The equation of state with nation is the arch-heresy of our time. A “nation” is, at root, an ethnic and linguistic – occasionally religious – entity. Since it is through language and liturgy that culture is transmitted, each nation will have its own distinctive cultural history, available for use and misuse, invention and discovery.

The state, however, is a political construction designed to keep the peace in an economically viable territory. There are simply too many “nations” – actual or potential – to form the basis of a world system of states, not least because so many of them, having been jumbled up for centuries, cannot now be disentangled. ~Robert Skidelsky

As it happens, I agree with this almost entirely. Self-determination along ethnolinguistic lines has been one fo the great curses of the modern era, and it is responsible for a large part of the bloodshed of the last two centuries in Europe and around the world. Separating the concept of a nation from a polity representing or somehow embodying that nation is quite difficult. There has long been a flawed idea that every nation that lacks its own political independence is necessarily unfree or oppressed or denied its “natural” rights. This falsehood was used to good effect as a justification for dismantling the Austro-Hungarian empire, which arguably had the most elaborate system then in existence for respecting traditional legal rights and languages of its various subject peoples, and the bloodshed among these various peoples in the decades that followed was the result of destroying the so-called “prison of nations.”

Great powers have promoted or opposed specific cases of self-determination based largely on whether it would aid or harm their rivals or otherwise advance or threaten their goals in the region. Most are familiar with British promotion of Arab nationalism against the Ottomans and Russian support for Orthodox rebels against the Porte, but their rivals were engaged in the same efforts. Part of Wilhelm I’s ill-advised Weltpolitik was to try to stir up Central and South Asian Muslim rebellions against Russia and Britain. Washington was doing the same kind of thing in Kosovo and it is what Russia has been doing with the separatist enclaves in Georgia and Moldova. As I said repeatedly before last February and many times after that, one of the reasons why recognition of Kosovo was so dangerous and foolish is that it would provide a precedent and a provocation for Russia to promote separatists inside allied countries, and it would also generally contribute to international instability. Until then, Russia was still mostly willing to respect status quo borders and was formally opposed to interference in the internal affairs of other states. As a state with myriad ethnic groups and substantial separatist problems in the north Caucasus, Russia had no interest in endorsing ethnic self-determination and independence movements. The partition of Serbia changed this in a significant way. The blatant and willful disregard for Serbia’s sovereignty that recognizing Kosovo entailed made clear that the West as a whole had contempt for international law whenever it suited us. If it came to it, Russia would not need to be constrained by respect for Georgian sovereignty. Saakashvili managed to exacerbate this situation by giving Russia the perfect opening for using force to complete the separation of these enclaves from Tbilisi, but the outcome had already been determined when Serbia was partitioned simply because Western governments could do it.

It is also hard to forget that Skildelsky’s argument was exactly the argument that Milosevic made when he was defending Belgrade’s total opposition to separatist movements in Yugoslavia and inside Serbia itself. Back then, the respectable Western view was that all non-Serb nations had an absolute right to self-determination, regardless of the consequences or the history of the would-be independent state, and any effort by Belgrade to suppress rebellions aimed at carving up Yugoslavia and Serbia had to be denounced as tyrannical and monstrous. Now that Moscow has turned the rhetoric and posturing of self-determination against a “pro-Western” government, Westerners are rediscovering their wariness of political fragmentation and their distaste for non-viable, criminal statelets. Suddenly there is great concern over “Russia’s fictional sovereignties,” as if the sovereignties that the West propped up in the Balkans were any more real.

It would be highly desirable to bring this destructive process to a halt now, but it is not at all clear that Washington is willing to abandon using separatist movements as weapons against other states. There is no guarantee that this back-and-forth can be ended at this point, as both Moscow and Washington are invested in their respective myths that they are defending the rights and “freedom” of long-suffering peoples. Having gone so far as to recognize the independence of these non-viable states, neither government will want to climb down and reverse itself. Short of that, opposing or at least refusing to support future separatist ambitions is the best that we can hope to see.

