Michael Ignatieff is the Carr professor of human rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the editor of the new book American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. In this superb NY Sunday Times Magazine piece, Professor Ignatieff analyzes the risks that American society faces in pursuing a foreign policy based on the Jeffersonian dream of inevitable world-wide Republicanism. The entire article is balanced and well-written, as the following excerpts reflect:
Until George W. Bush, no American president — not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson — actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents’ “excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability” in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11.
If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office. For any president, it must be daunting to know already that his reputation depends on what Jefferson once called “so inscrutable [an] arrangement of causes and consequences in this world.”
The charge that promoting democracy is imperialism by another name is baffling to many Americans. How can it be imperialist to help people throw off the shackles of tyranny?
If the American project of encouraging freedom fails, there may be no one else available with the resourcefulness and energy, even the self-deception, necessary for the task. Very few countries can achieve and maintain freedom without outside help. Big imperial allies are often necessary to the establishment of liberty. As the Harvard ethicist Arthur Applbaum likes to put it, ”All foundings are forced.” Just remember how much America itself needed the assistance of France to free itself of the British. Who else is available to sponsor liberty in the Middle East but America? Certainly the Europeans themselves have not done a very distinguished job defending freedom close to home.
On this issue, there has been a huge reversal of roles in American politics. Once upon a time, liberal Democrats were the custodians of the Jeffersonian message that American democracy should be exported to the world, and conservative Republicans were its realist opponents. . . The liberals who founded Americans for Democratic Action refounded liberalism as an anti-Communist internationalism, dedicated to defending freedom and democracy abroad from Communist threat. The missionary Jeffersonianism in this reinvention worried many people — for example, George Kennan, the diplomat and foreign-policy analyst who argued that containment of the Communist menace was all that prudent politics could accomplish.
The leading Republicans of the 1950’s — Robert Taft, for example — were isolationist realists, doubtful that America should impose its way on the world. Eisenhower, that wise old veteran of European carnage, was in that vein, too: prudent, risk-avoiding, letting the Soviets walk into Hungary because he thought war was simply out of the question, too horrible to contemplate. In the 1960’s and 70’s, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger remained in the realist mode. Since stability mattered more to them than freedom, they propped up the shah of Iran, despite his odious secret police, and helped to depose Salvador Allende in Chile. Kissinger’s guiding star was not Jefferson but Bismarck. . .
It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy. . . the withdrawal of American liberalism from the defense and promotion of freedom overseas has been startling. The Michael Moore-style left conquered the Democratic Party’s heart; now the view was that America’s only guiding interest overseas was furthering the interests of Halliburton and Exxon. The relentless emphasis on the hidden role of oil makes the promotion of democracy seem like a devious cover or lame excuse. The unseen cost of this pseudo-Marxist realism is that it disconnected the Democratic Party from the patriotic idealism of the very electorate it sought to persuade.
It would be a noble thing if one day 26 million Iraqis could live their lives without fear in a country of their own. But it would also have been a noble dream if the South Vietnamese had been able to resist the armored divisions of North Vietnam and to maintain such freedom as they had. Lyndon Johnson said the reason Americans were there was the “principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania,” the right of people to choose their own path to change. Noble dream or not, the price turned out to be just too high.
If you read just one article this month on American foreign policy, then Professor Ignatieff’s article should be it. Kudos to the Times for running it.
It would be a noble thing if one day 26 million Iraqis could live their lives without fear in a country of their own
Tom,
My 2 cents is that if you take care of the little things the big things will take care of themself. Bush couldn’t water the White House lawn on his own. Consequently, his adventure into Iraq is starting to unwind and it is starting to become his war and it will end up being his Waterloo.
On the other hand, Iraq might have been manageable for someone with the skills of an FDR.
The problem with your piece is the disconnect between the goal and the means–First gauge the result, then gauge the effort. Bush so misstated the goal–regime change–that he badly underestimated the effort. At home, he should have first addressed our three flaws–opportunity gap, budget deficit, and trade deficit. Abroad, he should have, first, found solutions to the problems in Russia and second, really built a partnership of allies. We will never be able to hold our gains in the mideast if Russia fails.
However, at the end of the day, as made plain by China’s oil bid, sometimes desires are overtaken by the demands of competition.
Today, it is about the oil, only about the oil.
You lost me. How does Cnooc overpaying for Unocal have anything to do with the Bush Administration’s Iraqi policy?
As an aside, your equating the trade deficit and the budget deficit as domestic issues is misplaced. Do you really believe that Americans would be better off economically if they paid higher prices for domestic goods because the trade deficit is too high?
How does Cnooc overpaying for Unocal have anything to do with the Bush Administration’s Iraqi policy?
I don’t believe that Bush’s Iraqi policy started out being about oil.
However, events have overtaken Bush. China is now driving oil to the front burner, so that, today, its is about the oil, only about the oil.
Said differently, Can you at least make room for the possibility that China has been and is positioning itself in the MidEast to exploit every opportunity because of its desire for oil? If you do, then its becomes very clear that today the MidEast is now only about oil.
As for the trade deficit, it is self evidence that we would be better off without a trade deficit. Debt to finance the deficit is a drag on economic growth–reducing our standard of living over time. One cuts a trade deficit in either of two ways–cutting imports or increasing exports.
JL, the trade deficit does not have anything to do with incurrence of debt. For a good article that explains this misconception, check out the following:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/printww20050525.shtml
As for your theory about oil driving the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq, I simply do not agree. My reasoning is set forth in the blog post entitled “The grand mismanagement of Citgo” on April 20, 2005. Sorry I couldn’t just put in the URL, but for some reason the comment spam block rejected my comment when I included the URL. Email me if you have a problem finding that post and I will email you the URL.
Thanks for reading Clear Thinkers.
Back to matters of freedom and democracy, I think Ignatieff pretty much identifies the fault line of the matter and weighs the cost and benefits pretty fairly.
Of note, I think the contradictions that Ignatieff identifies make a good parallel with Kagan’s “uncertainties of war outcomes.” Point being that there is no perfect outcome in either war or the promotion of freedom and democracy.
The question this puts in front of myself when I read those two articles, however, is what are we doing to minimize the gap between rhetoric vs reality or, (in the case of war) to improve the positive outcomes while minimizing the negative outcomes. In matters of war, there’s more objective measurements that are at work. You want to minimize things like injured or slain combat members. That makes a course of action a bit easier – you build better guns, better transport vehicles, train in different ways, etc.
Yet, when it comes to promoting freedom, the task is more subjective, lest we use Freedom House ratings as the universal benchmark. How then to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality? I don’t know that there’s an easy answer to that other than to say “I don’t know … but just do it.”
the trade deficit does not have anything to do with incurrence of debt
Tom, I am embarassed for you if you believe that Walter Williams knows something about economics.
When China buys our bonds that’s debt. If we had a trade surplus we could buy their bonds. Are you richer when you owe people money or when they owe you money?
When one’s debts go up one’s future standard of living falls, unless you invest the debt in something that earns more than enough to pay the interest and repay the debt. We are not investing what we borrow, we are consuming most of such (burning oil, wearing out automobiles, etc.)
JL, Walter Williams probably knows more about economics in his pinky than either of us. See bio at
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BIOS/cbwwilliams.htm