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.

Yes, Minister jokes aside for the moment, I was struck by Ross’ comment on the Peter Baker story I posted on yesterday.  Ross writes:

On the one hand, it’s a damning portrait of a weak President who entertained delusions of world-historical grandeur but couldn’t even keep his own Vice President on board with the mission, let alone his Cabinet agencies; on the other it’s a story of how the federal bureaucracy works to frustrate and undermine the elected officials whose policies it supposedly exists to implement [bold mine-DL].

I have a few observations.  Cheney seems to me to be wholly on board with the “freedom agenda” as far as the Near East and the former Soviet Union are concerned (and these are the only places where the administration actually cares about the “freedom agenda,” because they think it meshes well with their other strategic goals, such as they are).  Embracing Nazarbayev is useful in pushing an anti-Russian line, while pushing for “democratic” revolution in places with more pro-Russian despots also advances that line.  One of the goals of democratism is to put a “democratic” (i.e., relatively pro-American) elite in power in various countries around the world, but their democracy is very much the managed managerial democracy that will come up with the “right” policy results rather than function as a government that reflects and represents the popular interest.  Eastern Europe is lousy with such “democratic” governments these days.  When democratists talk about democracy, it is this managerial system to which they are referring.  Actual popular, representative government gives such people hives, as we can see whenever American populists make any headway in domestic politics. 

There is a certain irony that some of the bureaucratic managers inside our managerial state are opposed to the proponents of the “global democratic revolution,” but I think it is a mistake to focus entirely on the federal departments as obstacles to some imagined representative government enacting the will of the people.  The policies being set by elected officials have no more connection with representative government than do the policymaking processes inside the bureaucracy; these policies routinely favour very narrow and particular interests that may have nothing to do with the interests of most of the voting constituents.  The departments and agencies work to undermine the politicians who actively work to undermine and discredit them–that’s how bureaucratic infighting works, and it is unavoidable once you have vested so much power in permanent departments and agencies.  If we find it obnoxious, as we all do to some degree, we might start by getting rid of large parts of the bureaucracy and removing permanent entrenched power interests from the heart of our government.  It seems to me that the trouble arises when we want to have the administrative and bureaucratic apparatus of a managerial state and also want to have none of the drawbacks of ceding actual governing to unelected functionaries.  We are likely to feel very agitated when confronted with the arrogance of the managers who think, not without good reason, that they are effectively in charge (or at least have a major say in what happens).   

What about the friendly relations with the Thai military men?  On the one hand, the administration can ignore the Thai coup and embrace Gen. Sonthi et al. because the coup does not represent a shift in Thailand’s relations with Washington (which is what really matters for those pushing the “freedom agenda”), and it can also justify support for the coup on the grounds that Thaksin was corrupt, unpopular and making a hash of the counterinsurgency in the south.  There will always be “war on terror” exceptions to the “freedom agenda” (see Pakistan) and the U.S. acquiescence in the coup in Thailand was a good example of that at work.

But the notion that the U.S. should not attack another country unless that country has attacked or directly threatens our national security is not really extraordinary. Quite the contrary, that is how virtually every country in the world conducts itself, and it is a founding principle of our country. Starting wars against countries that have not attacked you, and especially against those who cannot attack you, is abnormal. ~Glenn Greenwald

Yglesias cites this as an example of how Greenwald is politically on his “left” and rather too far to the left for his taste.  This is certainly one of those places where the right/left schema makes no sense at all to me, since I am light years to the right of Yglesias on everything else and yet I believe I am entirely in agreement with Greenwald’s statement here.  This is not because I am discovering my inner left-winger, but because Greenwald’s statement is entirely consistent with any sane Christian and conservative attitude towards war.  There is nothing particularly “far left” about repudiating and deploring wars of aggression, which seem to me to be the kind of war that Greenwald is rejecting.  He might go beyond this and say that American forces should never be involved in wars of collective security or sent on peacekeeping missions (that would generally be my view), but that is not clearly implied here.  Greenwald is saying that wanton aggression is not the norm, and wars of self-defense and national security are.  He does not say whether collective security or peacekeeping is desirable (my wild guess is that he probably thinks that they are), though he does imply that it is fairly unusual.  He says simply that the default condition for the use of force for most states is self-defense, which seems pretty clearly true.

Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chavez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008. He announced the change on his Sunday television program, accompanied by his highest-ranking science adviser, Héctor Navarro, the minister of science and technology. “This is about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight,” Mr. Navarro said in comments reported by Venezuela’s official news agency. Mr. Chávez said he was “certain” that the time change, which would be accompanied by a move to a six-hour workday, would be accepted. ~The New York Times

Via Zengerle

Clearly, the plan to conquer Argentina proceeds apace.  Fortunately for all of us, the Venezuelan war machine will only be working six hours a day, which means that we might still have a chance to save Buenos Aires from the dastardly time change before it’s too late.

