Inequality: An Unavoidable Byproduct of Capitalism?

A CNN segment with Ali Velshi.

Mostly of interest here are the comments by Harold Meyerson, who is introduced as a columnist at the Washington Post, but who is in fact a hard-line leftist and Vice-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (via Discover the Networks).

And from the DSA website, "Where We Stand: The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America":

Socialists have historically supported public ownership and control of the major economic institutions of society -- the large corporations -- in order to eliminate the injustice and inequality of a class-based society, and have depended on the the organization of a working class party to gain state power to achieve such ends. In the United States, socialists joined with others on the Left to build a broad-based, anti-corporate coalition, with the unions at the center, to address the needs of the majority by opposing the excesses of private enterprise. Many socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies. Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income, fostering economic growth and expanding social programs could be realized.

With the end of the post-World War II economic boom and the rise of global economic competitors in East Asia and Europe in the 1970s came the demise of the brief majoritarian moment of this progressive coalition that promised--but did not deliver--economic and social justice for all. A vicious corporate assault on the trade union movement and a right-wing racist,populist appeal to downwardly mobile, disgruntled white blue-collar workers contributed to the disintegration of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, the mildly redistributive welfare state liberalism of the 1960s, which accepted the corporate dominance of economic decision-making, can no longer be the programmatic basis for a majoritarian progressive politics. New Deal and Great Society liberalism depended upon redistribution at the margins of an ever-expanding economic pie. But today corporations no longer aspire to expand production and consumption by raising global living standards; rather, global capital engages in a race to increase profits by "downsizing" and lowering wages.

With the collapse of the political economy of corporate liberalism came the atrophy of the very institutions upon which the progressive politics of the New Deal and Great Society had been constructed. No longer do the social bases for a majoritarian democratic politics -- strong trade unions, social movements and urban, Democratic political machines -- simply await mobilization by a proper electoral appeal. Rather, a next left must be built from the grassroots up.

Given the globalization of economic power, such grassroots movements will increasingly focus upon building a countervailing power to that of the transnational corporations. A number of positive signs of this democratic and grassroots realignment have emerged. New labor leadership has pledged to organize a workforce increasingly constituted by women, people of color, and immigrant workers. Inner-city grassroots community organizations are placing reinvestment, job creation, and economic democracy at the heart of their organizing. The women's movement increasingly argues that only by restructuring work and child care can true gender equality be realized. And the fight for national health care -- a modest reform long provided by all other industrial democracies -- united a broad coalition of activists and constituencies.

But such movements cannot be solely national in scope. Rather, today's social movements must be as global as the corporate power they confront; they must cooperate across national boundaries and promote interstate democratic regulation of transnational capital.

If socialism cannot be achieved primarily from above, through a democratic government that owns, control and regulates the major corporations, then it must emerge from below, through a democratic transformation of the institutions of civil society, particularly those in the economic sphere -- in other words, a program for economic democracy.

As inequalities of wealth and income increase and the wages and living standards of most are either stagnant or falling, social needs expand. Only a revitalized public sector can universally and democratically meet those needs.

In other words, a socialist revolution.

Freakin' Harold Meyerson, damned Marxist asshole.

'I believe that in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live...' (VIDEO)

This is apparently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's canned line on what it means to be a democratic socialist. At WaPo, "'No person in America should be too poor to live': Ocasio-Cortez explains democratic socialism to Colbert."

She came up with the same line on the View, when asked by Meghan McCain. See Free Beacon, "Self-Described Democratic Socialist Ocasio-Cortez Struggles to Differentiate Between Socialism, Democratic Socialism."



She's just trying to make her socialism palatable, even for the so-called working class voters in her district, many of whom probably do wake up every morning saying they're "capitalists."

Here's the page for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) at Discover the Networks:

At the height of the Cold War and the Vietnam War era, the Socialist Party USA of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas split in two over the issue of whether or not to criticize the Soviet Union, its allies, and Communism: One faction rejected and denounced the USSR and its allies—including Castro's Cuba, the Sandinistas, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong—and supported Poland's Solidarity Movement, etc.  This anti-Communist faction took the name Social Democrats USA. (Many of its leaders—including Carl Gershman, who became Jeane Kirkpatrick's counselor of embassy at the United Nations—eventually grew more conservative and became Reagan Democrats.) The other faction, however, refused to reject Marxism, refused to criticize or denounce the USSR and its allies, and continued to support Soviet-backed policies—including the nuclear-freeze program that sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe. This faction, whose leading figure was Michael Harrington, in 1973 took the name Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC); its membership included many former Students for a Democratic Society activists.

