There can be absolutely no argument that a million or more Armenians died during World War I.  But, on issue of whether genocide—a deliberate plan to eradicate a people—occurred or not, there is a big gap between the narrative of Diaspora communities and that of prominent historians.  The historical debate is more complex. ~Michael Rubin

Via Yglesias

Well, there is certainly a big gap between historians who take the Turkish government’s view and those who actually properly handle the evidence.  I don’t know whether the Turkish historian Taner Akcam ranks as “prominent” in Mr. Rubin’s world, but the argument he lays out for the deliberate, central planning of the genocide is thorough and persuasive.  Even though it required quite a lot of political pressure to make it happen, the ADL’s belated, grudging and qualified acknowledgement of the genocide is to their credit. 

It goes without saying that similar agnosticism and references to the complexity of historical debate in connection with certain other genocides would be considered despicable, dehumanising to the victims and basically unwelcome in polite society.  The histories and historiographies of Cambodia and Rwanda were and are no less complex, but there were still deliberate genocides carried out in those countries.  Of course, neither the Khmer Rouge nor the Hutu Power maniacs have well-heeled lobbyists, a U.S.-allied government and willing apologists to help cast doubt and cover up for them. 

Update: Due credit to Jeff Jacoby for a good column on this.

Today’s dynamic and hopeful Asia — a region that brings us countless benefits — would not have been possible [bold mine-DL] without America’s presence and perseverance. ~George W. Bush

You know, if I were Japanese (or Taiwanese or Thai, to say nothing of Indian) I think I would get pretty tired of hearing this sort of thing.  Yes, I understand that this was a speech to the VFW and the President is obliged to pay his respects to veterans of the Pacific and Korean Wars, as well he should.  Nonetheless, we peddle these myths about our indispensible role in the reconstruction of many of these countries after the war, and this leads us to make mistakes in our current policies.  Thus Mr. Bush once again trots out post-WWII occupation and reconstruction as some sort of “proof” that current Iraq policy makes sense, which would be interesting, except that Japan was not like the way Iraq is and the two cases are not comparable at all.  If there were people who believed that Japan was unsuited to democracy (if today’s virtually permanent LDP rule they have there is what you want to call democracy), they were evidently too much in thrall to official propaganda about the nature of the Japanese regime, since the Japanese had already had universal manhood suffrage for decades.  They had a liberal constitutional monarchy, and their legal system was based on European models.  (Also, the implicit comparison the President makes between Shinto and Islam is unpersuasive for what I would hope are obvious reasons.) 

For people who normally get so edgy when Vietnam is mentioned in any negative connection with Iraq, the administration is strangely happy to make lame analogies with U.S. involvement with almost any  Asian country now.  For what it’s worth, Japan was fairly “dynamic” before the Pacific War, and they were, I suppose, “hopeful.”  It may have been the hopefulness of a would-be empire and regional overlord, but it was hopefulness all the same.  Indeed, they were rather too optimistic in what they thought they could accomplish.  That’s something worth bearing in mind.

There is one way in which Mr. Bush might have a small point, if he means to refer only to the postwar period and he wanted to talk specifically about, say, South Korea alone.  It was primarily the Japanese themselves who rebuilt their own country and transformed it into the economic dynamo that it became.  Having already industrialised significantly before and during the war, the Japanese were hardly unfamiliar with modern industry, finance and capitalism, and they had also had some experience with parliamentary government.  Having successfully created and sustained these things once before, they were prepared to rebuild and recreate anew.  Our role was to allow this without allowing Japan to rearm and resume its great power ambitions.      

Running throughout this speech is the idea that every nation in the world wants freedom and has the potential to do great things, but none of them could have done or will ever do anything if the Americans don’t show up to “help” or, more precisely, make them do it.  Especially if Mr. Bush is right about the potential and the desire of all peoples to live free, this is appalling arrogance to claim that their success is dependent on us.  On the other hand, if it is so heavily dependent on us, how will it be sustained if we should ever depart?  If the former, our involvement is redundant and pointless, and if the latter our involvement is ultimately futile.

My Scene colleague Matt Feeney raises an objection to Ross’ critique of Chait‘s criticism of Kristol (ah, the fun of blogging), noting correctly that there are internal political reasons why TNR does not say much about the war one way or the other.  There is something else worth mentioning here. 

