Am I The Establishment?

You would kind of think that when a major daily newspaper reviews your book, someone would let you know. But apparently not! Heads in the Sand was reviewed by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan a few days ago in The Los Angeles Times. I just wanted to take minor issue with one thing:

Yglesias occasionally assumes the bloggerish pose of an outsider screaming at the Establishment, but in its substance his preferred foreign policy is as Establishment as could be. What he offers is a livelier version of the sort of "liberal internationalist" platform that might be found in, say, a task-force report put out by a center-left think tank.

To me, though, this is the point. My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years. And they're ideas that could and should have been the key ideas of center-left think tanks in the post-9/11 world. But that's not what actually happened. Instead, a set of ideas that originally existed as a fringe right-wing position wound up being espoused not only by nearly the entire Republican Party but by a huge swathe of the broader establishment. The kind of institutions that you would expect to try to put the country back on an even keel -- The New York Times's foreign affairs columnist, The Washington Post's editorial page, the top foreign policy officials from the second Clinton administration, the Brookings Institution, etc. -- instead hopped aboard George W. Bush's madcap adventure.

Like everyone else, I do enjoy a bit of anti-establishment posturing now and again. But on another level, I'd really like my ideas to be espoused by the establishment. I think they're good ideas! I'd like them to be implemented! And as Kurtz-Phelan says, I think they've traditionally been espoused by the establishment. And America traditionally hasn't engaged in Iraq-scale blunders. But in the wake of 9/11 we saw a massive, system-wide failure of our elites that the country is only beginning to recover from, and that seems -- despite its incredibly disastrous consequences -- to have permanently pushed certain key institutions into loony land where the height of "seriousness" is to think politicians should muse aloud about launching an unprovoked attack on Iran.

Comments

Inb4 first!

Posted by Revamp | June 15, 2008 3:08 PM

I'm glad you're okay with being part of the Establishment. Because you're part of the Establishment.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 15, 2008 3:12 PM

Two major differences between you and George F. Kennan:

1. Kennan was not a zionist or zionist sympathizer.

2. Kennan didn't follow the NBA.

Posted by Trevor | June 15, 2008 3:24 PM

That's it. Now I might as well read George Will or Jonah Lucianne.

Posted by gregor | June 15, 2008 3:25 PM

you said,
"America traditionally hasn't engaged in Iraq-scale blunders."

this is wrong and just plain stupid, especially since you seem to be advocating a return to the foreign policy of more manageable state terrorism. are somalia-scale blunders really so great?

bad anti-war blogger! bad!

Posted by sleepy | June 15, 2008 3:35 PM

The idea that MattY could be anything other than part of the establishment - albeit at a lower level than, say, DanBalz and not anywhere near the level of, say, DavidRockefeller - is incredibly hilarious. Every group has minor disagreements, but at the end of the day they're all one big happy family.

Posted by TLB | June 15, 2008 3:36 PM

But in the wake of 9/11 we saw a massive, system-wide failure of our elites that the country is only beginning to recover from,

The overwhelming majority of whom remain fat and happy despite this.

Posted by McGruff | June 15, 2008 3:37 PM

Wow, no comment on that dark, forboding conclusion to the review? The reviewer seemed to think that the Iraq War wasn't just a disasterous mistake, but really the first shot in an upcoming global catastrophe, the equivalent of Fenrir's escape signalling the beginning of Ragnarok.

Posted by Gabriel | June 15, 2008 3:42 PM

But....what about all of the things America did in Latin America.

Or Vietnam. Laos, Cambodia.

Or the Iranian coup d'etat, the support of the Shah. Meddling in Egypt, in the gulf countries, in Afghanistan. Arming Saddam Hussein?

Or the policy of supporting thugs and coup d'etats in Africa.

Or East Timor, and the support for autocrats in Indonesia and the Phillipines.

Those have all either been supported or glossed over by the establishment.

Are those the things you would have supported, or are you thinking of an imaginary past?

Posted by graeme | June 15, 2008 3:42 PM

But....what about all of the things America did in Latin America.

Or Vietnam. Laos, Cambodia.

Or the Iranian coup d'etat, the support of the Shah. Meddling in Egypt, in the gulf countries, in Afghanistan. Arming Saddam Hussein?

Or the policy of supporting thugs and coup d'etats in Africa.

Or East Timor, and the support for autocrats in Indonesia and the Phillipines.

Those have all either been supported or glossed over by the establishment.

Are those the things you would have supported, or are you thinking of an imaginary past?

Posted by graeme | June 15, 2008 3:54 PM

That was so important I had to say it twice. Or the comments system sucks.

