Redux

Robert McFarlane was National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan and is officially down as a supporter of John McCain, but Jacob Heilbrunn reports that McFarlane thinks know-nothing neocons will run the show in a McCain administration, "According to McFarlane, 'the youngsters' would run foreign policy the first year and then likely be 'fired' by the second after they mess up." So that's the grown up defense of McCain. He's the kind of guy who's likely to appoint a bunch of people who screw up, and then fire them. More:

My ears perked up when I heard this assessment because it confirms what I've been hearing elsewhere: while Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and other realist elders are consulted by McCain, his heart is with the younger neocons, the "beavers," in the words of one McCain supporter, who draft the speeches and get the grunt work done.

I would suggest that this isn't just a question of personnel and the neocons having groomed a younger generation that the realists haven't. McCain's choice of personnel reflects his own ideas about national security, honor, national greatness, etc. The realists McCain knows are all older guys who are sort of out of the game because McCain was a realist a long time ago in the 1980s when I was in grade school and these old dudes were practitioners. But his conversion happened a while back, and he's been quite consistent in his adherence to neoconnish ideas (and, indeed, he's shaped the direction of the movement and not just signed on to it) presumably because he thinks they correctly depict the post-Soviet security environment.

He's wrong but it's not like he hasn't thought about this stuff or is some small-time governor being manipulated by his devilish speechwriters. These are his ideas and they're bad ideas and lifelong Republicans who don't like these ideas and don't want to see them implemented should support his opponent.

Comments

Aw, couldn't he at least keep them in office long enough so that they could screw up on the kind of scale which merited a medal?

Posted by El Cid | April 29, 2008 5:35 PM

Robert McFarlane was National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan and is officially down as a supporter of John McCain

And:

while Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and other realist elders are consulted by McCain

So this is supposed to be just as bad if not worse politically then the Obama-Ayers connection, and, at worst, they should all be shunned, right?

But you're writing about it as if now they shouldn't be, and certainly without a hint of scandal.

Why?

Posted by SoCalJustice | April 29, 2008 5:39 PM

"Beavers"?

That one's gonna stick.

Posted by southpaw | April 29, 2008 5:41 PM

Are they called "beavers" because they get all hot and flustered when they think about missiles?

Posted by A. Nonymous | April 29, 2008 5:46 PM

I don't get SoCal's comment. . .care to explain?

Posted by Wilson | April 29, 2008 5:54 PM

I love beavers. And Jeff Goldberg should be begging on the streets.

Posted by Winston | April 29, 2008 5:55 PM

SoCal is continuing an argument that started six threads ago. He sort of has a point.

Posted by Ryan | April 29, 2008 5:58 PM

The GOP's capacity for self-delusion in the face of failure after failure is staggering. Anybody so blind that they can't see how their policies have completely screwed the proverbial pooch is not attached to the real world. (Cue "Twilight Zone" theme song.)

Posted by LFC | April 29, 2008 5:58 PM

"but it's not like he hasn't thought about this stuff"

And the evidence that he's thought about this stuff is what, exactly? His opportunistic flip-flopping? His belief that Iran trains and supplies al-Qaeda to overthrow the Iranian-supported government of Iraq? What?

Posted by dogfacegeorge | April 29, 2008 5:59 PM

The headline should be:

Even a War Criminal like Henry Kissinger thinks McCain's foreign policy team is insane.

Posted by Eric k | April 29, 2008 6:02 PM

"According to McFarlane, 'the youngsters' would run foreign policy the first year and then likely be 'fired' by the second after they mess up."

That's ironic given that McFarlane was right in the middle of the Iran-Contra mess, and attempted suicide fearing that he would be blamed for the whole sorry affair.

Posted by Independent | April 29, 2008 6:03 PM

Note he has thought about this stuff--past tense. I am not sure that McCain is very coherent now though. Either it is a fiendishly clever plan as part of the strategy for widening the war to Iran or he is confused, or perhaps both.

Posted by Chris Dornan | April 29, 2008 6:13 PM

Well said.

Posted by Steve Sailer | April 29, 2008 6:20 PM

So, let's see, realists have a choice between America-First neo-cons in McCain's camp and America-Last isolationists in Obama's camp. Decisions, decisions...

