Sunday, March 07, 2004
Crooked Timber: Ideas and interests John Quiggin asks for help.
I like this formulation but what are you planning to do with it? At the end you seem to be trying to figure out the circumstances that would lead to pure public interest-based politics or pure private interest-based politics. That is not a discussion which particularly interests me. (Of course mine is just a private interest, and maybe not even your private interest) You suggest that if Keynes is entirely right it is one and if Marx is entirely right it is the other but I think neither of them is entirely right.
I am interested in how ideology mediates between public and private interests to create the political world we actually see. How can this 3-part division of yours be used to explain an actual case? I think a more practical take would be of greater public interest. Is that the direction you want to go? I for one like the less theoretical direction.
Also, since this seem like a good a simple idea I assume that someone has tried something like this before and there is a whole literature on it.
I like this formulation but what are you planning to do with it? At the end you seem to be trying to figure out the circumstances that would lead to pure public interest-based politics or pure private interest-based politics. That is not a discussion which particularly interests me. (Of course mine is just a private interest, and maybe not even your private interest) You suggest that if Keynes is entirely right it is one and if Marx is entirely right it is the other but I think neither of them is entirely right.
I am interested in how ideology mediates between public and private interests to create the political world we actually see. How can this 3-part division of yours be used to explain an actual case? I think a more practical take would be of greater public interest. Is that the direction you want to go? I for one like the less theoretical direction.
Also, since this seem like a good a simple idea I assume that someone has tried something like this before and there is a whole literature on it.
Friday, March 05, 2004
I would like to follow up on what Tim Burke said (link messed up, sorry) about people cleaning up his messes giving him the hebie-jebies. It is sort of an uncomfortable thing, and I think that this is in part because you are introducing a commercial relationship into what is supposed to be a non-commercial space.
Chun cites Barbara Ehrenreich, saying “If you're healthy, and someone else is cleaning your house, you need to check yourself. I don't care how many kids you have.” Lots of other people chime in pointing out that we hire people to do work for us all the time, but I think they are missing the point that Chun and Ehrenreich are making, although they might reject it. The home is a sacred space and housework is one of the duties of a woman. We’ve modernized a bit so that the guys can help out, but a lot of the opposition to hired help is that there are some things you can’t hire others to do. Good old domestic ideology is alive and well on the left. Maids, nannies, etc. are all bringing commerce into the home.
Another side to this is American egalitarianism. Burke felt uncomfortable I assume because there is no more obvious sign of social distinction than having someone come into your house and scrub your toilets. That bothered him. It bothers me too. One of the things I hated about my grad student apartment was the big dumpster outside that would often have someone rooting around in it for cans. Walking past my garbage when another human was rooting through it was wrong, it violated all the things I had learned about the proper relationships between people.
As both Burke and Belle point out, this proper relationship is culturally determined. Belle’s maid can provide personal services without either of them feeling that she is degraded thereby, something that it would be hard for two Americans to think. Burke’s potential housekeeper probably would have been annoyed that he was failing to live up to his role as an rich American and thus cheating her out of money because of some bizarre American fixation. Had he talked to her she might well have been insulted not by cleaning his underwear but by his apparent belief that by taking money from him she would be less human.
Here is a bit of a story to illustrate some of this. (My experience with servants is limited) When I was in Grad school I went to spend a couple of weeks with my Uncle who was an oil pooh-bah living in Jakarta. He had a big expat oilman’s house with at least 6 servants. The servants came with the house, and he could not really fire them. The servants ran the place the way it was supposed to be run regardless of what the supposed employer thought. When we first arrived the butler-type guy met us at the door with two frosted mugs of Heinekin (The Dutch influence I guess.) He did this every time an adult male came home and would not do it for women or people he though were too young. (I was old enough, I guess) The whole thing used to annoy my uncle a bit, since Heinekin was not his favorite beer and my aunt liked beer too. I sort of agreed with him, although on the cosmic scale of oppression being met at the door with a cold beer does not rank very high.
