Friday, July 16, 2004
Travesty at The Hague
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A21
Among various principles invoked by the International Court of Justice in its highly publicized decision on Israel's security fence is this one: It is a violation of international law for Jews to be living in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. If this sounds absurd to you -- Jews have been inhabiting the Old City of Jerusalem since it became their capital 3,000 years ago -- it is. And it shows the lengths to which the United Nations and its associate institutions, including this kangaroo court, will go to condemn Israel.
The court's main business was to order Israel to tear down the security fence separating Israelis from Palestinians. The fence is only one-quarter built, and yet it has already resulted in an astonishing reduction in suicide attacks in Israel. In the past four months, two Israelis have died in suicide attacks, compared with 166 killed in the same time frame at the height of the terrorism.
But what are 164 dead Jews to this court? Israel finally finds a way to stop terrorism, and 14 eminences sitting in The Hague rule it illegal -- in a 64-page opinion in which the word terrorism appears not once (except when citing Israeli claims).
Yes, the fence causes some hardship to Palestinians. Some are separated from their fields, some schoolchildren have to walk much farther to class. This is unfortunate. On any scale of human decency, however, it is far more unfortunate that 1,000 Israelis are dead from Palestinian terrorism, and thousands more horribly maimed, including Israeli schoolchildren with nails and bolts and shrapnel lodged in their brains and spines who will never be walking to school again.
From the safe distance of 2,000 miles, the court declared itself "not convinced" that the barrier Israel is building is a security necessity. It based its ruling on the claim that the fence violates Palestinian "humanitarian" rights such as "the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child."
I'm sure these conventions are lovely documents. They are also documents of absolutely no weight -- how many countries would not stand condemned for failure to provide an "adequate standard of living"? -- except, of course, when it comes to Israel. Then, any document at hand will do.
What makes the travesty complete is that this denial of Israel's right to defend itself because doing so might violate "humanitarian" rights was read in open court by the chief judge representing China, whose government massacred hundreds of its own citizens demonstrating peacefully in Tiananmen Square. Not since Libya was made chairman of the Commission on Human Rights has the U.N. system put on such a shameless display of hypocrisy.
Moreover, the court had no jurisdiction to take this case. It is a court of arbitration, which requires the consent of both parties. The Israelis, knowing the deck was stacked, refused to give it. Not only did the United States declare this issue outside the boundaries of this court, so did the European Union and Russia, hardly Zionist agents.
The court went ahead nonetheless, betraying its prejudice in its very diction. For example, throughout the opinion it refers to the barrier as a "wall." In fact, over 93 percent of its length consists of fences, troughs and electronic devices to prevent terrorist infiltration. Less than one kilometer out of every 15 is wall, and this is generally in areas that Palestinian gunmen have been using to shoot directly onto Israeli highways and into villages. Sensors and troughs cannot stop bullets.
The court's long account of the history of the conflict is equally corrupt. For example: In 1947, the United Nations partitioned Palestine into two states -- one Jewish, one Arab. When the British pulled out and Israel proclaimed its independence, five Arab countries responded immediately by declaring war and invading Israel with the announced intention of destroying the newborn state. How does the court render this event? "[O]n 14 May 1948, Israel proclaimed its independence . . . armed conflict then broke out between Israel and a number of Arab States." Broke out? As if three years after the Holocaust and almost entirely without weapons, a tiny country of 600,000 Jews had decided to make war on five Arab states with nearly 30 million people.
Israel will rightly ignore the decision. The United States, acting honorably in a world of utter dishonor regarding Israel, will support that position. It must be noted that one of the signatories of this attempt to force Israel to tear down its most effective means of preventing the slaughter of innocent Jews was the judge from Germany. The work continues.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A21
Among various principles invoked by the International Court of Justice in its highly publicized decision on Israel's security fence is this one: It is a violation of international law for Jews to be living in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. If this sounds absurd to you -- Jews have been inhabiting the Old City of Jerusalem since it became their capital 3,000 years ago -- it is. And it shows the lengths to which the United Nations and its associate institutions, including this kangaroo court, will go to condemn Israel.
The court's main business was to order Israel to tear down the security fence separating Israelis from Palestinians. The fence is only one-quarter built, and yet it has already resulted in an astonishing reduction in suicide attacks in Israel. In the past four months, two Israelis have died in suicide attacks, compared with 166 killed in the same time frame at the height of the terrorism.
But what are 164 dead Jews to this court? Israel finally finds a way to stop terrorism, and 14 eminences sitting in The Hague rule it illegal -- in a 64-page opinion in which the word terrorism appears not once (except when citing Israeli claims).
Yes, the fence causes some hardship to Palestinians. Some are separated from their fields, some schoolchildren have to walk much farther to class. This is unfortunate. On any scale of human decency, however, it is far more unfortunate that 1,000 Israelis are dead from Palestinian terrorism, and thousands more horribly maimed, including Israeli schoolchildren with nails and bolts and shrapnel lodged in their brains and spines who will never be walking to school again.
From the safe distance of 2,000 miles, the court declared itself "not convinced" that the barrier Israel is building is a security necessity. It based its ruling on the claim that the fence violates Palestinian "humanitarian" rights such as "the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child."
I'm sure these conventions are lovely documents. They are also documents of absolutely no weight -- how many countries would not stand condemned for failure to provide an "adequate standard of living"? -- except, of course, when it comes to Israel. Then, any document at hand will do.
What makes the travesty complete is that this denial of Israel's right to defend itself because doing so might violate "humanitarian" rights was read in open court by the chief judge representing China, whose government massacred hundreds of its own citizens demonstrating peacefully in Tiananmen Square. Not since Libya was made chairman of the Commission on Human Rights has the U.N. system put on such a shameless display of hypocrisy.
Moreover, the court had no jurisdiction to take this case. It is a court of arbitration, which requires the consent of both parties. The Israelis, knowing the deck was stacked, refused to give it. Not only did the United States declare this issue outside the boundaries of this court, so did the European Union and Russia, hardly Zionist agents.
The court went ahead nonetheless, betraying its prejudice in its very diction. For example, throughout the opinion it refers to the barrier as a "wall." In fact, over 93 percent of its length consists of fences, troughs and electronic devices to prevent terrorist infiltration. Less than one kilometer out of every 15 is wall, and this is generally in areas that Palestinian gunmen have been using to shoot directly onto Israeli highways and into villages. Sensors and troughs cannot stop bullets.
The court's long account of the history of the conflict is equally corrupt. For example: In 1947, the United Nations partitioned Palestine into two states -- one Jewish, one Arab. When the British pulled out and Israel proclaimed its independence, five Arab countries responded immediately by declaring war and invading Israel with the announced intention of destroying the newborn state. How does the court render this event? "[O]n 14 May 1948, Israel proclaimed its independence . . . armed conflict then broke out between Israel and a number of Arab States." Broke out? As if three years after the Holocaust and almost entirely without weapons, a tiny country of 600,000 Jews had decided to make war on five Arab states with nearly 30 million people.
Israel will rightly ignore the decision. The United States, acting honorably in a world of utter dishonor regarding Israel, will support that position. It must be noted that one of the signatories of this attempt to force Israel to tear down its most effective means of preventing the slaughter of innocent Jews was the judge from Germany. The work continues.
Can Kerry fix Europe?
By Tony Blankley
Although he makes regular rude noises about President Bush's Iraq policy, Sen. John Kerry has tucked his technical position as close to the president's as he can without actually endorsing it in every detail. Mr. Kerry has chosen one specific battleground with the president on Iraq: Mr. Bush's failure to get our historic allies in Europe on board for the Iraq war and its aftermath, thus resulting in our isolation.
