Posted on 03/07/2006 7:58:39 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Francis Fukuyama's recent essay in the New York Times, "After Neoconservatism," isn't just a call for neo-realism in lieu of neoconservatism. It's a call for nothing in lieu of something. Admittedly, sometimes doing nothing is the best policy. But after 9/11, as we survey the threat of Islamic terror and rogue states, should we really settle for so little?
After excoriating the real and imagined sins of neoconservatism, Fukuyama offers the following plan for reforming our foreign policy:
1) "In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments." Coincidentally, this step will enrich and empower foreign policy bureaucrats.
2) "The United States needs to come up with something better than 'coalitions of the willing' to legitimate its dealings with other countries." Such new bureaucracies will enrich and empower foreign policy bureaucrats.
3) Reform, reorganize, and improve the funding of entities such as "the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like." Oddly enough, this step will enrich and empower foreign policy bureaucrats.
Francis Fukuyama trusts foreign policy bureaucrats to save the world. Do you?
Global terrorism doesn't worry Fukuyama too much: "The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. [...] But the intelligence community never took nearly as alarmist a view of the terrorist/W.M.D. threat as the war's supporters did." If terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are threats that we can ignore because our infallible "intelligence community" dismisses them with a wave of the hand, then Fukuyama is right: we have fought for nothing. But if the threat of Islamicist terrorism is real -- if, for example, a handful of Islamicist terrorists could slip into the country and hijack airplanes for the purpose of destroying buildings and wreaking havoc -- then the "basic misjudgment" is Fukuyama's, not the neoconservatives'.
Is it crazy to think that rogue states might shelter terrorists and sponsor unprovoked atrocities against Western countries, just because they have already done so? Is it absurd to think that Islamicist bad guys want to kill us en masse, just because they've said so repeatedly, launched savage attacks against us, and used every means at their disposal to obtain weapons of mass destruction?
Fukuyama's real problem with neoconservative foreign policy has little to do with America's popularity or international consensus, despite his protestations to the contrary. His problem lies in neoconservatism's tacit refutation of his pet theory. In his 1989 magnum opus, The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama argued that liberalism was the final ideology, to which reasonable people could find no superior alternative; history would henceforth consist of individuals and nations struggling to endure the burdens that liberalism places on the human soul. By contrast, neoconservative foreign policy assumes that history is not at an end; that irrationalism and depravity can win anywhere, and may perhaps win everywhere. Neoconservatism demands that righteous nations resist the depredations of evil regimes, by force if necessary and prudent, in order to accelerate the growth of freedom and international security. No disembodied force of History will do our work for us; the world's future is not a straight line pointed at a certain outcome, but rather a jagged and irregular line – the line between good and evil that runs through every human heart. You might think that the events of the last seventeen years would convince nearly anyone that the human heart still has the last word over History. But Fukuyama will not surrender his cherished beliefs without a fight.
He writes: "'The End of History,' in other words, presented a kind of Marxist-Hegelian argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States."
So it's "Leninist" to apply power and will to achieve liberal democracy ahead of History's schedule. Presumably it was also "Leninist" to apply power and will toward making the Soviet Union fall ahead of schedule. In fairness, I believe that Communism was destined to collapse under the weight of its wickedness and economic ineptitude -- given enough time. But the resolve of the West determined how much of the world Communism could defile on its way down -- and how many people had to die in gulags while waiting for History to arrive. If it was "Leninist" to apply power and will toward expediting the rendezvous of the Evil Empire with the dustbin of History, then sign me up for Leninism.
The same analysis applies to any of America's other wars. Nazism was untenable as a political theory, but who regrets the "Leninism" of applying power and will to throttle Nazism in its crib? The South would have abandoned slavery if left alone for a few generations, but were we Yankees insufferably "Leninist" when we sent the Union armies to give History a little kick in the butt? It's true that good intentions don't justify every war, but come on: is every righteous application of military force "Leninist?"
Fukuyama doesn't resent neoconservatism's purported militarism because of his concern for victims of war, or America's international standing, or petty gripes about pre-war planning, or any other red herrings. He resents neoconservative military action because it works too well. Unlike handouts to foreign policy bureaucrats, military action actually deposes totalitarian regimes and allows democratic societies to come into being -- not as theoretical constructs, but as actual existing states, however imperfect, however distant from the liberal ideal. Fukuyama may love the idea of democracy, but he doesn't love the untidy, unsatisfying realities of flawed, fumbling democracies in their toddler years. To the extent that military action engenders such puling squalls of unruly young democracies, he opposes it.
Fukuyama's critique fails most completely on the problem of tyranny. "By definition," he writes, "outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective." Ignore the obvious counter-examples of post-WWII Germany and Japan for a moment. Fukuyama's rejection of military action follows necessarily from his belief that demand for democracy must be domestic. If we can create new democracies only through careful, unhurried maneuvering, then the abrupt changes that follow in the 82nd Airborne's wake are unhelpful at best and uselessly destructive at worst. But by definition, tyrannies and rogue nations do not allow political and economic conditions to "ripen" into the ideal circumstances for a liberal democracy. If we restrain our foreign policy actions to the subtle and gradual, we will foment freedom in those nations least in need of our help, even as we condemn those nations whose corrupt leaders have rendered them impervious to long-term, opportunistic processes. Subtlety is dandy for building democracy in the Taiwans and Chiles of the world. How well does it work for the Irans and North Koreas of the world? What can neo-realism tell us about creating democracy in places where foreign policy bureaucrats are as likely to be eaten as feted?