Life in that house was a little weird. You could choose light or heavy starch in your underwear but not no starch. You could not leave your swimsuit hanging in the bathroom or it would be washed (I hid mine.) Mealtime was a constant struggle that my aunt usually won (she was an old hand at this) but still a struggle. The point of all this is that the house was a network of relationships and roles that we had to go along with. Tim Burke is happy enough to get his underwear washed by a stranger if he drops it off and there is no social relationship. Chun and Eherenreich are presumably saying the same thing; how can you have someone in your house without some sort of relationship? What sort of relationship could there possibly be between an American servant and an American employer?
Well, I could go on at some length but I need to get home. Got to get the house cleaned up for the maid.
Chun cites Barbara Ehrenreich, saying “If you're healthy, and someone else is cleaning your house, you need to check yourself. I don't care how many kids you have.” Lots of other people chime in pointing out that we hire people to do work for us all the time, but I think they are missing the point that Chun and Ehrenreich are making, although they might reject it. The home is a sacred space and housework is one of the duties of a woman. We’ve modernized a bit so that the guys can help out, but a lot of the opposition to hired help is that there are some things you can’t hire others to do. Good old domestic ideology is alive and well on the left. Maids, nannies, etc. are all bringing commerce into the home.
Another side to this is American egalitarianism. Burke felt uncomfortable I assume because there is no more obvious sign of social distinction than having someone come into your house and scrub your toilets. That bothered him. It bothers me too. One of the things I hated about my grad student apartment was the big dumpster outside that would often have someone rooting around in it for cans. Walking past my garbage when another human was rooting through it was wrong, it violated all the things I had learned about the proper relationships between people.
As both Burke and Belle point out, this proper relationship is culturally determined. Belle’s maid can provide personal services without either of them feeling that she is degraded thereby, something that it would be hard for two Americans to think. Burke’s potential housekeeper probably would have been annoyed that he was failing to live up to his role as an rich American and thus cheating her out of money because of some bizarre American fixation. Had he talked to her she might well have been insulted not by cleaning his underwear but by his apparent belief that by taking money from him she would be less human.
Here is a bit of a story to illustrate some of this. (My experience with servants is limited) When I was in Grad school I went to spend a couple of weeks with my Uncle who was an oil pooh-bah living in Jakarta. He had a big expat oilman’s house with at least 6 servants. The servants came with the house, and he could not really fire them. The servants ran the place the way it was supposed to be run regardless of what the supposed employer thought. When we first arrived the butler-type guy met us at the door with two frosted mugs of Heinekin (The Dutch influence I guess.) He did this every time an adult male came home and would not do it for women or people he though were too young. (I was old enough, I guess) The whole thing used to annoy my uncle a bit, since Heinekin was not his favorite beer and my aunt liked beer too. I sort of agreed with him, although on the cosmic scale of oppression being met at the door with a cold beer does not rank very high.
Life in that house was a little weird. You could choose light or heavy starch in your underwear but not no starch. You could not leave your swimsuit hanging in the bathroom or it would be washed (I hid mine.) Mealtime was a constant struggle that my aunt usually won (she was an old hand at this) but still a struggle. The point of all this is that the house was a network of relationships and roles that we had to go along with. Tim Burke is happy enough to get his underwear washed by a stranger if he drops it off and there is no social relationship. Chun and Eherenreich are presumably saying the same thing; how can you have someone in your house without some sort of relationship? What sort of relationship could there possibly be between an American servant and an American employer?
Well, I could go on at some length but I need to get home. Got to get the house cleaned up for the maid.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
John Kerry's Waffles - If you don't like the Democratic nominee's views, just wait a week. By Michael�Grunwald
More on Flip-flops. I hate flop-flop journalism. You see a lot of it of course, since reporters are too lazy and timid to directly judge a politician. (The candidate's numbers do not add up.) They are a bit more likely to cite another politician's criticism, but that of course brings up the dreaded specter of partisanship. What they like is finding the candidate contradicting themselves. Sadly, as with this bit of junk they do it in the worst possible way. Flip-flop pieces usually involve looking around for seeming contradictory statements. Grunwald claims to be ignoring a lot of the typical pandering that we voters demand of our politicians, but his list of Kerry flips demands of level of consistency that is insane. Kerry once favored an increase in the gas tax. It is not now part of his plans. Waffle! I would see upping the gas tax as a revenue matter rather than a position of principle, and so not wanting one now would seem to be meaningless. Kerry once favored increasing the top limit on payroll taxes. Now he says that he will not balance the budget on the backs of America's seniors. This is a waffle? Kerry voted for a lot of things that did not pass and he gave up on them. Is this an abandonment of principle? He proposed things which included elements that are not in his current plan? This is an abandonment of principle? To write a piece like this a journalist has to step outside of everything they know about American politics and how it works and start hunting for Kabuki inconsistencies. It's crappy journalism and bad for America.
p.s. The Bush bit that opens the article is obscene. Bush is the model of political principle to which Kerry is to be compared? It is always good for a journalist to ask themselves "If I let the RNC re-write the intro to my Kerry piece would it look any different?"