Posted by Al | April 29, 2008 6:51 PM

BTW, I think that one of the reasons that realists haven't "groomed a younger generation" is that there is not a heck of a lot of realists out there. Many of them, especially on the right, abandoned "realism" at the same time McCain did (for example - me). So this issue is, to some extent, pretty minor - who cares what a small and diminishing segment of the population thinks anyway?

Posted by Al | April 29, 2008 7:00 PM

Isn't "America-Last isolationist" an oxymoron?

Posted by Led | April 29, 2008 7:04 PM

Can you please, please put quotes around "national greatness" when you are talking about that particular strain of neocon? These demented extremists have led our country into anything but "greatness" and intend to continue, given the chance.

Posted by James | April 29, 2008 7:14 PM

I think that one of the reasons that realists haven't "groomed a younger generation" is that there is not a heck of a lot of realists out there.

I agree, and I think part of the reason for this is that the realists haven't laid out a policy agenda. To grossly simplify the foreign policy debate during the cold war, it seems to have been a contest between people whose first priority was to:

(a) strenghten the liberal internationalist order Matt writes about in his book (liberals),
(b) contain the spread of communism (realists), or
(c) roll back and destroy the country's enemies (right wingers). [I'm deceptively leaving out the marxists and the isolationists and probably lots of boutique views.]

Today, we still have (a) and (c), but the (b) faction has become far less relevant because they achieved their goal of ending communism's expansionist stage. If realism has a substance beyond containment, I haven't seen it.

Posted by southpaw | April 29, 2008 7:23 PM

So, let's see, realists have a choice between America-First neo-cons in McCain's camp and America-Last isolationists in Obama's camp. Decisions, decisions...

Seriously, Al, that's embarrassing.

Posted by fnook | April 29, 2008 9:19 PM

Isn't "America-Last isolationist" an oxymoron?

No. It's the typical leftist "Everything America does internationally is evil ([insert list of alleged evil acts, e.g.: Allende, Contras, Iraq war, Vietnam, Mossadegh, support of Israel, etc., etc.]), so America should never assert its interests abroad."

Posted by Al | April 29, 2008 10:10 PM

See there, now, Al actually understands the arguments that everything the US has done is incorrect, and ineffective - he runs the list down - but then he decides that all of that is just fine.

Al IS a traitor to the United States and should be hung by the neck until dead like Benedict Arnold .

Naah. Just break his head with a baseball bat and dump his body in the street as a warning to the others.

Southpaw: "roll back and destroy the country's enemies". How's that working out, dude? From where I sit, the US has lost just about every fight they've started for the last twenty years.

Uri Avnery has a commentary about the futility of war in achieving (ostensible) political goals on today's Antiwar.com page:

Always the Military Option
http://www.antiwar.com/avnery/?articleid=12761

Of course, he doesn't understand that no war is started for any of that political crap. It's all done for greed and power - and it's not the politicians or generals who are the ones behind it all. They're just the front men - although they're just as crooked as the real people behind it.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 30, 2008 4:49 AM

Southpaw: "roll back and destroy the country's enemies". How's that working out, dude?

Clearly not well. I was just trying to give each view a charitable description.

To some degree, every foreign policy "-ism" lives in the minds of its advocates (along with marxism, conservatism, and, I'd imagine, transhumanism) as a utopian ideal. These policy prescriptions cannot fail, they can only be failed.

It can be fairly said that Containment ultimately achieved it's goal of checking communism until communism largely collapsed. But Containment also turned out to be a bloody and demoralizing project that repeatedly drew the United States into destructive and indecisive proxy conflicts.

Rollback is a close cousin of imperialism, one that taxes the nation and punishes the world just as much but isn't as forthright about its motives or as effective in achieving its goals.

And while I haven't finished HITS, I have grave doubts about the liberal internationalist project. It strikes me as a sort of isolationism from 30,000 feet. A heavy cake of indifference to the world topped with an icing of fancy-pants meetings in quaint European capitals. In my caricature, these are meetings where everyone deplores the "acts of genocide" in X and debates high-mindedly how many such acts would constitute an actual genocide and how we ought to put together an international committee to study sending a rapporteur just in case he might need to recommend (after a period of consultation) that the security council take up the issue and decide whether to authorize a peacekeeping force (which the Chinese would veto, so really why bother) and how of course in any case our troops couldn't be made available to save those lives and oh look at the time, I'd love to continue but I'm expected for dinner in Gstaad in two hours . . . .

