th-century unionism and its subordination to a non-Christian ruler, opponents of Nikon’s reforms considered liturgical practices imported from Constantinople to be less acceptable and represented an unnecessary and undesirable innovation in church life.

Yair Rosenberg suggests that Romney might consider following Tony Blair’s religious example:

The shared implication of these arguments is that Romney cannot run for office while running away from his potentially problematic religious beliefs. But recent history offers a powerful counterexample of a very successful politician who quite transparently soft-pedaled and sidestepped his own religious convictions: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Blair’s example doesn’t offer Romney much guidance. For one thing, Blair obviously didn’t make social and cultural conservative issues an important part of his political identity, and he didn’t lace his rhetoric with frequent references to faith and God throughout his national political career. The lesson Romney might have learned from Blair is that it is possible to avoid discussing one’s religious beliefs in a political culture where this is already frowned-upon and considered rather antiquated or bizarre, and it is much easier to be nothing more than a privately observant politician in a country and a party where that is considered normal. Unfortunately, Blair’s “soft-pedaling” of his religious convictions didn’t save Britain or the rest of us from his obnoxious, pro-war moralizing.

Romney’s predicament is quite different. Blair became a successful leader of the main center-left party in a predominantly secular country. Romney has tried to make himself into the religious conservative leader of a center-right party made up mostly of Christians and seeks to be the president in a nominally majority Christian country. Romney cannot “sidestep” his convictions because he has made those convictions an important part of the earlier reinvention of himself as a movement conservative. If he is perceived as “sidestepping” his convictions, it will be considered another opportunistic move to create yet another political identity.

To the extent that he was responsible for it, Blair’s political success derived from his ability to reinvent the image of his party and to bring his party along with him. For his part, Romney has made a point of identifying himself with the GOP as he found it beginning in the mid-2000s. He has spent the last five years trying and only partially succeeding to persuade conservative Republicans that he is on their side. Romney cannot do for Republicans what Blair did for Labour, which is probably for the best considering Blair’s track record. Romney has little credibility with core constituencies of the party, but he would have even less if he had not boxed himself in with his culture war rhetoric over the last several years.

Michael Cohen follows up on earlier criticisms of Romney on NATO:

In what other situation would it be considered politically appropriate to have countries free ride off U.S. generosity, and then turn around and demand that Washington provide even more lucre? But yet this is precisely Romney’s argument.

The only way to truly incentivize European defense spending for NATO is to say that the United States is going to reduce its commitment and then actually do it. Romney’s solution would instead actually reward European obstinacy.

It seems that the Romney campaign was determined to make the proposed reductions into one of the targets of the op-ed, and they had to find some way to tie it to NATO and Europe. It didn’t matter to Romney that Panetta explained that the “devastating” reductions would entail reducing the U.S. military role in Africa and Latin America, which wouldn’t be meaningfully harmful to U.S. national security at all. Not only is Romney giving an endorsement to European free-riding, but to make his point he is citing proposed reductions in projected spending that wouldn’t affect NATO even if the reductions happen. As Cohen notes, European governments have no incentive to increase their own military spending so long as they can rely on the U.S. to make up the difference. There is absolutely no incentive for any U.S. President to propose reducing U.S. support for NATO if he is going to be attacked for abandoning NATO even when he doesn’t do this.

My new column on the Chicago NATO summit for The Week is now online.

Jacob Heilbrunn asks:

Will Colin Powell support Mitt Romney?

Powell doesn’t give a direct answer here, but these don’t sound like the words of a would-be endorser (via Andrew):

“I don’t know who all of his advisers are, but I’ve seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought,” Powell said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

He gave the example of Romney recently saying that Russia is the “number one geopolitical foe” to the United States.

“Come on Mitt, think,” Powell said. “That isn’t the case.”

Powell doesn’t appreciate that this was supposed to be an example of one of Romney’s “carefully thought-out” positions. The Romney campaign would have us believe that his Russia blunder was an example of what happens when Mitt is thinking. Some of his advisers have made it clear that they aren’t responsible when Romney says things like this.

Aaron David Miller takes a reasonable observation to its absurd extreme:

I raise the idea to drive home a broader point. Despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney would be quite comfortable carrying out President Obama’s foreign policy because it accords so closely with his own.

It’s true that Romney has been compelled to make up a lot of things about Obama’s record because there is no opening for him on a number of issues. There are many Obama administration policies that line up with what Romney already says he supports, and there may be others that he would end up supporting in office but pretends to dislike. There is a bipartisan foreign policy consensus on many issues, but this treats the reality of that consensus as proof that Romney’s foreign policy does not differ in significant ways from Obama’s. Consider one very dubious claim Miller makes in support of his claim that there is a bipartisan consensus in favor of ending wars and not starting them:

President Romney would have steered clear of unilateral intervention in Libya, and been as cautious as Obama (rightly) has been on Syria. (Iran is a special case, which I will address below.)

