Questions...

... so, Matt, what's your book about? It's a good question. The answer, in short, is that the theory and practice of progressive national security politics and policy. In particular, it advances the argument that the political problem for contemporary progressives has been a failure to convince the American public that the Democratic Party offers a coherent and viable approach to national security policy. It denies that the issue here is that liberals need to "get tough" or some such thing. Rather, the problem has been a failure to advance a principled and coherent alternative to Bush-style hegemonism.

The good news is that such an alternative is fairly readily available in the form of traditional liberal internationalism as has historically, albeit with some missteps, been the lodestar of Democratic thinking throughout the twentieth century. The bad news is that just as it was more necessary than ever to articulate the meaning and utility of this doctrine, a giant portion of the movements leadership -- in congress, among intellectuals, among foreign policy practitioners -- found themselves abandonning it in favor of support for an invasion of Iraq that cannot be reconciled with it.

Having committed themselves to this war, and loathe to simply admit that it was an error, the bulk of the party's elites have found themselves oddly adrift -- sensing something has gone badly awry, searching for alternatives, but coming up primarily with ad hoc critiques and highly personalized attacks on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. as managers rather than offering a holistic critique of conservative foreign policy that, being grounded in principle, offers actual guidance on what should be said and done as new events and crises leap onto the stage.

I could say more, but I wouldn't really know where to stop since the book itself is (obviously) going to be thousands and thousands of words long so on the one hand, I have a lot to say about this, but on the other hand I should focus on actually writing a manuscript. Hopefully you'll all buy it, since I assume Wiley gave me the contract on the theory that I have a cult-like following I can dispatch to Barnes & Nobel at the drop of a hat and I wouldn't want to disappoint them.

Comments

Good luck,

Consider one additional point.

There is no political party structure in Congress worth the name.

Using Dems as the example, there is no central hierarchy for considering foreign policy, and no central staff.

535 members have 535 barely out of college "legislative assistants" in charge of all foreign policy, including Iraq

no matter how brilliant your book, how much past juvenile do you expect their positions to ever get?

The Emperor has no clothes. And needs them. badly

Posted by jwp | September 1, 2006 12:07 AM

No one has a coherent theory of foreign policy or security. At best it's like music theory -- you look at the actions people make (the music they write) and try to shoehorn it into some patterns or themes (that's a plagal cadence, that's 12 bar blues). Trying to make the theory first and the music second gives you unlistenable noise.

(Except in music you don't play bullshit to impress bullthirsty male voters. Or maybe you do.)

That's not to say there isn't progressive national security policy. It's just the rational and pragmatic policy that progressives make.

As for me, I'd hit the reset button. I'd tell every country, "Look, we're going to normalize relations with you and everybody else, and we're never going to break it off, no matter what you do," because isolation seems to help the bad guys more than us. And I'd go out of my way to address foreign governments and foreign peoples separately. A lot of people don't like their government much.

Do a good job Matt. Authors can be dangerously influential. Just look at Bill Kristol!

Posted by Chris | September 1, 2006 12:18 AM

this is it? this is the topic for the first book you're going to right? a silver bullet theory of democratic messaging? oy.

i hope that the thesis ends up being a bit more nuanced than that.

Posted by Marc | September 1, 2006 12:19 AM

shit, i just wrote 'this is the topic for the first book you're going to right?' i'm retarded. don't follow my example.

Posted by Marc | September 1, 2006 12:20 AM

i hope that the thesis ends up being a bit more nuanced than that.

Hm...can I possibly squeeze additional nuance in while expanding from four paragraphs to 80,000 words? I certainly hope so!

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | September 1, 2006 12:24 AM

Bullseye, Matt...!

Posted by Steveconga | September 1, 2006 12:29 AM

"Hm...can I possibly squeeze additional nuance in while expanding from four paragraphs to 80,000 words? I certainly hope so!"

Of course, if you just copy and paste those four paragraphs a thousand times, you'd be done tonight. Non-repetitiveness is overrated.