So I tend to approach the whole foreign policy world from an attitude of despair.

Posted by southpaw | April 30, 2008 5:29 AM

southpaw,
despair may be the right attitute, especially since the West isn't going to call the shots anymore. On the one hand we can say, so what, it is not like the western democracies approach brought sweetness and light. And that is right. But when you contrast the old western approach with the new China India Asia philosophy of international relations, which is non intervention to the 9th degree. Then you realise that we are entering a world of every man for himself and complete indifference. The burmese will have to sort out burma, the rawandans will sort out rawanda, etc... Welcome to the real New World Order.

McCain and his minions are so last century. Which doesn't make them incredibly dangerous. A world power is at its most dangerous when it can't manage its reduction in international status with grace.

Posted by Northern Observer | April 30, 2008 9:19 AM

It's the typical leftist "Everything America does internationally is evil ([insert list of alleged evil acts, e.g.: Allende, Contras, Iraq war, Vietnam, Mossadegh, support of Israel, etc., etc.]), so America should never assert its interests abroad."

First off, "America" didn't do those things. Particular politicians did pushing particular policies. Those individuals and their cheerleaders (originating in both political parties) were horribly wrong.

Secondly, those were not "my" interests, nor were they the interests of most U.S. humans, so they weren't "our" interests.

Unless, of course, you meant the royal "we".

Posted by El Cid | April 30, 2008 9:52 AM

There is no evidence that Obama is any kind of isolationist. His most prominent foreign policy person, you might remember, was Samantha Power. Power is of the US-must-assert-its-power-to-right-the-world's-wrongs school. New Republic liberalism. All the indications are that Obama is in the same place.

Posted by Pithlord | April 30, 2008 12:03 PM

I think the generational gap element, with the decline of realists among young policy-oriented people, is a bit more important than you're letting on. Most of the prominent realists in the public sphere are either aging or pretty damned old, whereas there's a near-inexhaustible supply of young neocons ready to preach their gospel of national greatness through superior firepower.

Funny thing, though, is that I don't think that it's the realist's fault per se. Normally they'd have plenty of young people in the academy who would be interested in following in their footsteps; no "grooming" required. But old-style structural realism isn't exactly popular among young academics either, as far as I can tell; various flavors of postmodernism (which, oddly enough, includes neoconservatism) and constructivism seem to really hold sway.

Which would be fine as well, except that these guys aren't interested. Most "posties" would rather chew their own arms off than go work for the Republicans, and even the more realist-friendly constructivists seem to have little desire to go play ball with Republicans like their realist forefathers did. At best, they're Dems.

And the Republicans don't really need to court them, not with the flood of neoconservatives ready, willing, and eager to do anything and everything asked of them. (Except actually talk to anybody who actually knows anything about IR. It might upset them.)

So you end up with a party held hostage by the numerous young proponents of a failed paradigm. Sucks to be them.

Posted by Demosthenes | April 30, 2008 12:15 PM

"Which would be fine as well, except that these guys aren't interested. Most "posties" would rather chew their own arms off than go work for the Republicans, and even the more realist-friendly constructivists seem to have little desire to go play ball with Republicans like their realist forefathers did. At best, they're Dems."

Good point. A lot of younger left-leaning foreign policy wonks have been tending to blend Samantha Power-style liberal internationalism and Anatol Lieven-style ethical realism with a dash of constructivism to explain how the world came to be how it is. However, outside of Lugar (especially with Hagel retiring and Chafee now an independent and out of office), fewer and fewer Republican politicians are sane enough to be weened off of a blend of reconstructed Trotskyite neoconservatism and militarist nationalism. The latter group seems to want to use military force when it is counterproductive (Iraq) and against using it when we have a good chance of success (Kosovo). Hell, I would bet Fukuyama (and maybe even Dan Drezner) is more popular these days on the left than on the right.

Posted by Reality Man | May 1, 2008 4:55 AM