Posted by graeme | June 15, 2008 3:56 PM

So - why did our Establishment lose its mind? Decide to back ventures which anyone who had one semester's understanding of the Mideast could see were probably destined for disaster? Decide they were tired of the Constitution? Decide it was OK to torture? What the hell happened?

Posted by mf lehman | June 15, 2008 4:25 PM

So - why did our Establishment lose its mind? Decide to back ventures which anyone who had one semester's understanding of the Mideast could see were probably destined for disaster? Decide they were tired of the Constitution? Decide it was OK to torture? What the hell happened?

Posted by mf lehman | June 15, 2008 4:26 PM

To me, though, this is the point. My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years.

Which is pretty much what Kurtz-Phelan quotes you saying in the very next sentence after the part you excerpted.

Posted by Royko | June 15, 2008 5:02 PM

Yglesias was wrong about the war because the Establishment was wrong about the war. One can not expect a serious young man like Matthew to side with the DFHs.

Posted by posturing indeed | June 15, 2008 5:13 PM

Question 1: is Matthew Yglesias part of the establishment?

Case for: Harvard, the Atlantic, supports Obama, says his ideas were once establishment idea

Case against: strongly anti-war, way too snarky for your typical establishment writer, is under 30

Conclusion: Matt is part of the far left fringe of the establishment

Question 2: Is it true that "America traditionally hasn't engaged in Iraq-scale blunders".

Well, given that the total scale of the Iraq blunder continues to grow with each passing day, I'd say the jury is still out. However if one were to begin to assess the question based on the current scale of the blunder, one has to define "blunder". America was founded upon the basis of seizing land and killing or expelling its inhabitants. This, while atrocious, is not a "blunder" in that we did it very well and benefited from it. However, the war of 1812 was a blunder, the civil war was a blunder (not only should we have abolished slavery without war, but the war itself was conducted dreadfully by the North) and the occupation of the Philippines was a blunder. Lets see: 1812, 1861, 1899, 1965, 2002. I'd say that we commit a major blunder every 50 years on average. This is probably about right, since after each blunder the nation needs time to both pick up the pieces and for its leaders to completely forget the last blunder.

Posted by Alex Broner | June 15, 2008 6:09 PM

Well said, and well captured in the subtitle of the book (which I thought was brilliant, but I thought I detected some ambivalence from you in a past Table conversation).

Posted by Chris Dornan | June 15, 2008 6:14 PM

"But in the wake of 9/11 we saw a massive, system-wide failure of our elites.."

Was Matt's early support of the Iraq war part of that "massive system-wide failure of our elites"?

Posted by kafka | June 15, 2008 9:16 PM

My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years.

Haven't read your book (yet), MY, but my problem with that lone statement is ...

... that said consensus was nuts. I mean, Planter's Mixed Nuts nutty, with the cashews all gone.

The paranoia about International Communism, the idea that "credibility" was worth any price, the deluded belief that America could do anything it set its mind to (cf. "Green Lantern theory") ... that was NOT the fenced-off hunting preserve of the GOP, sir.

That was Truman's administration, that was Kennedy's, that was Johnson's. They weren't just scared of being painted as "pink" (Johnson may be a partial exception). They BELIEVED in the Cold War.

The fundamentally fact-free nature of CW paranoia is in no way better demonstrated than by its wholesale mapping onto to the Global War Against Islamofascism.

So for those of us whom you are trying to draw into reading your book, please don't say how the liberal CW establishment was right on foreign policy. Because they weren't.

Posted by Anderson | June 15, 2008 9:23 PM

Matt confirms cluelessness - film at 11.

He actually sits there and proclaims himself one of the "Establishment".

If I was running my old game, and I heard that, I'd put him down on the list for a bullet in the head. Except it would truly be a waste of fifty cents because he's such a "wannabe". The list of people more deserving of a bullet in the head is long.

Meanwhile, he's NOT part of the Establishment because Bill Kristol is and Bill Kristol has the balls to openly advocate war on Iran, and Matt doesn't. Which is WHY Matt is a "wannabe".

And as I said, he's NOT part of the Establishment - he's a WANNABE part of the Establishment.

But take heart, Matt! I'm sure your pathetic cluelessness about national security and foreign policy and human nature in general will allow you to become a full-fledged nitwit member of the Establishment in no time.

You're certainly doing a bang up job here.

By the way, nobody let you know the book was reviewed because nobody gives a shit about you or the book.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 15, 2008 9:23 PM

Establishment? Status Quo? Iconoclast?

Always remember:

"If you're not inside, you're outside" --Gordon Gecko.

Posted by Ted | June 15, 2008 10:29 PM

Establishment? Status Quo? Iconoclast?

Always remember:

"If you're not inside, you're outside" --Gordon Gecko.