DSOC operated not as a separate political party but as an explicitly socialist force within the Democratic Party and the labor movement. As such, it attracted many young activists who sought to push the Democratic Party further leftward politically. Among the notables who joined DSOC were Machinists' Union leader William Winpisinger, feminist Gloria Steinem, gay rights activist Harry Britt, actor Ed Asner, and California Congressman (and avowed socialist) Ron Dellums.

By 1979 DSOC had made major inroads into the Democratic Party and claimed a national membership of some 3,000 people. In 1983 DSOC, under Michael Harrington's leadership, merged with the New American Movement to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Harrington’s strategy was to force a “realignment” of the two major political parties by pulling the Democrats emphatically to the left and polarizing the parties along class lines. He expected that this would drive business interests away from the Democrats and into the Republican Party, but that those losses would be more than offset by an influx of newly energized minority and union voters to the Democratic Party, and that over time the Democrats would embrace socialism as their preferred ideology.[1] Thus Harrington sought to establish DSA as a force that worked within, and not outside of, the existing American political system. Following Harrington's lead, most DSAers were committed to electoral politics within the Democratic Party.[2] They feared that if they were to openly move too far and too quickly to the left, they would run the risk of alienating moderate Democrats and thereby ensuring Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984.[3]

Early in DSA's history, political organizer Harry Boyte, convinced that even Michael Harrington’s non-revolutionary form of socialism would be rejected by most Americans, formed a “communitarian caucus” within DSA. As author Stanley Kurtz explains:

“The communitarians wanted to use the language and ethos of traditional American communities—including religious language—to promote a 'populist' version of socialism. Portraying heartless corporations as enemies of traditional communities, thought Boyte, was the only way to build a quasi-socialist mass movement in the United States. Socialists could quietly help direct such a movement, Boyte believed, but openly highlighting socialist ideology would only drive converts away. In effect, Boyte was calling on DSA to drop its public professions of socialism and start referring to itself as 'communitarian' instead.”[4]
But DSA rejected this approach, worried that if it failed to publicly articulate its socialist ideals, genuine socialism itself would eventually wither and die. Boyte’s opponents stated: “We can call ourselves ‘communitarians,’ but the word will get out. Better to be out of the closet; humble, yet proud.”[5]

DSA helped establish the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in 1991 and continues to work closely with the latter to this day. Virtually every CPC member also belongs to DSA.

In 1998, WorldNetDaily (WND) published a two-part series of articles titled “Congress’ Red Army Caucus” (here and here), which exposed the close association between DSA and CPC. At that time, DSA hosted the CPC website. Shortly after the WND revelations, CPC established its own website under the auspices of Congress. Meanwhile, DSA scrubbed its own website to remove evidence of its ties to CPC. Among the items removed from the site were the lyrics to such songs as the following:

* “The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of Communism and socialism

* “Red Revolution,” sung to the tune of “Red Robin” (This song includes such lyrics as: “When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more lootin’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng.…”)

* “Are You Sleeping, Bourgeoisie?” (The lyrics of this song include: “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”)

In 2000, DSA endorsed Pay Equity Now!—a petition jointly issued in 2000 by the National Organization for Women, the Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the International Wages for Housework Campaign. Together these organizations charged that “the U.S. government opposes pay equity—equal pay for work of equal value—in national policy and international agreements”; that “women are often segregated in caring and service work for low pay, much like the housework they are expected to do for no pay at home”; and that “underpaying women is a massive subsidy to employers that is both sexist and racist.”

In 2001, DSA characterized the 9/11 terror attacks as acts of retaliation for transgressions and injustices that America had previously perpetrated across the globe. “We live in a world,” said DSA, “organized so that the greatest benefits go to a small fraction of the world’s population while the vast majority experiences injustice, poverty, and often hopelessness. Only by eliminating the political, social, and economic conditions that lead people to these small extremist groups can we be truly secure.”

Strongly opposed to the U.S. war on terror and America's post-9/11 military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, DSA is a member organization of the United For Peace and Justice anti-war coalition.

