The end of internationalism? Posted by Derek Chollet

Ok, so the header is intentionally over-the-top.  But after reflecting on the Administration’s latest PR offensive on Iraq – it seems like they roll out a new one every other week, but the polls keep slipping – and how their unrelenting happy talk veers further and further away from reality, I’m in a gloomy mood.

In today’s New York Times, Anthony Cordesman, Washington’s straightest shooting military analyst, nails it.  "The problem with the [Bush] speeches [on Iraq] is they get gradually more realistic, but they are still exercises in spin…They don't outline the risks. They don't create a climate where people trust what's being said."

I very much agree with Heather’s thoughts below that many Americans are simply, in her word, “done” with Iraq, and that this fact makes our realistic options rather limited.  Most things in foreign policy always seem to fall into one of three categories – breakdown, breakthrough, or muddle through, and Iraq is clearly a muddle.

As if the news of the day weren’t depressing enough, what is just as concerning over the long term is the last point Cordesman raises: the erosion of trust that Americans have in their government -- and both the Bush Administration and the Democratic opposition -- when it comes to national security.

This certainly shapes today’s debate about Iraq, but it also has a much deeper impact.  Because what seems to be happening is that both the Left and the Right are becoming more suspicious, cautious, or skeptical about America’s institutions and engagement abroad.  Widely reported polls show it.  And I’ve been amazed to hear not just conservative skepticism about promoting democracy abroad, but progressives arguing that it is not be in our interests (seeming to forget the lessons of the Clinton years).  So even if our strategists and leaders were more focused on other challenges, it begs the question of whether they could create and sustain the domestic support to do much about them. 

To be sure, healthy public skepticism is critical to democratic governance – we want the public to question leaders and hold them accountable.  But the question is whether this might go too far, especially as these questions get shaped by the 2006 (and sooner than we think, 2008) political cycle.  Will the anger and deep suspicions many have developed about the making of our national security policy will only linger and fester? Will the perceived political payoff of criminalizing honest policy differences continue to grow?  Will this bitter climate keep us looking backward and make it harder to look forward; and if unaddressed over the long-term, will it inhibit political leaders of any political stripe from acting effectively to meet challenges – whether existing or new? 

That’s certainly not the kind of legacy Bush has in mind, but I fear it is right where his policies are leading us.  And while it’s not good for Bush conservatives, it’s not much better for progressives.

Comments

[William Fettes]

What did you expect? This is only the beginning of the fallout of listening to those whose ideology hinges on rejecting the idea of positive good governance, and who strengthens such perception with their every act in power. The fact that they make a kind of sport out of poisoning the well of international institutions and multilateralism is just helping hand toward the general race to the bottom.

One of the Iraq war critiques was always an erosion of good will, and its terrible effect on the perception and reality of the utility of American power projection toward worthwhile, and more sustainable, global initiatives. It is entirely predictable that this kind of fatigue would set in, and that the American public will, because of Bush, swing back toward their more natural egoist Pat Buchanan-style isolationism.

It’s really tough luck for everyone involved, because the US has so much capacity to do good in the world if you elect people in the Princeton school of international relations. If only your public had the foresight to see through the rhetoric, personality politics, and sound bites, and never elected such demagogic idiots. As it is we will all pay the price for this administration’s maleficence.

[Cal]

Because what seems to be happening is that both the Left and the Right are becoming more suspicious, cautious, or skeptical about America’s institutions and engagement abroad.

And what have Democratic and Republican leaders done to earn our trust?

Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows:

"Companies deciding which kind of toothpaste to market have much more rigorous, established decision-making processes to refer to than the most senior officials of the U.S. government deciding whether or not to go to war," Michael Mazarr said. "On average, the national-security apparatus of the United States makes decisions far less rigorously than it ought to, and is capable of. The Bush Administration is more instinctual, more small-group-driven, less concerned about being sure they have covered every assumption, than other recent Administrations, particularly that of George H. W. Bush. But the problem is bigger than one Administration or set of decision-makers."

Would you trust your son or daughter to such a process?

[Dan Kervick]

And I’ve been amazed to hear not just conservative skepticism about promoting democracy abroad, but progressives arguing that it is not be in our interests (seeming to forget the lessons of the Clinton years).