My apologies for the deplorably infrequent blogging for the last few weeks. Between moving to Albuquerque and getting settled here, I have not had as much time to write in the last two weeks. Normal blogging will resume shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Richard Pipes has an essay in today’s Wall Street Journal that purports to explain Russians’ many “complexes.” While there are some things to say about this part of the essay, I am less interested in that than I am in talking about Pipes’ policy recommendations. Essentially, Pipes spends a great deal of time explaining why all of our provocative policies produce such intense, hostile reactions in Moscow, and he then seems to endorse every last one of those policies. He then caps this off by saying that we should “convince” Russians that they belong to the West and somehow bring them around to adopting the political and economic model that they regard as utterly bankrupt on account of their experience in the ’90s. How we are supposed to do this is left to the reader’s imagination, because there is no way that Washington can continually align itself with overtly anti-Russian governments in neighboring countries while simultaneously persuading the Russian people that we are interested in their well-being.

Pipes says we should avoid any measures that convey the impression of military encirclement of Russia, but nowhere does Pipes rule out the expansion of NATO into Russia’s near abroad. We should understand why Russians react badly to it, he tells us, but nowhere does he say that we should halt expansion. As a practical matter, Pipes is urging that the substance of our message remain unchanged, and that we put it in a more soothing, understanding tone. In other words, we should patronize the Russians, pat them on the head and then go about doing what we have been doing for the last twenty years without interruption. Pipes wants to draw a line between “gentle manners and the hard realities of politics,” which means that we should “take into consideration” Russian sensitivities while taking every available action to irritate and provoke them.

Pipes takes for granted that there is Russian “aggressiveness” that needs to be curbed, and describes the war last year as the “invasion of Georgia,” as if Russian retaliation had not been provoked. It seems to me that it is impossible to understand the actions of the Russian government correctly when one cannot even accurately describe what those actions are. When Westerners constantly pretend to see Russian aggressiveness where it does not exist and always misrepresent conflicts between Russia and our “pro-Western” satellites such that Russia is made to appear the aggressor, it is no surprise if Russians believe that to be “pro-Western” is simply to be anti-Russian and react accordingly.

My new column for The Week on the death of Baitullah Mehsud and the war in Afghanistan is now available.

Spencer Ackerman and Josh Smilovitz note that Huckabee has already stated publicly that he doesn’t believe that Palestinians exist as a nation. Ackerman also professes amazement that a high-profile major party politician can say these things. He concludes:

If ever anyone started to make dubious historical arguments to deny the historical roots of Zionism — let alone that ludicrous historical assertions undermine the right of Israelis to live in their own state — as a plot against the Arabs, he would be run out of the political discourse. In this country, he gets a Fox News TV show and a shot at the GOP presidential nomination [bold mine-DL].

Well, no, not exactly, and I think Ackerman understands this perfectly well. When someone makes dubious historical arguments to deny the rights and national identity of Palestinians, he gets a FoxNews TV show and a shot at the Republican nomination. Of course Huckabee denies that Palestinians are a nation. This is such a commonplace on the right that I have lost track of how many times I have read it. It is of a piece with the standard, Mark Twain-quoting, “Palestine was empty” nonsense that circulates freely among “pro-Israel” conservatives. The rejection of Palestinian nationhood ironically relies on all of the standard assumptions of 19th century ethnonationalism, according to which a given modern nationalist movement is merely reawakening or restoring an ancient people to its rightful place. In this view, if a distinctive Palestinian identity does not predate the last century or two it doens’t count, and in any case its claim must be trumped by the older, more authentic claim of the descendants of previous inhabitants.