DSA was a Co-sponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” held in Washington, D.C., a rally that drew more than a million demonstrators advocating for the right to unrestricted, taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

In 2007, DSA National Political Committee member David Green expressed support for the Employee Free Choice Act as a measure that could “limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace”; “minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists”; and “provid[e] an excellent organizing tool (i.e., tactic) through which we can pursue our socialist strategy while simultaneously engaging the broader electorate on an issue of economic populism.”

In 2008, most DSA members actively supported Barack Obama for U.S. President. Saidthe organization: “DSA believes that the possible election of Senator Obama to the presidency in November represents a potential opening for social and labor movements to generate the critical political momentum necessary to implement a progressive political agenda.”

In October 2009, the Socialist Party of America announced that at least 70 Congressional Democrats were members of its Caucus at that time—i.e., members of DSA. Most of those individuals belonged to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and/or the Congressional Black Caucus. To view a list of their names, click here.

In the fall of 2011, DSA was a strong backer of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Said DSA:

"The Occupy Wall Street protests have invigorated the American Left in a way not seen in decades … So we have urged our members to take an active, supportive role in their local occupations, something many DSAers had already begun doing as individuals, because they believe that everyday people, the 99%, shouldn’t be made to pay for a crisis set off by an out-of-control financial sector and the ethically compromised politicians who have failed to rein it in."

On October 8, 2011, DSA co-sponsored a Midwest Regional March for Peace and Justice, a protest demonstration commemorating the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
 Click here for a list of additional co-sponsors.

DSA members today seek to build “progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics.” “We are socialists," reads the organization's boilerplate, "because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.” "To achieve a more just society," adds DSA, “many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed.” A major hallmark of such transformation would be an “equitable distribution of resources.”

DSA summarizes its philosophy as follows: "Today … [r]esources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them. Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives."

True to its roots, DSA seeks to increase its political influence not by establishing its own political party but rather by working closely with the Democratic Party to promote leftist agendas. "Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party," says DSA. "We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.... Maybe sometime in the future ... an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats."

In a document titled “Where We Stand,” DSA outlines in detail its political perspectives. Key excerpts from this document include the following:

“Nearly three decades after the 'War on Poverty' was declared and then quickly abandoned, one-fifth of our society subsists in poverty, living in substandard housing, attending underfunded, overcrowded schools, and receiving inadequate health care.”

“In the global capitalist economy, these injustices are magnified a thousand fold. The poorest third of humanity earns two percent of the world's income, while the richest fifth receives two-thirds of global income.”

“We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.”

“We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.”

“A democratic socialist politics for the 21st century must promote an international solidarity dedicated to raising living standards across the globe, rather than 'leveling down' in the name of maximizing profits and economic efficiency.”

“Equality, solidarity, and democracy can only be achieved through international political and social cooperation aimed at ensuring that economic institutions benefit all people.”

“Democratic socialists are dedicated to building truly international social movements—of unionists, environmentalists, feminists, and people of color—that together can elevate global justice over brutalizing global competition.”

“To be genuinely multiracial, a socialist movement must respect the particular goals of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and other communities of color. It must place a high priority on economic justice to eradicate the sources of inequality; on affirmative action and other compensatory programs to overcome ongoing discrimination and the legacy of inequality; and on social justice to change the behavior, attitudes, and ideas that foster racism.”

“Free markets or private charity cannot provide adequate public goods and services.”

“The capitalist market economy not only suppresses global living standards, but also means chronic underfunding of socially necessary public goods,from research and development to preventive health care and job training.”

“U.S. dominance of the global economy is buttressed by its political power and military might. Indeed, the United States is engaged in a long-term policy of imperial overreach in a period in which global instability will probably increase.”

“Fifty years of world leadership have taken their toll on the U.S. The links among heavy military spending, fiscal imbalance, and a weakening economy are too clear to ignore. Domestically, the United States faces social and structural economic problems of a magnitude unknown to other advanced capitalist states. The resources needed to sustain U.S. dominance are a drain on the national economy, particularly the most neglected and underdeveloped sectors. Nowhere is a struggle against militarism more pressing than in the United States, where the military budget bleeds the public sector of much needed funds for social programs.”

“As inequalities of wealth and income increase and the wages and living standards of most are either stagnant or falling, social needs expand. Only a revitalized public sector can universally and democratically meet those needs.”