Mr. Kerry assures the voters that as president, he, with his friends in Europe and his smarter, more nuanced diplomacy, can correct that Bush failure. He has gone so far as to argue that Europe's problem is more or less personal to George W. Bush, and thus could not be fixed by him. It may take a new president to fix the problem,Mr. Kerry asserts.
While President Bush's prewar diplomacy was hardly a graceful affair, it is Mr. Kerry who is being simplistic, almost childlike, in his description of the current diplomatic environment. Mr. Kerry is only playing into the public's (and the popular media's) belief that personalities and "chemistry" between world leaders determines the success of diplomatic engagements. Thus many people were surprised when Tony Blair supported Mr. Bush on Iraq after he had been such good friends with Bill Clinton.
But, of course, Blair supported both Bush and Clinton out of calculations of British national interest — not for good fellowship's sake. As Lord Palmerston explained the classic British foreign policy maxim: Britain has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. And so it has been for all nations and alliances. Since World War II, British foreign policy has been premised on being Europe's best friend to America, and America's best friend to Europe — thus maximizing her influence in both quarters.
So the more interesting question is why the French, German and other continental leaders opposed America on Iraq. And, as so often has been the case, the beginning of wisdom is to read the thoughts of Henry Kissinger. Last week he published an article in The Washington Post titled "A Global Order in Flux." While the names Bush and Kerry do not appear in the article, it stands as a powerful rebuttal to Mr. Kerry's claim that President Bush made a hash of things that a President Kerry could fix.
Mr. Kissinger argues that: (1) the global scene is more fluid than it has been for centuries, (2) the center of gravity of world affairs is moving to the Pacific, (3) the major actors are defining new roles for themselves, and (4) the transformation is about basic concepts rather than tactical issues.
Thus he notes: "Differences between America and Europe are serious and substantive. But the reason the results of recent U.S.-European diplomatic encounters have proved so disappointing — despite serious efforts from both sides — is that the historical evolutions underway on the two sides of the Atlantic are different."
He goes on to argue that "the most important event in Europe is the progressive erosion of the nation-state," which is leading them to reject, as a matter of principle, the right of any nation to exercise national sovereignty, particularly when resorting to the use of military force.
Rather, as they spend most of their time on issues of European unification, "these non-state attitudes toward international relations are becoming deeply embedded in European public opinion." Mr. Kissinger doubts whether these building attitudes "can ever be again fully reconciled with the experience of a country driven by state concepts or with the notion of alliance as traditionally conceived." Meanwhile, "By contrast, America remains [with such other countries as Russia, China, Japan and India] a traditional nation-state, insistent on sovereign freedom of action."
If Mr. Kissinger's insights are right, the constant problems we are having with Europe (with the exception of Britain, which still sees itself as largely sovereign) over everything from Iraq to the Kyoto Treaty to the United Nations to the International Criminal Court will not go away in January 2005 under a notional President Kerry. Mr. Kerry will not be able to sweet talk or outsmart or charm the Europeans into compliance with American national interest. He will not be able to merely remind them of our half-century-old alliance as a motivation to work with us.
The only coin of the realm — so to speak — which the continental Europeans will accept will be American concession of some of our sovereign rights to the international order that the French-led Europeans are trying to bring to life. Assuming Mr. Kerry is as smart, informed and nuanced of mind as he claims to be, he well understands this deeper reality.
He should level with the electorate and discuss just how much of our sovereignty and national interest he is prepared to barter away in the interest of regaining European friendship and cooperation. It has become a matter of principle with the Europeans that they will not diplomatically barter with us in the traditional sovereign manner. What they want is our acquiescence in the new international, de-sovereigned order they are trying to bring into being. Where does Mr. Kerry stand on this central international challenge?
By Tony Blankley
Although he makes regular rude noises about President Bush's Iraq policy, Sen. John Kerry has tucked his technical position as close to the president's as he can without actually endorsing it in every detail. Mr. Kerry has chosen one specific battleground with the president on Iraq: Mr. Bush's failure to get our historic allies in Europe on board for the Iraq war and its aftermath, thus resulting in our isolation.
Mr. Kerry assures the voters that as president, he, with his friends in Europe and his smarter, more nuanced diplomacy, can correct that Bush failure. He has gone so far as to argue that Europe's problem is more or less personal to George W. Bush, and thus could not be fixed by him. It may take a new president to fix the problem,Mr. Kerry asserts.
While President Bush's prewar diplomacy was hardly a graceful affair, it is Mr. Kerry who is being simplistic, almost childlike, in his description of the current diplomatic environment. Mr. Kerry is only playing into the public's (and the popular media's) belief that personalities and "chemistry" between world leaders determines the success of diplomatic engagements. Thus many people were surprised when Tony Blair supported Mr. Bush on Iraq after he had been such good friends with Bill Clinton.
But, of course, Blair supported both Bush and Clinton out of calculations of British national interest — not for good fellowship's sake. As Lord Palmerston explained the classic British foreign policy maxim: Britain has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. And so it has been for all nations and alliances. Since World War II, British foreign policy has been premised on being Europe's best friend to America, and America's best friend to Europe — thus maximizing her influence in both quarters.
So the more interesting question is why the French, German and other continental leaders opposed America on Iraq. And, as so often has been the case, the beginning of wisdom is to read the thoughts of Henry Kissinger. Last week he published an article in The Washington Post titled "A Global Order in Flux." While the names Bush and Kerry do not appear in the article, it stands as a powerful rebuttal to Mr. Kerry's claim that President Bush made a hash of things that a President Kerry could fix.
Mr. Kissinger argues that: (1) the global scene is more fluid than it has been for centuries, (2) the center of gravity of world affairs is moving to the Pacific, (3) the major actors are defining new roles for themselves, and (4) the transformation is about basic concepts rather than tactical issues.
Thus he notes: "Differences between America and Europe are serious and substantive. But the reason the results of recent U.S.-European diplomatic encounters have proved so disappointing — despite serious efforts from both sides — is that the historical evolutions underway on the two sides of the Atlantic are different."
He goes on to argue that "the most important event in Europe is the progressive erosion of the nation-state," which is leading them to reject, as a matter of principle, the right of any nation to exercise national sovereignty, particularly when resorting to the use of military force.
Rather, as they spend most of their time on issues of European unification, "these non-state attitudes toward international relations are becoming deeply embedded in European public opinion." Mr. Kissinger doubts whether these building attitudes "can ever be again fully reconciled with the experience of a country driven by state concepts or with the notion of alliance as traditionally conceived." Meanwhile, "By contrast, America remains [with such other countries as Russia, China, Japan and India] a traditional nation-state, insistent on sovereign freedom of action."
If Mr. Kissinger's insights are right, the constant problems we are having with Europe (with the exception of Britain, which still sees itself as largely sovereign) over everything from Iraq to the Kyoto Treaty to the United Nations to the International Criminal Court will not go away in January 2005 under a notional President Kerry. Mr. Kerry will not be able to sweet talk or outsmart or charm the Europeans into compliance with American national interest. He will not be able to merely remind them of our half-century-old alliance as a motivation to work with us.
The only coin of the realm — so to speak — which the continental Europeans will accept will be American concession of some of our sovereign rights to the international order that the French-led Europeans are trying to bring to life. Assuming Mr. Kerry is as smart, informed and nuanced of mind as he claims to be, he well understands this deeper reality.
He should level with the electorate and discuss just how much of our sovereignty and national interest he is prepared to barter away in the interest of regaining European friendship and cooperation. It has become a matter of principle with the Europeans that they will not diplomatically barter with us in the traditional sovereign manner. What they want is our acquiescence in the new international, de-sovereigned order they are trying to bring into being. Where does Mr. Kerry stand on this central international challenge?
