"Force and Legitimacy"

I said yesterday that I thought James Steinberg was the most interesting name on the Obama National Security Working Group list. The other folks are either people who've been in the Obama circle for a while, or else they're elder statesmen types rather than potential future appointees. Steinberg, however, was Deputy National Security Advisor from 1996-2000 and is thus exactly the sort of person who could get a senior-level job in an Obama administration.

As such, I was interested to read his essay "Force and Legitimacy in the Post 9/11 Era: What Principles Should Guide the United States?" It's a pretty disappointing piece of work. He observes that the UN Charter authorizes the use of force for the purpose of self-defense, for defense of others, or in other circumstances when authorized by the UN Security Council. He then observes that there are a variety of circumstances under which people sometimes think we should use non-defensive force even without Security Council authorizations. And he observes that using force in all of these circumstances is problematic in many ways. And that it's more problematic the more unilateral it is. And then he kind of just concludes that it all depends. The essay is full of thumbsuckers like this:

Thus, the bottom line suggests that preventive force must be part of the policy mix in dealing with the acquisition of dangerous capabilities, especially WMD, but the wisdom of its use is highly fact-dependent and requires a very careful balancing of the real benefits to be achieved against likely costs.

And:

Although there are substantial costs and risks to acting preventively, the calculation may still be favorable in light of the alternatives.

None of this contradicts the bold thinking and new approaches some of us have been excited about, but it's really the reverse of bold thinking and new approaches. Now arguably it's a good idea for an incoming president to leaven some of his big new ideas with a certain amount of mealy-mouthed timidity and Steinberg does have sound views on the key substantive issues but there is a certain "change you can believe in" quality missing here. Part of the issue, as Chris Hayes says, is that you need to staff a national campaign and an administration with people who know what they're doing, and that necessarily entails a certain status quo bias that's bound to disappoint the true believers.

Comments

It sounds like Obama is going to be Clinton II without the sex scandals. A better option that John "Let's Have a War Across the Fertile Crescent" McCain, but not the revolutionary leader that people seem to be expecting.

Posted by Helter | June 19, 2008 9:25 AM

The idea apparantly is to pivot to the center (right?) to capture more moderate voters. Presumably, the new President then governs as an
actual progressive.

I haven't seen any persasive evidence that Obama holds especially progressive policy views. Somehow, we are supposed to take it on faith that Obama represents a clean break with the past.

Posted by Running Dog | June 19, 2008 9:39 AM

Is Matt just figuring out Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist?

But personally, a foreign policy based on facts and serious cost benefit analysis sounds pretty good to me.

Posted by DTM | June 19, 2008 9:40 AM

There's a few things I think you are not fully appreciating:

a) There are very few people who can do this sort of job. The longer you are out of power the fewer there are. Of the new crowd, Steinberg is probably the pick of the bunch. As great as Samantha Power is, it is simply crazy to imagine that you could just put her in now as nat sec adv given that she has no government experience.

b) the administration will need a mix of idealism and pragmatism. Steinberg definitely represents the latter but there will be others to balance it out. In any case, the preventive use of force is arguably one where we do not need new thinking, just a return to sensible old pre-Bush thinking

c) you are sort of misrepresenting his argument since the whole article/ chapter provides example after example to show that doctrine is not the way to go. By simply taking the conclusion, you can make it appear bland but what you really need to do is to show that it is possible to have a doctrine to fit all cases-- only in that case do you land a real blow.

d) finally, as I understand Matt's argument it is that we do not need new ideas, just old liberal internationalism. It sounds strange then when he criticizes old liberal internationalists for lacking new ideas.

Posted by pt | June 19, 2008 9:54 AM

After 8 years of Bush, Pragmatism is revolutionary and a clean break with the past.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 19, 2008 10:01 AM

As I said yesterday, there is no one on the list who is remotely "interesting". Certainly there is no one on the list who has a reputation for being provocative, controversial, visionary or unorthodox. There are no noted intellectuals or innovative global thinkers from outside the drab stable of approved government and policy shop professionals. Nor am I aware that there is anyone on that list who disagrees in any fundamental ways with anyone else on the list.

It's just a list of many of the usual Democratic suspects. Actually, several of the usual suspects are missing form the list, because even some of the usual suspects are now apparently deemed too controversial. It looks like Obama is determined to avoid creative tension, intense debate, bold intellectual vitality and spirited disagreement of all kinds, and expose himself only to few dozen voices expressing the same body of received center-Dem opinion.