“Social redistribution—the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society—will require: massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.”

“Over time, income redistribution and social programs will be critical not only to the poor but to the great majority of working people. The defense and expansion of government programs that promote social justice, equal education for all children, universal health care, environmental protection and guaranteed minimum income and social well-being is critical for the next Left.”

“The fundamental task of democratic socialists is to build anti-corporate social movements capable of winning reforms that empower people. Since such social movements seek to influence state policy, they will intervene in electoral politics, whether through Democratic primaries, non-partisan local elections, or third party efforts.”

“Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.”

Multilateralism and the Globalization of Abortion

Many readers of this blog are likely not up on some of the hottest trends in international relations theory.

World politics, and the academic study of it, evinces a central tension between power and cooperation in international affairs. Since World War II, the great hope of international idealists has been to create institutions that would promote peace and facilitate cooperation among nations. As time has passed, real world events have shown the false benigity of such hopes, for example, in the emergence of the United Nations General Assembly as a Third World power shop seeking to shift global resources and influence away from the industrialized nations of the global north. Key manifestations are found in the demands for a "New International Economic Order" in the 1970s and ongoing U.N.-sponsored "Conferences Against Racism," with the next installment scheduled for April in Geneva. For an idea of the anti-Western agenda at the upcoming "Durban II" meeting, see U.N. Watch, which includes this photo:

I've been thinking more and more about academic international relations theory and "real world" events this last few weeks, especially since Foreign Policy announced its new website and stable of bloggers. In particular, the blogging debut of Harvard's Stephen Walt has been something of an eye-opener. My academic relationship to Walt is discussed here. I am now about halfway through Walt's book, The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, which I find disturbing, but readers can get a feel for Walt's views at his blog. Walt's a "neorealist" who specializes in alliance formation and the balance of world power (it's interesting how the "amoralism" of realism is deployed so effectively by Walt to delegitimize the moral existentialism of the Israeli state).

My point in this essay, however, is to take a look at trends on the "neoliberal institutionalist" side of international theory, starting with Robert Keohane, Stephen Macedo, and Andrew Moravcsik's new essay at International Organization, "Democracy-Enhancing Multilateralism." The abstract of the article is at the link, but the basic gist of the piece is an attempt to secure some middle ground between critics of "global goverance" and "universal sovereignty," and those who favor the use of global mutlilateralism to advance "pragmatic" international change, cooperation, and democratic deliberation.

These passages from the conclusion are worth citing:

Our discussion has shown that multilateral institutions can empower diffuse minorities against special-interest factions, protect vulnerable individuals and minorities, and enhance the epistemic quality of democratic decision making in well-established democratic states. Moving some forms of governance up to a higher level, insisting on elaborate mechanisms for public debate and criticism, and making use of impartial and expert decisionmaking bodies can improve democracy ....

Democracy requires that governments control factions, protect minority interests, and maintain the epistemic quality of deliberation. Multilateral constraints, like other constitutional constraints, can enhance the ability of publics to govern themselves and enact their deliberate preferences over the long term ....

Yet we are not apologists. We emphatically do not claim that multilateralism always enhances domestic democracy. To the contrary, the standards we have articulated for defending multilateral institutions on democratic grounds equally enable criticism of democracy-inhibiting multilateralism, should international institutions promote special interests, violate rights of minorities, diminish the quality of collective deliberation, or seriously degrade the ability of people to participate in governance without compensating democratic advantages. There are good reasons to be concerned that multilateralism can sometimes empower unaccountable elites—a tendency against which it is necessary to guard.

I offer this review of multilateral theory mainly because it's the cutting edge of the discipline. Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik demonstrate the kind of academic detachment inherent to the scholarly enterprise, although the implications of some closely-related research in the field - and the ideological agenda of many adherents to multilateralism - leave much to be desired.

For a quick sample (albeit journalistic), let me leave readers with an example of the multilaterization of an emerging regime promoting abortion as a human right under international law. Michelle Goldberg has a piece on this at Slate, "Abortion Rights Go Global." Here's a chilling excerpt:

In the last four years ... women and their lawyers have brought abortion actions before the U.N. Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which investigates human rights violations in the Western hemisphere. Several times, women who've been denied abortions have won both compensation and an acknowledgment that their rights were violated. For feminists worldwide, this represents a great victory, since it elevates women's rights and safety above the often-sacrosanct principle of national sovereignty ....