Posted by Ted | June 15, 2008 10:29 PM

Richard Steven Hack -- Are you a right-wing troll or a left-wing troll? Your post doesn't make clear which side you're embarrassing.

Posted by Marxist | June 15, 2008 11:50 PM

As a left-wing outsider, I'm struck by the similarities between the old liberal foreign policy establishment you're so nostaligic for and the neoconservative approach. Despite significant differences, you have more positions in common than not. The liberal foreign policy establishment agrees with the neocons that the U.S. should (it goes without saying) have the strongest military in the world, that the U.S. is the rightful guarantor of a corporate world order, and that the U.S. is the only power in the world that has the right to define as a "threat" either what some country on the other side of the world does within a few hundred miles of its own border, or the refusal recognize the U.S. as hegemonic power. The liberal foreign policy consensus got us all the nasty shit Gabriel Kolko wrote about, like forcibly suppressing leftist resistance movements in former Axis-occupied territories and putting former Axis puppets back in power. It got us Korea and Vietnam (including the installation and subsequent overthrow of Diem, and the Tonkin Gulf incident). It got us Suharto, and endless other dictatorships of, by, and for the landed oligarchs and TNCs.

In short, your "liberal establishment" foreign policy, to the extent that it differs from that of the neocons, reminds me of Chomsky's quip about the liberal wing of the Nazi party that only wanted to kill half the Jews. While it's arguably an improvement, it's still utterly reprehensible.

Posted by Kevin Carson | June 16, 2008 2:36 AM

My ideas really are basically the ideas that were at the core of the bipartisan, establishment consensus throughout the Cold War years.

Hmm, that wonderful consensus, whatever its "core", did nothing to prevent the US from going into Vietnam causing 1 million+ deaths or meddling in South America in the most atrocious way. I know the narrative of steely but educated and reasonable cold warrior gentlemen must be appealing to Matt, but in fact they were the same murderous scum as the neocons.

Posted by novakant | June 16, 2008 4:35 AM

Matt doesn't want to control the world - he just wants to control parts of it that he thinks are "bad".

Starting with Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Once we're done there, there won't be any US military to deal with anything else, so Matt's concepts aren't much of a threat to Russia or China.

I predict that within a couple of years, Yglesias is going to have about as much credibility as Bill O'Reilly.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 16, 2008 4:53 AM

"The liberal foreign policy consensus got us all the nasty shit Gabriel Kolko wrote about, like forcibly suppressing leftist resistance movements in former Axis-occupied territories and putting former Axis puppets back in power. It got us Korea and Vietnam (including the installation and subsequent overthrow of Diem, and the Tonkin Gulf incident). It got us Suharto, and endless other dictatorships of, by, and for the landed oligarchs and TNCs."

The thing about the Chomsky thesis is that all of these examples are from the Cold War and the Cold War is long gone. There's a blindness about history. You would think after winning the Cold War, they'd make every place a dictatorship. Instead, for example, the South Koreans are rebelling.

Maliki isn't exactly a puppet as recent events have shown.

After 911 Chomsky said the US was going to commit genocide against the Afghans and it never came about.

Posted by Peter K. | June 16, 2008 11:38 AM

Of course, it isn't merely 9/11 alone that made the transformation, but 11/4(/1979) as well. The political class and establishment are all old enough to have been alive (and at least minimally geopolitically aware) during the invasion of US soil by the current Iranian regime, a still-unanswered act of war which makes the idea of an 'unprovoked' attack on Iran seem downright oxymoronic. The only remedy may be to go back to the 'Don't trust anyone over 30' maxim, which would seem perforce to exclude Matt from any putative new and better Establishment...

Posted by Jeff R. | June 16, 2008 3:51 PM

Peter K,

Actually, the Chomsky thesis is that dictatorship on the Pinochet is a last result for the neoliberals. They prefer to minimize fuss and muss whenever possible, with the kind of neoliberal spectator democracy (usually installed through some sort of color-coded revolution, with Havel or Mandela as branding icon). The ideal is a system where the public gets to choose between two corporate suits who share 80% of their basic assumptions (which assumptions, hence, are never the subject of political debate); after the election, the winning suit's technocrats starts implementing Washington Consensus policies with as little public attention as he can manage, and the public goes back to their bowling leagues and ice cream socials and other manifestations of "civil society" and leave policy to the properly qualified professionals.

Neoliberals are all in favor of promoting "democracy," but it's a formal democracy defined entirely by electoralism, in which all questions of economic justice (e.g., the monopolization of land in Latin America by latifundistas), or of the structure of economic power in society, are out of bounds.

Posted by Kevin Carson | June 16, 2008 4:38 PM