More on Flip-flops. I hate flop-flop journalism. You see a lot of it of course, since reporters are too lazy and timid to directly judge a politician. (The candidate's numbers do not add up.) They are a bit more likely to cite another politician's criticism, but that of course brings up the dreaded specter of partisanship. What they like is finding the candidate contradicting themselves. Sadly, as with this bit of junk they do it in the worst possible way. Flip-flop pieces usually involve looking around for seeming contradictory statements. Grunwald claims to be ignoring a lot of the typical pandering that we voters demand of our politicians, but his list of Kerry flips demands of level of consistency that is insane. Kerry once favored an increase in the gas tax. It is not now part of his plans. Waffle! I would see upping the gas tax as a revenue matter rather than a position of principle, and so not wanting one now would seem to be meaningless. Kerry once favored increasing the top limit on payroll taxes. Now he says that he will not balance the budget on the backs of America's seniors. This is a waffle? Kerry voted for a lot of things that did not pass and he gave up on them. Is this an abandonment of principle? He proposed things which included elements that are not in his current plan? This is an abandonment of principle? To write a piece like this a journalist has to step outside of everything they know about American politics and how it works and start hunting for Kabuki inconsistencies. It's crappy journalism and bad for America.
p.s. The Bush bit that opens the article is obscene. Bush is the model of political principle to which Kerry is to be compared? It is always good for a journalist to ask themselves "If I let the RNC re-write the intro to my Kerry piece would it look any different?"
Friday, February 20, 2004
Made in China -- With Neighbors' Imports (washingtonpost.com)Actual stats on Chinese imports from S.E. Asia
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Chinese reformers in Iran (Via Oxblog) Can it work?
No. Or at least the two situations are different enough that it seems unlikely. Note that I know even less about Iran than I do about China.
-Iranians are not as sick of politics as the Chinese. The Chinese liu mang (hoodlum) author Wang Shuo once denounced all the "people like Liu Binyan" who were trying to save China. One part of the rejection of the Tiananmen movement after Tiananmen was that it was calling people to sacrifice on behalf of a glorious future. This was not a new message to most Chinese, and it was not a likely winner regardless of its content. Rejecting the political for the personal was what the state was asking people to do and after the rough period of 1919-1989 it was a popular message.
-Tied to this is the fact that China is getting richer. After 1989 the state urged the young and educated to abandon politics and get rich and there was an economy there to do it in. An economy that the CCP could and did claim credit for. Iranian hardliners are trying to lure people away from politics without any bait.
-Tied to that is the international situation. The Chinese government had a good deal of international leeway since the Cold War was over and people wanted to trade with them. Iranian conservatives can't avoid being in favor of a new form of Islamic state at a time when that will not be popular with the U.S. or anyone else.
-Finally, Chinese have gotten a lot of freedom. Residence is free. Speech is free, in that you can now say whatever you want in conversation. You can have sex if you can find someone who wants to. You have all the wonderful freedoms that come with consumerism. There is democracy at the local level and the state is formally committed to more of it. There has been some liberalization in Iran, but I have never seen it properly theorized as either enough freedom or part of a road to democracy with Iranian characteristics. Where are Lee Guanyu, Wang Guangwu and the Confucian development analogues for Iran? Maybe there are some, but I at least have no idea who they are or what they might be saying.
So the comparison is not all that useful, but it did make me think a bit about the "Chinese Model." What is it? That is, what are the elements that made it possible for the Chinese state to re-legitimize itself after 1989 and how portable are they?