I have no idea where Miller gets the idea that Romney would have avoided intervention in Libya. I don’t dispute that he would have done things differently (he doesn’t “lead from behind,” you see), but there is no way that he would have exercised restraint when so many of the hawks in his party were insisting that the U.S. use force. On Syria, it’s harder to know for certain what Romney would have done or will do, but everything else he has been saying about U.S. “leadership,” Iran, and Obama’s supposed failures suggests that he would be unable to resist pressure to arm the Syrian opposition, and he might be willing to order military action. Obama and Romney may be hard to distinguish on Iran, but that is only because both Obama and Romney have said that they support waging preventive war against Iran. If there is a consensus here, it isn’t one opposed to starting new wars.

Miller blows off Romney’s biggest differences with Obama on Russia and China, which looks a lot like ignoring evidence that flatly contradicts his thesis. It’s one thing to say that Romney wouldn’t be able to implement all of his preferred policies toward Russia and China because of international realities, but it’s something else entirely to suggest that these rather glaring differences are meaningless. A good rule for understanding Romney’s foreign policy is that he is in favor of the consensus view so long as the consensus view favors more confrontational and intrusive policies.

Noah Millman remarks near the end of his discussion of Christianity and human rights:

A Christian doctrine that says, in an Eisenhower-esque vein, “in the long term, you can’t believe in democracy and human rights unless you believe in religion, and I don’t care what it is” winds up, effectively, endorsing at least some other religions as at least “sort of true.” Which I think any orthodox Christian would find highly problematic.

Some orthodox Christians might react that way, but I’m not sure that Orthodox Christians would, and I am confident that Catholics (especially post-Vatican II Catholics) would not. It is Catholic teaching that other monotheistic religions are “sort of true” on account of their monotheism, and other religions are true to whatever degree their teachings reflect Truth (that is, Christ):

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.

It is almost impossible for other religions not to be “sort of true” when judged this way. Of course, as a matter of religious teaching being “sort of true” isn’t enough for orthodox Christianity, and there’s no way that it could be, but for the purposes of this discussion I don’t think Ross would have any difficulty accepting that other religions are “sort of true.” For that matter, heresies are “sort of true,” but what matters to the orthodox Christian is how they depart from the fullness of the truth found in orthodoxy. I assume this is why Ross chooses to describe beliefs in terms of heresy rather than using a different word. Orthodox Christians have been declaring certain doctrines to be “sort of true” for two millennia. It is because of their partial truth that these doctrines have been rejected as misleading and spiritually dangerous.

Let’s come back to Ross’ argument. He writes:

This brings us back to the core of my argument: Namely, that much of contemporary secular liberalism depends on assertions that are potent and widely persuasive only because most Westerners are still deeply influenced by Christian premises about the nature and destiny of man.

It’s the last part of the sentence that doesn’t make sense to me. As an empirical matter, it seems that most Westerners are not “still deeply influenced by Christian premises about the nature and destiny of man.” I don’t disagree with Ross when he describes secular liberalism as “a system of thought that looks rather like a Christian heresy,” but as Ross knows heresies don’t always share the orthodox premises about God or man, and there are always some orthodox premises that a heresy necessarily rejects. If ancient heresies often centered on questions of Christology and theology, modern heresies usually represent departures from orthodox premises concerning “the nature and destiny of man.” If that’s right, the popular appeal of modern heresies depends on orthodox Christian premises’ losing their influence in much of the West. Democracy and human rights seem to serve as a sort of substitute religious worldview in the post-Christian parts of the West because there is no longer any confidence that God created man in His image and likeness and then became man that we might become gods.

P.S. All the different citations and re-uses of Tertullian’s phrase in contemporary debates are amusing, not least because Tertullian’s Christianity was rigorist, uncompromising with the secular culture around him, and later became heretical.

Conor Friedersdorf explains why Marco Rubio’s constitutionalist rhetoric doesn’t mean anything:

Rubio himself backed an amendment that would permit War on Terror detainees to be held indefinitely even after they received a trial and were found innocent in court. He voted against an amendment that would have prohibited the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens [bold mine-DL]. He’s the kind of “constitutionalist” that doesn’t give a damn about the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments, so long as there’s a religious extremist somewhere who wants to do us harm.

This is the key to understanding how hegemonists such as Rubio can deliver lines about respect for the Constitution and limited government without bursting into laughter: what Rubio calls “these concepts and these principles that are so important for our future” don’t apply to anything that hegemonists can identify as being related to national security, and they can relate quite a lot of things to national security. This is how Virginia Gov. McDonnell supposedly has a “national security problem” because he did not stand up in support for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. Rubio evidently has no problem locking up citizens without due process, at least so long as it can be justified in the name of anti-terrorism, and this is one of the reasons why he is lionized and praised by many movement conservatives. The message to current and future leaders in the GOP is clear enough: honoring the Constitution is all well and good when it relates to domestic issues that aren’t tied in some way to national security (i.e., when they don’t interfere with what hegemonists want to do), but it is unacceptable to apply the same principles consistently to all activities of the government. According to this view, the priorities of the national security state always take precedence over constitutional protections, and politicians that don’t understand this are the ones with the “problem.”