Thursday, July 15, 2004
DAILY EXPRESS
Normal Distribution
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.15.04
John Edwards has a point: There really are two Americas. One is at war. One is not. As for which America Edwards and John Kerry intend to mine for votes, the answer may be gleaned from, among other places, their campaign mantra, "Let America be America Again." Neatly summarizing the point Kerry and Edwards mean to convey, Slate's Mickey Kaus writes that the "message is that America wants a respite from all the headstrong history-making of the past four years." The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan makes a similar argument. Concerned about President Bush's election prospects, she writes:
History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe, fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting. And my general sense of Americans is that we like things to be boring.
Now, exciting might not be the perfect adjective here--horrifying seems closer to the truth--but Noonan is on to something. After eight years of micro-initiatives, school uniforms, soccer moms, and books about the end of history and the obsolescence of war, Americans have been drowning in history since September 11. Unpleasant as all this may be, it also points to a rather glaring defect in the argument for a return to normalcy: No matter how much we might wish to take a holiday from history, history probably has other plans.
None of this, however, seems to have made the slightest impression on politicians who speak as though it's still September 10. As Kerry put it in a recent appearance on Larry King, "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young American soldiers were not deployed?"--the clear implication being that, if we concentrate hard enough, the world around us will disappear. Hence, when asked during the primaries about the threat of terrorism, Kerry responded, "I think there has been an exaggeration." (It was left to his future running mate to point out, "It's just hard for me to see how you can say there's an exaggeration when thousands of people lost their lives on September 11.") Still, when Kerry makes the fight for America's nurses a centerpiece of his campaign--and when Edwards goes an entire primary season with barely a mention of events beyond our shores--they're hardly spinning political strategy out of whole cloth. When it comes to civic habits and public policy priorities, after all, most of us have picked up exactly where we left off three years ago.
On this count, there's enough blame to go around. It was none other than President Bush who exhorted us in the days after 9/11 to "get down to Disney World in Florida" and to "enjoy life." Which is exactly what most of us--the notable exception being members of the armed forces and their families--proceeded to do. Long gone are surveys from 2001 in which majorities cite terrorism as the key issue of the day. A Pew poll last month found that both Republicans and Democrats rate the economy as the most important issue and that, among Democrats, terrorism ranks somewhere behind health care and education. A series of Gallup polls last year showed that, as 9/11 faded into memory, so too did people's inclination even to display an American flag. True, the same polls show that some groups still attach primary importance to the war on terror: residents of rural areas, evangelical Christians, southerners. But, for most Americans, what homeland security czar Tom Ridge refers to as "the new normalcy" feels nothing so much like the old normalcy.
As to where all this leads, we would do well to cast a glance backward, for this is hardly the first time Americans have yearned for a return to normalcy--even when circumstances do not justify such a return. The phrase comes from Warren Harding, and it became a mantra of the post-World War I era and a rallying cry for isolationists of the period. But normalcy turned out to be in the eye of the beholder, and the Japanese put its interwar version to rest on December 7, 1941. The motto enjoyed a brief vogue after World War II, but soon enough Soviet expansionism put it to rest once more. After Vietnam, it returned yet again. President Carter congratulated America for having overcome its "inordinate fear of communism" as well as the "belief that Soviet expansion was almost inevitable and that it must be contained." Alas, while Carter was burbling about academic fads like the North-South divide between rich and poor, America's foe was busy invading Afghanistan and fomenting revolution in Latin America.
The final return to normalcy came during the 1990s, when President Clinton entered office pledging to "focus like a laser" on the economy. This had a direct bearing on foreign policy, for as Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff explained, "We simply don't have the leverage, we don't have the influence, we don't have the inclination to use military forces, we certainly don't have the money" to settle global crises. Or, as the President explained, "We've simply got to focus on rebuilding America." As for the international scene, Clinton reduced it to a simple narrative of material progress and moral improvement, the benefits of which would be glimpsed in a New Middle East, an African Renaissance, and a strategic partnership with China. This interregnum, too, came to a close on September 11.
So here we are again, as if nothing has been remembered and nothing learned. Or maybe not. With an eye to the presidential election--and a Kerry victory--a debate has emerged among Washington foreign policy types. On one side, The Weekly Standard's Robert Kagan and a number of Kerry aides insist that, regardless of who wins the election, continuity will be the order of the day. In this telling, for all his complaints about the Bush team's "arrogant" response to the war on terror and America's bind in Iraq, Kerry won't have much room to maneuver when it comes to these and other issues. Bush, after all, entered office pledging a "humble" foreign policy but quickly discovered that humility doesn't provide an adequate response to the challenges that America faces abroad. On the other side, the Bush team and Kerry himself predict a fundamental break--an impression that Kerry's well-chronicled distaste for democracy promotion and his flat out declaration this week that "I am against the war" in Iraq has only encouraged. Which camp is right? To paraphrase a memorable Trotsky quotation, Americans may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is definitely interested in them. As much as we might wish for a return to normalcy, the other side gets the final say.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at TNR.
Normal Distribution
by Lawrence F. Kaplan
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.15.04
John Edwards has a point: There really are two Americas. One is at war. One is not. As for which America Edwards and John Kerry intend to mine for votes, the answer may be gleaned from, among other places, their campaign mantra, "Let America be America Again." Neatly summarizing the point Kerry and Edwards mean to convey, Slate's Mickey Kaus writes that the "message is that America wants a respite from all the headstrong history-making of the past four years." The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan makes a similar argument. Concerned about President Bush's election prospects, she writes:
History has been too dramatic the past 3 1/2 years. It has been too exciting. Economic recession, 9/11, war, Afghanistan, Iraq, fighting with Europe, fighting with the U.N., boys going off to fight, Pat Tillman, beheadings. It has been so exciting. And my general sense of Americans is that we like things to be boring.
Now, exciting might not be the perfect adjective here--horrifying seems closer to the truth--but Noonan is on to something. After eight years of micro-initiatives, school uniforms, soccer moms, and books about the end of history and the obsolescence of war, Americans have been drowning in history since September 11. Unpleasant as all this may be, it also points to a rather glaring defect in the argument for a return to normalcy: No matter how much we might wish to take a holiday from history, history probably has other plans.
None of this, however, seems to have made the slightest impression on politicians who speak as though it's still September 10. As Kerry put it in a recent appearance on Larry King, "What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young American soldiers were not deployed?"--the clear implication being that, if we concentrate hard enough, the world around us will disappear. Hence, when asked during the primaries about the threat of terrorism, Kerry responded, "I think there has been an exaggeration." (It was left to his future running mate to point out, "It's just hard for me to see how you can say there's an exaggeration when thousands of people lost their lives on September 11.") Still, when Kerry makes the fight for America's nurses a centerpiece of his campaign--and when Edwards goes an entire primary season with barely a mention of events beyond our shores--they're hardly spinning political strategy out of whole cloth. When it comes to civic habits and public policy priorities, after all, most of us have picked up exactly where we left off three years ago.
On this count, there's enough blame to go around. It was none other than President Bush who exhorted us in the days after 9/11 to "get down to Disney World in Florida" and to "enjoy life." Which is exactly what most of us--the notable exception being members of the armed forces and their families--proceeded to do. Long gone are surveys from 2001 in which majorities cite terrorism as the key issue of the day. A Pew poll last month found that both Republicans and Democrats rate the economy as the most important issue and that, among Democrats, terrorism ranks somewhere behind health care and education. A series of Gallup polls last year showed that, as 9/11 faded into memory, so too did people's inclination even to display an American flag. True, the same polls show that some groups still attach primary importance to the war on terror: residents of rural areas, evangelical Christians, southerners. But, for most Americans, what homeland security czar Tom Ridge refers to as "the new normalcy" feels nothing so much like the old normalcy.