-The CCP, Maoist version, still has a good deal of residual legitimacy. Although the Republican period has been partially rehabilitated, partially by Taiwan, there is still a lot of gratitude to the Maoist period. He whipped the Americans in Korea, made China strong, and was egalitarian enough to gain new popularity in a time of growing class cleavages. Also, I think, most Chinese never bought the whole Gang of Four thing. It was not Maoism or Mao who did things it was "us", and you can't work up the same hate for your own youthful mistakes as you can for an alien NKVD or Gestapo. (You can work up a hate, but not the same one, and it focuses less on the state. )
-Turning Maoism into nationalism was not all that hard, since Maoism was always pretty nationalistic. The Iranian revolution was explicitly anti-nationalist and can't really stop being so. So far, nationalism is the only way to
-The CCP has been successful since Deng. It delivers economic growth and international prestige. It is also eager to recruit the young and ambitious into its apparatus.
-The nut of it is that the CCP has been able to grant considerable freedom in the last 15 years. Demands for "freedom," whatever that may mean in a given context, seem to come with a connection to the global system.1 The CCP is in a position to grant a lot of these things because it is a nationalist movement that has nationalist goals and a lot of the freedom stuff is either free to them, cheap enough to be worth it, or actually good. Free to them would be things like freedom of porn. Not a good thing, but they don't really care, and all sorts of individual liberties fit in here. In Iran not so much. Then you get freedom of residence. Not really a freedom in the U.S. since we have never had a system of residence permits. Giving it up cost the CCP some control, but it was a price they were willing to pay. Democracy at the local level has been encouraged by the Party as a way of reducing the security of local power-holders.
The CCP can thus grant many freedoms since they have a goal beyond restricting freedom. An Islamicist state, as far as I can tell, does not.
1. Yes, I could associate it with a rising middle class, but I don't want to and I don't want to get into that.
No. Or at least the two situations are different enough that it seems unlikely. Note that I know even less about Iran than I do about China.
-Iranians are not as sick of politics as the Chinese. The Chinese liu mang (hoodlum) author Wang Shuo once denounced all the "people like Liu Binyan" who were trying to save China. One part of the rejection of the Tiananmen movement after Tiananmen was that it was calling people to sacrifice on behalf of a glorious future. This was not a new message to most Chinese, and it was not a likely winner regardless of its content. Rejecting the political for the personal was what the state was asking people to do and after the rough period of 1919-1989 it was a popular message.
-Tied to this is the fact that China is getting richer. After 1989 the state urged the young and educated to abandon politics and get rich and there was an economy there to do it in. An economy that the CCP could and did claim credit for. Iranian hardliners are trying to lure people away from politics without any bait.
-Tied to that is the international situation. The Chinese government had a good deal of international leeway since the Cold War was over and people wanted to trade with them. Iranian conservatives can't avoid being in favor of a new form of Islamic state at a time when that will not be popular with the U.S. or anyone else.
-Finally, Chinese have gotten a lot of freedom. Residence is free. Speech is free, in that you can now say whatever you want in conversation. You can have sex if you can find someone who wants to. You have all the wonderful freedoms that come with consumerism. There is democracy at the local level and the state is formally committed to more of it. There has been some liberalization in Iran, but I have never seen it properly theorized as either enough freedom or part of a road to democracy with Iranian characteristics. Where are Lee Guanyu, Wang Guangwu and the Confucian development analogues for Iran? Maybe there are some, but I at least have no idea who they are or what they might be saying.
So the comparison is not all that useful, but it did make me think a bit about the "Chinese Model." What is it? That is, what are the elements that made it possible for the Chinese state to re-legitimize itself after 1989 and how portable are they?
-The CCP, Maoist version, still has a good deal of residual legitimacy. Although the Republican period has been partially rehabilitated, partially by Taiwan, there is still a lot of gratitude to the Maoist period. He whipped the Americans in Korea, made China strong, and was egalitarian enough to gain new popularity in a time of growing class cleavages. Also, I think, most Chinese never bought the whole Gang of Four thing. It was not Maoism or Mao who did things it was "us", and you can't work up the same hate for your own youthful mistakes as you can for an alien NKVD or Gestapo. (You can work up a hate, but not the same one, and it focuses less on the state. )
-Turning Maoism into nationalism was not all that hard, since Maoism was always pretty nationalistic. The Iranian revolution was explicitly anti-nationalist and can't really stop being so. So far, nationalism is the only way to
-The CCP has been successful since Deng. It delivers economic growth and international prestige. It is also eager to recruit the young and ambitious into its apparatus.