Yet as abortion rights go international, so does the anti-abortion backlash. The globalization of the abortion wars creates some of the same tensions—between universal human rights and community mores, between majority rule and the protection of individual liberty—as Roe v. Wade, on a larger scale. All over the world, in countries including Kenya, Poland, and Nicaragua, local anti-abortion movements (often working with American allies) rail against the meddling of powerful outsiders. In Poland, traditionalists who oppose abortion bemoan the loss of their country's Catholic values as it integrates into secular Europe. They speak about international human rights and the courts that enforce them with something of the frustrated anger that American conservatives sometimes direct at the federal government. "Abortion proponents cannot win elections on these issues, so they have to go through the least democratic bodies in the world, the United Nations, for instance, and the courts," says Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a pro-life organization active at the United Nations.

That last quotation from Austin Ruse brings us back to the theoretical foundations and benefits of multilateralism.

Will creating an international human rights regime for abortions advance the interests in individual nation-states of the international system? My feeling is that folks like Michelle Goldberg don't care, and the Democratic-left's accession to power in the U.S. with the advent of the Barack Obama administration will certainly put the push for a global abortion regime into hyperdrive. Obama's move to overturn the Reagan-era "Mexico City Policy" is a sign of the times for the power of the mulitlateralists to advance an agenda that is not only anti-democratic in its hubristic assumptions, but radical in its anti-life aspirations.

John McCain's Democratic Realism

A couple of weeks back, the Los Angleles Times ran an fuzzy article on John McCain's international orientation, "McCain's Mixed Signals on Foreign Policy":

The presumptive GOP nominee for president, McCain ... has adopted a surprising diversity of views on foreign policy issues during his 25 years in Congress. It is a pattern that brings uncertainty to the path he would take if elected.

It is true that McCain's views on America's international role have been complicated and diverse, but the Arizona Senator's more firm today - on the nation's goodness in the world and on the priority of protecting American national security - than ever. Thus, it's simply not accurate to announce we'd see an "uncertain path" in foreign policy under a McCain administration.

What's interesting about this notion of McCain's international uncertainty is that our enemies aren't buying it, nor are our domestic surrender hawks, who're suggesting McCain makes Curtis LeMay look like a choir boy:

...McCain may deviate from right-wing dogma on discrete issues when it comes to domestic policy questions. But on questions of foreign policy, national security and war, McCain ... [is] as extremist as it gets in the mainstream political spectrum. On those obviously central issues, there simply is nobody and nothing to the Right of McCain.

Why the soft-peddling in the mainstream media and the radical left's demonization? Apparently McCain's breaking the molds of conventional foreign policy thinking, which befuddles the corporate press and enrages our most implacable left-wing appeasement advocates.

The reality, however, as was seen in last week's major foreign policy address, is that McCain's unflinching support for Iraq, and his essential belief in the promise of an international concert of great democratic powers, offers a compelling vision of American international leadership in the post-Bush era.

This is John McCain's democratic realism, as Joseph Loconte points out, at the Weekly Standard:

JOHN MCCAIN'S FIRST MAJOR foreign policy speech as the presumed Republican nominee for president, delivered last week in Los Angeles, was widely viewed as an effort to distance himself from President George W. Bush. The Washington Post said his agenda "contrasts sharply" with the "go-it-alone approach" of the Bush administration. London's Telegraph discerned a "more practical, less ideological approach" to the war on terror. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh accused McCain of rejecting America's superpower status and "pandering to the hate-America crowd." New York Times columnist David Brooks claimed that unlike Bush, McCain wants to "protect the fabric of the international system."

The flabbiness of these critiques, though, becomes apparent when McCain's speech is read carefully and alongside his other foreign policy statements. For starters, McCain shows little interest in the "fabric" of an alleged "international system"--a concept as coherent as tapioca pudding--and even less interest in protecting it.

In fact, McCain seems intent on either shaking up existing international organizations--making sure the G-8 remains a club of market democracies by keeping Russia out, for example--or creating new ones. He calls for the formation of a "new global compact" of democratic nations, a "coalition for peace and freedom." McCain envisions a "League of Democracies" which can "harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interest." In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, he explained that U.S. soldiers are serving in Afghanistan with British, Canadian, Dutch, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Spanish, and Turkish troops from the NATO alliance--all democratic states. Yet they lack an overarching set of political and economic priorities to meet today's challenges.