Which noble Clinton lessons do you have in mind Derek? You mean the democracy promotion lesson taught us that if you spend a decade dividing and destroying a state, starving and immiserating its people, wrecking what imperfect governmental institutions it has, lobbing missiles at it, fomenting violence and empowering its internal enemies to make war on it from within, then what you eventually end up with is not a democracy, but a broken, failed state spewing out its suddenly stateless population of angry, miserable, divided people in a condition of violent civil discord? You mean that lesson?

[Dan Kervick]

Will the perceived political payoff of criminalizing honest policy differences continue to grow?

- Derek Chollet, March 2006

It is mind-boggling to me that one of those investigations is criminal and that you have attempted to criminalize policy differences between co-equal branches of government and the executive's conduct of foreign affairs.

- Lt. Col Oliver North, July, 1987

The prosecutions of the individuals I am pardoning represent what I believe is a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences. These differences should be addressed in the political arena, without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of some of the combatants. The proper target is the President, not his subordinates; the proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom.

- President George H. W. Bush, pardoning Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Duane R. Clarridge, Alan Fiers, Clair George, Robert C. McFarlane for their roles in the Iran-Contra scandal, December, 1992.

Fitzgerald’s larger obligation is to see that justice is done, and that should include ensuring that he doesn’t become the agent for criminalizing policy differences.

- Wall Street Journal, October, 2005

We don't pretend to have all the answers, or a solid answer even to one of these questions. But it's a reasonable bet that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives. And it is clear that thinking through a response to this challenge is a task conservatives can no longer postpone.

- William Kristol, October, 2005

One could be a believer in a strong presidency who thinks the whole idea of criminalizing policy differences has a tendency to sap the boldness of the president.

- New York Sun editorial defense of Scooter Libby, December, 2005

[Mark Lindeman]

Derek, whoa there, did you actually read that Pew/CFR survey? it isn't really all that isolationist. I see healthy skepticism about "promoting democracy," and considerable support for dealing with climate change; helping to improve living standards in developing nations; protecting people threatened with genocide; defending human rights; reducing the spread of AIDS (almost as high as preventing the spread of WMD); even strengthening the UN (still, despite a clear decline in support). If that is isolationism, bring it on.

(Sure, I should qualify this characterization -- and who knows how those results would look now, four months later -- but by golly, this is no time for fatalism.)

I think that in the context of the Iraq war, people can tend to agree with the statement that "the U.S. should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own" without embracing many, if any, of the trends you describe.

Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, President Bush is trying to game the country by arguing otherwise -- by arguing that to the extent that Americans weary of his war, they are turning away from the world. Well, shame on him, and please let's not echo his talking points.

[Zathras]

Chollet is describing a trend, not a static situation. And he is mostly right; we are not close to the end of internationalism now, but we are heading in that direction.

The isolationist impulses of an American public aware of their country's distance from other people's quarrels has always been strong. The implicit question asked of public officials with respect to American involvement in international affairs has traditionally been, "what's in it for us?" From time to time intuitively persuasive answers suggest themselves -- the historic political malignancy of Soviet Communism produced them for decades -- but in general American tolerance for a liberal internationalist policy has rested on two pillars. One has been inertia; the public supports policies and institutions that have been around for a long time because they have been around for a long time. The other is confidence in American political leadership; the public is willing to give political leaders who sound as if they know what they are doing the benefit of doubts about policies that seem directed more at the good of other countries than the good of their own.

Wars and period of rapid economic change are both destructive of inertia. To a much greater degree they can be corrosive of public trust in government if people get the idea that political leaders are in over their heads or otherwise not up to the job. They are getting that idea now.

Democrats should beware of yielding to the partisan temptation to assume that declining public trust in government is solely a product of the Bush administration's mistakes and general inadequacy. The source of Bush's electoral success -- and in large measure of his administration's failures as well -- is the absolute priority he and his closest associates have always given to electoral considerations, specifically to the positioning, fundraising and message discipline necessary in the permanent campaign. Every one of the leading Democratic contenders for the 2008 Presidential nomination is more like George Bush in that respect that he (or she) is different. Perhaps for that reason, Bush's declining approval ratings have not been accompanied by any great surge in approval for any leading Democrat, or indeed for the Democratic Party generally. Much of the public views politicians generally, both Democrats and Republicans, as so many peas in a pod.

