Properly Understood

Brian Beutler alterts me to Jonah Goldberg's curious proclamation that "realism, properly understood, demands that we pay some respect to the idea of promoting democracy." Interested to find out what Jonah meant, I clicked through and found:

Andy may not have liked all of the democracy-mongering in defense of the Iraq invasion, but the case for regime change would be beyond impossible without appeals to America's sense of decency and, yes, mission. There's a lot of unrealistic realism on display out there when people talk about how we should have — and could have — destroyed the Saddam regime and then walked away. It's a seductive position, but I have a hard time seeing America or Congress supporting that or being able to stay on the sidelines as America-induced chaos took-over in post-Saddam Iraq.

Now it's probably true that it would have been politically unrealistic to try to sell the war in pure realist terms, but it's also true that that's now what "realism" means in this context. In foreign policy terms "realism" isn't just an adjective meaning the same thing as "practical," it's a school of thought with defined tenets including, notably, the view that the internal political organization of states is irrelevant to international relations.

Comments

This is of the same cloth as Wolfy's statements that the WMD lies were just for public consumption in order to garner its support for sending our kids to die in Iraq.

Shorter Jonah Lucianne: Realism demanded that our leaders lie to the people so they could have their war.

Nothing more can be expected from him.

Posted by gregor | July 18, 2007 3:01 PM

Note also that Goldberg's line amounts to:

look, we never could have sold the war honestly.
So *of course* we had to lie!

America is too decent to invade a country with the intention of leaving it in flames.

So we had to *pretend* we were *not* going to leave it in flames!!

Oh--and MY? Do you want to edit "now" to "not" in the line

"now what realism means in this context"?

Posted by Count Cant | July 18, 2007 3:03 PM

shouldn't someone who writes about foreign policy, you know, all the time endeavor to have at least a passing understanding of what is perhaps the single most important school of thought in foreign policy?

Posted by steve | July 18, 2007 3:08 PM

Say it often and say it loud, if the President wants to fund the troops, a bill is sitting on his desk ready to do just that.

Neither the President, nor the Republicans generally, control this situation. If the Democrats hold firm on passing only the appropriations bill they want, the Republicans only choice is basically to hope that they can pass-off blame for not funding the troops the way Newt Gingrich got tagged for shutting down the government under Clinton. In this case, however, the Country is already on the Democrats side and want the war to come to an end.

Please stop the pretense of being powerless!

Posted by BobPM | July 18, 2007 3:23 PM

When I read the initial Goldberg quote, I thought he might be getting at something like Bob Wright's "progresssive realism" and was prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Turns out no such preparation was necessary.

Posted by Led | July 18, 2007 3:28 PM

There's a lot of unrealistic realism on display out there

I think that when a description like "realism" has diverged enough from its everyday usage that "unrealistic realism" can be used without apparent irony, things have gone too far. (Maybe it's just me.)

Posted by RSA | July 18, 2007 3:30 PM

There's a lot of unrealistic realism on display out there when people talk about how we should have — and could have — destroyed the Saddam regime and then walked away.

In five years of reading political blogs, I can't recall ever seeing anyone advocate the above-quoted policy--the debate has always been between people who feel we should be involved in remaking Iraq in one way or another and people who feel we shouldn't be there at all.

For Goldberg to present this straw position as the opposite of "realism" is ridiculous.

Posted by James Gary | July 18, 2007 3:30 PM

The problem with Realism is that it's unrealistic, though not in the sense Jonah means. Because of Realism, we supported Saddam; because of Realism, we turned against him. Same with Noriega. Because of Realism, we financed the madrassas in Pakistan and supported the Afghan jihadis. What has that gotten us? Because Realism does not have substantive goals, it creates a foreign policy based on short-term interests and disposable alliances. We end up fighting those we have built up.

Posted by Martin Bento | July 18, 2007 3:33 PM

Matt, you are mixing up realism and neo-realism. Realism in the tradition of Kennan, Carr, Churchill, Morgehthau, and even Kissinger places a great emphasis on the internal characteristics of states. Think about Kennan's Long Telegram. What was it if not a memorandum about the dangers of a "communist" Russia. Churchill played power politics as well as anyone but was also a staunch foe of dictatorships and a champion of democracy in Poland and elsewhere. Kissinger is famous for being less concerned with the internal organization of states than whether the US can get along with them, but his first book was about the danger of revolutionary regimes and he also is always careful to say that he would pursue machtpolitik for idealistic ends, which is how he justifies his record. Neo-realism on the other hand, i.e. Waltz, Mearsheimer, says that the internal character does not matter.

Posted by Paul | July 18, 2007 3:38 PM

International relations has to do with the relations among nation-states. As we know, half the problem in the ME has nothing to do with nation-states as such. I am not sure what"realism" has to say about non-state actors, but the irrelevance of state organizations surely has little to do with it.

Posted by Al | July 18, 2007 4:26 PM

Paul's right about realism v. neo-realism

Regardless either the realism as expressed by GOP foreign policy certainly didn't care much about promoting democracy.

I'll be looking forward to the Jonah Goldberg column on why realism requires the right wing to rethink America's historical role in Latin America, and Iran.

Posted by ChrisB | July 18, 2007 4:44 PM

James Gary, that "rubble doesn't make trouble" attitude is associated with John Derbyshire and I think John Bolton.