Ross began his post thus:

Jon Chait’s attack on Bill Kristol’s supposed “thuggery” in support of the current American strategy in Iraq would be considerably more interesting if it were possible to discern where Chait’s own magazine stands on the question. 

By the same token, Ross’ critique of Chait would be considerably more powerful if it were possible to discern clearly what Ross’ own view on the war was at the present time.  It isn’t that Ross never writes about the war, but he doesn’t say much about what kind of Iraq policy he thinks would be best.  In his bloggingheads appearances, he will often make a point of declaring himself to be something of an agnostic on the “surge,” and thus ends up, by default, with a “wait and see” position.  That’s fair enough, but it is a bad  position from which to criticise someone else’s reticence about Iraq policy.   

I would add that it shouldn’t matter here whether TNR’s position on the war is discernible, and I don’t know that it would necessarily make the criticism that much more interesting.  If TNR were an openly pro-withdrawal, antiwar magazine, Chait’s criticism of Kristol could–and would–be written off by other war supporters as a standard attack on a prominent “hawk,” which would immediately make the criticism less interesting to large numbers of people.  If it were an openly pro-war, stay-until-we-“win” magazine, this might make the article more noteworthy as evidence of some political rift among the “hawks,” but it would in no way make the underlying criticism of Kristol more or less interesting. 

On the contrary, the nebulous nature of TNR‘s position could make the criticism of Kristol all the more powerful, as it sets up an opposition between a magazine trying to offer a report about the reality of the war and the reflexive, ideological, party-line response of a major war supporter.  This entire Beauchamp affair has been a miniature version of the larger pro-war obsession with the media’s “failure” to report the “real news” and “good news” from Iraq.  The pro-war responses to the Beauchamp reports, of which Kristol’s is one of the more prominent, have been typical representatives of this kind of argument.  Underlying this “they aren’t reporting the real, good news” view is the assumption that any media outlet that reports things that war supporters don’t want to hear must be reporting them because of their inveterate opposition to the war and their hatred of the troops, etc.  After all, only ideologically-driven antiwar fanatics could believe that anything was really going awry in Iraq, since war supporters know that the “surge” is working and all will be well. 

When there is the slightest hint of erroneous reporting, the war supporters believe they have found the Holy Grail in their quest to uncover antiwar media bias.  Arguably, Iraq reporting in a magazine whose editors have an ambiguous or divided view of the war stands a slightly better chance of breaking through this otherwise impenetrable cloud of willful pro-war ignorance.  Similarly, such a magazine’s criticisms of war supporters whose first resort is vilification and insult instead of real argument might be more effective in forcing less obnoxious war supporters to recognise the shallowness of the arguments offered on their behalf by a prominent “hawk.”

Update: Ross gives a good reply here, and he convincingly rebuts at least part of my post.  TNR does have more of a responsibility to address Iraq policy.

It is certainly a conundrum of America’s laudable foreign policy objective of democracy promotion that electorates sometimes freely vote for parties whose goals are distinctly inimical to US foreign policy objectives. ~Gerard Baker

You could call it a conundrum.  Or you could call it an entirely predictable outcome of empowering populations that despise U.S. foreign policy, which is not so much of a conundrum, since virtually everyone already knew the attitude of the populations in question.  Conundrum makes the outcome sound somehow mysterious, inexplicable and bizarre, as if it were the last thing anyone might have expected. 

Baker continues:

And yet, for all its perils, President George Bush is surely right to insist on the primacy of freedom.

Well, this seems to be a decidedly strange way to run U.S. foreign policy (the primacy of the just American interest would seem to be appropriate), but even supposing that Mr. Bush insisted on the “primacy of freedom” and did the necessary legwork to make sure that his rhetorical insistence was matched with proper support, an insistence on the “primacy of freedom” has next to nothing to do with the promotion of democracy.  As Near Eastern, Latin American and other elections are reminding us all the time, democratic elections in most countries are a sure-fire way to ensure that there is much less freedom in the country, since majorities in these countries are far more interested in using their political power to gain benefits and subsidies than they are in gaining any real sort of freedom.  This may have something to do with the fact that most people, when faced with the choice of either doing the hard work needed to possess and retain freedom or not doing it, will opt for the easier path.  This rather makes nonsense out of Mr. Bush’s refrains that all people want freedom, since they might very well want it and could still want many other things far more. 