-The nut of it is that the CCP has been able to grant considerable freedom in the last 15 years. Demands for "freedom," whatever that may mean in a given context, seem to come with a connection to the global system.1 The CCP is in a position to grant a lot of these things because it is a nationalist movement that has nationalist goals and a lot of the freedom stuff is either free to them, cheap enough to be worth it, or actually good. Free to them would be things like freedom of porn. Not a good thing, but they don't really care, and all sorts of individual liberties fit in here. In Iran not so much. Then you get freedom of residence. Not really a freedom in the U.S. since we have never had a system of residence permits. Giving it up cost the CCP some control, but it was a price they were willing to pay. Democracy at the local level has been encouraged by the Party as a way of reducing the security of local power-holders.
The CCP can thus grant many freedoms since they have a goal beyond restricting freedom. An Islamicist state, as far as I can tell, does not.
1. Yes, I could associate it with a rising middle class, but I don't want to and I don't want to get into that.
A bit more reflection on what I said below about the lack of a policy for the War on Terror. Thinking about it, Resolve seems to tie our policy together reasonably well. One of the Calpundit commenters mentioned that he would never forgive Carter for his lack of action on the hostages, and that we have been paying the cost for this lack of visible resolve ever since. He could just as well have mentioned Vietnam in that context, but the general tone is pretty much the same. America must demonstrate its resolve by using force, this is what makes enemies fear us and allies support us. The Iran/hostage thing makes a nice example of this because while there are logical places to denounce a lack of resolve that was not one of them.
Willingness to use force is part of a nation's stock in trade and something that I have supported (Kossovo and E. Timor and Afghanistan) and wished for (Rwanda.) Carter did not invade Iran, I assume, because he was afraid that the Soviets would not like it and it would lead to WW III. Thus on a straight cost-benefit analysis it was not a good risk. Only if you see demonstrations of Resolve as having value beyond any rational calculation would war with Iran/Panama/Syria make sense. Carter was not squeamish about killing people. At the time my Mom thought that Desert One was a very cynical attempt to end the hostage crisis one way or another. If they had made it to Tehran the most likely outcome was rescuing some hostages and having the rest killed, but in any case an end to the crisis. Critics of squishy foreign policy are not attacking Carter or Clinton or Kerry for bad analysis or unwillingness to kill, but for lack of Resolve in the abstract.
Calling for more resolve regardless of context, cost or possible benefits is just calling for blowing things up and assuming that good things flow directly from violence and an attitude toward violence. I think this is why Bush's carrier landing stunt was so popular in some quarters. He was saying "I favor kicking some ass. Not sure whose. Don't care why. I will not let over-analysis paralyze me. I (we) will kick some ass."
For the Bush administration war is not just politics by another means and war is not just one tool in the toolkit. It is the aesthetic center of American foreign policy. Holbo pointed this out for domestic policy, but it works for foreign policy as well. Willingness to use force, as demonstrated by using force, is the key to everything. Proper application of force is not as important as application, and application is not as important as the willingness to do so. Thus Kerry really is a wuss, regardless of the Purple Hearts.
More importantly, there are certain policy things that flow from this.
-Allies are actually bad, other than a good wingman like Blair. Letting more people in sullies the moral clarity, both in the sense that you have to make compromises to get them and in the sense that it sullies the image of the lone warrior. To a lesser extent this works domestically as well.
-You can't allow people to diss you. Backing off of invading Iraq becomes impossible once you have mentioned the possibility a few times. If war is caused by Resolve then lack of war is caused by lack of resolve. Regular nations can back away from wars on the claim that the cost/benefit analysis no longer favors it, but a Nation of Resolve can not. Thus we can't really debate the wisdom of destabilizing Iran, because once it is on the table the only thing that would keep us from invading is a lack of resolve.
-Results of wars don't matter as much. Since the purpose of war is to demonstrate Resolve you can't really loose once you start one, at least if you are the U.S. For some it would be possible for us to loose in Afghanistan if it were to end up a place that is more of a threat to the U.S., or, (for me) a place that is unfree enough for it to be an embarassment to admit that the United States of America created it. If the point of Afghanistan is to show resolve then there is nothing to keep us there.