The idea that national identity is something that comes into existence at a particular moment in time is utterly foreign to people who say these things, and even if they acknowledged the existence of Palestinian nationhood they would still say that the recent construction of this identity renders it insignificant. In the process, Huckabee and those like him who make arguments that take for granted an undifferentiated, united Arab nation are endorsing claims from an old pan-Arabist ideology that scarcely any Arabs still accept, but they are doing so to achieve the opposite of what the pan-Arabists desired, which was the political unification and empowerment of Arabs against foreign interference and domination. Huckabee here is dusting off an old fiction of a single Arab nation to help make sure that a particular group of Arabs remains disenfranchised and without power. More to the point, he is using this argument to defend the status quo, even though this is barely threatened by Obama’s slightly firmer line on settlements.

In practical terms, Huckabee is just demonstrating the extent of his support for maximally hawkish policies in Israel-Palestine. As with Cantor, whose remarks about “Judeo-Christian principles” informing U.S. policy in the region caused a small stir earlier this summer, Huckabee happens to be giving voice to what a huge number of Republicans believe and frequently say among themselves and put into print. One could come away from this with an even stronger conviction that the leaders in the GOP are incapable of intelligent foreign policy thinking, but I’m not sure what else is so amazing about what Huckabee said. Appalling and ridiculous, of course, but it is anything but amazing. It is the standard reckless rhetoric unmoored from reality that passes for foreign policy discourse on much of the right.

Matt Duss had an article Wednesday on Huckabee’s recent statements earlier this week rejecting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. In short, Huckabee absolutely opposes any divison of Jerusalem and believes the Palestinians should not have a state “in the middle of the Jewish homeland.” Huckabee said that such an arrangement would be unrealistic. While Huckabee may not have thought out quite what this entails, it would mean either that the Palestinians remain a stateless, second-class people in the territories or that they would have to be relocated to some other territory that Huckabee would not regard as being in “the middle of the Jewish homeland.” Huckabee has now securely occupied the transferist ground in Republican presidential politics. Put that way, it sounds very bad, but it will almost never be put that way in conservative media outlets and it will not be heard that way by conservatives. Even though it is the mirror image of radical anti-Zionist rhetoric that insists that Jews ought to have their own state anywhere except Israel, it will not draw the same ire or condemnations because there is no political downside in the U.S. to denying Palestinian claims. Indeed, there are many political rewards for the politician or pundit who not only rejects a Palestinian state but who also denies that Palestinians exist as a nation.

The article’s title asked whether Huckabee will pay a price for saying something like this, but the question must be a rhetorical one. We already know that the answer is no. After all, who would make him pay a political price for saying this? He is voicing a sentiment that is not only broadly popular on the American right, but which also outrages no one of consequence inside the Republican Party. Even if Huckabee’s statement puts him to “the right” of Israel’s own nationalist government and puts him out of step with the official bipartisan and international consensus on the matter, there is no group or institution in the United States that would be willing to penalize Huckabee for taking this position. There are depressingly few on the right who would have a principled objection to the substance of his remarks. Most conservatives would say that Huckabee has his heart in the right place, but that he is the one being “unrealistic” and too idealistic. A movement and party that not only abides but embraces the likes of John Hagee will hardly be interested in punishing Huckabee for rejecting a Palestinian state.

Were someone to attempt to hold these statements against Huckabee in a significant way, we could expect Hagee’s CUFI and their allies to rally to his defense. Far from paying a price, Huckabee stands to solidify his standing with evangelicals in the GOP and shore up his credentials as a hawkish “friend” of Israel (if these were ever in doubt). At the same time, he has staked out an uncompromising rejectionist stance that will reassure national security conservatives who had once thought him too prone to foreign policy realism. All of the incentives in GOP pre-primary and primary politics work to encourage Huckabee’s sort of crazy policy freelancing.

Were a Jon Huntsman in the 2012 mix, Huckabee might at least have a credible rival who could make Huckabee look foolish in debates on foreign policy. Glib and clever as he is, Huckabee would not fare well against an experienced diplomat on matters of substance. As we all know, this debate will never happen because Huntsman scrapped any near-term presidential hopes when he accepted the job in Beijing. At present, Huckabee’s main rival in any future presidential campaign will likely be Romney, and Romney has shown repeatedly that he can be at his pandering worst when it comes to foreign policy questions. The only question for Romney will be how he can get to Huckabee’s “right” on Israel.