As to Jonah Goldberg writing something incorrect, well, you could knock me over with a feather. In a world where that happens, and this happens, where can we turn?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | July 18, 2007 4:51 PM

I agree that few if any people have suggested we should have deposed Saddam Hussein and walked away, but I wonder why sitting on the sidelines as America-induced chaos took over would be more unpopular than sitting in Baghdad having our troops be picked off (and perhaps supporting one side or the other) while America-induced chaos took over.

Posted by KCinDC | July 18, 2007 5:21 PM

"Neo-realism on the other hand, i.e. Waltz, Mearsheimer, says that the internal character does not matter."

This is inaccurate. Neorealists definitely place a huge - nay, far greater - emphasis on structure and systems than the internal dynamics of the units. But this is not to say that they are claiming that the internal dynamics of the units doesn't matter. Waltz' justification of this, that is, the emphasis on structure and system, in part, is because neorealism is a theory of international politics and not foreign policy; and a theory of international politics is not a theory of foreign policy.

Posted by lex | July 18, 2007 5:55 PM

In foreign policy terms "realism" isn't just an adjective meaning the same thing as "practical," it's a school of thought with defined tenets including, notably, the view that the internal political organization of states is irrelevant to international relations.

That's just not true. Realism is roughly the view that the behavior of states is best understood as motivated by the pursuit of the national interest, where the national interest is taken to consist mainly in power, security and wealth.

Realism is thus opposed to other theories of state behavior that hold either that states sometimes act from motivations other than the pursuit of national interest - such as selfless moral or ideological motivations - or that those moral or ideological motivations themselves omprise a category of "moral interests" that are factors in the national interest over and above their influence on the pursuit of wealth, security and power.

Realism is by no means committed to the notion that states will never concern themselves with, or seek to influence the internal political organization of, other states. It says that one state will attempt to influence the internal political organization of another state only to the extent that the internal political organization of that latter state has an influence on the narrowly conceived national interest of the former state.

Since the internal political organization of one state can quite clearly have an influence on another state's pursuit of power and wealth, it is very easy to think of situations in which states whose motivations are as purely and narrowly self-interested as realists say they are would choose to meddle in each others' internal political affairs.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 18, 2007 7:11 PM

"There's a lot of unrealistic realism on display out there when people talk about how we should have — and could have — destroyed the Saddam regime and then walked away."

How deep is Jonah's memory hole?

Bush Plan A was to walk away after toppling Saddam. It was always his Plan A, there was no Plan B.

From the pre-war plan that had us withdrawing our troops within 90 days of toppling Saddam to Rumsfeld's "Freedom's messy" to Bush's obstinant refusal to call our presence in Iraq an occupation to the absolute failure to plan for post-conflict operations, Bush intended to destroy Saddam and leave the mess for others.

Problem was, no-one else signed up...the "Coalition of the Willing" was as much figment as fig leaf.

Jonah has re-written history here and shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

Posted by cp | July 18, 2007 7:17 PM

cp is right... the only "people" I remember ever talking about getting in & out of Iraq were the Bush administration circa 2002/2003... handover of sovereignty 2004... and so on. Everyone else was either "don't go in" or "go in for keeps."

Posted by Grumpy | July 18, 2007 7:42 PM

Dan Kervick, I think MY was alluding more to the idea in realism that the particular orientation of a state doesn't matter as a causal mechanism in determining its behavior because it will act like you outlined above - acting only in pursuit of self-interest - no matter if it's a dictatorship, a democracy, etc. Realists have had a hard time accepting the fact that democracies could possibly act fundamentally differently in international relations than dictatorship in a rational way towards serving its national interest, in part because realism, a theory based in the tragedy of self-destructive human nature, does not allow for the role of learning that it does in liberalism that liberals believe leads to enlightened self-interest.

Posted by Reality Man | July 18, 2007 8:45 PM

It always seemed to me as if 'Realism', which seems to be the most rigorous and least platitudinous school of thought in the study of International Relations, was based on a lot of the assumptions underpinning standard neoclassical economics. That being a conception of the economy as a large collection of rational individuals each seeking to maximize their own utlity, only writ large on an international scale and with autonomous nation-states substituted for autonomous individuals.

I think their are sufficient people with a general interest in both subjects that I don't have to formally move on to the multitude of problems that stem from this. But I will point out that it's saying something that the study of International Affairs generates an even poorer light to hear ratio than does the study of economics.

Posted by DRR | July 18, 2007 9:44 PM

Nice post, Dan K.

Realism is thus opposed to other theories of state behavior...

Perhaps we should say 'augmented' by other theories of state behavior. I think the principals who decide foreign policy are always 'realist' in the sense that they pursue some perceived self-interest, if not always in the sense that they know what they're doing.

The difficulty is with the relative nature of morality (I'm going to get in a lot of trouble with this...). At the level of the individual, we depend on other individuals for our survival (loosely analogous to the cells of an animal); whereas at larger levels of organization, the state (loosely analogous to the whole animal) for example, this dependence is much, much weaker, and morality follows the same pattern. It is strongest at the level of the individual, and weakest at the level of the state.

I believe that 'other theories of state behaviour' are actually attempts to resolve, through propaganda and faith, the sorts of contradictions that arise with issues of morality and self-interest as we move from the level of the individual to the level of the state.

Democracies obviously have different internal constraints that dictactorships, although I think the seeds of either are in every society. Curiously enough, the propaganda is usually quite similar, which I suppose we can just take as a sign that the individual everywhere has the same basic range of emotional triggers.

Posted by RLaing | July 19, 2007 1:55 PM