Posted by Petey | September 1, 2006 12:34 AM

I will do my cultist duty if we see LOL WTF D00D: A Careful Consideration of the Bush Doctrine bruited about Gawker and the like as the working title. (It doesn't have to be the working title.) Given the Strangelovian posture of the neocon ideology, I renominate The Mineshaft Gap: Deterrence and Delusion in the Post-Cold War World as the alternative fake working title. (Neither, of course, is mine. Except in the sense that works of genius belong to all of us.)

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 1, 2006 1:01 AM

Best of luck in your new ventures Matt.

Lately, I have been thinking that there are a lot of different forms of liberal internationalism, and that what the world needs now is a bit less emphasis on the "liberal" and a bit more emphasis on the "internationalism". It is the internationalist aspiration itself that is in need of resuscitation.

It's not that I don't ultimately want an international order that is liberal in some broad sense. But I think we need to get back to what seems to me was the driving force behind the emergence of international institutions in the 20th century - the acutely perceived need for mechanisms of cooperation and conflict resolution involving all organized states, and institutions that could help save the world from the horrible scourge of war.

While the United Nations has never been the effective body it's founders hoped to create, I think it is interesting that it was actually stronger, more prestigious and more effective during the Cold War, when about 3/4ths of the world was decidedly illiberal, than it has been in the post-Cold War era.

I think the new internationalism must also not shy away from recognizing the things that are badly broken. There are indeed many international laws and treaties and institutions which work very well for us every day, and form the basic framework within which the world conducts it's daily business. We must do more to remind people of those realities and point frequently to their routine successes and essential role in our lives. But we shouldn't pretend that there is already a successful international security order run by "the international community", when in fact nothing that would truly be entitled to such a description yet exists. That's something we need to build, and we should try to generate some momentum behind it. If we fail to acknowledge the need for such an order, and pretend it is already there, we will rightly be accused of our critics of believing in castles in the sky, and of being a danger to the nation's security.

One last thing I'll leave you with as you begin to work on your book is an issue that you may be very well-placed to address, since you are much younger than I am, and it reflects a generational difference.

When I discuss international affairs with younger people these days, I often feel that they are insufficiently frightened of the prospect of nuclear proliferation and nuclear war, and of war between states generally. On the other hand, they are very frightened of terrorists. They regard the threat of nuclear annihilation as something that was part and parcel of the Cold War, and is now a problem solved by the end of that war, and rendered obsolete by "globalization". I tend to think their judgment is severely distorted by an overemphasis on recent events, while they no doubt think my own views are relics of a vanished age.

My own diagnosis of the differing attitudes is that the current generation grew up under Reagan, and imbibed an easy sort of Morning in America hyper-optimism and end-of-history triumphalism with their mother's milk.

I also find that these younger people tend to regard the preservation of peace through diplomacy and conflict-resolution, including working with illiberal regimes on the resolution of those conflicts, to be a cold and dreary "realist" approach to the world - and even a cynical one - not fit for hardy and moral "idealists".

This is dispiriting to me, since during the Cold War it was the liberals (there were some in both parties in those days) who were most in favor of peace and detente. "World peace" was considered the liberal goal par excellence - even to the point of parody. What more humane, moral and liberal goal could there be than preventing human beings from murdering each other over ideological differences? The liberals were opposed by the conservatives, with their Whittaker Chambers-like moral and religious fanaticism and uncompromising, cult-like anticommunism.

Where my heroes were the people who labored in the diplomatic vineyards in all countries and on both sides to preserve the peace, to undermine the fanatics in both blocs, and to save the world from annihilation as we navigated our unsure way though the Cold War standoff, many younger people today find their heroes among those who were most passionately devoted to fighting the "twilight struggle against Communism". Where I tend remember a certain amount of gratuitous and overblown anticommunist rhetoric from Washington statesmen, and gratuitous and overblown anticapitalist rhetoric from Moscow, both designed to placate the wingnuts at home - rhetoric that rarely matched the more practical, sober and responsible attempts at balancing and statesmanship that formed the actual policies - the new generations finds evidence of a fervant "fighting faith".

