Brave old world

Robert Kagan has come out with a new essay that is decidedly less revolutionary than his earlier "Of Power and Paradise," which captured the mood of the 2003 transatlantic feud.

In this new essay in Policy Review, Kagan comes to a realization about the nature of American power and world order that others have been arguing for years: the US, for all its power, has limited power to transform anything, and that calling the international system "unipolar" obscures more than it reveals. The only reason that this is worth calling attention to is that Kagan, of course, is a leading neo-conservative (as is this blog's policy, I use this term descriptively, not pejoratively). He has been a prominent advocate of the use of American power to promote democratization, but in this essay it seems he recognizes that American power has limits after all — and so perhaps 9/11 did not change everything after all, revealing instead the limits on America's ability to transform the world, which had been casually assumed during the 1990s.

To describe the world has he sees it, Kagan borrows a concept from the Chinese: one superpower, many great powers. The US remains, and will remain for decades to come, the single strongest power in the world on the basis of its economic dynamism and military strength (which is unlikely to change given US defense spending, and R & D as a portion of US defense spending). But the global system in which the US appears predominant is more a patchwork of regional systems and balances, with the US alone having a stake in all or most of them, often as an external balancer and maintainer of stability. The Bush administration's policy in the Middle East explicitly departed from a balancing role in the region, disastrously, and seems determined to backtrack and restore some semblance of balance after deliberately overturning it. But the US role is broad but shallow: "Predominance is not the same thing as omnipotence. Just because the United States has more power than everyone else does not mean it can impose its will on everyone else."

For all this, I find it odd that the Japanese government has ramped up its emphasis on the idealistic side of its alliance with the US, at the same time that Washington has been playing down its emphasis on values, democratization, human rights and the like. While the latter will always be a part of US foreign policy, they will clearly be stressed less in the coming years. Rather it should be the "public goods" aspect of the alliance that should be emphasized, because that is what the US brings to the Asia-Pacific; the value of the alliance is based on whether and how it contributes to providing a public goods, foremost among them stability, to the region.

UPDATE: Readers should be aware that I'm not recommending this essay because it's particularly interesting or novel — far from it. In fact, if it had been written by anyone else I would not have bothered to look at it. But when a prominent proponent of the use of American power to promote American values reconsiders and suggests that there may, in fact, be limits to what the US can hope to achieve and that it will have the face the reality of a more competitive international system, I think it is worth noting. In fact, the questions that ought to be asked are why it took someone like Kagan so long to come around to this position, and whether any of his compatriots (and family members) share his epiphany.

The future of American power

I found this post by Suzanne Nossel at Democracy Arsenal fascinating, in that it is a fair, reasonable critique of the Iraq War that does not indict the very idea of the US using its power in support of its values abroad.

I particularly like her points "the US Military has limits" and "military power can't accomplish everything." Both seem self-evident, and yet in some circles these points may well be controversial. It is essential that conservatives scale back their triumphalist rhetoric -- as noted by Jacob Weisberg in his response to AEI's 2007 banquet (aka the neocon prom) -- and begin to acknowledge the limits of American power. It doesn't mean embracing isolationism: it means acknowledging that the use of force abroad has unintended consequences that must be taken into account when making policy, that regardless of American ideals and good intentions negative consequences may still result from intervention abroad. It doesn't mean retreating: it means that American policymakers must be prudent in considering how best to apply American power.

I was led to think this in part after seeing Charles Krauthammer's speech at the 2004 AEI banquet, in which he spoke of American power as if the previous year's difficulties in Iraq had never happened. Francis Fukuyama, in attendance at the banquet, had the same response, resulting in his supposed "break" with his fellow neoconservatives, played out in the pages of The National Interest and culminating in his book America at the Crossroads, in which he cites Krauthammer's speech as an important moment leading him to reconsider his ideas.

The American foreign policy establishment must continue to reassess the tools available in the foreign policy toolbox, in the process de-prioritizing the use of force as a means of achieving US foreign policy goals. Force is a blunt tool, the use of which has numerous unforeseen consequences. The work of building a new "new world order," in which the US Military plays quieter, less visible but still important roles, will require greater nimbleness and flexibility on the part of the US government in its relations with allies and rivals. It's a tragedy that it took disaster in Iraq for the adjustment to begin, but it has begun in earnest.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, Realist? Hardly

Jeane Kirkpatrick, US ambassador to the UN during Reagan's first term and AEI senior fellow before and after her service, died last week at the age of eighty.

Having spoken with her at length on one occasion and seen her speak on a number of occasions (and having helped her down the stairs once when a fire alarm went off at AEI), it was clear that she remained a formidable intellectual and skilled debater to the last.

In the aftermath of Ambassador Kirkpatrick's death, Slate's Timothy Noah wrote a short essay entitled "Jeane Kirkpatrick, realist," in which he concludes, "Let it be said of Jeane Kirkpatrick, on the occasion of her death, that she didn't have to wait to see an Iraq fiasco unfold to know that the invasion was wildly oversold. It's a legacy of humility that her fellow neocons would do well to consider." In general, his argument is valid; the foreign policy thinking of early neo-conservatives, insofar as they thought about foreign policy, was vastly different than that of their contemporary successors.

Noah's mistake, however, is to assume that "realist"="Realist." The lower-case "r" makes a world of difference. Noah conflates the two, calling James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger adherents of "foreign-policy realism" (no capital). I would argue that the two former secretaries of States are, in fact, capital-R Realists. To them, all foreign policy is essentially reactive, grounded in iron laws shaped by Westphalian era of international relations. States may differ in relative power capabilities, but all seek to use whatever capabilities they have to secure their interests in the midst of perpetual competition among states. Ideals -- the world as it ought to be -- have little place in this vision of international affairs.

