James points to the hurdles that confront any aspiring nation-state, and he is right that gaining international recognition and being seated at the U.N. are the most difficult barriers to new states fully entering into the international system.  However, that does not mean that we won’t eventually have a flood of new separatist declarations of independence, and it doesn’t mean that pseudo-states that have already declared independence, such as Karabakh, won’t insist that the precedent of Kosovo is relevant to their own situation (as they already have done), and it doesn’t mean that other states won’t recognise the independence of separatist enclaves.  Armenia has threatened to recognise Karabakh for obvious reasons, which would make any negotiations with Azerbaijan in the future all but impossible and could restart the Karabakh war.  The conventional assumption is that Yerevan isn’t going to risk a backlash by doing this, but this underestimates how powerful a grip on the modern Armenian mind Karabakh has, and it definitely underestimates how important Karabakh is to the incoming president. 

Even if no other state recognises Karabakh, its recognition will create a significant problem for stability in the Caucasus.  No one except Ankara recognises Northern Cyprus, but that doesn’t mean that Ankara’s continuing recognition and support isn’t a significant hurdle to a resolution of the situation on Cyprus.  Kosovo independence is already having the negative consequences opponents of recognition predicted, and it has been independent for just a month and a half.  With more time, the precedent will be seized on by more and more separatists.  They will either receive recognition from opportunistic and troublemaking states, or they will intensify attacks on the governments of the states they are breaking away from to draw international attention to their case.  Either way, the Kosovo precedent will have led to greater instability around the world.

But it’s worth remembering what helped to get us into Iraq: a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that favors U.S. military intervention abroad whenever we may be able to accomplish something that looks appealing. That was our national approach under the past three presidents, and it’s a safe bet it will be our approach under the next one. ~Steve Chapman

Mr. Chapman’s argument that all three candidates endorse the interventionist consensus certainly makes sense to me, since I have been making the same one for months.  After eight years of nation-building, cruise missile strikes and air wars, a candidate promising to stop doing all or at least most of those things was very appealing.  I didn’t vote for that one, either.  Now we are faced with the end of another two-term presidency marred by foreign policy excesses and failures, and we have a candidate who proposes not only to end one of the most egregious examples of the administration’s failure but also to change the “mindset” that led to it.  That sounds fine, except that, as Chapman argues, he isn’t going to change the mindset or the assumptions about American “leadership.”  Someone appalled by Kosovo might have been moved to vote for Gov. Bush and his “humble” foreign policy, only to find the new administration invading Iraq a few years later.  Now many are tempted because of the disaster of Iraq to back someone else who accepts the same interventionist consensus.  Eight years ago few would have guessed that Bush would plunge headlong into an invasion of Iraq, but the acceptance of the consensus view all but guaranteed some terrible foreign policy decisions.  There is a level of confidence in Obama’s restraint among his supporters that never ceases to amaze me, but his acceptance of the consensus view all but ensures that he will use force counterproductively and in ways harmful to the national interest, because that it how interventionism works.  I take Dr. Hadar’s point that Obama is more likely to withdraw from Iraq, but part of the “incomplete information” problem is that we cannot be sure whether he will inaugurate some brand new folly.  I remain unconvinced that the best decision is to endorse one side of the interventionist consensus in an attempt to undermine another part of it.

Update: Brendan O’Neill’s cover piece from the 2/25 issue restates the case against Obama’s interventionism.

Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal. ~Absolut

The ad depicting Mexico in its pre-1836 state, even including Texas, with the tagline “In an Absolut world,” has naturally caused some hostile reaction.  If their marketing people thought that appealing to either Mexican nostalgia or irredentism was a good way to sell vodka, they probably ought to have considered that Americans would take a dim view of the same. 

This reminds me of a recent discussion I was having about Greece and FYROM.  Someone said that Westerners probably find Balkan disputes about names and ancient territorial claims to be “petty.”  This is probably true, but it is mostly a function of not understanding the history behind the controversy.  Had Greeks not waged the Macedonian Struggle in one form or another for the better part of seventy years, the dispute over what to call the former Yugoslav republic would probably have been resolved, but because of the explicitly irredentist and separatist aspects of “Macedonian” identity over the last century it is very difficult for many Greeks to accept Skopje’s claim to the name.  In that conversation, I noted that we have our own controversies about “merely” symbolic things as well.  Of course, people tend to call them “merely” symbolic when the symbols belong to someone else and they don’t understand the significance of the symbols, especially not at a visceral level. 