-Mobilizing the nation for war is not really needed. As a practical matter we can beat people without much by the way of extra taxes or recruiting, and there is no real task of reconstruction, there is no need to sell war bonds or collect scrap metal.
Needless to say I think this is a bad policy idea, but I think it does explain what policy really is.
Willingness to use force is part of a nation's stock in trade and something that I have supported (Kossovo and E. Timor and Afghanistan) and wished for (Rwanda.) Carter did not invade Iran, I assume, because he was afraid that the Soviets would not like it and it would lead to WW III. Thus on a straight cost-benefit analysis it was not a good risk. Only if you see demonstrations of Resolve as having value beyond any rational calculation would war with Iran/Panama/Syria make sense. Carter was not squeamish about killing people. At the time my Mom thought that Desert One was a very cynical attempt to end the hostage crisis one way or another. If they had made it to Tehran the most likely outcome was rescuing some hostages and having the rest killed, but in any case an end to the crisis. Critics of squishy foreign policy are not attacking Carter or Clinton or Kerry for bad analysis or unwillingness to kill, but for lack of Resolve in the abstract.
Calling for more resolve regardless of context, cost or possible benefits is just calling for blowing things up and assuming that good things flow directly from violence and an attitude toward violence. I think this is why Bush's carrier landing stunt was so popular in some quarters. He was saying "I favor kicking some ass. Not sure whose. Don't care why. I will not let over-analysis paralyze me. I (we) will kick some ass."
For the Bush administration war is not just politics by another means and war is not just one tool in the toolkit. It is the aesthetic center of American foreign policy. Holbo pointed this out for domestic policy, but it works for foreign policy as well. Willingness to use force, as demonstrated by using force, is the key to everything. Proper application of force is not as important as application, and application is not as important as the willingness to do so. Thus Kerry really is a wuss, regardless of the Purple Hearts.
More importantly, there are certain policy things that flow from this.
-Allies are actually bad, other than a good wingman like Blair. Letting more people in sullies the moral clarity, both in the sense that you have to make compromises to get them and in the sense that it sullies the image of the lone warrior. To a lesser extent this works domestically as well.
-You can't allow people to diss you. Backing off of invading Iraq becomes impossible once you have mentioned the possibility a few times. If war is caused by Resolve then lack of war is caused by lack of resolve. Regular nations can back away from wars on the claim that the cost/benefit analysis no longer favors it, but a Nation of Resolve can not. Thus we can't really debate the wisdom of destabilizing Iran, because once it is on the table the only thing that would keep us from invading is a lack of resolve.
-Results of wars don't matter as much. Since the purpose of war is to demonstrate Resolve you can't really loose once you start one, at least if you are the U.S. For some it would be possible for us to loose in Afghanistan if it were to end up a place that is more of a threat to the U.S., or, (for me) a place that is unfree enough for it to be an embarassment to admit that the United States of America created it. If the point of Afghanistan is to show resolve then there is nothing to keep us there.
-Mobilizing the nation for war is not really needed. As a practical matter we can beat people without much by the way of extra taxes or recruiting, and there is no real task of reconstruction, there is no need to sell war bonds or collect scrap metal.
Needless to say I think this is a bad policy idea, but I think it does explain what policy really is.
China's ZTE Wins Iraq Reconstruction Contract
Hard to know what spin is on this, but it is nice to see that at least in one case the Iraqis are calling the shots on reconstruction contracts
Hard to know what spin is on this, but it is nice to see that at least in one case the Iraqis are calling the shots on reconstruction contracts
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
More Brooks-bashing, of a sort, this time via Calpundit.
First BrooksNow, in the midst of the war against Islamic totalitarianism, the crucial question is this: Is the Democratic Party truly set to reclaim the legacy of Truman and Kennedy, or is it still living in the shadow of Vietnam?
