Elliot Cohen today gives an insightful reading of a central clash in American foreign policy, that between realists and idealists. I find this speaking to my own soul since I would consider myself a realist with strong idealistic leanings (in reality, I'd consider myself a democratic realist). I think the best critique of the Bush foreign policy is the realist critique. The left-wing critique smacks of insipient Marxism: the Bush administration went to war because of a clandestine arrangement with capitalists (e.g. the oil industry) to extend the reach of capitalism so as to enrich the entrenched capitalist elite. The realist examination of Bush is more plausible and much more, dare I say it (I dare! I dare!), realistic. The problem with the Bush Doctrine, the realist would say, is that it starts on a false assumption, that within every human heart beats the yearning for freedom. No, they'd say, there is no natural yearning for freedom, only a natural yearning for power that can realize itself in many different forms of government, not just democracy. And there might be some people who really believe, for example, it is more important to have a government that fits the will of God than to have a government that promotes human freedom (this of course assumes God is agnostic about human freedom). But the point is the Bush bases his foreign policy on a fundamental falsehood: that all humans long to be free and that American has both the duty and the ability to promote human freedom in the world. Realists would call this a "pie in the sky" foreign policy doomed to failure. It is best to make peace with corrupt human nature and the corrupt governments it inspires.
Of course, the realist critique, as Cohen suggests, isn't very liberal. Liberals (of the classical and contemporary kind) believe in universal human rights; we used to call them natural rights. These rights are articulated in the Declaration of Independence. We are all naturally equal. Part of that equality is the equal possession of certain natural rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of government is to protect those rights. All just government is by consent (although the DOI is silent on what "consent" means). These aren't just the rights of British citizens living in America in 1776. These are, the DOI proposes, the rights of all people in all places for all time. If this is true, and American has the ability to protect the rights not just of her own citizens but for people the world over, does she not have the duty to do so? As we learn in the recent Spiderman movies, with great power comes great responsibility.
But how do we know when to protect the rights of other peoples and when to leave that up to that institution that is most directly responsible for protecting their rights, namely their own governments? Since American can't really protect everybody's rights, when do we know when to use American power abroad in the name of protecting rights, and when is that a foolish or abusive use of American power? There is no formula. It takes judgment. Cohen reminds us that the fact that America will necessarily have an inconsistent foreign policy does not mean that American foreign policy is fundamentally unjust, which is another claim one hears from some quarters of the Left. Luckily, there are liberals (of the contemporary kind) such as Christopher Hitchens, Martin Peretz of The New Republic and Paul Berman who recognize that the cause of promoting human rights is benefited, not undermined, by an aggressive yet prudent use of American power.
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