McCain's League of Democracies, to be convened and led by the United States, would function under a new political rubric. In his Foreign Affairs article, he writes that the organization could offer "united democratic action" to confront threats and crises whenever the United Nations failed to do so--failures, of course, as predictable and plentiful as cicadas in summertime. In his speech to the World Affairs Council, McCain notably made no reference to the United Nations or the U.N. Security Council. So much for the delicate fabric of the global community.

In his attention to America's allies, McCain insists he is a realist--the United States simply cannot overcome global challenges on its own. It requires the help of the world's democratic states, including the European Union (most of whose members belong to NATO), India, Japan, South Korea and others. Moreover, he argues, political and military power is no longer concentrated in the United States as it was during the Cold War. "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to," he said. "We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them." Exhibit A for the McCain doctrine might be Afghanistan. Five years after the United States toppled the Taliban and routed al Qaeda, they remain a dangerous source of instability in the country. American and British forces, wearied and overstretched, are doing most of the fighting because other NATO members have declined to step up. Yes, alliances matter.

Nevertheless, many conservatives balk at McCain's conciliatory tone. His speech was "just pandering to the people who think we're the problem in the world," Limbaugh complained. "The United States is the solution to the problems of the world." The notion, though, that America could happily manage without friends or alliances is not just hubris; it is the well-worn path to decline--political, economic, and moral. "The tyrant is a child of Pride who drinks from his great sickening cup recklessness and vanity," wrote Sophocles, "until from his high crest headlong he plummets to the dust of hope."

Is McCain's democracy agenda a stark departure from the Bush doctrine? In the fall of 2003, Bush announced a new "forward strategy of freedom" for the Middle East: an end to America's Cold War compromise with illiberal Arab regimes for the sake of stability. McCain equally rejects the "realist" bargain; it only helped to produce "a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred." His alternative: "We must help expand the power and reach of freedom" in the Middle East, using every diplomatic tool available. "It is the democracies of the world," he argues, "that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace." In a judgment that is anathema to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, McCain thus binds the struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq to America's political destiny. "Whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well."

In this, McCain subscribes to a view of America's national security interests in sync not only with the Bush administration, but also with any honest reading of the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission Report. America faces a global threat from religious extremists determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use against civilian populations. They seek the help of rogue nations that share what McCain calls "the same animating hatred for the West." Neither diplomacy nor changes in policy can temper these hatreds. "This is the central threat of our time," he said, "and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it."

In other words, the "transcendent challenge" of radical jihadism, as McCain puts it repeatedly, is the lens through which the next U.S. president must view American foreign policy. Any contender for the office who rejects this doctrine, he reasons, "does not deserve to sit in the White House."

That's right, they don't deserve to occupy the White House, because the U.S. today needs unflinching leadership and resolve in the next commander-in-chief, who will direct American national security policy in an age of shifting power dynamics in world affairs, marked with special emphasis by Islam's battle against the West.

Retreating from Iraq (Clinton and Obama) or playing nice with our enemies (Obama) is the last thing the country needs right now, despite the arguments of left's irretrievable defeatists.

See also, Charles Krauthammer,"Democratic Realism:An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World."

"Blindsiding" the Democrats on Foreign Policy?

Thomas Edsall argued yesterday that the GOP could "blindside" the Democrats on foreign policy in the November election:

While many Democratic strategists are confident that the deteriorating economy virtually assures the victory of their presidential candidate on November 4, there is a quiet debate over whether the party and prospective nominee are likely to get blindsided by Republicans raising issues of terrorism and national security.

Republicans are making no secret of their intentions in the general election.

Edsall follows this introduction with some comments from party insiders on both sides of the divide. He indicates, for example:

Alex Castellanos, Republican media strategist, told the Huffington Post that the continuing concerns of American voters about the dangers of another terrorist attack will be the engine behind a Republican victory in November...

Read the whole thing.

It's likely that Republicans will get the benefit of the doubt on national security this fall. The Democrats have been weak on that issue for decades, and the improvement in Iraq over the last year has lessened some of the demands for withdrawal in the electorate.

