"Europe and Asia"

Commenter DivGuy notes that the Daalder/Kagan op-ed I panned earlier today is even more cynical and wrongheaded than I'd guessed:

I like how it's "democracies in Europe and Asia."

Because if they included Mexico or Brazil or South Africa, there would be a small chance of intervention being vetoed. (And, of course, how stupid is Daalder to think that Kagan would respect France's veto in a future debate over intervention?)

Exactly. But this is precisely the problem. A lot of folks -- normally disgruntled former Iraq hawks, but also including Daalder who I think never backed the war -- seem to be grasping for an international mechanism that would provide legitimacy but somehow also never block actions the US government wanted to take. Obviously, though, this isn't going to work. The idea that some international organizations say-so might grant legitimacy to something or other is inextricably bound up with the idea that the IO might say no.

Comments

Thanks for picking out that comment!

If I may extend on the argument here, I think there is a further, theoretical critique of Daalder to be made.

"Legitimacy" only exists when a large and varied group of international actors agree that an intervention is legitimate. Daalder and the moderate neocons who make up our "liberal" foreign policy establishment want to make an end-run around this basic practical fact, by creating an array of fake institutions which exist only to confer ostensible legitimacy on whatever action the US wishes to take.

This desire is telling. It bespeaks the fundamental neoconservatism of the establishment - American decisions are right because they are American, and we must establish their legitimacy through whatever means we have, or create new means if necessary. There is no moment of self-critique, or a moment for hte international community or other international actors to level a critique - those have been already ignored. Legitimacy inheres to American actions, and then shall be secured by the creation of institutions which will not challenge American actions.

This neoconservatism needs to be pulled up from its roots, and without such a drastic response, further American war crimes are inevitable.

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 5:16 PM

I linked to this once before, but the Onion said it better than I ever could:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27948

Posted by James Gary | August 6, 2007 5:19 PM

normally disgruntled former Iraq hawks, but also including Daalder who I think never backed the war

What the hell? Your own post earlier linked to Daalder's signature on the PNAC document that quite specifically supported military intervention in Iraq.

Posted by nolaboyd | August 6, 2007 6:01 PM

Sort of.

Some neoconservatives view the "Council of Democracies" as a standing "Coalition of the Willing." Others support it on ideological grouds--a grand Wilsonsian-Kantian project that gets you international institutions without the pesky dictators. But some liberal internationalists actually want a legitimate forum that might constrain unilateral and/or misguided attempts by the US to use force. Part of the idea here is that a Council of Democracies would sign off--at least much more quickly--on action to hinder or stop genocide, but might provide brakes on ill-advised action like a future invasion of Iraq.

So this "objection" represents a "feature," rather than a "bug," for some subset of supporters of the Concert of Democracies proposal.

Posted by Daniel Nexon | August 6, 2007 6:19 PM

But some liberal internationalists actually want a legitimate forum that might constrain unilateral and/or misguided attempts by the US to use force.

Right, in Daalder's brain, this forum would constrain only those actions that Daalder would not already support.

The idea is that when the moderate neocons (ostensible liberals) take hold of the reins of power, their decisions will simply all be legitimated by the Concert of Democracies.

The Concert of Democracies exists to constrain others, but not the Daalderians. The Concert of Democracies would last up until the first veto, at which point it would be replaced by a body that recognized the obvious righteousness of the action that some illiberal critic had foolishly, and illegitimately rejected.

That's not liberal internationalism of any stripe that I recommend. It's neoconservatism wearing a nicer hat.

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 6:26 PM

Is it really possible to guess how accommodating this council of democracies will be? I can see how it sounds like it would be more effective than the UN, but I am skeptical that a UN2 is going to be less cantankerous and bureaucratic than a UN1, just because a couple of the usual suspects won't be there.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 6:28 PM

"he idea is that when the moderate neocons (ostensible liberals) take hold of the reins of power, their decisions will simply all be legitimated by the Concert of Democracies."

I don't know what the phrase "moderate neocons" means in this context. Neoconservativism is the bastard child of liberal internationalism, not an umbrella concept.