I hear many these days argue that peace is not possible unless the world is first transformed. So we are told we must build a "liberal order", or a "league of democracies", that then goes out to convert and transform the world by very pro-active means. My approach had always been that peace provides the preconditions for the work of transformation to liberality, rather than seeing liberal revolution as the necessary condition of peace.

So maybe I'm wrong; or maybe the people I'm arguing with are wrong. But this is an issue I wish you would look into.

Posted by Dan Kervick | September 1, 2006 1:14 AM

"The good news is that such an alternative is fairly readily available in the form of traditional liberal internationalism as has historically, albeit with some missteps, been the lodestar of Democratic thinking throughout the twentieth century."

Do you think that 'liberal internationalism' has been the lodestar of Democratic thinking about the Middle East throughout the twentieth century?

Posted by otto | September 1, 2006 1:28 AM

Until the Democratic Party manages to break out of the stranglehold on foreign policy exercised (in both parties) by the one-sided commitment on the Israel-Palestine issue, there can be no “principled and coherent alternative to Bush-style hegemonism”.

And that’s only for starters. Then, there’s the larger issue of how to deal with the "addiction to oil" and perceived economic threat from “peak oil” driving foreign alliances inconsistent with other national security goals while failing to develop domestic policies that would shift the economy out of reliance on fossil fuels – hence interdependence of foreign and domestic policy. Here, too, the Dems lack “a coherent and viable approach”.

Then, on our doorstep, the issue of immigration, which is tied up with issues of foreign trade, investment ("outsourcing") and aid that the Dems have failed to address coherently (allowing folks like Lou Dobbs to virtually take over the debate).

Finally, the Dems appear confounded by the deeper question of how to reconcile being the world's super-power (having economic and military hegemony) with the emergence of regional centers of power(Iran?)and with the need to bridge the huge divide between us and the poor in the rest of the world.

It will be interesting to see how you find your way through this thicket.

Posted by Jim Dandy | September 1, 2006 1:43 AM

How many copies are we each supposed to buy?

Posted by Seattle Man | September 1, 2006 1:52 AM

If the problem that the dem's have failed to offer a "principled and coherent alternative" or that they have failed to offer an *attractive* alternative? Much of the domestic success of Bush's foreign policy is that it satisfied the base emotional needs of the electorate.

Posted by Glenn | September 1, 2006 2:20 AM

*Is* the problem, not if. jebus, none of us can type tonight.

Posted by Glenn | September 1, 2006 2:22 AM

Clinton ran on domestic policy; Carter ran as the virtuous antidote to the Nixon scandals. The last successful Democratic presidential campaign was JFK. He didn't exactly do the "get tough" bit, but he did challenge Nixon on national security, re-establishing that a Democrat could be trusted with defending the nation and its interests.

At least two players are still around: speechwriter Ted Sorensen and SecDef Robert MacNamara. So far as I know, journalists don't interview Sorensen and politicians don't consult him. This is odd, given our party's incoherence on foreign policy.

MacNamara, of course, will carry the stain of Vietnam for eternity. Nonetheless, Vietnam was barely on his plate while Kennedy was alive and he might welcome an opportunity to offer his perspective on foreign policy that isn't Vietnam.

JFK certainly wasn't perfect and I'm not advocating a foreign policy based on trying to divine What Would Jack Do? but he did have a recognizably Democratic foreign policy and he was able to articulate it. It might be useful to try to take his foreign policy forward, as if Vietnam never happened, and see where that leads.

Anyway, I for one would be interested in what Ted and Mac are thinking these days.

Posted by Mark Paul | September 1, 2006 4:08 AM

Bullthirsty. I like that.

Posted by Alex | September 1, 2006 6:20 AM

Does anyone else find the font in the comments section unreadable?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | September 1, 2006 6:53 AM

That's because of the Sans Serif font, I think. Try a different font, Matt!

Posted by Anono | September 1, 2006 8:52 AM

Matt, I've enjoyed your writing over the years and look forward to seeing more of it. That said, however, may I add one complaint? I'm sorry, but your new site is just butt ugly! The colors are too bright, the typeface too thin, there's too much white space. Please fire your web designer asap (or hire one if you did it yourself, and stick to the policywonking).

