A Lazy Post

Tony Smith has a pretty great article in today's Post. I'm just going to quote a bunch of it:

Iraq had flustered the congressional Democrats because Democrats don't have an agreed position on what America's role in the world should be. They want to change the Bush administration's policy in Iraq without discussing the underlying ideas that produced it. And although they now cast themselves as alternatives to President Bush, the fact is that prevailing Democratic doctrine is not that different from the Bush-Cheney doctrine. Many Democrats, including senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, embraced the idea of muscular foreign policy based on American global supremacy and the presumed right to intervene to promote democracy or to defend key U.S. interests long before 9/11, and they have not changed course since. Even those who have shifted against the war have avoided doctrinal questions.

But without a coherent alternative to the Bush doctrine, with its confidence in America's military preeminence and the global appeal of "free market democracy," the Democrats' midterm victory may not be repeated in November 2008. Or, if the Democrats do win in 2008, they could remain staked to a vision of a Pax Americana strikingly reminiscent of Bush's. . . .

The early positions of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates illustrate their party's problem. The front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not moved from her traditional support of the DLC's basic position -- she criticizes the conduct of the war, but not the idea of the war. Former senator John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama are more outspoken; both call the war a serious mistake, but neither has articulated a vision for a more modest U.S. role in the world generally.

It isn't easy to offer a true alternative. The challenges to world order are many, as are the influential special interests in this country that want an aggressive policy: globalizing corporations, the military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel lobbies, those who covet Middle Eastern oil. The nationalist conviction that we are indeed "the indispensable nation" will continue to tempt our leaders to overplay their hand. The danger lies in believing that our power is beyond challenge, that the righteousness of our goals is beyond question and that the real task is not to reformulate our role in the world so much as to assert more effectively a global American peace.

As I say, I agree.

Comments

Somehow, I'm guessing that Matt's "coherent alternative" would center on the idea that Israel is the main culprit behind the world's current problems...

Snark snark...

Posted by Mr. Noah | March 11, 2007 8:28 PM

Somehow, I'm guessing that Matt's "coherent alternative" would center on the idea that Israel is the main culprit behind the world's current problems.

Well, it wouldn't.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 11, 2007 8:32 PM

It isn't easy to offer a true alternative.

That's funny - I thought Dennis Kucinich (among others, such as Sharpton) offered a true alternative, but according to the unwritten rules, you're not supposed to speak / write about them. Kucinich and Sharpton are, after all, non-contenders - which pretty much becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy when no one dares speak / write about them.

Posted by chuck | March 11, 2007 8:39 PM

As to Edwards and Obama, doesn't it seem that advocating an end to the present madness is a good place to start? Can't the "Grand Plan" wait until we have cleaned this up?

Posted by JackD | March 11, 2007 8:44 PM

Agree with JackD. One way to get a sense of possible new approaches to foreign policy would be to interview the various foreign policy advisers to the various Presidential candidates, I would think. If only there was a foreign policy journalist who was interested in this sort of thing.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 11, 2007 8:57 PM

I agree, too.

This is an important follow-up to the wonderful posting Matt did on "the incompetence dodge". We are not out of the woods unless and until our leaders formally and forcefully renounce the "Bush Doctrine." Once that's done, the existing framework of international treaties, the UN, and the Geneva Convention provides the outline of a sane US foreign policy. Wesley Clark has been the most convincing, so far.

Posted by Brautigan | March 11, 2007 9:15 PM

Well, it wouldn't.

Sorry, sorry, just doing a little snarking...Everyone succumbs to the snark urge once in a while...

Posted by Mr. Noah | March 11, 2007 9:42 PM

I thought this article was more interesting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030901839.html

How many of Frederick Kagan's close relatives are going to be allowed to write about how the surge is succeeding without mentioning that they're, well, Frederick Kagan's close relatives?

Has Donald written about the surge yet?

Posted by guy | March 11, 2007 9:44 PM

Sure, sure, but that's okay 'cuz we're all expecting your book to solve all these problems.

Posted by JP | March 11, 2007 10:10 PM

As to Edwards and Obama, doesn't it seem that advocating an end to the present madness is a good place to start? Can't the "Grand Plan" wait until we have cleaned this up?

