[Mb-civic] The Anti-Neocon

[Hawaiipolo at cs.com]

Excellent synopsis /review of Merry's "Sands of Empire" and a blistering 
critique of  Neocon forign policy from the pragmatic conservative right....MD> 
>  The Anti-Neocon
> By David Corn
> TomPaine.com
> 
>  Wednesday 20 July 2005
> 
>  "I'm the anti-neocon." That's how Robert Merry recent y described himself 
> to me. After reading his new book-Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American 
> Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition -I have to say: He got that 
> right.
> 
>  His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their 
> misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of 
> Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips 
> apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their 
> bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. 
> Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a 
> smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He's certainly not keeping 
> company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in 
> his view) American national security interests with feel-good global 
> humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché-the enemy of 
> my enemy is my friend-he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign 
> policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry's 
> knife-throwing gallery.
> 
>  His high-minded goal was to pen an intellectual history that traced the 
> ideas that led-over decades-to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. (Let's assume 
> that ideas had something to do with it.) Merry does reach back far, reviewing 
> the works and notions of such profound ponderers as the Abbé Charles-Irénée 
> Castel de Saint-Pierre (who postulated that humankind was on an inevitable 
> journey toward further enlightenment and civilization), Oswald Spengler (the 
> chronicler of the ups and downs of civilizations), and such big-idea moderns as 
> Frances Fukuyama (the premature prophet of the End of History), Samuel 
> Huntington (the advocate of the Clash of Civilizations), and Thomas Friedman (the 
> cheerleader for the Glory of Globalization). Merry suggests that in the 
> broadest terms there are two ideas that have motivated Western thought: the Idea 
> of Progress (humankind is on a never-ending advance), and the Cycle of History 
> (history is the story of civilizations that rise and then fall; screw 
> progress). And a corollary to the Cycle of History view, he notes, is Huntington's 
> Clash of Civilizations, which suggests that not only is progress not 
> inevitable but that conflict between civilizations is. The capital letters are his.
> 
>  Out of all this, he notes, American history has yielded four basic strains 
> of foreign policy: conservative interventionism (the hard-headed Cold War 
> policy that came out of World War II), conservative isolationism (poster boy: 
> Pat Buchanan), liberal interventionism (sending U.S. troops to help troubled 
> countries such as Haiti), and liberal isolationism (think of the movement 
> against the Vietnam War). His descriptions invite the charge that he is being 
> overly simplistic. For instance, he claims Reagan's use of force in Central 
> America in the 1980s-which he points to as an example of conservative 
> interventionism-was necessary to "save Western civilization from the threat of Soviet 
> expansionism." No, it wasn't. But the real question for him-and for us-is, which 
> of these four teams is essentially right?
> 
>  To answer that, Merry has fun batting aside those he consider wrong. He 
> scoffs at Fukuyama's thesis-that America and other Western democracies represent 
> the culmination of human civilization and stand as the obvious (and only) 
> ideal for the rest of the world. From this stance, Merry notes, it's a 
> perilously short distance to presuming a missionary destiny for the United States: 
> Let's make them more like us. He notes that Fukuyama, in his famous 1989 essay 
> "End of History," observed that nationalism and ethnic zeal could no longer 
> threaten a nation and that Islamic fundamentalism "has little appeal for 
> non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any 
> universal significance. Ouch. And he whips Thomas Friedman to an inch of his 
> intellectual life, noting that the gaga-on-globalization columnist is deft at 
> analyzing transnational economic forces but willfully naïve in saying that the 
> people of the world, looking toward the United States as "a spiritual value and a 
> role model," will harness these new economic trends and ride off to a better 
> future because they have no choice. "Political analysis as exhortation is not 
> serious political analysis," Merry rightfully huffs, adding, "The impulses 
> of human nature go far beyond the material comforts and options that so 
> preoccupy Friedman."
> 
>  Why does Merry devote himself to disproving Fukuyama and Friedman? It's 
> because they are idealists whose out-of-touch-with-reality views (as Merry sees 
> it) lead toward danger. But it is the neocons who have put this danger into 
> practice. It's no secret: Merry is with the hardheaded conservative 
> interventionists and quite sympathetic to Huntingtonism. The world is nasty and full of 
> nasty people-most notably, Islamic extremists-and it's our job not to change 
> the world but to define the threat wisely and specifically and to take the 
> practical steps necessary to thwart that threat or at least keep it at bay for 
> as long as possible.
