Chickenhawk Down
Realists respond to the neocons’ worldview.
By Keith White, University of Virginia
Thursday October 12, 2006
How would you expect an academic discussion on America’s role in the international system to start off? A stale joke? Sure. But nothing prepared the audience for foreign policy expert Anatol Lieven’s opening. He kicked off a panel discussion at the libertarian Cato Institute by retelling an old joke about British pacifists fighting the draft during World War I:
When a pacifist was asked if he would shoot a German that was raping his sister, he replied: “Well first I’d try to stand between them.”
It was at that moment of nonplussed silence and outright laughter, that it became clear this wouldn’t be a routine forum.
Iraq is a mess, North Korea has gone nuclear, and international support for America is at an all-time low. Against today’s dreary foreign policy backdrop, Lieven and Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow John Hulsman have co-authored a diplomatic resuscitation manual for American foreign policy, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World. They gave a presentation on their book’s thesis at the event
Hawkish New Republic Senior Editor Lawrence Kaplan and Joseph Cirincione, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, responded to the authors, who then had time for a short rebuttal before opening up to questions.
Lieven and Hulsman not only made the case for new American policies, but laid out the urgent need for both American political parties to junk the neoconservative world view. What should replace this failed strategy? A return to a nebulously defined “Burkeanrealism,” they said. This policy was best encapsulated by President Harry Truman during the Korean War; while not appeasing Communist expansion, he famously refused to attack China directly. Truman, aware of the catastrophic consequences a war with China could bring, strengthened American security by limiting its wartime aims.
Peppering his speech with Thomas Jefferson quotes and dialogue from To Kill a Mockingbird, Hulsman crafted a funny and penetrating critique of the Bush administration. The thesis? Excise neoconservatism from American foreign policy.
Focusing on Iran, Hulsman demanded that the United States begin direct peace negotiations and formulate a real diplomatic strategy, instead of continuing to issue vague warnings and shifting expectations. He called on the Bush administration to set aside plans for military strikes, quash fantasies about spontaneous democratic ascendancy, and pursue meaningful diplomacy with Tehran.
Lieven called on America to limit its strategic ambitions. No longer able to hold the same clout in the international system, America’s relative decline in power demands that it define its vital national concerns and drop less important aims.
In short, America can’t have it all. American diplomacy must embrace hard-headed realism when sketching out its goals. Diplomacy is the art of getting what is needed, not satisfying every desire.
Lieven and Hulsman advocated negotiation with the United States’ strategic rivals. Instead of advocating regime change, they said, the United States should stabilize its relations with Iran and North Korea as quickly as possible and trust the liberal international order to open up closed regimes gradually. And when illiberal regimes do try to make a move for supremacy—à la the Soviet offensive against Afghanistan in 1979—the United States must hit back. But the key to this strategy is patience, not foolhardy attempts to accelerate history to our liking.
Kaplan, the lone hawk in the room, had an anguished look. He cautioned the authors against putting full faith in American economic liberalism as a means of political reform. He perceived the authors’ "capitalist peace" as dangerously similar to the concept of "commercial peace," which holds that economic growth creates stability. Kaplan argued that "economic orientation is an effect, not a cause of political stability." Trading with these countries will not guarantee stability. While accepting the messes America has gotten itself into around the world, Kaplan, eyes puffy and red, wearily told the audience what it didn’t want to hear: There are bad problems out there, and really no easy solutions.
While agreeing with the need for a realistic and ethical foreign policy, Kaplan softly spoke of his fear of American retreat. The virtue of neoconservatism, he implied, is its willingness to use force to seek positive change in the world.
Cirincione then responded, launching a rhetorical assault on the Bush administration’s foreign policy, calling for a full recognition of the failings of neoconservatism. Calling it "rotten from the core," Cirincione demanded that Americans "crush this neoconservative virus."
One could sense Kaplan’s focus drifting from the forum as the tide of the discussion turned against him. Cirincione had spoken a sentiment felt throughout the room: the strong desire for accountability.
Cirincione’s remarks, while heavier on rhetoric than detail, sketched out a progressive foreign policy that could offer hope to a fatigued and frightened American citizenry.
Enthusiastic applause filled the hall, with the moderator forced to pause awkwardly before recalling the authors for their concluding rebuttals.
The forum not only showcased a growing policy canon of progressive responses to neoconservatism, but displayed realist policy thinkers retaking the rhetorical high-ground from neocons. Not all the talking points were smooth, the vision not yet fully lucid, and confusion still abounded: What if direct talks with Iran fail? What happens if Iraq becomes engulfed in all-out civil war? And how does America contain a North Korea continuing to defy expectations for rationality? But I still could not help but feel that I was in a construction-zone, hearing the building of a new foreign relations paradigm.
And while I still found myself in serious need of a hardhat, Hulsman did plant one beam I was happy to lean on. Borrowing from Sen. J. William Fulbright, Hulsman soberly repeated, "I think man is free to contemplate metaphysics, not practice it." In other words, policy makers will always fail when they confuse understanding how our world works with recasting the world in their preferred image.
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Even though we are political polar opposites, I found this article nicely witten. Keith presents the “rhetoric v. details” critique well.
But Joe Cirincione’s admonition to “crush this neoconservative virus”? That doesn’t sound very “progressive to me”. Having seen Joe, “the political contributor”, on television, he doesn’t sound like he would crush anything….Is that what they mean by playing to your audience?
— mighty aphrodite - Oct 12, 07:22 PM - #Name one neoconservative
— Frank Lornitzo - Oct 16, 04:54 PM - #that actually drilled in a branch of the U.S. Service,
or met a payroll, milked a cow. Thedy are metaphysicians, every one of them, taught by the Platonist Leo Strauss Power
is the end all of the philosopher
Lieven and Hulsman are still conservatives. Burkean realism? Do me a favour! The sooner American foreign policy becomes truly globalist and internationalist – adhering to UN principles of human rights, eg closing Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – that would do for a start. Bush and Blair are certainly neoliberal – neoconservative also? Perhaps they’ll have to rely on Syria and Iran to allow them to escape from Iraq and Afghanistan!
— David Chalmers - Oct 17, 08:54 PM - #