It's increasingly looking like this is not enough, because the debate has unavoidably moved beyond that elementary point. The congressional debate naturally raises questions about the consequences of withdrawal and the alternatives to the present Iraq policy that that call for some intimation of a strategy. That's because "cleaning this up" is inextricably bound up with pursuing some plan that involves more places than Iraq, and you can't start the cleanup plan if you don't know which one of the incompatible alternatives you are pursuing. The problems of US action abroad don't come bundled up into neatly isolated nation-sized packages.

If one has thrown their lot in with those people who think Iran is the new Evil Empire - a mad, fanatical, expansionist prison state of genocidal and suicidal nuke-loving mullahs - and that it must be challenged, contained and checked at all costs, then you're in a pretty tight and dubiously consistent box if you then want to go on and advocate the withdrawal of troops from neighboring Iraq, where those troops are presumably checking the expansion of said diabolical Mad Mullahs. It's like an old Cold Warrior saying, "it's absolutely essential that we contain those marching Godless Communists, therefore we must remove our troops from Germany and Japan!"

The Iran debate has really undermined the Democratic post-election momentum and taken a lot of wind out of the party's unprepared sails. It's hard to see, for example, how any serious person could deny that if the goal is to end the US presence in Iraq, and stabilize Iraq and the region at the same time so as to prevent a regional implosion and future US involvement, then part of the solution is a cooperative regional security strategy which requires the participation of all significant neighboring states. But some of our leading Democrats have put themselves in a position of going dovish on Iraq and hawkish on Iran at the same time. They definitely have not all done this; but enough have to divide and weaken the party, and open it up to the charge of strategic incoherence and cluelessness.

It also doesn't help to have one of your main voices for withdrawal - Jack Murtha - argue against the war while he is at the same time working to lard up the proposed Iraq budget with addidtional spending. One might offer several refined political arguments for this approach, but it sure looks to most of the public like a lot of Democrats have competely forgotten the issue that got them elected now that they have their own hands on the military pork barrels.

Here's an example of the Democratic divide: I read an LA Times editorial last fall back by Nancy Soderberg on Latin America that seemed to go in for whole hog, Monroe Doctrine-loving, pro-corporate, pro-debt lefty-hating and portrayed the new ascendancy of the Latin American left as a dire threat to everything holy (like the IMF). Some of us, of course, like the general idea of countries laying control of their national destinies and sticking it to the foreign elites, economic hit men, blood bankers and transnational corporatocrats that control their lives - even if those foreigners are Americans, and even if we differ here or there with some of the particular economic tactics of the anti-imperialists.

It is very difficult to isolate and solve major foreign policy issues while there is such profound strategic ambivalence in the party. Some Democrats want a perpetuation of American empire, hegemony, primacy or whatever you want to call it under a somewhat less brazen and less beligerant veneer of soft power niceness. Their "internationalism" retains strong elements of aristocracy, hierarchy, chauvinism, exceptionalism and national domination - and relies on war from time to time to nudge aside recalcitrant serfs and rebellious vassals. Others want a more egalitarian economic and political world system, and support an internationalism that is far more global, pacific, even-handed and universalistic.

Posted by Dan Kervick | March 11, 2007 11:00 PM

I really don't understand what is so difficult about finding a common defensible position on Iraq. I feel the best solution for Iraq would be a re-deployment of troops to the Iraqi borders and back to Afghanistan. This would serve a number of functions.

1. It would pull our troops out of the civil war while at the same time containing the fighting and preventing it from going regional.

2. We would focus our military efforts on a morally justifiable war in Afghanistan.

3. It would insulate the Democratic Party from charges of being soft on terrorism.

4. It would strengthen our military position on three sides of Iran.

Isn't this Murtha's plan? For the life of me, I don't know why we can't agree on it. Stop saying we want to bring the troops home and start saying we want to take the troops out of harms way in Iraq. We'll redeploy to the borders and continue training the Iraqis, while at the same time we step up the search for Bin Ladin and "fix" Bush's failure to crush the Taliban.