I've been thinking a bit about these Cold War/War on Terror comparisons and they keep making me wish Gore had beaten Bush. Usually 9/11 makes me think just the opposite. Presumably President Gore would have been well on his way to replacing Hillary as the Slick Wille substitute hate object, and 9/11 would have been laid right at his feet. The Bushies have always escaped blame in part for the very reasonable reason that they had not been in power long enough to be really responsible. We were perhaps lucky that 9/11 did not tear the country apart politically, which it could have given the atmosphere. It seemed like a good Revolutionary Moment to me, but politically it just did not line up with existing divisions. I suspect the morally clear Congressional Republicans would have been very different from the fairly toothless (in every way) Democrats
The one good thing about a Gore presidency is that we would have been more likely to come up with a real strategy for the War on Terror. Gore would be better for that then Bush, and it would have been politically essential. That's what Brooks lauds Truman for I assume; presiding over the hammering out of containment and some of the rest of the Cold War strategy. We are right now in the Truman era of the War on Terror, but X is nowhere in sight. I suppose the Liberation of China in 1949 would be 9/11, but I can't see any of the elements of the Cold War consensus shaping up. Where is NATO? I don't mean that just in an alliances sense, although it is that too. What are the essential parts of our strategy.?
I assume the invasion of Iraq lines up with NATO, in that it is seen as the most important part of what we are doing. In that case I suppose the plan "really" is the Josh Marshall take on "Iraq is low-hanging fruit" in the neo-con plan to democratize the Middle East. Josh emphasizes the deception involved in this, but deeper than that I think that it is more than deception. I could see getting behind democratization as a crusade, but there is nothing to get behind. The Truman Cold War policy became a bureaucratic consensus (I'm sure someone has written on this,) whereas the Neo-cons were at best a minority view and at worst window-dressing. I'm not sure there was a real policy behind the Iraq invasion. Bureaucratic action can be like Supreme Court decisions, it does not matter if you have five affirmative votes with five justifications the ruling is still to affirm. You don't need to have everyone behind you in the same way and I can't see that we in fact did. In fact, the momentum for invasion seems to have come to some extent from the fact that there was no other center to our policy, so this had to be shoved in. Truman and co. bent the entire foreign and domestic policy of the U.S. around the Cold War, and the rest of us bent the entire culture around it. It may not have been an entirely good idea to do that, but it seems to have helped. Now there is no there there to bend things around. The Cold War seems like a fairly obvious set of things to do now, but the phrase was not used until 1948 and many of the fundamental parts of the strategy are later than that.
This hammering out is not happening now, and it is hard to see what the consensus would be around.
First BrooksNow, in the midst of the war against Islamic totalitarianism, the crucial question is this: Is the Democratic Party truly set to reclaim the legacy of Truman and Kennedy, or is it still living in the shadow of Vietnam?
I've been thinking a bit about these Cold War/War on Terror comparisons and they keep making me wish Gore had beaten Bush. Usually 9/11 makes me think just the opposite. Presumably President Gore would have been well on his way to replacing Hillary as the Slick Wille substitute hate object, and 9/11 would have been laid right at his feet. The Bushies have always escaped blame in part for the very reasonable reason that they had not been in power long enough to be really responsible. We were perhaps lucky that 9/11 did not tear the country apart politically, which it could have given the atmosphere. It seemed like a good Revolutionary Moment to me, but politically it just did not line up with existing divisions. I suspect the morally clear Congressional Republicans would have been very different from the fairly toothless (in every way) Democrats
The one good thing about a Gore presidency is that we would have been more likely to come up with a real strategy for the War on Terror. Gore would be better for that then Bush, and it would have been politically essential. That's what Brooks lauds Truman for I assume; presiding over the hammering out of containment and some of the rest of the Cold War strategy. We are right now in the Truman era of the War on Terror, but X is nowhere in sight. I suppose the Liberation of China in 1949 would be 9/11, but I can't see any of the elements of the Cold War consensus shaping up. Where is NATO? I don't mean that just in an alliances sense, although it is that too. What are the essential parts of our strategy.?