As to where all this leads, we would do well to cast a glance backward, for this is hardly the first time Americans have yearned for a return to normalcy--even when circumstances do not justify such a return. The phrase comes from Warren Harding, and it became a mantra of the post-World War I era and a rallying cry for isolationists of the period. But normalcy turned out to be in the eye of the beholder, and the Japanese put its interwar version to rest on December 7, 1941. The motto enjoyed a brief vogue after World War II, but soon enough Soviet expansionism put it to rest once more. After Vietnam, it returned yet again. President Carter congratulated America for having overcome its "inordinate fear of communism" as well as the "belief that Soviet expansion was almost inevitable and that it must be contained." Alas, while Carter was burbling about academic fads like the North-South divide between rich and poor, America's foe was busy invading Afghanistan and fomenting revolution in Latin America.
The final return to normalcy came during the 1990s, when President Clinton entered office pledging to "focus like a laser" on the economy. This had a direct bearing on foreign policy, for as Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff explained, "We simply don't have the leverage, we don't have the influence, we don't have the inclination to use military forces, we certainly don't have the money" to settle global crises. Or, as the President explained, "We've simply got to focus on rebuilding America." As for the international scene, Clinton reduced it to a simple narrative of material progress and moral improvement, the benefits of which would be glimpsed in a New Middle East, an African Renaissance, and a strategic partnership with China. This interregnum, too, came to a close on September 11.
So here we are again, as if nothing has been remembered and nothing learned. Or maybe not. With an eye to the presidential election--and a Kerry victory--a debate has emerged among Washington foreign policy types. On one side, The Weekly Standard's Robert Kagan and a number of Kerry aides insist that, regardless of who wins the election, continuity will be the order of the day. In this telling, for all his complaints about the Bush team's "arrogant" response to the war on terror and America's bind in Iraq, Kerry won't have much room to maneuver when it comes to these and other issues. Bush, after all, entered office pledging a "humble" foreign policy but quickly discovered that humility doesn't provide an adequate response to the challenges that America faces abroad. On the other side, the Bush team and Kerry himself predict a fundamental break--an impression that Kerry's well-chronicled distaste for democracy promotion and his flat out declaration this week that "I am against the war" in Iraq has only encouraged. Which camp is right? To paraphrase a memorable Trotsky quotation, Americans may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is definitely interested in them. As much as we might wish for a return to normalcy, the other side gets the final say.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at TNR.
Reflections on the Democratic Ticket
Thanks to Innocents Abroad
If I had a choice, I would not have picked a VP candidate who has the protectionist sympathies that John Edwards has (although god knows they come from the right place emotionally, namely a real, unfaked sympathy for working people). Al Gore was a free trader, and I think at the margins this kept Clinton moving in the right direction in the 90s. I'm worried that, although Kerry is basically a free trader, Edwards will nudge him in the wrong direction. The fact that he was a plaintiff's attorney bothers me, although it could be worse--much worse--since he had a personal injury practice, not handling mass-tort cases. But again, at the margins, if Kerry had any desire to buck the party's most important constituency (along with teachers unions), he wouldn't get a lot of help from Edwards.
That said (!), I'm thrilled. I supported Edwards in the primary, and I genuinely dislike Kerry, so having him on the ticket makes it that much easier to swallow the inevitable (voting Democratic). Everyone who saw him speak on the campaign trail (as I did in New Hampshire, at an absolutely mobbed appearance), had a crush on him. By the time I saw him, the "two nations" thing was becoming sort of old, but it's still precisely the right message, much better than Kerry's lame attacks on Bush's job losses, which is a very ephemeral rhetorical hook. The basic problem, Edwards suggested, was deeper--that the folks running the current administration (for the most part, with exceptions) just have a very different set of interests than in helping the poor or the working class. While Fahrenheit 911 was made by a genuine cretin (in my view), the more people who see the speech where George Bush says to a group of campaign contributors, "some people call you the haves, and the have mores. I call you my base..." the better. It makes Edwards' point precisely--poor and working people are not the base of George W. Bush's party, and they are not the people who most of his administration think of when they put together their policies. This has consequences all the way through the administration's policies, regardless of whether this month's economic numbers are up or down. If I were Kerry, I'd go back to the front porch campaign, stay in Beacon Hill, and just have Edwards hammer away at the Republicans non-stop for 5 months. Unfortunately, protocol dictates that he has to campaign.
Strategically, given that the "hide Kerry in a salt mine" strategy will probably be a non-starter, I would actually be quite focused with what I did with Edwards. I would NOT send him all over the country as a surrogate, to places where Kerry can't reach. Instead, I'd pick a very small number of places and have Edwards become a real, long-term force there. Places where Edwards is likely to go over well, and that are either competitive or close enough to being competitive that it forces the Bush people to run more of a 50 state campaign than they'd like to. Here's my list:
a) Florida panhandle, and pretty much everywhere there's a military base in Florida. Northern Florida is actually part of the South, and for that reason, having Edwards talk about what a great patriot and veteran Kerry is will go over better than having the man do it in person. In addition, the Dems have a good "Bush administration is bad for veterans" issue, even if it is somewhat overblown. Kerry should do fine in Southern and Central Florida, but even picking up a few percentage points in the North would give the campaign a big advantage. 27 electoral votes.
b) Louisiana. An 8 point spread in 2000, I'd have Edwards campaign very hard to raise black turnout here, and do everything he can to come up with a convincing "Kerry is NOT going to take away your guns" riff in the more rural parts of the state. Edwards is much more likely to be able to do this than Kerry, even though Kerry is an (accurate!) hunter. Same story for Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia (although the latter has a much lower black vote than the other two), which were even closer. Together that's 35 electoral votes. Did I mention how important I think neutralizing the gun issue is here?
c) Iowa and Wisconsin. States where Edwards campaigned hard, and where he showed serious support among independents, and where the Democrats won by the smallest of margins in 2000. 17 electoral votes.
That's 79 electoral votes, which is much more than we should think that any vice-presidential candidate could have an effect on. But these are, for the most part, not large states, where something just above retail campaigning is actually possible (with the exception of Florida, and even there, in the places where it matters, like Pensacola, you could spend enough time to have a really major impact on the local media market). And in that context, Edwards is fantastic, and may be able to reach voters who would not otherwise listen to Kerry. Critically, I would dramatically limit Edwards' campaigning everywhere else, except for a few drop-ins on states that are geographically close to the ones above, and similar in their basic political alignment (such as North Carolina, where I don't think Edwards will push the campaign over the top, but where it's worth having him there to try to push up turnout in races down the ticket).
The most important thing, in my mind, is that the Kerry campaign be seen as not allowing Bush to count on a huge chunk of states as already having been locked up before the shooting starts. The more that they attack vigorously in states that are weakly in the red territory, the more it makes the political calculations of the Republicans more difficult. Edwards certainly helps with this in some states (although Bill Richardson, who I preferred for political reasons, would have helped out with a whole other set of states, such as NV, AZ, and CO).
A final thought on Edwards. I think Kerry made a wise decision for one additional reason--the future. Edwards really is a fantastic campaigner, and a smart guy and a quick learner, but green. VP is probably the right place for him, especially if Kerry can figure out a real, serious job to give him (as Clinton did with the reinventing government stuff). If he loses, he'll be ready in 2008, if he wins, he's got eight years of experience in 2012. It is hard to see that there is ANYONE with the package of assets that Edwards has, and therefore it makes sense to put him up on the first tier for the future of the party.
Now if only Edwards could get over his allergy to free trade and tort reform....
-- Steven M. Teles
Thanks to Innocents Abroad
If I had a choice, I would not have picked a VP candidate who has the protectionist sympathies that John Edwards has (although god knows they come from the right place emotionally, namely a real, unfaked sympathy for working people). Al Gore was a free trader, and I think at the margins this kept Clinton moving in the right direction in the 90s. I'm worried that, although Kerry is basically a free trader, Edwards will nudge him in the wrong direction. The fact that he was a plaintiff's attorney bothers me, although it could be worse--much worse--since he had a personal injury practice, not handling mass-tort cases. But again, at the margins, if Kerry had any desire to buck the party's most important constituency (along with teachers unions), he wouldn't get a lot of help from Edwards.