The current demonization of Russia in some American quarters is thus incomprehensible, unless one keeps in mind the particular conceit of democracies at war that Kennan, following Tocqueville, pointed out long ago: “There is nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision of everything else. . . . People who have got themselves into this frame of mind have little understanding for the issues of any contest other than the one in which they are involved.” ~Tony Corn

It is an interesting, albeit rather long, article, and I can’t agree with everything in it (who can actually be surprised by neocon tunnel vision?), but most of the sections on Russia and Central Asia seem fairly sound.

There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah [bold mine-DL], and the crucifixion never happened.  A forthcoming ITV documentary will portray Jesus as Muslims see him. ~The Guardian

I don’t know whether this is a mistake by The Guardian or by ITV’s documentary, but a mistake it surely is.  Set aside for the moment that the phrase “Christ is not the Messiah” sounds really stupid (since Christos means “anointed one” and thus Messiah), and consider the claim behind it.  The claim is that Muslims do not accept Jesus as the Messiah, which is incorrect.  The relevant point, obviously, is that they deny His Divinity and do not recognise His Divine Sonship in His role as Messiah.  This is one of the two major points of disagreement between the religions, and it is rather central to how Muslims see Jesus.  One would have thought that a report on a documentary designed to foster some minimal understanding of the Islamic view would have managed to get this much right.

The Qur’an (Sura 3:48) says (Pickthall translation):

(And remember) when the angels said: O Mary! Lo!  Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary…

Idh qaalat al-malaika ya Maryam inna Allah yubathiruki bi-kalimat-in minhu ismuhu al-masih-u ‘Isa ibn-u Maryam…

Presenting Mormon tritheism:

Just to clarify, Mormons in fact do believe that Christ is God. It’s really quite simple. There is one God, which is the Godhead, consisting of three separate beings [bold mine-DL] in the way that the Bush Administration is one administration consisting of many people. God the Father, Jesus Christ who is also God, and the Holy Ghost, who is also God. They are one in purpose. It’s not more complicated than that. Mormons do not believe in the Nicean [sic] Creed, but Christ’s role is not undermined.

In other words, Mormons do not share the fundamental doctrine of God that all Christians share and quite explicitly accept something that undermines monotheism.

But after the inevitable failure of Islamic movements to provide an adequate response to the challenge of modernity, what will Muslims embrace? The only thing left, at that point, will be the ever elusive “moderate Islam,” a new, modernity-compatible faith that retains the name of Islam but jettisons all the substance (kind of like mainline Protestantism).

But Muslims have to come to that conclusion on their own, by living under regimes that will exemplify that failure (like Iran). Our hearts-and-minds efforts, like the north poles of two magnets, can only repel Muslims from drawing the necessary, inescapable conclusion that Islam, as it has existed for 14 centuries, is a failure as an ideology and way of life in the modern world. ~Mark Krikorian

No offense to Mr. Krikorian, but does he really think that Muslims are going to conceive of their religion as an “ideology” and “way of life” that have failed?  If they believe, as I assume they do, that their religion is the final revelation of God to humanity, it will take a lot more than its “inadequacy” to adapt to modernity to persuade them to abandon it.  The substitute will also have to be a lot more powerful than the Islamic equivalent of the via media. 

The lesson of mainline Protestantism, to follow his comparison, is that religion without substance and conviction is dead and uninspiring and doomed to stagnation and irrelevance.  People flee it as they would from the plague.  Those inclined to belong to religious communities are going to seek out communities where there is a sense that the religion they practice is true and edifying.  Looked at this way, Islamic revivalism and fundamentalism stand a much better chance of spreading and thriving, much as Pentecostalism has been doing for many decades, which means that the failues to adjust to modernity will simply persuade even more people to follow a revivalist and fundamentalist path.  For every person who thinks that a religion needs to be updated to match the modern world there will always be at least one other who thinks that it is the modern world that must be adjusted to the dictates of the old time religion, and probably more than one.  It seems to me that one of the handicaps of a lot of Westerners in understanding the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism is the idea that such fundamentalism is not modern.  It is anti-modernist, but it is itself a modern phenomenon that addresses the needs (or seems to address them) of people today.  To say that it does not result in good results by the standards of our modernity is to miss the point entirely–the people who embrace such fundamentalism do not want such results, or if they do they want them less than they want the certainty and deliverance offered them by revelation.