If Mr. Bush were insisting on the “primacy of freedom,” he would be actively discouraging elections and encouraging the development of civil society and liberal education.  Instead, there is virtually none of the latter and constant chatter about the former.  Besides, all those purple-thumbed Iraqis make for better television than the drudgework of changing political culture over the long haul (not that I think that the U.S. government should be involved in any of this).

Pluralistic though it was, Islamic Spain was no democracy. ~Alexander Kronemer

Additionally, Kronemer writes of a generic “Islamic Spain,” as if there were no difference between Umayyads, Almoravids and Almohads.  The latter two dynasties were decidedly much less interested in perpetuating whatever toleration and good intercommunal relations there had been before, and they were, in fact, much more fanatical.  It is remarkable how these dynasties play no role in Kronemer’s description of the worsening relations between Christians and Muslims in Spain.

There was a time when neoconservatives sought to hold the moral and intellectual high ground [bold mine-DL]. There was some- thing inspiring in their vision of America as a different kind of superpower–a liberal hegemon deploying its might on behalf of subjugated peoples, rather than mere self-interest. As the Iraq war has curdled [bold mine-DL], the idealism and liberalism have drained out of the neoconservative vision. What remains is a noxious residue of bullying militarism. Kristol’s arguments are merely the same pro-war arguments that have been used historically by right-wing parties throughout the world: Complexity is weakness, dissent is treason, willpower determines all. ~Jonathan Chait

That first line is amusing.  Certainly, neocons have always sought to strike the morally and intellectually superior pose, but their taking of the “high ground” usually consisted of declaring that their policies are the ones most consistent with American values and then declaring those who oppose them to have lost faith in those values.  Chait is right that neocons did stress the idealistic cant about “benevolent global hegemony” and their enthusiasm for democratising the world more than they tend to do these days, but when exactly was this pristine time when they did not simultaneously engage in vilification, demonisation and, as he calls it, “thuggery”?  Thuggery and intimidation have always been part of their method, and they have, at least until very recently, been fairly successful in marginalising political rivals as a result.  Neocons learned fairly early on that ideologically-charged demonisation of opponents was quite effective in either shutting up or discrediting their foes, and it seems to me that some of them taught Mr. Bush a thing or two about this. 

Part of the advantage of their support for democratisation, a foreign policy of “values” as well as interests and an idealistic hope to reform politically dysfunctional societies was that they could–and did–very easily cast anyone who opposed their preferred policies as people who were not very supportive of, or who actually hated, democracy and American values (or who actively sympathised with despots and noxious ideologies).  To deny the feasibility and practicability of the democratisation of the Near East was not just common sense or prudence.  No, it was evidence at once of cultural supremacism and/or racism and also cultural relativism.  If you did not accept that freedom and democracy were universally possible, you did not really think people in other countries were fully human, and so on.  This was the standard kind of argument put forward by neoconservatives.  Nowadays, it is true that the neocons tend to go straight for the jugular by smearing their opponents as unpatriotic backstabbers, but this is simply because their more “idealistic” rhetoric does not have the power to shut down debate that it once did.  Heavy-handed nationalist and militarist appeals (which have been integral to neoconservatism for at least the last 12 years) are their best rhetorical weapons for shoring up their base of support and bludgeoning their foes.  Naturally, it is not persuasive or intelligent, but that has been true of these people for a very long time.

Accusations of treason are a dime a dozen for these people–what does Chait think their unending warnings against policies of “appeasement” are if not accusations that their policy opponents are aiding and abetting the enemies  of the United States?  The embrace of simplistic abstractions in the place of complex analysis has been commonplace, and you need only browse Krauthammer’s archives for a few minutes to find some nauseating invocation of the power of the will and the need to show “resolve.”  This was all true before the invasion of Iraq, and for years before that.  If Chait has finally discovered the hollowness and shallowness of modern neoconservatism, good for him, but it is not exactly a new thing.