The less confidence the public has in the political leadership in general, the less likely it will be to trust its leaders to commit to international policies and institutions with no obvious, immediate payoff for America. That is the essence of the threat to an internationalist foreign policy today.

[Dan Kervick]

The less confidence the public has in the political leadership in general, the less likely it will be to trust its leaders to commit to international policies and institutions with no obvious, immediate payoff for America. That is the essence of the threat to an internationalist foreign policy today.

I rather disagree with this. The less confidence Americans have in the judgment and motivations of their own government leaders, the more they will demand that those leaders curb their dangerous and unreliable enthusiasms, and act within the restraining checks of global institutions, compacts and alliances. That means more internationalism, not less. What Derek seems worried about is that Americans are losing their taste for bold foreign adventures, for profligate expenditures of blood, and for think-tank and NGO driven foreign makeover projects. He also seems worried that some Americans have acquired a perverse new taste for holding government officials responsible for their criminal acts.

It is hard to delineate all of the semantic strains that have been placed on the term "internationalism" lately, but it seems increasingly common for that word to be used by foerign policy professionals to mean little more than "being actively involved in international affairs". But surely internationalism, as it is traditionally understood, means more than that. Internationalism is not the same thing as unilateral American activism in global affairs. Nor is it the same thing as ad hoc, multilateral America-lead activism in international affairs. Internationalism is a commitment to enduring forms of international cooperation and agreement - that is, to international institutions.

My sense is that Americans are fed up with the incompetence and recklessness of their own government. And they are also fed up with the incompetence, corruption and weakness of many of the international institutions that currently exist. But I suspect they would respond favorably to serious, practical and realistic proposals for building new international institutions, negotiating new reality-based international agreements, and developing broad-based, coordinated and hard-headed strategies for addressing pressing and obvious problems of global concern - notably in the areas of the economy, the environment and security.

There is no real evidence that Americans are increasingly opposed to "international engagement" as such. They may not be the sort of engagements Derek wants, but Americans are still fully cognizant of the fact that they live in a complicated and interconnected world, and that they have to deal with it if they want to thrive in it. They want their government to advance their interests, and understand that doing so requires active engagement with the world. What I think they do insist upon, as they always have, is that their government manages the US enagagement with the rest of the world with an eye chiefly toward advancing the interests of the American people they govern. Those should be the fundamentals of foreign policy. Many Americans are also interested in various acts of global philanthropy, and if the government delivers consistently on the fundamentals, the public will advance the trust needed to go beyond the fundamentals, in sensible ways, to do certain kinds of good in the world, even when that good does not have an obvious and immediate payoff for America.

But the foreign policy elites of both parties have consistently neglected the fundamentals in recent years, and are committed to all sorts of heavily ideological agendas that place the economic well-being and security of Americans at risk. These projects (and perhaps the sinecures that go along with them) are what the reigning policy mavens seem so concerned about losing.

[libertarian soldier]

"My sense is that Americans are fed up with the incompetence and recklessness of their own government. And they are also fed up with the incompetence, corruption and weakness of many of the international institutions that currently exist."
I agree completely, but the difference is Americans know they can change their own government every four (or two or six depending on which part of government you are talking about) if they want to, but they see that they can't change the international institutions at all--either hardball with Bolton or softball with others.

"But I suspect they would respond favorably to serious, practical and realistic proposals for building new international institutions, negotiating new reality-based international agreements, and developing broad-based, coordinated and hard-headed strategies for addressing pressing and obvious problems of global concern - notably in the areas of the economy, the environment and security."

I agree with this as well. Too bad it never happens--most recent examples being the "new" human rights commission and FR (thus EU) protectionism over trade and the economy in the WTO. And we will see what the AU ultimately decides about Sudan, and what the UN ultimately does about Iran. I am quite confident that they will both live down to my pessimism.

[kamil]

There are certain things in life related to smoking that simply cannot :)
parça kontör
parça kontör bayiliği
parça kontör bayilik

[luxury watches]

I am so with you,rolex watch
luxury watch

[cheap coach handbags]

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!

[nike air max]

0314
The Nike air max Shoe lives up to its name with plush cushioning and a sleek silhouette. It brings you just what you need to style it up wherever you go. you can look at the Air max 2009,air max 90,Air max 95,Air Max 2010
Features:
* Minimalistic construction of leathers and synthetics in the upper
* Nike Shox technology for optimal cushioning
* Rubber outsole for excellent grip