Duss asks:

Can a prominent American conservative leader now oppose this consensus, reject the right of the Palestinian people to a state in their homeland, and even endorse population transfer as a solution — which is, after all, the clear implication of Huckabee’s suggestion that the Palestinians should find a homeland “elsewhere” — and still hope to run for president?

Duss seems to think that a more forthrightly extreme anti-Palestinian stance would be a liability for a Republican presidential candidate. I am not sure why he thinks this. The most damage that Huckabee might suffer from this is the accusation that he is not well-versed in foreign policy and would therefore be prone to saying and doing provocative or foolish things were he to be elected President. Then again, for a nontrivial segment of the GOP this seems to be a desirable quality. His future primary opponents could paint him as being “out of touch” or ill-informed. This would not be because they find Huckabee’s remarks all that objectionable, but rather because they could use his statements to make him appear naive and unprepared. However, that might not be very effective, either. We have already seen how Palin’s apologists came out of the woodwork to glory in her international ignorance, much as many conservatives did when journalists and pundits mocked Bush’s ignorance in 2000 and afterwards. There is no reason to believe that rank-and-file distaste for expertise, international experience and diplomacy has lessened in the last year or that it will have significantly waned by 2011-12. The question then is not whether Huckabee will pay a price, but rather it is this: how much will he gain?

Update: Greg Scoblete hasmore.

My apologies for the lack of new posting for the last week. I have been preparing to move back to Albuquerque in addition to other obligations, and I have had no time this week for blogging. Blogging will resume in the middle of next week once I am settled in back home.

There’s little else I agree with in this Matt Curry piece*, but Curry does make one important point:

Given this location, Ukraine will fall into a sphere of influence [bold mine-DL] and will lean toward either the West or Russia.

Obviously, Curry wants Ukraine to be in “our” sphere of influence, which is probably the most honest, straightforward statement I have seen made in defense of the insane proposition of bringing Ukraine into NATO. Nowhere does Curry pretend that bringing Ukraine into a Western orbit has to do with its sovereignty and independence or a repudiation of “19th century ideas of a sphere of influence,” which are the usual excuses for unnecessarily provoking the Russians. Spheres of influence are going to exist, so the real question is why the West generally or America specifically should continue to ruin the relationship with Russia to deny it a sphere of influence over territories that it has ruled for a large part of its modern, non-Soviet history. Why engage in what must be and will be seen to be openly anti-Russian moves? How is any real Ukrainian interest served by making Ukraine a front-line state in a renewed rivalry with Moscow? Who possibly benefits from this madness?

Curry says Ukraine’s role is to be “a successful check against Russian expansionist tendencies,” which would require Russia to have expansionist tendencies to check. Once again, we see an argument for the pursuit of NATO expansion in terms of defending against Russian expansion that has not been taking place and could not realistically take place on a large scale even if Moscow so desired it. At least when the British were afraid of Russian advances towards India, there had been some actual expansion of Russian territory to give them cause for worry. Today hawks are frightened of Russian expansion despite having seen the retreat of Russian power for the last twenty years. Isn’t it odd how remarkably skittish and easily spooked many hawks are? The only thing that has continually expanded regardless of circumstances or consequences has been NATO and the American sphere of influence in eastern Europe. Despite all of this expansion, NATO has shown that it has outlived its usefulness and has become more of a menace to the peace of Europe than it is a pillar of security, and real American interests that could have been served by improved relations with Russia have been tossed aside to keep an archaic, unnecessary alliance going.

* Can anyone spell Caucasus correctly? Anyone?