That said (!), I'm thrilled. I supported Edwards in the primary, and I genuinely dislike Kerry, so having him on the ticket makes it that much easier to swallow the inevitable (voting Democratic). Everyone who saw him speak on the campaign trail (as I did in New Hampshire, at an absolutely mobbed appearance), had a crush on him. By the time I saw him, the "two nations" thing was becoming sort of old, but it's still precisely the right message, much better than Kerry's lame attacks on Bush's job losses, which is a very ephemeral rhetorical hook. The basic problem, Edwards suggested, was deeper--that the folks running the current administration (for the most part, with exceptions) just have a very different set of interests than in helping the poor or the working class. While Fahrenheit 911 was made by a genuine cretin (in my view), the more people who see the speech where George Bush says to a group of campaign contributors, "some people call you the haves, and the have mores. I call you my base..." the better. It makes Edwards' point precisely--poor and working people are not the base of George W. Bush's party, and they are not the people who most of his administration think of when they put together their policies. This has consequences all the way through the administration's policies, regardless of whether this month's economic numbers are up or down. If I were Kerry, I'd go back to the front porch campaign, stay in Beacon Hill, and just have Edwards hammer away at the Republicans non-stop for 5 months. Unfortunately, protocol dictates that he has to campaign.
Strategically, given that the "hide Kerry in a salt mine" strategy will probably be a non-starter, I would actually be quite focused with what I did with Edwards. I would NOT send him all over the country as a surrogate, to places where Kerry can't reach. Instead, I'd pick a very small number of places and have Edwards become a real, long-term force there. Places where Edwards is likely to go over well, and that are either competitive or close enough to being competitive that it forces the Bush people to run more of a 50 state campaign than they'd like to. Here's my list:
a) Florida panhandle, and pretty much everywhere there's a military base in Florida. Northern Florida is actually part of the South, and for that reason, having Edwards talk about what a great patriot and veteran Kerry is will go over better than having the man do it in person. In addition, the Dems have a good "Bush administration is bad for veterans" issue, even if it is somewhat overblown. Kerry should do fine in Southern and Central Florida, but even picking up a few percentage points in the North would give the campaign a big advantage. 27 electoral votes.
b) Louisiana. An 8 point spread in 2000, I'd have Edwards campaign very hard to raise black turnout here, and do everything he can to come up with a convincing "Kerry is NOT going to take away your guns" riff in the more rural parts of the state. Edwards is much more likely to be able to do this than Kerry, even though Kerry is an (accurate!) hunter. Same story for Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia (although the latter has a much lower black vote than the other two), which were even closer. Together that's 35 electoral votes. Did I mention how important I think neutralizing the gun issue is here?
c) Iowa and Wisconsin. States where Edwards campaigned hard, and where he showed serious support among independents, and where the Democrats won by the smallest of margins in 2000. 17 electoral votes.
That's 79 electoral votes, which is much more than we should think that any vice-presidential candidate could have an effect on. But these are, for the most part, not large states, where something just above retail campaigning is actually possible (with the exception of Florida, and even there, in the places where it matters, like Pensacola, you could spend enough time to have a really major impact on the local media market). And in that context, Edwards is fantastic, and may be able to reach voters who would not otherwise listen to Kerry. Critically, I would dramatically limit Edwards' campaigning everywhere else, except for a few drop-ins on states that are geographically close to the ones above, and similar in their basic political alignment (such as North Carolina, where I don't think Edwards will push the campaign over the top, but where it's worth having him there to try to push up turnout in races down the ticket).
The most important thing, in my mind, is that the Kerry campaign be seen as not allowing Bush to count on a huge chunk of states as already having been locked up before the shooting starts. The more that they attack vigorously in states that are weakly in the red territory, the more it makes the political calculations of the Republicans more difficult. Edwards certainly helps with this in some states (although Bill Richardson, who I preferred for political reasons, would have helped out with a whole other set of states, such as NV, AZ, and CO).
A final thought on Edwards. I think Kerry made a wise decision for one additional reason--the future. Edwards really is a fantastic campaigner, and a smart guy and a quick learner, but green. VP is probably the right place for him, especially if Kerry can figure out a real, serious job to give him (as Clinton did with the reinventing government stuff). If he loses, he'll be ready in 2008, if he wins, he's got eight years of experience in 2012. It is hard to see that there is ANYONE with the package of assets that Edwards has, and therefore it makes sense to put him up on the first tier for the future of the party.
Now if only Edwards could get over his allergy to free trade and tort reform....
-- Steven M. Teles
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
John Kerry, Reactionary
By Thomas Donnelly, Vance Serchuk
The Weekly Standard
Publication Date: July 19, 2004
With his July 4 op-ed in the Washington Post, "A Realistic Path in Iraq," presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry lays claim to being the genuinely conservative foreign-policy voice in this fall's election. Arguing that, in Iraq and in the greater Middle East, the United States needs "a policy that finally includes a heavy dose of realism," Kerry sounds more like Henry Kissinger than the Massachusetts liberal of Republican party dreams.
There's undoubtedly a good deal of campaign strategy in this. The idea of attacking Bush from the right is just the sort of man-bites-dog angle that appeals equally to Beltway political junkies and journalists. In any event, it makes the 2004 election not just a referendum on Iraq per se, but on the principles that should guide the use of American power in the world. The contest is between Bush the revolutionary and Kerry the reactionary.
The "realism" of Kerry's July 4 column comes as no surprise to those who have followed the senator's campaign. For several months, Kerry has downplayed democracy in Iraq, insisting, "I have always said from day one . . . that the goal here is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy." The idea that the greater Middle East suffers from a freedom deficit has found little resonance with Kerry; speaking with the editors of the Washington Post, he explained that, if elected, he would emphasize political reform and human rights in Egypt and Saudi Arabia less than traditional U.S. interests such as "general stability in the Middle East."
Writing in the New Republic this spring, Franklin Foer made a persuasive case that Kerry learned his realism at an early age, from his father. Richard Kerry spent much of his professional life as a foreign service officer, and seems to have imbibed the antidemocratic habits of that trade. Richard Kerry's 1990 memoir, The Star-Spangled Mirror, complained about excessive American moralism in international affairs. The United States, wrote Kerry p?re, committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" throughout the Cold War and failed "to see the parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world and the Soviet uses of military power outside the Soviet Union." The book concludes, reports Foer, in "a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral authority."
Joshua Micah Marshall, in an article in the current Atlantic Monthly, likens Kerry's realist attitudes to those of George Bush senior and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. It's a comparison that Rand Beers, Kerry's top foreign policy adviser, and another Kerry aide, Dan Feldman, welcome.
Part of the allure of this ideology is that it's supposed to be the "mature" approach to national security policy: sober, coolly calculating, and adult. And indeed to social scientists of the realist persuasion, their understanding of international politics is less a matter of choice than a description of the world: All actors on the world stage are governed by a Leviathan-like logic propelling them to maximize their own power. All states, regardless of their internal politics (democracy, dictatorship, whatever), act in accordance with the dictates of power, and all seeming differences in international behavior can be explained in this way if fully investigated and correctly understood.
The gods of realism of the nineteenth century--Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck--were the masters of realpolitik and the balance of power, wherein process and purpose are often hard to distinguish. These were great statesmen, to be sure, but their talents were at the service of deeply conservative regimes increasingly more fearful of their own people than of their fellow kings and kaisers.