This is very different from realism, a cast of mind that does not reject ideals, but rather acknowledges that when in pursuit of ideals one cannot be indifferent to reality as it is. This was the fundamental belief of the early neo-conservatives, both in the views on domestic policy and foreign policy. They emerged as a coherent group in opposition to the Johnson administration's "Great Society" policies, which they felt produced disastrous unintended consequences despite the administration's good intentions. Some -- like Nathan Glazer -- made the same argument about Vietnam. For the most part, however, they didn't reject the ideals; they rejected brazen attempts to impose those ideals, regardless of the consequences. Accordingly, the view of foreign policy outlined by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her 1979 essay in Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," was largely consistent with the domestic policy views of thinkers like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson, and Nathan Glazer. Policymaking in pursuit of ideals isn't the problem; failing to temper ideals with a sober assessment of reality is. That was the basis of Kirkpatrick's thesis in "Dictatorships," in which she suggested that the Carter administration's pursuit of human rights at all costs in Iran and Latin America ushered worse governments into power. She didn't dispute the value of democratization or the promotion of human rights. She rejected the Carter administration's foolish pursuit of those goals.

Thus if she differed from contemporary neo-conservatives on Iraq and other questions -- and I've argued about the generational divide in neo-conservatism before -- it was a matter of means, not ends. There are strong reasons to doubt the commitment of Baker and others of the Kissingerian school of foreign policy to using American power for idealistic ends. Kirkpatrick was not of that ilk. She may have had doubts about the ability of the US to bring democracy to Iraq wholesale, but she did not doubt the importance of democratization as a goal for US foreign policy.

Therefore to call Ambassador Kirkpatrick a realist, as Noah does, may not be technically incorrect, but in this case the word "realist" conceals more than it reveals.

Muravchik's memo

I want to pause once again and turn from Asian matters to a memo by my friend and mentor Joshua Muravchik in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Policy titled "Operation Comeback," addressed to "My Fellow Neoconservatives."

His piece reflects on the mistakes made in recent years by neoconservatives, and attempts to restore some meaning to a phrase that's been warped and distorted out of all recognition in recent years. I think he does an admirable job, in particular by calling for an end to the neoconservative obsession with the revolution in military affairs that began in the late 1990s as neoconservatives came to see high-tech power projection capabilities as efficient and bloodless (for us) tools with which to punish tyrannical regimes.

That illusion has been punctured. If American power is going to be used to promote liberalization abroad, it will have to be with boots on the ground; thus he argues, "We may have seized on a technological fix to spare ourselves the hard slog of fighting for higher defense budgets. Let's now take up the burden of campaigning for a military force that is large enough and sufficiently well provisioned however 'redundant' to assure that we will never again get stretched so thin. Let the wonder weapons be the icing on the cake."

But he also acknowledges that neoconservatives must once again emphasize the deployment of ideas, because ultimately it is by ideas that the world will be liberalized. This means more public diplomacy, but it also means that the US government should step out of the way and let organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and a host of other organizations will similar purposes provide assistance to struggling democracies, providing technical support and education to parties, journalists, activists, and citizens.

Many of the world's governments are already ostensibly democratic: the task now is to help consolidate their democracies. This is particularly necessary in Asia, where countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand (which, of course, recently experienced a major setback) are struggling to construct transparent, representative institutions supported by open societies that enable citizens to participate in making decisions about how their countries are run.

Where I disagree with Josh is on what to do about Iran.

He writes:

Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran.

The global thunder against Bush when he pulls the trigger will be deafening, and it will have many echoes at home. It will be an injection of steroids for organizations such as MoveOn.org. We need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes. In particular, we need to help people envision what the world would look like with a nuclear-armed Iran. Apart from the dangers of a direct attack on Israel or a suitcase bomb in Washington, it would mean the end of the global nonproliferation regime and the beginning of Iranian dominance in the Middle East.

This defense should be global in scope. There is a crying need in today's ideological wars for something akin to the Congress for Cultural Freedom of the Cold War, a global circle of intellectuals and public figures who share a devotion to democracy. The leaders of this movement might include Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, and Anwar Ibrahim.

Now, I agree that Iran won't be dissuaded from pursuing nuclear weapons by peaceful inducements offered in diplomatic talks, just as North Korea will not be induced to abandon its nuclear weapons in the six-party talks. Where I disagree is on the likelihood of a bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities. It may be technologically possible -- especially if it only involved air assets coupled with special forces. But I wonder if it would stop Iran's drive to regional predominance, which the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have made easier (reconfirming the idea that unintended consequences govern society, a notion emphasized by the early neoconservatives).

In short, with or without nuclear weapons Iran is now in a commanding position in the Middle East, and it may require more than a bombing campaign to reverse that trend, if it is in fact reversible. What this means is that aside from relying on containment to prevent a nuclear Iran from using its nukes itself or handing them over to terrorists, the battlefields will remain in the hearts and minds of Muslims throughout the region and the world -- with perhaps the occasional battle against Iran's terrorist proxies -- in which case it remains imperative that the US and its allies equip themselves to fight a protracted war of ideas.

In any case, Muravchik's memo is important because it is a reminder that although the Iraq war has gone disastrously wrong, the ideas that inspired it remain essential to the foreign policies of the US and other liberal democracies, namely the idea that the world's liberal democracies should use their power to aid the spread of liberalism and democracy. Neoconservatives are not alone in believing in this idea. It is therefore time for its defenders to stop brooding over Iraq and to begin devising a strategy to strengthen the advance of democracy, one that does not necessarily privilege the use of force over the other tools at our disposal.