The message conveyed by the announcement of this advisory board is this: "There is nothing remotely troubling about standard, garden variety US foreign policy, and nothing wrong with the current set of policies that isn't the fault of a few crazy Bush hotheads, and that won't be fixed immediately by bringing back the old crew. Yes, I may be young. But I have a lot of very, very old grownups, and assorted government veterans and old hands, advising me. And you can count to me to continue to do the things the grownups and veterans have always done before they were rudely interrupted by those dangerously innovative Bush radicals. You want boring? I can be way, way boring."

Now, certainly,, there are a lot of problems that will be fixed simply by going back to Clinton administration veterans and the old Democratic guard. But you would think that at least for an advisory committee, a candidate would want to expose himself to a few unconventional thinkers, and a few non-bureaucratic types from outside the think tanks and policy shops, if only to provoke sharper and deeper debate.

Posted by Dan Kervick | June 19, 2008 10:03 AM

There are multiple types of legitimacy, and people like Steinberg are hopelessly confusing the situation when they just combine them all and act as though it's a unitary concept.

At minimum, there's a pre-liberal sovereignty based legitimacy, which usually encompasses defensive wars, and efforts like Afghanistan to react to material threats.

There's the affinity-based, a-liberal legitimacy inherent in concepts like "soft power", however poorly named, where people extend the benefit of the doubt to us because they like us.

And then there's the transactional, liberal, legitimacy derived from good faith participation in institutions and observance of restraints/rules. If people think we are largely law abiding, they will be more open to our entreaties.

All the preventative junk is non-liberal crap, wishful thinking about the capacity of our military given its questionable legitimacy. Bah.

Posted by Dave Meyer | June 19, 2008 10:05 AM

There are multiple types of legitimacy, and people like Steinberg are hopelessly confusing the situation when they just combine them all and act as though it's a unitary concept.

At minimum, there's a pre-liberal sovereignty based legitimacy, which usually encompasses defensive wars, and efforts like Afghanistan to react to material threats.

There's the affinity-based, a-liberal legitimacy inherent in concepts like "soft power", however poorly named, where people extend the benefit of the doubt to us because they like us.

And then there's the transactional, liberal, legitimacy derived from good faith participation in institutions and observance of restraints/rules. If people think we are largely law abiding, they will be more open to our entreaties.

All the preventative junk is non-liberal crap, wishful thinking about the capacity of our military given its questionable legitimacy. Bah.

Posted by Dave Meyer | June 19, 2008 10:07 AM

Anyone expecting Obama to trot out lots of exciting new foreign policy initiatives is deluded. "Clinton II minus the sex scandals" suits me just fine, as I suspect it will suit a big majority of other voters. We've had more than enough excitement lately, and Steinberg certainly doesn't appear likely to provide any more.

I may be wrong, but Matt appears disappointed Steinberg didn't launch into a comprehensive denunciation of "unilateral pre-emption" based on Iraq as is currently fashionable. Someone who knows what he's talking about as Steinberg appears to is never going to do so, of course, because the invasion of Iraq was neither unilateral (it had the support of most of the world's most important democracies), nor pre-emptive (we had been fighting a war with Iraq in fits and starts ever since 1991). Mismanaged, sure, but all the ranting about illegality and new doctrine was propaganda unsupported by any facts.

Posted by robert powell | June 19, 2008 10:19 AM

This isn't my field, but what precisely is wrong with Steinberg's position? He is saying that there might be situations where preventative intervention is appropriate. Is the claim that there will _never_ be such situations?

Because he may be part of our futures, I will add that I roomed with Jim for a year at Andover, and stayed in touch with him when we were at Harvard. He was well-motivated, and way smarter than me, but the most striking thing was how precociously _competent_ he was. (He also had a reputation for arrogance at _Harvard_. Think about what that takes...)

Posted by Bill Gardner | June 19, 2008 11:02 AM

Steinberg's quotes in isolation seem fairly lame, but nothing to get excited over.

On the other hand, Matt is correct when he prefers to see some awareness that calls into question the United States meddling that has been going on for the last century or more.

As I've said here repeatedly, Obama is essentially clueless on foreign policy and national security, despite his background. He is parroting lines about Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan that are simply massively at odds with the facts on the ground and the reality of what can be accomplished.