P.S. Curry’s article runs through all the reasons why Ukraine is vital to Russia, and how complicated by ethnic (and religious) differences Ukrainian politics is, and concludes that these are reasons why it is a good idea to make Ukraine a military ally! It’s quite obvious that Moscow’s interest in retaining Russian access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean, a strategic goal of Russian policy for centuries, is obviously a good reason why Western powers shouldn’t be allying themselves with the country that stands in between Russia and this goal. Clealrly, an ethnically divided state in which a large part of the population is Russian makes a very poor candidate for an ally in an openly anti-Russian strategy. Instead of providing a bulwark against Russia, which is unnecessary and dangerous in itself, this arrangement would fragment Ukraine. Ukraine’s long term survival and success depend on the strength of ethnic Russian nationalism being kept to a minimum inside Ukraine. Curry’s proposals would have the opposite effect. Finally, it goes without saying that fiddling with U.S. immigration policy to try to manipulate the demographics of Ukraine’s ethnic make-up would have approximately zero support on either the right or left.

When many conservatives were jumping on the bandwagon declaring Sotomayor to be a racist/racialist, I marveled at the short-sighted, self-defeating nature of the attacks. Of course, the bigger problem was that these charges against Sotomayor were baseless and ridiculous, and conservatives who kept propagating them were discrediting themselves and were distracting from the legitimate objections to the nominee’s judicial philosophy. What was more striking about the campaign to derail Sotomayor, which failed yesterday as everyone knew it would, was how it opened conservatives up to the most absurd, baseless charges of racism and lowered the standard by which an idea, statement or action should be considered racist. Now Paul Krugman has managed to discern racial antagonism in the vocal, sometimes obnoxious opposition to Democratic health care legislation at town hall meetings. Krugman writes:

But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

You might call this Krugman’s Hatchet: no matter how many other reasonable explanations may account for conservative behavior, the real cause is always racial panic.

The point is not that Krugman would not have made an argument like this had the opposition to Sotomayor not been centered around her non-existent racism, but that Krugman and the like always make these arguments and the attacks on Sotomayor have made it virtually impossible for the public to take conservatives seriously after they so cavalierly threw the same charges against Sotomayor. Conservatives will reject Krugman’s attack as the nonsense that it is, but every conservative who hallucinated Sotomayor’s racism/racialism doesn’t have much of a credible defense. Indeed, these conservatives will be reduced to saying that their outrage over Sotomayor’s non-existent racism was just as manufactured as Krugman’s claims are unfounded. If Sotomayor’s really unremarkable “wise Latina” statement is proof of abiding anti-white racism, as so many pundits on the right have claimed and as at least one of the Senators voting nay insisted during the floor debate, “code”-breaking liberals are going to have a field day with every anti-Obama statement any conservative makes. Having watered down what constitutes racism so much to try unsuccessfully to trip up Sotomayor, these conservative critics cannot credibly refute Krugman et al. when they impute motives to their opponents just as the critics foolishly imputed them to Sotomayor.

The clever thing in accusing someone of “racial anxiety,” as Krugman does to the protesters against health care legislation, is that it is as hard to disprove as a conspiracy theory. No matter what explanation one provides for the intensity of opposition to Democratic health care proposals, the “real” reason for such intense opposition must be found somewhere else. One simple explanation might be this: the protesters are die-hard partisans who want to thwart Democratic initiatives as much as they can. Another might be that they see the proposed legislation as another advance towards a socialistic system that they find unacceptable and un-American on an ideological level (which may also explain the cries of “This is America!”). (The importance of Americanism as the driving force of much of the right cannot be overestimated in all of this.) There may be a more mundane, practical reason for opposing the plan, such as having a strong desire not to pay for it. It is possible that Middle Americans who have seen wealthy and powerful interests saved in one bailout after another have reached their limit with the concentration of power in Washington and the collusion between government and corporate interests, and they are reacting reflexively against any new large government spending commitments. It could also be the case that protesters are acting on exaggerated or misleading information that was designed to inspire outrage, which could help account for the vehemence of some of the protests. Of course, none of this is sufficient for Krugman, who must always see everything on the right in terms of racial resentment. As usual when he writes about politics, he is making it all up and pretending to know something about what drives the other side of the debate, when it is merely what he prefers to believe are the motives of his opponents.