Posted by Just Karl | March 12, 2007 12:04 AM

This sort of comment by Smith is totally unhelpful and self destructive, turning democrat against democrat. obviously there is a difference between neo liberals and bush. after all, the clinton administration didn't get into the mess we're in now. rather than focus on that salient fact, smith chooses to say that the difference between bush and clinton is smaller than the difference between clinton and those who want a scaling back of america's commitments and a non-interventionist policy. Maybe, but does that not suggest that the non-interventionist perspective is quite radical. i for one am pretty sick and tired of the self righteous ignorance posturing as insight that passes for those on the fringe of our party who are trying to smear the democratic party foreign policy types with the sins of Republicans. It sounds a lot like a bunch of disaffected outsiders trying to take advantage of a crisis in our nation's history to get what they feel is their moment in the sun after decades of being shut out. Please grow up, get real, accept that our foreign policy types do a good job, and let's focus on 08.

Posted by pt | March 12, 2007 12:10 AM

My guess is that Chuck Hagel and Wes Clark possess the most sane and balanced perspective on what America's foreign policy should be in the wake of the Iraq fiasco. I don't think either one of them thinks the Iran should be challenged and provoked. And, that the real source of the world's instability is just who everyone else in the world thinks it is. Hell, even Colin Powell, Poppy Bush, Scowcroft, Jim Baker, Lee Hamilton, and maybe even Dick Lugar and John Warner have woken up and smelled "The Lobby" and its amen corner. Unfortunately, we may just get stuck with another stupid quisling.

Posted by Trevor | March 12, 2007 5:01 AM

Any strategic vision that requires eating humble pie and the suggestion that we aren't facing some global existential threat (that doesn't contain the word "warming" that is) is dead in the water politically. This is America, Still the Greatest Country on Earth.

Posted by Bill | March 12, 2007 9:22 AM

Re Trevor

Mr. Trevor invokes the usual Israel bashing crowd in claiming that the answer to all the worlds problem in the Middle East is to somehow obtain an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. I have some news for Mr. Trevor and the Israel bashing chorus. If Mr. Haniyeh and Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert signed a peace treaty tomorrow morning it would have not the slightest effect on the situation in Iraq. What is going on there is a civil war focussed on who is going to wield power there. The Sunnis and the Shiites couldn't care less about what the Israelis and the Palestinians do. It would also not have the slightest effect on Irans' attitude. In fact, in the very unlikely event of such a development, it is likely that Mr. Amadinejad and the mullahs behind him would work to undermine Mr. Haniyeh and Mr. Abbas, considering them to be traitors.

Posted by SLC | March 12, 2007 9:51 AM

I would have thought "don't fabricate evidence and use it as an excuse to invade the wrong country" was enough of a coherent alternative to be getting on with. It's only too bad the Democrats didn't have the courage to embrace it when it would have done some good.

Posted by JMo | March 12, 2007 10:27 AM

Re: our power being beyond challenge, and the difficulty of playing that hand. It reminds me of texas fold-em poker. Maintaining a huge chip lead can be deviously difficult for most poker players. Your opponents go all-in over and over. If you fold, they keep robbing your blinds. If you call and don't have a killer pocket, they rapidly double-up. Two or three of those in a row, and you're ruined in a matter of minutes.

In other words, taking on opponents who feel they have nothing to lose takes intelligence, skill, patience, and the ability to rapidly change strategies. Precisely the skills that are missing, currently.

Posted by Slippery Pete | March 12, 2007 10:31 AM

I thought John Kerry articulated a pretty sound Democratic foreign policy in 2004 - you know, the "global test" and all that. Was he really such an outlier?

Posted by Steve | March 12, 2007 11:01 AM

It's not that the Democrats are paralyzed from stopping the war without a strategy. It's that without an alternative that the public understand and endorses, the domestic political victory and the ability to hang onto the levers of power will be short-lived. Ending the Vietnam war brought us Jimmy Carter, but shortly thereafter, Ronald Reagan. The big majority in the House that post-Vietnam and post-Watergate swept in endured long enough to pass the Boland Amendment and such things, but not enough to get Mondale or Dukakis elected, to negotiate a nuclear freeze, or really to force any significant change in Cold War strategy.

Posted by John S. | March 12, 2007 9:27 PM