Translated through the works and careers of the "wise men" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, then of Henry Kissinger, these attitudes wormed their way into American strategy-making. Fittingly, Kerry's op-ed urged that we "look back at NATO and the Marshall Plan, the enduring creations of the Truman administration." Never mind that this analysis leaves out half the story--neglecting, for example, the Truman Doctrine, which unilaterally pledged American support to "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures"; the decision to fight in Korea; and NSC-68, which "militarized" the Cold War. Hans Morgenthau, dean of American realists, forcefully argued against each of these policies, and Dean Acheson routinely complained of Truman's annoying habit of seeing the Cold War in moral terms, of making bold speeches "clearer than truth."
The Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente with the Soviet Union remains perhaps the purest American example of the practice of realism. It sought simply to manage the relationship with the Soviet Union by "balancing" the Communists in Moscow with the Communists in Beijing. It was in these years that "moral equivalence" between East and West slipped into the mainstream of U.S. strategic thought, and so a critique advanced by left-wing dissenters during the Vietnam years was adopted by a right-wing administration in the White House. Not even Ronald Reagan could thoroughly uproot this entrenched ideology, for with the collapse of the Soviet empire, many realists pressed to maintain the balance of power--by restraining America.
Thus, Senator Kerry, in voting against the first Gulf War, explained that he feared the conflict would augur a "new world order" in which the United States would shoulder disproportionate responsibility. "Can it really be said that we are building a new world order when it is almost exclusively the United States who will be fighting in the desert, not alone but almost, displaying pride and impatience and implementing what essentially amounts to a Pax Americana?"
For the past decade, this fear of American power has defined political realists of both parties. Steeped in an understanding of international politics that held balancing as the highest virtue, this analysis warned against "hyperpower" and jumped excitedly at the slightest sign of its decline--whether absolute or relative. Our hegemony was itself marginally more tolerable during the Clinton years, when the president and his lieutenants were content to lecture the world on theories of "assertive multilateralism," and threats against the U.S. homeland appeared less pressing. (Notably, however, after President Clinton in his second inaugural address described the United States as "the indispensable nation," Senator Kerry reportedly recoiled, asking an aide: "Why are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?")
Initially, of course, George W. Bush seemed the very model of a modern, post-Cold War realist. During his campaign, his foreign policy advisers--the so-called Vulcans--adopted the same disdain for the puerile vanities of a moralistic foreign policy as many conservative critics of President Clinton. But since 9/11, the realists think the president has lost his perspective. As Lawrence Kaplan has observed, the insurgency in Iraq has ushered in a "springtime for realism," complete with a Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Founding member Gary Hart sniffs: "The extravagance, not to say the arrogance of this epic undertaking [of transforming the greater Middle East] is sufficiently breathtaking in its hubris to make Woodrow Wilson blush."
Alas, in a one-superpower world, it's hard to be a humble hegemon. But the problem is not just that realism fails as an assessment of the actual balance of power--the United States enjoys an unprecedented preponderance of strength, a fact that will not soon change, regardless of what happens in either Iraq or the White House. The root of the problem is that "realism" of this sort is deeply at odds with both American political principles and American national interests.
There is a reason that Richard Kerry felt himself a "dissident" from the "intensely moral outlook" of the Cold War. In the long twilight struggle against the Soviet Union, it was Americans' faith in the universality of liberty, capitalism, and self-determination that sustained our commitments to like-minded allies around the world and weakened our enemies, ultimately converting them to our principles. But just as realism disdained that broader war of ideas, today it disparages the intensely moralistic outlook of President Bush and the "forward strategy of freedom" he has articulated in the fight against Islamist terrorism.
Perhaps, for many on the left, this is simply the expression of an intense loathing for President Bush. Still, it is notable that the Kerry camp--presumably more clear-eyed about such matters--is attacking less the often-bumbling means by which the administration has tried to bring democracy to Iraq, than the wisdom of the effort itself. Rand Beers, Kerry's top foreign policy adviser, recently told the Los Angeles Times, "We have been concerned for some time that Bush's position about having some kind of democratic state [in Iraq] was too heroic."
To be sure, there is a huge risk of hubris in attempting to foster democratization across the greater Middle East--a danger that the Bush administration has not appreciated as keenly as it should. Yet the status quo is intolerable, and there are worse offenses than excessive ambition in trying to change it. And just when did the American left begin to sneer at heroic efforts to improve the world?
The deeper problem for realists, of course, is that American interests and American principles are inextricably bound together in Iraq. Iraqis' tolerance of foreign troops has always dangled on the thread of the belief that the United States will help empower the Iraqi people, not consign them to life under yet another strongman. In particular, the support of the majority Shia has been contingent on U.S. guarantees of democratic elections. Should we retreat from these assurances, it will destroy the very stability that the realists claim to prize.
If the terms "liberal" and "conservative" still had any meaning in American foreign policy, George Bush would happily style himself the true liberal--the radical, even--in the upcoming election and paint Kerry as the conservative, the reactionary. Indeed, it's hard to conceive of anything more repugnant to American principles--or blind to American interests--than "conserving" the current political order in the Middle East.
It is one thing to argue that strategy and statecraft demand that we pick our fights carefully, with a due regard for the sacrifices Americans will be asked to make in blood and treasure. It is another altogether to say that prudence demands that we pick our principles so as to avoid sacrifice. Always shameful, such a position is also, in a post-9/11 world, profoundly unrealistic.
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow, and Vance Serchuk a research associate, in defense and security policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
By Thomas Donnelly, Vance Serchuk
The Weekly Standard
Publication Date: July 19, 2004
With his July 4 op-ed in the Washington Post, "A Realistic Path in Iraq," presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry lays claim to being the genuinely conservative foreign-policy voice in this fall's election. Arguing that, in Iraq and in the greater Middle East, the United States needs "a policy that finally includes a heavy dose of realism," Kerry sounds more like Henry Kissinger than the Massachusetts liberal of Republican party dreams.
There's undoubtedly a good deal of campaign strategy in this. The idea of attacking Bush from the right is just the sort of man-bites-dog angle that appeals equally to Beltway political junkies and journalists. In any event, it makes the 2004 election not just a referendum on Iraq per se, but on the principles that should guide the use of American power in the world. The contest is between Bush the revolutionary and Kerry the reactionary.
The "realism" of Kerry's July 4 column comes as no surprise to those who have followed the senator's campaign. For several months, Kerry has downplayed democracy in Iraq, insisting, "I have always said from day one . . . that the goal here is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that's a full democracy." The idea that the greater Middle East suffers from a freedom deficit has found little resonance with Kerry; speaking with the editors of the Washington Post, he explained that, if elected, he would emphasize political reform and human rights in Egypt and Saudi Arabia less than traditional U.S. interests such as "general stability in the Middle East."
Writing in the New Republic this spring, Franklin Foer made a persuasive case that Kerry learned his realism at an early age, from his father. Richard Kerry spent much of his professional life as a foreign service officer, and seems to have imbibed the antidemocratic habits of that trade. Richard Kerry's 1990 memoir, The Star-Spangled Mirror, complained about excessive American moralism in international affairs. The United States, wrote Kerry p?re, committed the "fatal error" of "propagating democracy" throughout the Cold War and failed "to see the parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world and the Soviet uses of military power outside the Soviet Union." The book concludes, reports Foer, in "a plea for a hardheaded, realist foreign policy that removes any pretense of U.S. moral authority."
Joshua Micah Marshall, in an article in the current Atlantic Monthly, likens Kerry's realist attitudes to those of George Bush senior and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. It's a comparison that Rand Beers, Kerry's top foreign policy adviser, and another Kerry aide, Dan Feldman, welcome.