> 
>  He and I would, no doubt, consume many beers in any full-length 
> conversation about the past glories and mistakes of U.S. foreign policy. But Merry is 
> not interested in raking through the coals of the many past debates. This is 
> what concerns him now: "Can an effective brand of conservative interventionism 
> be fashioned for the post-9/11 era, when the West is locked in a clash of 
> civilizations with major elements of the world of Islam and cultural instability 
> seems on the rise elsewhere around the globe?" He adds, "That is probably 
> the most pressing question facing the country-and the world-today." And the 
> biggest obstacle to fashioning a positive response, he argues, is the neocons.
> 
>  Another obstacle, he claims, are liberal interventionists such as those who 
> supported the U.S. bombing in Kosovo and Bill Clinton's involvement in the 
> Balkans. Merry goes for the jugular in questioning the arguments for and the 
> wisdom of these actions. This section of the book is not for the 
> faint-hearted. ("True, Serbian actions in Kosovo prior to the bombing were barbaric. But 
> in fact they never matched the kinds of abuses the [Clinton] administration 
> had been willing to accept in Turkey, Kashmir, Sudan, and Rwanda-or in Croatia, 
> for that matter. Thus did the United States action reveal a fundamental 
> reality of any moralistic foreign policy: inevitably it exposes a selective 
> morality.") But since the liberal interventionists are not in the driver's seat 
> and did not lead the nation into the wrong war in Iraq, Merry has less reason 
> to worry about them these days. So he unleashes the lion's share of his fury 
> upon the neoconservatives.
> 
>  He traces the history of this bunch and pokes at the contradictions and 
> inconsistencies that lie in their wake. This band of 
> Democratic-liberals-turned-Republicans-armchair-warriors, he notes, have abandoned the typical 
> "conservative hostility" toward utopian visions and bold government initiatives and 
> have "embraced a Brave New World in which American exceptionalism holds sway 
> everywhere and peoples around the globe abandon their own cultures in favor of 
> Western ideals….[T]he neoconservatives have arrived at a point where they 
> aren't really conservative at all." The neocons' transition into idealists-hey, 
> let's fight for democracy in the Middle East!-is an odd one and ought to be 
> greeted with skepticism. Merry points out that in the late 1970s and early 
> 1980s, the neocons held firm to a less noble operating premise. It was Jeane 
> Kirkpatrick, the godmother of the neocons, who wrote an influential article that 
> bitterly decried assigning human rights a priority in foreign policy. She 
> scoffed at those who believed "that it is possible to democratize governments, 
> anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances." Such conversions, she said, take 
> "decades, if not centuries." (Hmmmm.) And in a 1978 essay, Irving Kristol, 
> the neocons' godfather (and the actual father of William Kristol, the 
> movement's unofficial student body president), urged the United States to be "less 
> vaguely moralistic in its pronouncements." In 1980, Merry notes, Irving Kristol 
> wrote that it was a "fundamental fallacy" to believe that people in all 
> nations are entitled to a liberal constitutional government. The apple has 
> bounced far from this tree.
> 
>  So how did we get from there to the point where Bill Kristol and Co. are 
> rah-rahing and egging on a president who justifies invading a country-forget 
> those nonexistent WMDs-with the most lofty rhetoric about exporting democracy 
> and freedom overseas? It's not just 9/11. The neocons were hankering for a war 
> against Iraq long before nineteen al Qaeda recruits stunned the world. The 
> neocons, Merry writes, "have a tendency to make their way to whatever watering 
> hole they can find to quench their need for a rhetorical argument of the 
> moment." And in the years prior to 9/11, they became enthralled with the idea of 
> "American hegemony." Merry considers this quest for a Wilsonian-fueled 
> hegemony nuts, for it obscures the difficult questions and prevents consideration 
> of what to do about complex, centuries-in-the-making, on-the-ground 
> realities.