Admittedly, neoconservatism has no easy or satisfying answer to the threat of democratically-elected tyrants. The transition from oppression to responsibility is hard for anyone to make, let alone for an entire society to make. Brand-new voters may fall prey to the old enemies of democratic discourse: demagoguery and factionalism. We can indulge failures of civic virtue as necessary lessons in the consequences of irresponsible voting -- but only up to a point. Can we warmly embrace the ideal of democracy if free elections give to Islamicist thugs control of entire nations -- with all the resources, weapons, legitimacy, and scientific prowess entailed in such control?
That's a hard question. But Fukuyama offers no answer. Support democracy, he tells us, but not to the point that such support is expensive, or dangerous, or premature, or upsetting to other nations, or irritating to potential terrorists, or empowering to potential enemies, or overly "Leninist" in its zeal to loose the chains of the slave grinding at the mill. Is it any wonder, then, that Fukuyama's policy prescription is to take two nothings and call him in the morning? If History is inevitable, if no threat menaces us, and if energetic foreign action puts us on a par with Lenin, then doing nothing looks pretty good indeed. Neoconservatism rejects all three of those premises, proposing instead an active and, yes, aggressive strategy for building liberal democracies. Fukuyama's neo-realism offers only the slender hope that History will vanquish international wrongdoers; that determinism will succeed when the nerve of bureaucrats fails. But waiting for the vicissitudes of History to smite your enemies is like Waiting for Godot: you talk and you talk and you talk, and then the curtain fails.
Francis Fukuyama is still waiting for his Godot. He sits patiently at the station, waiting for the End of History to arrive; it never does, and never will. He asks us to wait with him; neoconservatism leaves, and beckons us to follow. The station is comfortable and familiar, but a commotion can be heard outside, and the fire alarm is starting to ring. It's time to go after neoconservatism.
But he opens another question - just what are the best conservative books to read these days?
BTW, Bolton is coming up on the Tony Snow Show
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1591545/posts
He is saying that he was wrong, on a scale that has cost us thousands of American lives and billions of dollars.
WTH should we listen to him now?
There are only four options open to us: (1) Appease them, (2) Reform them, (3) Kill them, or (4) Pretend nothing happened. Currently, this administration is using options 1 through 3. The previous administration did number 4. Unless I missed something Fukuyama is saying do a lot of number 1. Personnally, I don't think we have demonstrated the full capacity of number 3. If we demonstrate our total lethality it is my opinion that number 2 becomes a workable strategy. Remember what it took to steer Germany and Japan on a peaceful path.
I believe it was Nathaniel Bedford Forest who said victory goes to those who are "firstest with the mostest." The lesson is hit first and hardest. It might be cheaper to demonstrate our full capability against Syria rather than Iran. Maybe they would learn something?
I recommend Paul Johnson's Modern Times.
1) "In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments."
Hereafter to be referred to as 'The Global Tickling of Terror Until It Cries "Uncle"'
2) "The United States needs to come up with something better than 'coalitions of the willing' to legitimate its dealings with other countries."
Hereafter to be referred to as 'The Coalition of the Unwilling'
3) Reform, reorganize, and improve the funding of entities such as "the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like."
'Pork barrel politics' will hereafter be renamed 'Bribe and/or Extortion money', because we all know 'pork' is offensive to Muslims.
Fukuyama is a Stalinist.
Nope. Only 2 and 3. There is no 1 in the current Administration.
What do you call UAE deal? It is the sign of a smart man to use all available tactics to achieve the greater goal. If UAE has an $8 billion investment in the US, they will be very interested in anyone who could screw that up. If they get the deal we by extension get their intel on who is moving fishy money. Nice trade.
What do you call UAE deal? It is the sign of a smart man to use all available tactics to achieve the greater goal. If UAE has an $8 billion investment in the US, they will be very interested in anyone who could screw that up. If they get the deal we by extension get their intel on who is moving fishy money. Nice trade.
The US Govt could merely find NO Legitimate reason to block a PRIVATE BUSINESS Deal. The problem is the US Longshoreman Union will have to renegotiate it's contracts with the Dubai Port World. So they went and got all their Congressional Whores to gin up a completely fraudulent PR stunt.
Amazing that "Conservatives" are pushing a Democrat Senate Election Year PR stunt. The US Govt has NO role here. Amazing how "Conservatives" are pushing such hysteria whose ONLY end game can be to significantly increase the size and scope of the Federal Govt reach into the Private Sector.
This is not "RNC Talking Points" "White House Spin" or "Drinking the Bush Koolaid" it is the FACTS of the deal.
The FACTS have been more the repeatedly posted here on Free Republic about the Port Deal. Amazing how the Port Deal Critics simply try to scream down any who does not march in Nazi like lockstep with their hysteria, bigotry and ignorance. The FACTS do not change just because the Port Deal Hysterics hate them.
I am okay with the deal. I just like the fringe benefits of getting the UAE royals betting with the US. Since UAE is the clearing house for funny money in the mid-east, having indepth intel on who is moving money to whom gives us an added perspective on threats. This is good business, this is how you build allies. I like the deal. Having said all of that, this action falls under Option (1), appease them.
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