And this is going to cost the US substantially if he becomes President and tries to conduct US foreign policy along those lines.

This is still better than McCain or Clinton, of course - but not by much.

As for Bill's question above, there is only one application of military intervention which is appropriate - and that is defense against an immediate direct military threat to either the US or a major ally like Japan. If North Korea threatens to immediately nuke Japan or the US, that would be a situation where the US should act - IF the threat is confirmed to actually be possible and immediate - not just bellicose talk that can only result in action two years from now. This bullshit about Iran doesn't even come close to that sort of situation.

Intervention is a "slippery slope". This country has already gone into free fall on that slope, and needs a President who will pull it back forcefully from that slope.

And Obama does not seem to be it.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 19, 2008 5:59 PM

Sorry to have to point this out, but a comprehensive repudiation of "unilateral pre-emption" is not some current fad, but the cornerstone legal obligation of the international system--embedded in the United Nations Charter after codification in the Kellogg-Briand treaty of Paris. (One of the prime legal bases for sending the flower of German National Socialism to the gallows at Nuremberg was that treaty's bar to launching war.)

The Iraq invasion triggered the abrupt slide worldwide in support for the United States -- an average 30 point fall-off in virtually all of the dozens of countries surveyed between March and May 2003. That's a crash in global respect from which the US has still not recovered -- and which has crippled American global leadership. Some may view "ranting about illegality" as irrelevant, but the pushback from the rest of the world (and especially from "the world's most important democracies") for US disregard of treaty law is exacting a real price.

It's those damned democracies that insist on "ranting about illegality" that make the United States currently unelectable to international human rights bodies. And it will stay unelectable until it corrects the Bush crowd's egregious violations of global conventions on treatment of war detainees (Geneva) and against torture. Quaint and obsolete as it may appear in Washington in recent years, international law is treated quite seriously by the "civilized world." You remember -- we used to be part of it.

Posted by Jeff Laurenti | June 19, 2008 6:07 PM

Sorry to have to point this out, but a comprehensive repudiation of "unilateral pre-emption" is not some current fad, but the cornerstone legal obligation of the international system--embedded in the United Nations Charter after codification in the Kellogg-Briand treaty of Paris. (One of the prime legal bases for sending the flower of German National Socialism to the gallows at Nuremberg was that treaty's bar to launching war.)

The Iraq invasion triggered the abrupt slide worldwide in support for the United States -- an average 30 point fall-off in virtually all of the dozens of countries surveyed between March and May 2003. That's a crash in global respect from which the US has still not recovered -- and which has crippled American global leadership. Some may view "ranting about illegality" as irrelevant, but the pushback from the rest of the world (and especially from "the world's most important democracies") for US disregard of treaty law is exacting a real price.

It's those damned democracies that insist on "ranting about illegality" that make the United States currently unelectable to international human rights bodies. And it will stay unelectable until it corrects the Bush crowd's egregious violations of global conventions on treatment of war detainees (Geneva) and against torture. Quaint and obsolete as it may appear in Washington in recent years, international law is treated quite seriously by the "civilized world." You remember -- we used to be part of it.

Posted by Jeff Laurenti | June 19, 2008 6:10 PM

Sorry to have to point this out, but "slides" in random opinion polls have little or nothing to do with actual "global leadership", which is based on much more substantial things.

And ranting about illegality is fine with me as long as there is some actual illegality involved. Enforcing the 1991 ceasefire and subsequent Chapter VII Resolutions on Iraq wasn't illegal according to the relevant authorities in the legitimate elected governments of the US, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Spain, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Holland, etc, etc, etc.

Finding a "panel of experts" from among politically interested outsiders to say something is illegal is only compelling evidence to those who want to believe it.

Posted by robert powell | June 20, 2008 4:25 AM

Powell, you are once again a fucking liar.

The invasion of Iraq was declared illegal by the UN Secretary General - who IS the "relevant authority" in matters of international war - and virtually every body of international law jurists on the planet.

You're a fucking blatant liar.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 20, 2008 5:23 PM

Only a real idiot would suggest that Kofi Annan is a "relevant authority in matters of international war", or for that matter just about anything else.

The idea that the UN Secretary General or some random panel of "international law jurists" has more legal authority than the governments of any, let alone most of the world's important democracies is so self-evidently ridiculous it's hardly worth pointing out.

Posted by robert powell | June 21, 2008 2:48 AM