Good luck!

Posted by AndrewBW | September 1, 2006 9:08 AM

So, the Big Project that has Matt saying fare-thee-well to Josh and the Gang, ramping down at TAP, reviving a domain name, and having us all waiting with baited breath turns out to be...

...a rehash of Beinart's book, for a different publisher.

Yawn. Admit it fellow peanut gallery denizens, we were hoping for something zestier and bolder than that. Matt, well, okay, but just churn out the damn manuscript, put it behind you and then quickly get aboard whatever '08 campaign you choose. Just don't start the book with that godawful anecdote of the dinner party right after the 2004 election..."as the wine was poured, the salad was munched, we all spoke of what was unspoken, the need for Democratic credibility on national security..."

Posted by TheManofKStreet | September 1, 2006 9:09 AM

Non-repetitiveness is overrated.

head on! apply directly to forehead. head on! apply directly to forehead. head on! apply directly to forehead.

Posted by head on | September 1, 2006 9:09 AM

...a rehash of Beinart's book, for a different publisher.

No, damnit, it's like the reverse of Beinart's book. And for a different publisher! Working title is The Bad Fight. Focus, people.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | September 1, 2006 9:30 AM

MY:

Can you post briefly about how Clinton fits into this conceptual framework? I promise I'll buy the book if you do :-)

Posted by Noto | September 1, 2006 9:51 AM

I'll look forward to the book, but I hope the solution isn't "we need to work more through international institutions like the UN." That's at least my conception of what "liberal internationalism" means. Perhaps I'm wrong about that, though.

Posted by Al | September 1, 2006 10:09 AM

Hm...can I possibly squeeze additional nuance in while expanding from four paragraphs to 80,000 words? I certainly hope so!

DFWY ... Don't Fuck With Yglesias.

Posted by Anderson | September 1, 2006 10:11 AM

It had better not be a rehash of Beinart's book or your reputation is toast.

That also means not ignoring oil or Israel in your discussion of US/ Democratic party Middle East policy over the last 70 years.

Posted by otto | September 1, 2006 11:25 AM

And while you're working on The Bad Fight can you think about getting rid of The Bad Font ?

Posted by otto | September 1, 2006 11:31 AM

There is no doubt you usually have something interesting to say which makes me somewhat hopeful about this book. I say "somewhat" because I disagree with you what you identify as the "primary political problem for contemporary progressives".

Yes Dems have "failed" to convince the American public that the Democratic Party will kepp them them safe. But it seems to me the problem is not the lack of a coherent and viable approach to national security policy. The problem is "somehow" people are getting a message that democrats are weak, cowardly, fools who would go on vacation if they heard Osama was determined to attack the USA. And "somehow" people keep getting messages that they should be very afraid. And "somehow" the American public keeps hearing messages that the Republicans are doing the "correct" thing that fits most peoples worst emotional impulses when scared, blowing up stuff real good.

As long as "somehow" progressives find it difficult to convince the American Public of anything I am not sure it matters how consistant, sensible, or thoughtful the policy could be. Generally speaking when people are doing stupid things that are making their lives uncomfortable or downright horrible it is because they are stuck in their feelings and not using their heads. Watching the USA from afar I am often struck by the huge degree that "somehow" the American public is encouraged to rely on emotions rather than thoughts.

Likewise as you are no doubt aware consistancy is a hobgoblin. Producing optimal outcomes relies not so much on being consistant as try hard to be smart and trying especially hard not to dumb things.

On the other hand writers like politicians are sometimes well served by overstating their case. And would reinventing the wheel to remind some democrats of smart national security policy was done be a bad thing - likely not. So good luck.

Posted by Rob | September 1, 2006 11:52 AM

"Liberal internationalism" never *really* decided if neo-colonial wars by the big powers were going to be acceptable or not. Aggression by the major powers against small / "illegitimate" / third world ones went on next to and beside the diplomatic framework for peaceful resolution set up under the international system. The minor powers resisted, usually in "people's wars" of some sort. Iraq is nothing new. Guerilla resistance against modern, industrial armies has been getting more and more effective.