Many economists (not all) might agree that it would be lovely if we lived in an Edenic utopia in which everyone did the best for society without thought of themselves. But almost all economists recognize that self-interest is a powerful force that must be dealt with, and therefore that economic policy must be designed on the assumption that people will try to maximise their own good, rather than society’s. Similarly, foreign policy assumes that states will act in their own interest, and try to design a foreign policy that works within that constraint [bold mine-DL]. The netroots (and many libertarians), who have a more idealistic theoretical model, are outraged. They are particularly outraged because they see that in certain cases, such as Iraq, their prescription would have produced a better outcome. ~Megan McArdle

First, foreign policy does not assume this, but traditional foreign policy realists assume this.  It remains unclear to me how accepting that states act out of self-interest requires anyone to endorse interventionist foreign policy prescriptions or the rather open-ended ” war for vital interests, whatever they may be” position.  It is not clear to me that people who object to wars of aggression are espousing an “idealistic” worldview, unless we would like to say now that only “idealists” are interested in opposing the principal crime for which the war criminals at Nuremberg were executed.  Undoubtedly, all states operate out of their self-interest.  One of the basic red lines of international law, of the international system itself, is that no state should be able to pursue that self-interest through an aggressive war.  It was to provide a mechanism to prevent such acts, theoretically, that international organisations such as the U.N. were created in the first place.  Respecting the sovereignty of other states is one of the bonds that is supposed to hold the international state system together.  Apparently, Drezner believes that the Foreign Policy Community generally agrees that this rule does not apply to the United States. 

The formulation of which Drezner approves declares that the interests of some states or perhaps just one state take precedence over the constraints of that system.  If this were an economic model, it would be a near-monopolistic system in which the monopolist is allowed to steal and destroy the property of everyone else if he has a “vital” need to do so.  It is curious that Drezner would basically confirm the worst possible indictment of the Foreign Policy Community, which is that it is fundamentally biased in favour of illegal and aggressive warfare, but he seems to have done just that.

But of course, that doesn’t mean that it necessarily works as a system–that Bill Gates gave billions to charity is not a vindication of communism. Having gotten it so dreadfully wrong on Iraq, I am seduced by the easy by-the-numbers approach posed by a non-interventionist foreign policy. But I wonder what I am not seeing–the wars that don’t happen in the Middle East¹, or Central Europe, because all the participants know that it would be a foolhardy invitation to US intervention. I take this to be the foriegn [sic] policy defense of their position; and it’s a pretty compelling one. For the same reason that it’s only a good idea to be a pacifist in a nation with a strong police force, it may only be possible to be an idealist when realists are running the show. ~Megan McArdle

Ms. McArdle seems willing to concede the possibility that Dan Drezner‘s foreign policy fight with certain other bloggers is one of sober “realists” (Drezner) against high-minded, but necessarily reckless idealists (Greenwald, Quiggin, etc.).  Non-interventionists do not assume that natural human goodwill and peace would spring up in the absence of U.S. intervention; we are not the foreign policy equivalent of utopians or idealists (it is strange that this needs saying).  Non-interventionists do not imagine that states do not act in their interest, and many of us do not think that they ought to act any other way.  We have this funny idea that it is not in the national interest of our country to start fruitless and aggressive wars.  To use an economic comparison, non-interventionists are like those who think that there ought to be a free exchange of goods, but who still hold that murder, assault, theft and arson should still be illegal.  We are like those who assume that the security of persons and property is vital to the functioning of a market economy (or, indeed, of society in general).  The serious “realists” of the Foreign Policy Community believe that there is at least one actor in the world that is allowed to ransack the other “shops” to secure what it “needs” and indeed takes this as an essential part of the foreign policy consensus.  We oppose foreign policy criminality, whereas they find it acceptable, at least when it comes to our government.  We regard wanton aggression as something that destroys the proper working of the international system (this is something that internationalists themselves used to believe before our government got into the habit of attacking smaller states), just as we might argue that criminality undermines trust and the effective working of the market. 

Most non-interventionist critiques of those “serious” people trying to push anti-Russian, anti-Iranian or other aggressive lines around the world focus on the understandable and legitimate interests of other states that a sane, responsible foreign policy (i.e., something the Foreign Policy Community would not be interested in) would have to take into account.  The “realists” take it for granted that those states’ interests are not only to some degree illegitimate, but that any pursuit of their interests must necessarily be damaging to America, because maintenance of hegemony is their overarching concern.