You don’t even need to think that the reconquista is underway to find the ad offensive.  Of course, if the people living in what was then northern Mexico had anything to say about it in the 1830s they were only too eager to break away from Mexico, and not just in Texas.  They didn’t think being part of Mexico, at least the Mexico of Santa Anna, was ideal and essentially put up no resistance when our armies arrived.  The people who think 1830s Mexico was ideal tend to be people who never had to live in it.

Philip Giraldi makes a lot of sense in challenging the recentfrenzyof“Obamacan”discussion.  He is quite right that we have been caught up in speculation that’s quite far removed from most Republicans and conservatives, and he’s also right that at this point it is premature to dismiss Obama.  It’s worth noting that a lot of the speculation about Obama’s electoral prospects has often taken for granted that he is in a position to poach on McCain’s territory and expand the Democratic coalition, but it seems distinctly possible that he will hemorrhage so much Democratic support in the general that any gains will be quickly erased.  To the extent that polling this far removed from November is any indication of real voting preferences, however many Republicans say they will back Obama are outnumbered in just about every state by the Democrats who will back McCain.  One example of this comes from North Carolina today, as Rasmussen has found that 56% of Clinton backers in the Democratic primary say they are not likely to vote for Obama against McCain.  Since just 33% of respondents prefer Clinton, the probable loss of this many voters is in line with the 16-20% of Democrats Obama loses to McCain across the country outside of “blue” states such as Maine.  (In fact, this figure seems slightly better than the 23% of Democrats he was losing to McCain in a poll from late March; in that poll, he was getting 15% of Republicans.)  Typically, Obama is drawing two-thirds or sometimes just half as many Republicans outside “blue” states.  It is likely true that Obama is drawing many long-time Republican voters to his side, but what he seems to have difficulty with is keeping the Democrats that previous nominees have won.

P.S.  For a few other examples of this: in New Jersey, McCain has 24% of Democrats, Obama 18% of Republicans as of a week ago; in Wisconsin, McCain has 16% of Democrats, Obama 10% of Republicans.  By comparison, Missouri is a disaster for Obama: McCain gets 22% of Democrats, Obama 7% of Republicans.

Jeffrey Hart’s article on William F. Buckley in the 3/24 issue is a fine piece, and I recommend it to any who haven’t read it yet.  It has received a fair amount of attention, mostly because of the anecdotes Mr. Hart includes, but it has also received some recentcriticism along other lines: it is “gloomy” about the movement’s prospects and “meanspirited.”  This latter charge, which seems to hinge on referring to Limbaugh as a blowhard (a more or less accurate description), doesn’t stand up when you look at the article as a whole.  On the whole, Mr. Hart describes and recounts; this is not a polemic.  Though I cannot know about what was in Mr. Hart’s mind when he wrote those words, I would guess that he called Limbaugh a “radio blowhard” because that is what he thought of him and other purveyors of what is called popular conservatism, and I expect that this is a result of Mr. Hart’s more general opposition to populism. 

Mr. Freire objects:

Why conservatives heap onto other conservatives in such a way, I don’t understand.

As the rest of Mr. Hart’s article makes clear, conservatives “heap onto other conservatives” this way because they have strong disagreements and have been heaping scorn on each other for over fifty years.  There are ways to make strong criticisms without resorting to ad hominem attacks, and this is desirable, but Mr. Hart is not exactly criticising a Limbaugh argument in the anecdote, and he is describing him with the word he thinks is fitting.  Calling people names is unnecessary, unless the names are the proper ones to use.  Why might Mr. Hart take a dim view of someone like Limbaugh?  The article gives us a hint when he writes:

…I learned a great deal from Burnham, most importantly to resist ideology, reflexive partisanship, wishful thinking, emotion. Fact and analysis.

Limbaugh has spent much of his career indulging in one or more of these with regularity, and this has become particularly noticeable during the last eight or ten years.

As for the charge of gloominess, there may be something to it, but the conclusion that the movement is probably finished seems to me to have strong arguments behind it.  No doubt there are smart, young conservatives who will continue to represent the best of intellectual conservatism, but after their complicity in the disasters of the Bush Era the movement institutions probably do not have much of a future over the long term.  The political conservative movement, having bound itself to an unnecessary war, has suffered such a loss of credibility that it probably is finished.  Maybe the better question to ask is whether a movement that enabled and defended such disasters should survive.  As I said when I spoke at CPAC, in its current form I doubt that it will, and I tend to think that it probably shouldn’t.