The fundamental argument that has to be made is that war is a very bad idea in the modern world. It is almost always ineffective in achieving useful goals and therefore immoral (because effectiveness is the moral justification for something as destructive and murderous as war). As long as the American people think wars are good things, as long as we are a militarist country, we will continue to fight them when riled up. Unfortunately, the conservative backlash in this country has made any kind of principled anti-war stance seem hippie-ish and "un-serious". Even young liberals are often afraid to condemn militarism outright, for fear of losing legitimacy. Thus we get mush-mouthed stuff about the grand tradition of liberal internationalism, which is usually nothing but barely disguised nostalgia for Democrats Who Could Win Elections. What the country actually needs is someone who can make the wisdom of the hippies and the peace movement acceptable again, not somebody to channel Jack Kennedy or Woodrow Wilson.

Posted by MQ | September 1, 2006 12:47 PM

What your readers really want to know is whether you got a Beinart style $600,000 advance?

(Does anyone know how many books PB's book has in fact sold so far? We need some benchmarks.)

Posted by otto | September 1, 2006 1:13 PM

I'm sure your book will be great.

Say, are you going to blog about The Wire? Cuz I no longer have HBO and I really want to keep up with the new season.

Posted by AF | September 1, 2006 1:21 PM

"No, damnit, it's like the reverse of Beinart's book."

You've chosen to write an irrelevant book? Odd choice.

Posted by Petey | September 1, 2006 3:09 PM

(Does anyone know how many books PB's book has in fact sold so far? We need some benchmarks.)

I believe that The New Republic is now printed on the repulped pages of his oft-remaindered book.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 1, 2006 6:23 PM

I would like for liberal internationalism to be a success.

But American moves in that arena have often been disasters, and, not infrequently, big ones.

Maybe a book on this subject should start with an honest look at the Wilsonian interventionism that set the stage for WW II, the Truman inaugeration of the Cold War that led us to support dictatorships around the world, the Scoop Jackson years that led us down a merry path of insanity to Ronald Reagan and his 40 thieves, and the Clinton initiatives that have made many of us wonder if anything good can come of international trade.

The party elites have found themselves adrift because the Iraq fiasco resembled strongly what has gone before, but the times, they are a changin'.

The fact is, the U.N. was the brainchild of Roosevelt and Churchill, and Churchill was so conservative that even the Conservative Party disowned him for most of the thirties. The U.N. is not so much liberal as it is just good common sense.

Saving the Democratic party with this thesis will be a tough business. You should at least try to get a degree out of the effort, in case the primary mission is unsuccessful.

Posted by serial catowner | September 1, 2006 7:37 PM

hmmm.
Wow, this website has changed.
Cheers on the book. (although, didn't Peter Beinart already write it?)

Are you leaving the American Prospect as well as TPM Cafe?

Posted by glasnost | September 1, 2006 8:08 PM

Not to be a wet blanket or anything but couldn't you have picked a more interesting topic? My eyes are glazing over already. I hope you got a big non-refundable advance.

Posted by James B. Shearer | September 2, 2006 3:43 AM

The font is just fine the way it is and you can tell there is not one designer among you. Who ever heard of designer demanding less white space.

(OK, the masthead is really over the top)

Posted by The Art Director | September 2, 2006 7:23 PM

Count on me for unwanted advice.

I think that Republican penetration of the media, a dynamite Republican political machine (which controls policy-making), and the Republican alternate media (think tanks and money-losing fringe publications) is the main reason why Democrats lose.

These forces are happy to work with sympathetic members of the military-intelligence establishment (excluding the CIA these days), and militarism is part of the campaign mix. Between the two, America's permanent mobilization (since 1941) was bent in a certain unfavorable direction, but liberal internationalists have played an only slightly different game (e.g., Bzrezinski still defends US support of Islamofascism [/irony] in the Afghan-Soviet War).

If your new liberal internationalism manifesto includes a prominently placed line-item like "Sometimes it's OK to be opposed to blowing shit up", or "Doves are not always wrong", I guess I might be sympathetic. I fear that it won't.

Posted by John Emerson | September 9, 2006 9:15 AM