Quiggin points us to this Drezner’s rephrasing of Greenwald and Drezner’s remark following it:

The number one rule of the bi-partisan foreign policy community is that America can invade and attack other countries when vital American interests are threatened. Paying homage to that orthodoxy is a non-negotiable pre-requisite to maintaining good standing within the foreign policy community.

I suspect that anyone who accepts the concept of a “national interest” in the first place would accept that phrasing. As a paid-up member of the Foreign Policy Community (FPC), I certainly would.

Yes, well, we all make mistakes.  Non-interventionists accept the concept of “national interest,” but we don’t endorse the abhorrent idea that Drezner endorses here.  Indeed, we place national interest fairly close to the heart of our foreign policy view.  The fundamental argument of non-interventionism is that aggressive and interventionist wars–always in the name of “vital national interest”–are detrimental to the American interest and always will be.  They are also damaging to the international system as a whole.  Invading Panama to clean up one of Bush the Elder’s old mistakes at the CIA strikes us as a rather senseless waste; starting a war against a European country in the name of European stability and human rights strikes us as fairly barbaric.  I would be interested to know what a “paid-up member” thinks our “vital” interests were in the many military campaigns over the past 17 years.   

“Vital” interests are always so broadly defined by the people who invoke them as justifications for intervention that they come to include almost everything.  These interests are never clearly defined, and this is because America does not have any significant interest at stake in many regions around the world.  Any effort to define and describe those interests would reveal this.  It is hardly in the interest of the Foreign Policy Community to acknowledge that part of its definition of “vital” interests includes the perpetuation of U.S. hegemony itself.

Someone will need to explain this to me: why do certain Westerners claim to care so much what happens inside Russia (or replace Russia with any other country you’d care to name)?  I’m serious.  This is the second prominent op-ed about the youth group Nashi in the last week, and it is written in that same tone of alarmed concern.  It seems to me that Westerners look at Russia with the same kind of myopia with which Americans look at Europe or Europeans look at America or coastal liberals look at people in “Red” America.  The critics always latch on to those elements of the country that they purport to find sinister (usually because the “sinister” elements have different political views from themselves) and then generalise about the condition of the entire country based on this.  Where the secular European quakes in dread of American megachurches, or the religious American shudders at the thought of empty churches in Europe and godless Frenchmen cavorting on their long weekends, certain Westerners are filled with horror at the thought of Russian nationalists. 

Better yet they are disturbed by things like this:

But it is one thing for French kids to be told about Joan of Arc’s heroism or American kids about Paul Revere’s midnight ride; everyone is entitled to a Robin Hood or William Tell or two. It’s a bit more disturbing to learn that the new Russian history manual teaches that “entry into the club of democratic nations involves surrendering part of your national sovereignty to the U.S.” [bold mine-DL] and other such choice contemporary lessons that suggest to Russian teenagers that they face dark forces abroad.

The textbook’s phrasing is a bit blunt, but I can’t say that I find this statement to be all that inaccurate.  Entering the “democratic club of nations” in practice frequently means having your policies dictated to you by foreign governments, the U.S. being chief among them, which offer the “incentives” of gaining membership in other clubs (the WTO, NATO, the EU) and receiving support from the IMF.  Once you have joined these organisations, your sovereignty is reduced even more and your policy options are even more constrained.  In practice, it often is the case that these nations yield up some of their sovereignty to Washington as an “ally” or to institutions where Washington’s influence is very great. 

The legitimate criticism here should be that this statement has little or nothing to do with the study of history.  If it were a political science book, it might be different, but there is certainly a level of gratuitous politicisation here in any case.  It is the politicisation, and not the message’s content, that we should find objectionable.

It is worth noting that none of this fundamentally changes what our attitude towards the Russian government ought to be.  Cooperation with Russia is in the best interests of both our countries.  The more people in the West rile themselves up over what the Russians are doing with their textbooks and the like, the harder it becomes to foster good relations with Moscow.  The Japanese, of course, have engaged in some of the most appalling revisionism about WWII in their textbooks, but very few people seem terribly upset by this these days such that they try to encourage fear and loathing of Japan.