It’s been ages since I have had an occasion to mock Mitt Romney, so I was very grateful to one of my commenters for drawing attention to Romney’s silly book title, No Apology: The Case For American Greatness. Via Andrew, I see that Alex Massie has already said much of what needed saying:

That alienation responds to emotion, not policy. It’s nationalism – or, if you prefer, its definition of patriotism – is instinctive, suspicious and belligerent, keenly aware that there are sell-outs and traitors everywhere. This, then, is the crew Romney is pandering to. Maybe he is right to do so, perhaps he needs to do this. Either way, it’s a sad commentary on the state of the modern conservative movement.

Just to be clear: the notion that Obama has been scurrying around the globe grovelling and apologising on behalf of the United States is utterly absurd. As candidate Obama said over and over again, he owes everything he has to the United States. It was America, after all, who gave his father the chance to come and study in the US. Without that there is no Barack Hussein Obama, far less a President Obama.

Nor can it be said that Obama’s foreign policy views diverge much from the American mainstream. They are, for the most part and at bottom, pretty conventional. Certainly there are few areas in which Obama’s views would have been considered extreme in, say, the time of the George HW Bush administration. Nor, needless to say, has he staffed his administration with radicals.

Still, that’s by-the-by. Romney’s little book – and it is bound to be terribly small – wrestles with a straw man. Sadly that’s only to be expected these days. The GOP has, for the time being at least, decided to double down on nationalism amidst an atmosphere of festering resentment. Denouncing your opponents as un-American isn’t serious politics, nor does it seem likely to be sufficiently persuasive in serious times. But at the moment, that’s where the GOP is at.

What I find intriguing in Romney’s choice of topic for his book, which I imagine will be a more long-winded version of thisspeech, is that he has absolutely no background in foreign affairs, military policy or national security issues. Just as he did in the last cycle, he is intent on identifying himself with hard-line positions on issues where he has no credibility, and he is also studiously avoiding all those areas of policy where his business experience and his inner domestic policy wonk might help him. Of course, as a proponent of bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit and as the governor who signed off on MassCare, Romney has less credibility than most other Republican presidential aspirants in attacking Obama on either front. No doubt he will transform himself yet again into a hard-charging, government-slashing radical if he thinks that is what will win him support, but the man’s lack of any enduring convictions will reveal itself before long.

Last time, Romney determined that social issues were his weakness with core GOP constituencies, and so he worked overtime to cover that weakness by saying all the right things despite having zero credibility as a serious pro-lifer. While it is true that Romney comically tried to out-hawk everyone in the Republican field in 2007-08, memorably telling Cuban exiles that they should appropriate Castro’s slogan of “patria o muerte, venceremos” for their own cause and touting his lame grandstanding over Khatami’s visit to Harvard in 2005 as proof of his strong leadership, he had to be aware that national security was not his strong suit. The latest incarnation of Romney, in which he pretends to be the vigilant security hawk and super-nationalist, has no more substance behind it than Romney the social conservative, but as Massie correctly observes it is emotion and not substance that matters more to most nationalists.

Specifically, it is the emotional satisfaction that the U.S. government is ultimately always in the right, because America is always right. It is the pleasure derived from the idea that whatever the government does or has done abroad should be praised, or at the very least not criticized. Unless, of course, we are talking about an episode of withdrawal or negotiated settlement, as these represent a “betrayal” of American “leadership” and “mission.” As long as Romney sets the right mood, demonstrates the appropriate attitude of idolatrous reverence for the nation, and acts as the national cheerleader, his actual policy positions probably could be less hawkish and aggressive than Obama’s and he would be taken seriously. Even if acknowledging past U.S. mistakes aids our public diplomacy and enhances American influence in another country by repairing tattered relations with a foreign government, what matters to the kind of nationalists to which Romney evidently wants to appeal is that the U.S. government never admit serious error, because to do so would be to diminish “American greatness” and somehow invite foreign attacks.