The fact that Ross thinks it would be “obvious” to update The Manchurian Candidate by making Cheney a dupe of al-Qaeda mind control is interesting, because that reflects a paranoid – and not a rationally paranoid – concept of what al-Qaeda is and how it operates. The “paranoid style” movies he’s criticizing reflect a worldview that is off-the-shelf paranoid, and that is indeed a real weakness. But a movie about an al-Qaeda sleeper agent controlling the government would only be persuasive to an audience that actually held paranoid beliefs about the world, because it is so completely detached from the actual nature of the enemy we face. ~Noah Millman

Noah is right that an “al Qaeda controls Cheney” story probably would make no sense to anyone who doesn’t already think that the resurgent caliphate is just around the corner and poses an “existential threat” to us all.  Actually, I am going to guess that Ross regards this as the obvious way to update the story because he has been watching too much Battlestar Galactica in which the Vice President (at least during seasons 1 and 2) was/is a quasi-conspirator with the Cylons and then becomes their open collaborator thereafter.  BSG is probably the most outstanding example of post-9/11 paranoid style storytelling, so it’s too bad that Ross’ article (well worth reading) does not include more discussion of this aspect of the show.  He is right to describe it in terms of ’70s revival and tragic realism, but the show is rife with paranoia, too.  The entire show is premised on a “conspiracy so vast” that ends up destroying almost all of humanity and which achieved that goal through the infiltration of the Colonies with both covert operatives and sleeper agents.  I think that meets Noah’s standards.

P.S.  This post gives me an excuse to mention that season 4 of BSG premieres tonight.

The good times are here: anti-Romney ads and petitions seem to be everywhere these days.  The idea of selecting Romney as VP never made much sense to me, but then I was never exactly what you could call a big fan of the former governor.  When the speculation about selecting Romney first started, it seemed clear to me that Romney’s baggage would hinder McCain, who already had a reputation for neglecting social conservative concerns, so it made no sense to bring on someone who might alienate many pro-life, Christian conservatives.  Further, Romney would be a liability in a general election that will probably hinge on Rust Belt states.  Any possible benefit in Michigan from the Romney name would be offset by demoralised voters simply not turning out in other states, and in some swing states with large evangelical populations (e.g., Colorado, Missouri) it could end up costing McCain the election.  These advertisements and petitions are the first clear indications of just how big of a problem a Romney selection would create for McCain.  If the fundamental rule of VP selections is, “first, do no harm,” Romney would seem to be simply out of the question, and I don’t think you have to dislike Romney to recognise that millions of conservatives really do dislike him and some might sit out the election.  Ironically, because of his desire to appear independent, McCain may be instinctively driven to reject the demands of social conservative leaders and will select Romney for the sake of “party unity,” unwittingly fragmenting the party with this choice.  Then again, given how much he personally dislikes Romney, this protest against a Romney selection is probably a lot of agitation over nothing. 

As severalpeople have been observing, Paul Weyrich’s opposition to Romney as VP is a rather remarkable switch from his previous endorsement.  Personally, I’m glad Mr. Weyrich changed his mind about Romney.  I didn’t thinkhis endorsementmade much sense at the time, and opponents of Romney are always glad to welcome converts.

Update: Here is the story behind the open letter.  Here is the relevant section:

The room—which had been taken over by argument and side-conversations—became suddenly quiet. Weyrich, a Romney supporter and one of those Farris had chastised for not supporting Huckabee, steered his wheelchair to the front of the room and slowly turned to face his compatriots. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Friends, before all of you and before almighty God, I want to say I was wrong.”

In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.

Maybe the Huckabee movement Dan was talking about is getting started a little sooner than we might have thought.

The folks at EFM are not happy.

James said:

Now, only a crazy person would suggest using NATO to smash up Europe’s dangerous Islamic ghettos.

Fair enough, but I tend to take the view that “only a crazy person” would want to include Georgia in NATO.  (Happily, James and I are entirely on the same page in opposing entry for Georgia and Ukraine.)  We have these “crazy people” already–how much longer before we get the next batch?  Besides, we have seen NATO used as a hammer for smashing states that are deemed to be too harsh on their Muslim population.  The principle of using NATO to handle the internal political problems of European states has already been established.  How much longer before a NATO with nothing to do becomes Europe’s military police force?  Granted, it would probably be used to crush an attempted Flemish declaration of independence (at which point the defenders of Kosovo independence would express grave anxiety about separatism!) before anyone in Brussels would entertain the idea of directing its attentions elsewhere, but this is exactly why NATO as guarantor of “local security” also seems to me to be a very bad idea.  Croatia’s local security is just fine.  Albania is, of course, a center of criminality and human trafficking, which is a good argument for keeping Albania out of any European structures, and the only thing NATO could do to improve local security in Albania is to occupy it.  Meanwhile, since NATO has become America’s de facto posse in Afghanistan, shouldn’t the priority of the moment be building up existing members’ military strength to spread the burden more evenly among the allies we already have?  Albania does not contribute to this, and may detract from it to the extent that it is no position economically to fund the kinds of military upgrades that its forces would need just to bring them up to alliance standards.  We already have enough allies-as-dead-weight.  Why take on more?  It’s not as if our current burdens are light and few.