Posted by Daniel Nexon | August 6, 2007 6:52 PM

Daniel,

That's a great post you linked to. I agree with pretty much everything you said there, and I'm rather confused now as to where our disagreement lies.

These are the characteristics of neoconservatism or "Exceptionalist Internationalism" as you called it:

1. If the United States embodies liberal values - correctly understood - then institutional restraint on the US will always be illiberal.

2. Many international institutions, but particularly the UN, reflect the same leftist "relativistic multiculturalism" that threatens those values at home...

3. It follows that if we had robust international institutions, understood as ones that genuinely reflected core "western" and "liberal" values, they would improve international order and security...

Daalder's call for a Concert of Democracies, selectively chosen, clearly draws on these three principles. It's both an expression of a particular trajectory of liberal internationalism, and perfectly commensurate with this thing that has come to be called neoconservatism.

I use the term "moderate neocon" to refer to those self-described liberals who hold to the three principles you outlined, but who at least kinda-sorta oppose the Iraq War. They acknowledge that the US has made mistakes, but they see no reason to rethink the above principles that quite obviously paved the road to this disaster.

Daalder would have the US act unilaterally, or through sham institutions that could never actually exercise a veto, and he would believe that every action was liberal and just. The moderate neocons oppose restraints on US power except in situations when they already think the US is acting incorrectly. The liberal view is presupposed as Daalder's, and the goal is to create institutions that support this already-determined view, with its inherent rightness unchallengable by another international actor.

This particular strand of liberal internationalism is what passes for liberalism in elite discourse. I'd rather start calling it neoconservatism, and saving liberalism to describe something less obviously reprehensible.

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 7:19 PM

Another way of putting it -

Are you arguing that we need to be rid of liberal internationalism altogether, because it is finally inextricable from neoconservatism? Or, perhaps, that a new set of principles need to be added to liberal internationalism such that one cannot hold a Daalderian or Kaganesque position and claim (rightly) to be expressing liberal internationalism?

It seems obvious to me, and I assume we agree, that a foreign policy based on the principles above, whether named as "neoconservatism" or as a certain trajectory of liberal internationalism, would be and has been a Very Bad Thing. As an academic matter, it's important to reexamine liberal internationalism from its roots to see how it could have spawned such a demon child. As a political matter, it seems important to either make a clear differentiation between this demon child and the better, non-awful foreign policy that we'd like to see theorized and implemented.

I think the simplest thing to do is to call the Daalderians neoconservatives, and emphasize the humility that must inhere to any "internationalism".

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 7:27 PM

DivGuy--thanks for the nice comment about the post. But I think we're not in total agreement. One can support (or oppose) the "Council of Democracies" proposal on a great many different grounds. After all, this is basically Kant's original idea for a "League of Nations." I don't see Daalder's grounds as particularly neoconservative, but much more in line with traditional liberal internationalism.

Posted by Daniel Nexon | August 6, 2007 7:56 PM

Daniel,

How do you differentiate Daalder's position from the three principles outlined in that post you linked? His Concert of Democracies is proposed precisely to prevent "illiberal" nations from challenging the legitimacy of US action, and further, by being selective to the point of absurdity in his notion of a democracy, looks to prevent even liberal nations from making such a challenge. In fact, he even says that the US would still act if many of the democracies disagreed with the intervention.

Where, in that utter mess of a proposal, is the core decency that you seem to want to defend as Kantian liberal internationalism? It seems like a direct outgrowth of those three principles of neoconservatism, and it seems nothing I'd want to defend.

One problem with most discussions of Concerts of Democracy is that there's always a presumption that determining what is and is not a democracy is uninfluenced by questions of power politics. Of course Russia isn't a democracy, despite elections and a parliament. And of course nations that exclude felons from the vote certainly can be counted among the true democracies. Nations that run a gulag system through eastern Europe, no problem at all. But Mexico doesn't count, they have drugs or something. If I remember my Kant, this problem was never really addressed head-on, and certainly later thinkers, and most certainly Daalder, have left it as a massive lacuna.

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 10:00 PM