On “Rethinking” the National Interest
In a recent New York Times op-ed entitled Know-Nothing Politics, Paul Krugman argues that non-partisanship is a non-starter in today’s politics. And just why might that be? According to Krugman, when one political party is too dumb – incapable of recognizing the difference between a workable policy and one destined to fail – it is neither possible nor desirable to put an end to partisanship. When I first read the penultimate paragraph of Krugman’s piece, I immediately thought to myself, hey, Krugman simply can’t be right. Not-partisan politics is designed to get people with starkly opposed ideas together, so that the bad ideas will be routed out and the good ones conserved. Sounds promising, wouldn’t you agree?
But folks, after reading Condoleezza Rice’s Rethinking the National Interest in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs, I have realized that Krugman is on to something. Why the conversion to pessimism, you ask? The shorthand answer is that if Rice, a former Stanford Political Science professor and sitting U.S. Secretary of State, cannot comprehend that certain key parts of the neoconservative worldview are empirically unsupportable (i.e., stupid), it’s extremely unlikely that the dimmer bulbs in the neocon camp will come around and see the light. Ergo, Krugman is right: too many dummies on one side makes true non-partisanship unwise (since those with a good grasp on reality might actually accept some of the cant peddled by the dummies) and impossible (since by definition, if one party refuses to recognize reality, there can be no true cooperative decision making).
As for the longhand answer, consider the following gaffes, goofs and blunders in Rice’s well-written but woefully underthought tale of American exceptionalism. First, Rice attempts to convince her readers that the U.S. invaded Iraq for the specific purpose of overthrowing an imminent, significant threat to international security. At the time we invaded Iraq, our best intelligence did not indicate that there were linkages between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Nor did our intelligence clearly indicate that Saddam’s Iraq was capable of or interested in attacking the United States (or even destabilizing the region) through the use of chemical or nuclear weapons. Please Ms. Rice, no one accepts the fantasy that the Iraq invasion was necessary to save the free world from WMD.
Second, Rice contends that our democratic values place us in a unique position to influence, in a morally sound way, the development of democracy around the world. I agree with Rice that America possesses unique democratic values, and it is these basic values that have historically distinguished our approach to economic life, politics, and social justice from many of our contemporaries on the world stage. However, these values can only help us promote democracy and economic development if the rest of the world can see that we are abiding by them. When we abandon these key values, we lose the moral legitimacy that is a prerequisite of influencing the world with soft, along with hard, power.
It cannot be gainsaid that we have abandoned these values during Bush’s presidency. A nation that employs torture, invades sovereign nations on pretextual grounds, censors news reporting on an unpopular war to reduce public dismay, and provides an illegal immunity to telecommunications companies for violating the inalienable rights of its citizens is not acting in accordance with democratic ideals. Since we have so clearly failed to live up to these ideals in recent years, it is hard to see why anyone would want to emulate us. And this is precisely why Ms. Rice’s heart warming homily about our democratic values is likely to fall on deaf ears, as it should at this point in history.
Third, there’s the argument that a uniquely “American realism” has guided the foreign policy and international security policy of the Bush Administration. She is surely dead wrong. For the term “realism” to have any purchase in the phrase “American realism,” there must be a sense in which the Bush Administration’s policies have been designed to systematically enhance – not undermine – America’s economic and political interests. This simply has not been the case, as Bush’s attempt to bludgeon parts of the Middle East into accepting American style democracy has been a case study in abject failure. Our misadventures in Iraq have neither contributed to our safety nor enhanced our political and economic standing in the world. So, dear friends, in what possible sense could any variety of realism, American or otherwise, have been the philosophy guiding the Bush Administration over the past eight years?
Observant readers will note that I have perhaps taken Rice’s essay a bit too seriously. After all, it was our friend Condi who loudly decried nation building back in 2000 when she sketched her vision of the role the United States should play in the world. I take the point – perhaps Ms. Rice doesn’t really believe anything, but merely advocates whatever position is helpful to her client at the time. Taking a cynical view, Ms. Rice’s views on nation building simply changed with the tides. Set this issue aside, because the more important point is this: If Ms. Rice’s empty rhetoric about national building and the importance of democracy is the best the neocons can offer to justify and explain (1) the mess they’ve made of Iraq and (2) the incoherence of the Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terror more generally, a certain measure of pessimism about the future of non-partisan dialogue is entirely justifiable.
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