But it's not as though the Democrats haven't thought about what they'd do on international policy. Yet, that's pretty much exactly what Captain Ed argues when discussing the Edsall post:

According to Edsall, the Democrats have high confidence in succeeding on economics in this cycle. They expect the economy to worsen in 2008 and make it easier for them to sell higher taxes and more entitlements to nervous voters. They wonder whether the Republicans will somehow sandbag the election by talking about national security and terrorism instead, a battle for which Democrats are apparently unprepared.

Let's pause a moment and let this sink into the consciousness. More than six years after 9/11, the Democrats still have no comprehensive national security or counterterrorism plan....

They have no preparation for this discussion, and apparently consider it some kind of dirty trick....

Somehow, the Democrats feel that an election that focuses on policy for the government's primary duty works out to an unfair attack. They don't want to engage on that topic, but instead focus on everything else.

While it's true that the Demcrats haven't engaged foreign policy issues as much as they might, it's a stretch to intrepret Edsall's essay this way. Edsall himself indicates a diversity of opinion on the potential for blindsiding:

Opinion on the likely strength of such Republican challenges to the Democratic nominee varies widely.

But more importantly, all of the remaining Democrats in the race have published a major statement of their foreign policy views in Foreign Affairs, our top American foreign policy journal.

Not only that, a look at the candidates websites shows a considerable bit of information on their international positions.

Hillary Clinton's homepage includes links to some of the candidate's major foreign policy addresses, at the Center for a New American Security, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The website also posts the text of a Clinton speech on Iran, which declares that the White House should defer to the Congress for legislative authorization in the face of an Iranian challenge to U.S. national security; the address also calls for opening diplomatic relations with the Iranian regime.

Over at Barack Obama's campaign home page, the candidate boasts an extensive set of links to proposals on most of the major U.S. foreign policy issues of the day. Further, the site breaks down some broad issues in great detail, like energy and the environment and homeland security (each of which have a major foreign policy component).

John Edwards - who's committed to staying in the Democratic race until the convention - also provides considerable material on his foreign policy at the Edwards campaign website - for example, on "reengaging the world," "America's moral leadership in fighting global poverty, U.S. leadership on humanitarian intervention in Sudan and Uganda, homeland security, and terrorism.

Further, in a proposal with potentially disastrous implications for U.S. foreign policy, Edwards has called for an immediate and complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

A look, then, at the websites of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination reveals a great deal of information on the likely contours of foreign policy under a future Democratic White House.

What can we expect?

All three of the campaigns have committed to bringing the troops home by ending the war in Iraq. Timetables and numbers on residual troop levels vary, of course, but there's a clear unanimity among the candidates in repudiating the Bush adminstration's policy in Iraq. This is no surprise. Since 2006, Democratic foreign policy debate have not been driven by hard-headed calculations of American national interests, but instead by the scarcely veiled anti-Americanism of antiwar organizations and netroots outfits like Daily Kos and MoveOn.org.

Further, the Democrats are much more likelty to seek accomodation with Iran over its nuclear weapons development program. Barack Obama, in particular, has made provocative statements on Iran, in effect blaming the Bush administration for Tehran's support of terrorist organizations committed to the destruction of Israel.

The Democrats - as laid out in the Foreign Affairs essays - tend to place major faith in multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, or tend to champion "rebuilding" America's post-WWII alliances, which have allegedly atrophied under the Bush administration's tutelage. Forget that much of these proposals ignore the contemporary reality of robust cooperation with our allies in global health, energy, and security. The gist is that America needs to rein in its overwhelming global power, to allay supposed fears of a hegemonic tyrant astride the world stage. We need to repair our "international standing."

Oil and the environment? Look for a Democrat to revive the Kyoto process, which could damage the U.S. economy while do nothing to rein in the unrestrained growth in country's like China. How about humanitarian intervention? We could see the revival of foreign policy as social work, which sees international intervention acceptable only when national security interests are not at stake.

But most fundamentally, the Democrats advance a radically different view of the ideological and strategic challenges facing the United States.

At a time when some scholars have argued that militant Islam will not rest until its mission of global supremacy is complete, the Democratic Party continues to mount aggressive opposition to U.S. counterterror policies that have been effective in protecting the country.

In sum, the issue for conservatives is not whether the Democrats have a "comprehensive national security or counterterrorism plan." They do, or at least the major Democratic campaigns have provided advisory memos and think-tank style public policy articles laying out their positions.

