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Hanson’s Fantasy

Autocratic and dictatorial Russia has become a veritable friend. America will say very little about the Russian government’s involvement in the chronic assassination of journalists and dissidents. We don’t mind passing along nuclear-weapon information about our British allies to Russia if it furthers better relations with Moscow and results in a treaty. We apparently are […]

Autocratic and dictatorial Russia has become a veritable friend. America will say very little about the Russian government’s involvement in the chronic assassination of journalists and dissidents. We don’t mind passing along nuclear-weapon information about our British allies to Russia if it furthers better relations with Moscow and results in a treaty. We apparently are more worried about offending Vladimir Putin than about offending our Polish and Czech allies. We eagerly sign an arms treaty that most people believe favors Russia more than ourselves, and we shrug when Russia does not, as promised, help thwart Iranian nuclear proliferation. ~Victor Davis Hanson

Hanson has done some really impressive work here. I count three grossly false or misleading statements, and it’s just the second paragraph of the article. How did Hanson let this happen? There are two diagnoses, and neither of them is very reassuring. Hanson and his editors must not care that they are making false claims, or they may be so misinformed that they believe these claims are correct.

“Most people” don’t believe the arms reduction treaty favors Russia. This is a rather lazy debating trick, since what Hanson really means is that “most people” opposed to the treaty believe that it favors Russia. They represent a decidedly minority view, and they also happen to be wrong. Russia has provided minimal assistance in imposing sanctions on Iran at the U.N., which isn’t much, but it did happen. The claim about sharing British information is entirely misleading. This provision simply continues a provision from the earlier START. The cancellation of the missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic was handled poorly, but that is the only instance one could cite to support the remaining overblown claim.

What does it say for Hanson’s general critique of administration foreign policy that virtually every statement he made at the start of his argument isn’t credible? The only people who can read that passage and take it seriously are those safely inside a cocoon of conservative commentary and news where all of these half-truths and falsehoods circulate freely. The rest of the article isn’t any better. Let me just point out a couple more egregiously false claims that Hanson makes.

Hanson writes:

We cannot quite assure Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or the Philippines of past levels of support, since we are worried that our old high military profile would now only provoke Chinese sensibilities.

This is laughable. The U.S. has pledged support to Japan over something as questionable as its claim to the Senkaku Islands, it has continued arms sales to Taiwan regardless of what Beijing says, and just in the last few months administration officials have gone out of their way to make an issue out of Chinese claims in the South China Sea. China apparently responded to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the East China Sea, but these exercises are exactly the sort of thing that Hanson claims Washington wants to avoid doing. If someone is worried about provoking Chinese sensibilities, it doesn’t seem to be this administration. One can argue that it was a mistake to let the relationship with Japan weaken on account of disagreements on Okinawa basing rights, and Secretary Gates admitted as much when he was in Japan in January, but Hanson has nothing to say about that.

No dishonest account of Obama’s foreign policy would be complete without a nod to the persistent lie that Obama rejects American exceptionalism, and Hanson makes sure to throw that in as well:

In the theoretical sphere, we are unsure that America is any more “exceptional” than, say, Greece, since such perceptions are always relative and merely rest in the eye of the beholder.

If Hanson can’t even describe what has been happening without resorting to fabrications and distortions, why should anyone trust his conclusions?

Yes, Hanson is just repeating standard talking points, and he doesn’t seem to be giving any thought to them, and he obviously hasn’t bothered checking many of his claims, but it is because they make up a large part of the standard Republican critique on foreign policy that they matter. This is what a lot of mainstream conservative foreign policy argument has devolved into, and that can’t be healthy for the conservative movement or for the quality of foreign policy debate. This is what a number of prospective 2012 Republican candidates will be saying for the better part of the next two years, and a huge part of it is just ideological make-believe.

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