Bob Barr’s approaching entry into the presidential race should be at least slightly exciting, but for some reason I have not been encouraged by the prospect of the Barr run.  First, let me state the potential good news.  In many state polls, there has been resistance to both Obama and McCain, such that 7-10% regularly say that they will vote third party.  (To take a new example, 9% of Maine voters prefer “some other candidate” rather than a major candidate in the two possible match-ups.)  Not all of that will go to Barr, but if he can get even 5% consistently around the country that will be the best showing ever for a Libertarian candidate on the national level.  I should also say at the outset that a Barr Libertarian candidacy now provides some reason to vote where few or none existed before, and many traditional antiwar conservatives will no longer face the prospect of engaging in acrobatics and contortions to explain their voting preferences.  We will be able to vote for someone who actually believes what we believe, and given how depressing things were looking during the last six weeks that is an accomplishment all by itself.  However, I would not be a curmudgeon if I didn’t outline some of the potential problems with this Barr candidacy. 

Despite what the polling says about the potential for some limited third party success, this election doesn’t pit two almost indistinguishable “centrists” that can be easily portrayed as two sides of the same coin.  Despite the fact that both nominees are broadly committed to maintaining much of the status quo, there are enough real differences on policy that third party critiques that focus on the “duopoly” will be much less effective this time.  Disgruntled progressives don’t want a repeat of 2000, and disaffected conservatives have to bear in the mind that any strong showing for a third party candidate backed by them will be used as a scapegoat for any McCain defeat.  The paradox for the antiwar right challenger remains: win enough votes, and you may actually pull antiwar support from the Democrat, thus electing the Republican against whom you are rebelling; win just enough votes that make the difference and throws the election to Obama, and McCain’s defeat will be pinned on the antiwar right rather than his own militarism and pro-amnesty views.  The latter will serve two purposes: it allows the interventionists to save face and fight another day (another reason why the 2008 outcome will probably not affect the strength of interventionists in the GOP), and it frees mainstream conservatives of any blame for their previous intransigence against McCain.  If the purpose of the protest candidacy is simply to provide an alternative and a voice for disaffected conservatives and libertarians, none of that matters.  IHowever, if it is supposed to accomplish something more significant, I am not sure how it does that.

The Democrats’ question to antiwar conservatives will be: “Don’t you want to vote for the candidate who could actually win and possibly end the war?”  The Republican attack on pro-life conservatives will be: “Do you want to throw away the chance at overturning Roe?”  Framed this way, antiwar conservatives are going to feel pressure to rally around a major party candidate one way or the other.  These objections to antiwar conservative backing for Barr both turn on single issues, so neither one should be persuasive, since it is the single-issue voters more than anyone who “throw away” their votes.  By refusing to use even what miniscule leverage they have, these voters all but guarantee that they are not going to get what they want. 

In fact, I think giving in to this pressure will be a mistake, because before there will ever be any chance of building additional competitive national parties it is imperative to reject the assumptions that support the two-party system.  That is why it is important to back third party candidates especially when a successful showing could lead to the election of an undesirable candidate (and this year any remotely strong showing is going to be deemed the “spoiler” in what will probably end up being a reasonably close race between two undesirable candidates).  We already know that there is essentially nothing to be gained within either of the two parties over the long term, as years and years of experience have taught us, so this is not a question of gradualism vs. a desire for more rapid change.  This will be a matter of backing someone who actually represents us, and refusing to be unrepresented.  To persist in backing a major party candidate when neither one represents your interests is to ensure your continuing lack of representation.

So why am I not more enthused at the prospect of a conservative running as the Libertarian nominee?  Because I have the sneaking suspicion that enough disaffected conservatives will fall for one or the other of the objections mentioned above and they will opt to back candidates who will probably not do much at all on the very single issues that were the reason for supporting them in the first place.  The fear of “irrelevance” or playing a “spoiler” role may overwhelm the desire for real representation, but that fear needs to be resisted.  The way to make the antiwar right irrelevant is if we back a candidate that is either pro-war or not on the right. 

Update: Jim Antle makes the important point that people who are likely to vote for Barr were probably not going to vote for McCain otherwise, so the actual “spoiler” effect will be minimal. However, what worries me is the perception and the spin of the outcome that will blame any McCain defeat on Barr rather than on the appalling policies of this administration and McCain’s embrace of them.

Dan McCarthy makes some similar arguments on the main blog.