Part of the allure of this ideology is that it's supposed to be the "mature" approach to national security policy: sober, coolly calculating, and adult. And indeed to social scientists of the realist persuasion, their understanding of international politics is less a matter of choice than a description of the world: All actors on the world stage are governed by a Leviathan-like logic propelling them to maximize their own power. All states, regardless of their internal politics (democracy, dictatorship, whatever), act in accordance with the dictates of power, and all seeming differences in international behavior can be explained in this way if fully investigated and correctly understood.
The gods of realism of the nineteenth century--Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck--were the masters of realpolitik and the balance of power, wherein process and purpose are often hard to distinguish. These were great statesmen, to be sure, but their talents were at the service of deeply conservative regimes increasingly more fearful of their own people than of their fellow kings and kaisers.
Translated through the works and careers of the "wise men" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, then of Henry Kissinger, these attitudes wormed their way into American strategy-making. Fittingly, Kerry's op-ed urged that we "look back at NATO and the Marshall Plan, the enduring creations of the Truman administration." Never mind that this analysis leaves out half the story--neglecting, for example, the Truman Doctrine, which unilaterally pledged American support to "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures"; the decision to fight in Korea; and NSC-68, which "militarized" the Cold War. Hans Morgenthau, dean of American realists, forcefully argued against each of these policies, and Dean Acheson routinely complained of Truman's annoying habit of seeing the Cold War in moral terms, of making bold speeches "clearer than truth."
The Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente with the Soviet Union remains perhaps the purest American example of the practice of realism. It sought simply to manage the relationship with the Soviet Union by "balancing" the Communists in Moscow with the Communists in Beijing. It was in these years that "moral equivalence" between East and West slipped into the mainstream of U.S. strategic thought, and so a critique advanced by left-wing dissenters during the Vietnam years was adopted by a right-wing administration in the White House. Not even Ronald Reagan could thoroughly uproot this entrenched ideology, for with the collapse of the Soviet empire, many realists pressed to maintain the balance of power--by restraining America.
Thus, Senator Kerry, in voting against the first Gulf War, explained that he feared the conflict would augur a "new world order" in which the United States would shoulder disproportionate responsibility. "Can it really be said that we are building a new world order when it is almost exclusively the United States who will be fighting in the desert, not alone but almost, displaying pride and impatience and implementing what essentially amounts to a Pax Americana?"
For the past decade, this fear of American power has defined political realists of both parties. Steeped in an understanding of international politics that held balancing as the highest virtue, this analysis warned against "hyperpower" and jumped excitedly at the slightest sign of its decline--whether absolute or relative. Our hegemony was itself marginally more tolerable during the Clinton years, when the president and his lieutenants were content to lecture the world on theories of "assertive multilateralism," and threats against the U.S. homeland appeared less pressing. (Notably, however, after President Clinton in his second inaugural address described the United States as "the indispensable nation," Senator Kerry reportedly recoiled, asking an aide: "Why are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?")
Initially, of course, George W. Bush seemed the very model of a modern, post-Cold War realist. During his campaign, his foreign policy advisers--the so-called Vulcans--adopted the same disdain for the puerile vanities of a moralistic foreign policy as many conservative critics of President Clinton. But since 9/11, the realists think the president has lost his perspective. As Lawrence Kaplan has observed, the insurgency in Iraq has ushered in a "springtime for realism," complete with a Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Founding member Gary Hart sniffs: "The extravagance, not to say the arrogance of this epic undertaking [of transforming the greater Middle East] is sufficiently breathtaking in its hubris to make Woodrow Wilson blush."
Alas, in a one-superpower world, it's hard to be a humble hegemon. But the problem is not just that realism fails as an assessment of the actual balance of power--the United States enjoys an unprecedented preponderance of strength, a fact that will not soon change, regardless of what happens in either Iraq or the White House. The root of the problem is that "realism" of this sort is deeply at odds with both American political principles and American national interests.
There is a reason that Richard Kerry felt himself a "dissident" from the "intensely moral outlook" of the Cold War. In the long twilight struggle against the Soviet Union, it was Americans' faith in the universality of liberty, capitalism, and self-determination that sustained our commitments to like-minded allies around the world and weakened our enemies, ultimately converting them to our principles. But just as realism disdained that broader war of ideas, today it disparages the intensely moralistic outlook of President Bush and the "forward strategy of freedom" he has articulated in the fight against Islamist terrorism.
Perhaps, for many on the left, this is simply the expression of an intense loathing for President Bush. Still, it is notable that the Kerry camp--presumably more clear-eyed about such matters--is attacking less the often-bumbling means by which the administration has tried to bring democracy to Iraq, than the wisdom of the effort itself. Rand Beers, Kerry's top foreign policy adviser, recently told the Los Angeles Times, "We have been concerned for some time that Bush's position about having some kind of democratic state [in Iraq] was too heroic."
To be sure, there is a huge risk of hubris in attempting to foster democratization across the greater Middle East--a danger that the Bush administration has not appreciated as keenly as it should. Yet the status quo is intolerable, and there are worse offenses than excessive ambition in trying to change it. And just when did the American left begin to sneer at heroic efforts to improve the world?
The deeper problem for realists, of course, is that American interests and American principles are inextricably bound together in Iraq. Iraqis' tolerance of foreign troops has always dangled on the thread of the belief that the United States will help empower the Iraqi people, not consign them to life under yet another strongman. In particular, the support of the majority Shia has been contingent on U.S. guarantees of democratic elections. Should we retreat from these assurances, it will destroy the very stability that the realists claim to prize.
If the terms "liberal" and "conservative" still had any meaning in American foreign policy, George Bush would happily style himself the true liberal--the radical, even--in the upcoming election and paint Kerry as the conservative, the reactionary. Indeed, it's hard to conceive of anything more repugnant to American principles--or blind to American interests--than "conserving" the current political order in the Middle East.
It is one thing to argue that strategy and statecraft demand that we pick our fights carefully, with a due regard for the sacrifices Americans will be asked to make in blood and treasure. It is another altogether to say that prudence demands that we pick our principles so as to avoid sacrifice. Always shameful, such a position is also, in a post-9/11 world, profoundly unrealistic.
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow, and Vance Serchuk a research associate, in defense and security policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Civilization vs. Trivia
Sometimes life’s choices are simple.
Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.
Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.
Surely, the slow emergence of real civilization in Iraq is one of the seminal events in the history of an Arab and Muslim Middle East that has had no prior record of either consensual government or an independent judiciary. Unlike Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, a global criminal is facing his victims in a legitimate court administered by the beginnings of a free republican government. The more Washington, D.C., insiders insist that the transfer of power was a meaningless construct, the more we are beginning to see the future shape of an autonomous, free, and civilized Iraq. Don't listen to cynical American reporters and played-out professors who laugh at the idea of civilization. Watch instead how dictators and monarchs in the region recoil at it all. After all, such autocrats have lots to worry about: 70 percent of the world is democratic; excluding Israel, 0 percent of the Middle East is.
In response to the historic events of the week, one columnist for the New York Times decried George Bush's pronunciation of "Eye-rack." Another pundit trumped that profundity by whining that Bush had written "Let Freedom Reign," rather than "Ring" — a verb that, had Mr. Bush employed it, she would most likely have denounced as a hackneyed cliché.
At a time when tens of thousands are risking their lives to end the barbarism that has spawned a quarter century of worldwide terror, the New York Times wishes us to know that its columnists can properly pronounce Iraq and really do remember that freedom "rings" more often than "reigns."
Meanwhile, an even smugger Billy Crystal was introducing the billionaire John Kerry at a millionaires' banquet in L.A. with similar gravitas — comparing 9/11 to the president's SAT scores. Oh yes, 3,000 incinerated on September 11 add up to the president's combined SAT score. Analyze that: comparing charred corpses to multiple-choice tests taken by high-school seniors.