> 
>  Merry sees the clash between "the West and Islam" as the fundamental 
> reality of the day. But he is not looking forward to any ultimate confrontation. 
> This reality, he argues, "demands from the West a steady, careful, measured 
> approach to diplomacy and war. Will the West, with all its power and influence, 
> stimulate and aggravate these emerging cultural tensions around the world? Or 
> will it seek an approach aimed at protecting its interests while calming as 
> much as possible the cultural hostilities that are an integral part of our 
> era." He's essentially calling for a Nixonian approach. (I can't bring myself 
> to refer to it as Kissingerian.)
> 
>  His book half-echoes the critique made by the left (whether it is the 
> isolationist or interventionist left) of the current regime. Merry is talking 
> about wrestling with realities. The neocons speak of redefining reality-which 
> also can become ignoring reality. Remember Dick Cheney's promise that American 
> troops in Iraq would be welcomed as liberators? Merry does, and he catalogues 
> all the false assumptions made by the neocons and Bush's foreign policy team:
> 
>  "This litany of misstatements, misperceptions, faulty thinking and 
> off-the-mark predictions raises a question: how could so many highly intelligent 
> people be so wrong? The only answer is that they stumbled into a classic case of 
> ideological policymaking-viewing the world through the prism of a rigid 
> ideology, and then placing the pieces together to fit that ideological picture."
> 
>  Instead of offering a solution to the knotty dilemmas of the post-9/11 
> threat, the Iraq war has worsened the problem. This war, Merry maintains, can 
> only "enflame anti-Western passions in the world of Islam." That will mean "more 
> jihadists directed against the United States." The war also increases the 
> odds of destabilization in other lands-such as Saudi Arabia (which has oil we 
> need) and Pakistan (which has nukes we don't want to see used or transferred). 
> Merry sums up:
> 
>  In taking his military into the heart of Islam and planting his country's 
> flag into the soil of a foreign culture based on flimsy perceptions of a 
> national threat, George W. Bush has brought his country and the world closer to 
> that kind of Armageddon than it faced before. He did so on the basis of a world 
> outlook and political idealism that are alluring, comforting, and widely 
> embraced throughout American intellectual circles. They are also false and 
> highly dangerous.
> 
>  Strong stuff. This book shows that anti-war passion does not reside only on 
> the left. Merry, an Establishment sort, whacks Bush and the neocons for 
> turning America into the "Crusader State." And he calls for a foreign policy with 
> less idealistic zeal. Cut deals with strongman dictators who can contain 
> Islamic fundamentalism. Realize that "missionary democracy in the Middle East is 
> not necessarily our friend, for it likely would foster fundamentalist and 
> anti-American regimes in that strategically important region." Take the swagger 
> out of U.S. diplomacy. Drop the tough talk about who is "evil" and who is 
> not. Such actions, he maintains, only "exacerbate the civilizational war." 
> Instead, he advises, the United States to "foster the emergence of Islamic core 
> states" and to not fret too much about their records on democracy and human 
> rights. He calls for a rapprochement with Iran. He also suggests Washington 
> does what's necessary to encourage China and Russia to join in a containment 
> policy aimed at Islam. "What is required," he writes, "is an approach that is 
> sustained, measured, defensive in nature, limited in ambition, and based on a 
> sophisticated understanding of the cultural currents in play in the world."
> 
>  Merry is indeed the anti-neocon. Forget any idealism. Lose the rhetoric 
> about freedom, democracy and human rights. Don't give a damn about American 
> hegemony and exceptionalism. Just figure out what must be done in practical and 
> realistic terms to curtail the threat posed by Islamic extremism. It would be 
> hard for me to endorse an overarching policy so free of sentiment and 
> aspiration. But when idealism has been commandeered by the neocons for this 
> misguided (and so far unending) war, the desire for a foreign policy devoid of such 
> notions is understandable. Merry's provocative book is so hard-edged that it 
> poses a challenge to neocons and their critics on the left. But his skewering 
> of the Kristol crowd is so thorough and delicious that it makes one yearn for 
> more tough-talk from the self-described realists of the foreign policy 
> establishment.
> 
>  -----------
> 
>  David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn 
> is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of 
> George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).
> 
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