I'll Take It

Daniel Drezner, Republican, reports on the current state of the party:

It all started innocently enough. UCLA's Burkle Center hosted a conference last week on the best way to deal with rogue states. On a panel proffering advice for the next administration, I disagreed with the American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka over policy priorities. Pletka urged the next president to emphasize democracy promotion and the spread of human rights among rogues. I suggested that counterterrorism and counterproliferation merited greater attention.

this point, Pletka accused me of being on the far left. This amused my friends at the conference, since I am a Republican who acted as an informal advisor for the 2000 Bush campaign. When informed of my party status later, Pletka replied, "Well, he's not like any Republican I know!"

Dan's obviously got a problem here, as does the country, but if a desire to focus on counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation issues rather than overthrowing foreign governments is not the sign that you're on the "far left" then I think those of us on the left are in pretty good shape going forward.

Comments

His anecdote doesn't highlight the difference between neocons and realists. It highlights the difference between intellectuals and morons. What did he expect from the American Enterprise Institute? Seriously. What else did he expect?

The real problem with the "state of the party" is that republicans have gotten so used to using dishonest slurs like "far left" as if they were cogent arguments that they forget that some of their number ACTUALLY BELIEVE the stuff they say.

Posted by Patrick | March 23, 2008 1:07 PM

What exactly is wrong with promoting democracy and human rights? There's no mutual exclusiveness or need for prioritizing one above the other.

The fact that the neo-cons are warmongering idiots doesn't change anything.

Posted by novakant | March 23, 2008 1:11 PM

It's hard to extrapolate from this one example, given that Danielle Pletka is fucking batshit crazy. And while there are many similar voices in the GOP hierarchy, each example of batshit craziness is idiosyncratic.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | March 23, 2008 1:24 PM

The US should absolutely make the promotion of democracy in North Korea and Burma a priority. We can best do that by entering into peaceful dialogues with their leaders, promoting investment in their countries, and offering student visas for studying in mainstream political science graduate programs at American and European universities. Cutting the US defense budget in half would also be a good strategy for democracy promotion.

We should also defund the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy, which have done so much to retard the spread of democracy around the world.

Posted by brooksfoe | March 23, 2008 1:27 PM

Amazing that the dictators to be overthrown are those who choose the Euro over the Dollar for oil sales. Or resist offers from Houston to screw the native population.

Whereas the dictatorships of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and UAE are kept in power by US military power.

Yet no one stands up and suggests that the Republican pundits are two-faced hypocrites and the functional equivalent of bald-faced liars who have killed 4000 US soldiers for Big Oil.

No, instead let's give the PUBLIC airwaves to Glenn Beck so he can continually attack Rev Wright.

Rev Wright --who was a US Marine. As opposed to alcoholic Glenn Beck who , to the best of my knowledge, has never been within 1000 miles of an active battlefield but who seems uncommonly bloodthirsty when it comes to spending the lives of other men.

Posted by Don Williams | March 23, 2008 1:35 PM

I, for one, am shocked to discover that a university professor of international politics can give a more reasoned argument about foreign policy priorities than a hack at the AEI.

Keep in mind, of course, that when Pletka says "democracy promotion," he does not actually mean that the US should be "promoting democracy." He means "engaging in reflexive sabre-rattling as a first resort in diplomatic disputes."

Posted by Tyro | March 23, 2008 1:38 PM

Well, Drezner could just become a Democrat and be done with it.

Posted by chris | March 23, 2008 1:40 PM

Drezner's function is to be a useful idiot for the Radical Right. Possibly he is starting to understand exactly what that means. But given his past writings, he probably isn't.

Cranky

Go ahead and ask him about Cheney, Blackwater, Halliburton, mercenaries, and contract fraud in Iraq. Keep a copy of your question though as he will delete it within minutes.

Posted by Cranky Observer | March 23, 2008 2:46 PM

You know, I guess this goes without saying for those of us here that are over thirty, but the idea that GOP foreign policy is defined by promotion of democracy—whether at the end of a gun or not—is really quite astonishing.

GOP foreign policy used to be largely non-interventionist (excepting when fighting Communism and supporting business interests in Latin America), very cynical, and laughed at things like "spreading Democracy" as dangerous foolishness.

Of course, back then, it was people like Zbnew Brezinski who were arguing that the hard-realism foreign policy of the GOP was what was dangerous in its cynical support of even the most brutal dictator as long as he was in America's pocket. Brezinski argued back then for a foreign policy that was more aligned with American rhetoric, a policy that rewarded democracy, a respect for human rights, market economics and punished those who opposed those ideals, such as Saddam Hussein and Ferdinand Marcos.

Of course, what's striking when you compare American leftist and rightist attempts at idealism and realism, is that the right invariably chooses military force as the mechanism for achieving these goals, with economic force as an alternate. The left chooses negotiation, international consensus, and economic pressure ("force" here I'm defining as things like embargoes).

What's dismaying to me is to see the contemporary American left reacting to the right's foreign policy failures and never taking the lead on the issue, itself. Because of the nightmare which is the result of neocon foreign policy, the left has moved to an astonishingly cynical isolationist foreign policy. Neocons have so dirtied the entire notion of the promotion of democracy that it's now completely disregarded.

I mean, really, if you look at the dominant ideas in American foreign policy—idealism, realism, isolationism—they're all the right-wing versions of those ideas. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that we could promote "American values" in ways much more benign than by the barrel of a gun, that we could protect American interests above all other considerations other than by the barrel of a gun or other than by selling barrels of guns, or that we could stay out of other people's business except by taking a grim and cynical view of the Bosnias and Sudans of the world.

It seems to me that it's taken for granted on the left that little good can arise from using American's considerable global influence in an attempt to make the world a better place. But it's taken for granted only because for the most part the people deciding American foreign policy have been cynical, brutal realists who have never tried to be a benign world influence, or, more recently, they've been nearly insane idealistic neocons with little competence in the matter.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | March 23, 2008 5:06 PM

Does anyone remember when it was AEI-type Republicans mocked Democrats for saying we should "get tough" on China over their human rights failings during the Clinton administration? I guess for people like Danielle that only applies to Middle Eastern countries and not countries like China that own huge amounts of American debt.

Posted by ET | March 23, 2008 7:48 PM

"It seems to me that it's taken for granted on the left that little good can arise from using American's considerable global influence in an attempt to make the world a better place. But it's taken for granted only because for the most part the people deciding American foreign policy have been cynical, brutal realists who have never tried to be a benign world influence, or, more recently, they've been nearly insane idealistic neocons with little competence in the matter.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | March 23, 2008 5:06 PM"

Very true. Liberals have to learn to grow some balls and not be ashamed of what they believe. It doesn't make you weak to not rely on overcompensation to be your foreign policy guide. The crazy person who shoots everyone who looks at him cross-eyed gets shot pretty quickly and gets remembered as a loon. That's how people will remember the neocons.

Posted by Reality Man | March 23, 2008 11:18 PM

Daniel Drezner - Kerry-voting, Obama-suporting Republican. Riiiiight.

Posted by Al | March 24, 2008 8:06 AM

Keith: The continuity is perfectly understandable if you drill through the layers of code words. "Democracy promotion and the spread of human rights among rogues" pretty much just means "blow them to hell, mop up the remains, and watch as a delicate flower of Republican-friendly free marketeering grows up in its place."

That's also what they wanted during the Cold War. They were just a bit more honest about not giving a rat's ass if it were "democratic" or not back then, and a little less subtle about believing that economic liberalization is the only liberalization worth discussing.

Posted by Demosthenes | March 24, 2008 9:16 AM