The message of this out-of-touch, spoiled idiotocracy seems to be something like, "How embarrassing for us to have an inarticulate president who has freed Iraq and inaugurated democracy in Saddam's place." Are all these people crazy and ignorant of history — or do they simply want a free civilized Iraq and the American soldiers who brought it about to fail?
Do the trivialists want Saddam and the Taliban back in power? Does a Mr. Allawi repulse them? Do they wish 10,000 American troops back in Saudi Arabia? Perhaps they want Libya to resume its work on nukes? Do they care whether Dr. Khan returns to his lab? Or do they think it is child's play to hike back through the Dark Ages into the Pakistani borderlands looking for bin Laden? And is it all that easy to have prevented another 9/11 attack for almost three years now of constant vigilance? Perhaps they would like to deal with the corrupt, duplicitous, and tottering Saudi Royal family, which just happens to sit on 25 percent of the world's oil reserves — without whose daily production the economies of Japan, Korea, and China would almost immediately grind to a halt.
Only belatedly has John Kerry grasped that his shrill supporters are often not just trivial but stark-raving mad. If he doesn't quickly jump into some Levis, shoot off a shotgun, and start hanging out in Ohio, he will lose this election and do so badly.
The war that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards once caricatured as a fiasco and amoral is now, for all its tragedies, emerging in some sort of historical perspective as a long-overdue liberation. At some point, one must choose: Saddam in chains or Saddam in power. And the former does not happen with rhetoric, but only through risk, occasional heartbreak, and the courage of the U.S. military. If Iyad Allawi and his brave government succeed — and they just may — the United States will have done more for world freedom and civilization than the fall of the Berlin Wall — and against far greater odds. Deanism is dead. Moorism is a fatal contagion that will ruin anyone it infects.
Kerry is only now starting to grasp that a year from now Iraq more likely will not be Vietnam, but maybe the most radical development of our time — and that all the Left's harping is becoming more and more irrelevant. Witness his talk of security and his newfound embrace of the post-9/11 effort as a war rather than a DA's indictment. It is not a good idea to plan on winning in November by expecting us to lose now in Iraq.
So John Kerry is starting to get it that the conventional ignorance of Michael Moore, the New York Times, and George Soros is already anachronistic. You can see that well enough when a grandee like Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, or a Nightline flunky starts in with the usual cheap, cynical hits against Iraq reformers — only to be stunned mid-sentence, like deer in the headlights, with the sense that they are berating noble and sincere men and women — far better folk than themselves — who at risk to their lives are crafting something entirely new in the Middle East.
There is a great divide unfolding between the engine of history and the dumbfounded spectators who are apparently furious at what is going on before their eyes. Mr. Bush's flight suit, Abu Ghraib, claims of "no al Qaeda-Saddam ties," Joe Wilson, and still more come and go while millions a world away inch toward consensual government and civilization.
For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1964 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance. Instead of the "innocent" Rosenbergs and "framed" Alger Hiss we now get the whisk-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country conspiracy. Michael Moore is a poor substitute for the upfront buffoonery of Abbie Hoffman.
The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.
This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.
Sometimes life's choices really are that simple.
Sometimes life’s choices are simple.
Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.
Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.
Surely, the slow emergence of real civilization in Iraq is one of the seminal events in the history of an Arab and Muslim Middle East that has had no prior record of either consensual government or an independent judiciary. Unlike Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, a global criminal is facing his victims in a legitimate court administered by the beginnings of a free republican government. The more Washington, D.C., insiders insist that the transfer of power was a meaningless construct, the more we are beginning to see the future shape of an autonomous, free, and civilized Iraq. Don't listen to cynical American reporters and played-out professors who laugh at the idea of civilization. Watch instead how dictators and monarchs in the region recoil at it all. After all, such autocrats have lots to worry about: 70 percent of the world is democratic; excluding Israel, 0 percent of the Middle East is.
In response to the historic events of the week, one columnist for the New York Times decried George Bush's pronunciation of "Eye-rack." Another pundit trumped that profundity by whining that Bush had written "Let Freedom Reign," rather than "Ring" — a verb that, had Mr. Bush employed it, she would most likely have denounced as a hackneyed cliché.
At a time when tens of thousands are risking their lives to end the barbarism that has spawned a quarter century of worldwide terror, the New York Times wishes us to know that its columnists can properly pronounce Iraq and really do remember that freedom "rings" more often than "reigns."
Meanwhile, an even smugger Billy Crystal was introducing the billionaire John Kerry at a millionaires' banquet in L.A. with similar gravitas — comparing 9/11 to the president's SAT scores. Oh yes, 3,000 incinerated on September 11 add up to the president's combined SAT score. Analyze that: comparing charred corpses to multiple-choice tests taken by high-school seniors.
The message of this out-of-touch, spoiled idiotocracy seems to be something like, "How embarrassing for us to have an inarticulate president who has freed Iraq and inaugurated democracy in Saddam's place." Are all these people crazy and ignorant of history — or do they simply want a free civilized Iraq and the American soldiers who brought it about to fail?
Do the trivialists want Saddam and the Taliban back in power? Does a Mr. Allawi repulse them? Do they wish 10,000 American troops back in Saudi Arabia? Perhaps they want Libya to resume its work on nukes? Do they care whether Dr. Khan returns to his lab? Or do they think it is child's play to hike back through the Dark Ages into the Pakistani borderlands looking for bin Laden? And is it all that easy to have prevented another 9/11 attack for almost three years now of constant vigilance? Perhaps they would like to deal with the corrupt, duplicitous, and tottering Saudi Royal family, which just happens to sit on 25 percent of the world's oil reserves — without whose daily production the economies of Japan, Korea, and China would almost immediately grind to a halt.
Only belatedly has John Kerry grasped that his shrill supporters are often not just trivial but stark-raving mad. If he doesn't quickly jump into some Levis, shoot off a shotgun, and start hanging out in Ohio, he will lose this election and do so badly.
The war that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards once caricatured as a fiasco and amoral is now, for all its tragedies, emerging in some sort of historical perspective as a long-overdue liberation. At some point, one must choose: Saddam in chains or Saddam in power. And the former does not happen with rhetoric, but only through risk, occasional heartbreak, and the courage of the U.S. military. If Iyad Allawi and his brave government succeed — and they just may — the United States will have done more for world freedom and civilization than the fall of the Berlin Wall — and against far greater odds. Deanism is dead. Moorism is a fatal contagion that will ruin anyone it infects.
Kerry is only now starting to grasp that a year from now Iraq more likely will not be Vietnam, but maybe the most radical development of our time — and that all the Left's harping is becoming more and more irrelevant. Witness his talk of security and his newfound embrace of the post-9/11 effort as a war rather than a DA's indictment. It is not a good idea to plan on winning in November by expecting us to lose now in Iraq.
So John Kerry is starting to get it that the conventional ignorance of Michael Moore, the New York Times, and George Soros is already anachronistic. You can see that well enough when a grandee like Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, or a Nightline flunky starts in with the usual cheap, cynical hits against Iraq reformers — only to be stunned mid-sentence, like deer in the headlights, with the sense that they are berating noble and sincere men and women — far better folk than themselves — who at risk to their lives are crafting something entirely new in the Middle East.
There is a great divide unfolding between the engine of history and the dumbfounded spectators who are apparently furious at what is going on before their eyes. Mr. Bush's flight suit, Abu Ghraib, claims of "no al Qaeda-Saddam ties," Joe Wilson, and still more come and go while millions a world away inch toward consensual government and civilization.
For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1964 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance. Instead of the "innocent" Rosenbergs and "framed" Alger Hiss we now get the whisk-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country conspiracy. Michael Moore is a poor substitute for the upfront buffoonery of Abbie Hoffman.
The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.
This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.
Sometimes life's choices really are that simple.