I assume the invasion of Iraq lines up with NATO, in that it is seen as the most important part of what we are doing. In that case I suppose the plan "really" is the Josh Marshall take on "Iraq is low-hanging fruit" in the neo-con plan to democratize the Middle East. Josh emphasizes the deception involved in this, but deeper than that I think that it is more than deception. I could see getting behind democratization as a crusade, but there is nothing to get behind. The Truman Cold War policy became a bureaucratic consensus (I'm sure someone has written on this,) whereas the Neo-cons were at best a minority view and at worst window-dressing. I'm not sure there was a real policy behind the Iraq invasion. Bureaucratic action can be like Supreme Court decisions, it does not matter if you have five affirmative votes with five justifications the ruling is still to affirm. You don't need to have everyone behind you in the same way and I can't see that we in fact did. In fact, the momentum for invasion seems to have come to some extent from the fact that there was no other center to our policy, so this had to be shoved in. Truman and co. bent the entire foreign and domestic policy of the U.S. around the Cold War, and the rest of us bent the entire culture around it. It may not have been an entirely good idea to do that, but it seems to have helped. Now there is no there there to bend things around. The Cold War seems like a fairly obvious set of things to do now, but the phrase was not used until 1948 and many of the fundamental parts of the strategy are later than that.
This hammering out is not happening now, and it is hard to see what the consensus would be around.
OxBlog's David Adsenik makes a good point that Brooks is a hack, but then engages in a bit of revisionism of his own. (Not that I mind a bit of revisionism.) He is quite correct that Carter brought human rights back into U.S. foreign policy after the Nixon/Kissenger era, but he is pretty much dead wrong in saying that Reagan continued this. Adsenik claims that Reagan was willing to accept a fair amount of damage to human rights in order to get "democracy"
Yet when Reagan prioritized democracy promotion -- most notably in El Salvador and Nicaragua -- he did so at the cost of the local populations' human rights.
Adsenik is rightly critical of the Reagan's rather sorry record on human rights, but he seems to think this is because he was too interested in democracy. Actually, Reagan was interested in Anti-Communism, and democracy was a slogan while human rights were an annoyance. Anti-Communism is of course good, but it is not the same as democracy. Reagan supported the Kwangju Massacre in Korea, and presumably agreed with the American commander Wickham's statement that Koreans were "lemming-like" and "need a strong leader." An anti-communist leader, naturally. Adsenik claims that the Neo-cons are not self-critical enough but I think that they were quite self-critical as long as you distinguish goals from rhetoric.
I agree with Adsenik that the resemblance between Reagan and Bush were striking, but not always in a good way. Both claimed to be promoting 'democracy,' but this was largely a slogan sugar-coating the ugly part of anti-communism for Reagan and sugar-coating whatever Bush's real goals in the Middle East are. (I'm not sure this administration has clear goals, but they are clearly not democracy and human rights, although these are seen as nice add-ons.) Both Reagan and Bush have hefty amounts of the Kissenger realpolitic as well, which marks them off somewhat from Clinton and clearly from Carter. The two best examples of moralistic American foreign policy that I can think of are Carter's grain embargo (lifted by Reagan because it would cost him farm votes) and Kossovo (opposed by the right because......?)
Yet when Reagan prioritized democracy promotion -- most notably in El Salvador and Nicaragua -- he did so at the cost of the local populations' human rights.
Adsenik is rightly critical of the Reagan's rather sorry record on human rights, but he seems to think this is because he was too interested in democracy. Actually, Reagan was interested in Anti-Communism, and democracy was a slogan while human rights were an annoyance. Anti-Communism is of course good, but it is not the same as democracy. Reagan supported the Kwangju Massacre in Korea, and presumably agreed with the American commander Wickham's statement that Koreans were "lemming-like" and "need a strong leader." An anti-communist leader, naturally. Adsenik claims that the Neo-cons are not self-critical enough but I think that they were quite self-critical as long as you distinguish goals from rhetoric.
I agree with Adsenik that the resemblance between Reagan and Bush were striking, but not always in a good way. Both claimed to be promoting 'democracy,' but this was largely a slogan sugar-coating the ugly part of anti-communism for Reagan and sugar-coating whatever Bush's real goals in the Middle East are. (I'm not sure this administration has clear goals, but they are clearly not democracy and human rights, although these are seen as nice add-ons.) Both Reagan and Bush have hefty amounts of the Kissenger realpolitic as well, which marks them off somewhat from Clinton and clearly from Carter. The two best examples of moralistic American foreign policy that I can think of are Carter's grain embargo (lifted by Reagan because it would cost him farm votes) and Kossovo (opposed by the right because......?)
Cool, I got first post!
