On the (Antiwar) Radio
Scott Horton of Antiwar.com radio interviewed me for his show last Thursday. Here’s the audio (MP3). I’m more rambling than usual: the point I make about the two parties being essential similar in their foreign policy, but still having minute differences that can be exploited, might seem rather murky. The overarching thing I wanted to get across is that there are ways to have a relatively noninterventionist foreign policy even if pure noninterventionists are very sparse among the electorate. Not only do the humanitarian interventionists and too-hell-with-’em-hawks often disagree about targets and methods, but the to-hell-with-’em-hawks are themselves amenable to certain kinds of anti-interventionist arguments. I cite in the broadcast Mark Helprin, Angelo Codevilla, and Michael Scheuer as three non-doves with whom noninterventionists can find common cause. (These labels are feeble, I realize, but they are all we have.)
One point I was about to make just as the closing music was playing is that elections only indirectly affect foreign policy. Indeed, they only indirectly effect domestic policy, too, in the sense that what politicians do may be quite different from what voters want. But in foreign policy the distance between the electorate’s intent and what actually happens is much greater, since the public accepts a more passive role and politicians themselves defer to a policy elite. This need not be dispiriting for people who want a more down-to-earth or irenic foreign policy — but it does mean that rather than always putting one’s hopes in mass uprising that “throw the bums out,” one should devote great resources toward building a counter-elite that can a.) provide the expertise even the “good guys” may feel they need, and b.) perhaps provide expertise that even the “bad guys” have to recognize as sound. It’s not entirely true that foreign policy operates independently of elections, but it’s truer than the converse belief that elections determine foreign policy. To change the policy, one has to change the policy minds, not just the politicians or the attitudes of voters.
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“…one should devote great resources toward building a counter-elite that can a.) provide the expertise even the “good guys” may feel they need, and b.) perhaps provide expertise that even the “bad guys” have to recognize as sound…To change the policy, one has to change the policy minds, not just the politicians or the attitudes of vote.”
Exactly–and to change the policy minds, non-interventionists must make their case unshakable by pointing out that Islamism is not a monolithic political entity and there are stark distinctions between localist jihad and internationalist jihad. The point must be belabored that virtually all the regimes of the Muslim world are parochial in their concerns and have no fanciful notions of setting up a caliphate or waging worldwide jihad. Most jihadists in the Nineties were active only in their native countries (where their revolts were defeated) and hold no brief for Bin Laden’s delusional enterprise of international jihad. If we left, these groups would have no reason to attack America and would divert their energies to piecemeal reform at home and quashing Bin Laden-types.
Further, there is your prescription that America cannot “help the Islamic world negotiate a path between bin Laden’s Jacobinism and the House of Saud’s autocracy”. We must therefore “refrain from stoking the fires of nationalism and popular resentment by ending military operations against Muslims and ceasing to prop up tyrannical rulers” and let the fitna proceed as it must, knowing that “every popular revolution eventually has its Thermidor.” All that remains is to contain the conflict so neutral parties are not affected by the turmoil.