The key fact is that Democratic plans - to the extent they are developed thus far - would take the U.S. away from a forward domestic and foreign policy of antiterrorism and strategic primacy, in the intelligence, law enforcement, and military realms.

Conservative bloggers need to be hammering this point, not whether the Democratic retreatists might be "blindsided" by the Republicans in the fall campaign.

Today's Democrats: Peace at Any Price

Senator Joseph Lieberman's essay today reveals the true nature of today's Democratic Party. Abandoning the legacy of Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy, the party today, torn by its antiwar base, demands peace at any price, endangering America's relations in the world:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Lieberman, next to John McCain, is the most important spokesman on American foreign policy in the U.S. Senate. This is why he's attacked mercilessly by the very groups he identifies in his essay, the hardline surrenderist left.

In fact, my foreign policy nemesis says it's Lieberman who's become extreme:

...the things he's saying today were conventional wisdom among center-left elites five years ago and as recently as three years ago Peter Beinart could be found getting a respectful hearing for the idea that MoveOn members should be analogized to Communist Fifth Columnists and purged from progressive politics. It's just that most people who used to hold those views have abandoned them, often sotto voce, leaving Lieberman as an unexpected outlier.

So, basically, advocacy of a robust foreign policy, once championed by the heroic Democratic presidents of the post-war era, now places proponents as extreme outliers on the ideological continuum.

Things are just getting going in this election, too.

I'll have more ... but see also Jules Crittenden.

Iowa Voters Jittery on Trade Policy

Iowa voters are shifting toward protectionism on trade, as this Wall Street Journal article indicates, reporting from Waterloo, Iowa:

At a John Deere plant here, bright green tractors bound for Brazil, Russia and China roll off assembly lines. Global demand for tractors is good, and that's been good for Waterloo.

Yet over the last couple of years, workers and voters in this blue-collar manufacturing outpost -- and throughout Iowa -- have grown decidedly downbeat about globalization. Trade has become such a hot subject that Democratic presidential candidates seeking support in Iowa's influential Jan. 3 caucuses are turning into trade skeptics, and the issue is splitting traditionally free-trade Republicans.

Iowa's ambivalence is all the more remarkable because the state is on the whole a big winner from global trade. "Iowa, as much as any other state, is on the plus side of the ledger," says James Leach, a 30-year Republican congressman from Iowa who now runs Harvard University's Institute of Politics. "It would be highly ironic if pro-protectionist candidates prevailed in the Iowa caucuses." Trade wasn't always such a high priority: In the 2004 Iowa caucus, Richard Gephardt, the most outspoken Democrat on the issue, attracted so few votes he subsequently pulled out of the race.

As the 2008 presidential election approaches, anti-trade sentiment is percolating across America. It is particularly strong in places like Ohio, where foreign competition has decimated jobs. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted earlier this month found that 60% of voters nationwide agreed with the statement that "foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy."

Iowa's anxiety stems from a mix of factors, many of which are also at play in other Midwestern swing states. By many measures, the global economy has been good for the state. Boosted by the ethanol and biofuels craze and surging demand for crops and farm equipment world-wide, Iowa's exports are up 77% over the past four years versus 50% nationally. The state's unemployment rate hovers around 3.7%, below the national 4.6% average.

But the past couple of decades have seen a steady decline in once-prized factory jobs, from a high of 252,700 in 1999 to 231,000 today. Just this year, Iowa lost about 1,800 jobs when appliance-maker Maytag, now owned by Whirlpool Corp., shuttered its plant in its home town of Newton. (The jobs moved to Ohio, but foreign competition was a key reason Maytag was acquired by Whirlpool.) Wages haven't kept pace with inflation, and employers here, as elsewhere, have been paring health and retirement benefits.

Many Iowans blame their difficulties on global trade. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of Iowa Democrats conducted in September found that by 42% to 33% they favored a candidate who believes trade pacts hurt the U.S. economy over one who believes they benefit the economy; Republicans were evenly split at 39%. (The balance said they didn't know or hadn't a preference.)

The article notes that the Democratic presidential hopefuls are pandering to these trade fears:

On a recent Tuesday, the crowd at Des Moines Area Community College bursts into loud and sustained applause when Mr. Obama vows to make sure "that globalization is not just working for multinational companies."

In Cedar Rapids, workers nod as former Sen. John Edwards tells them that "the negative effects from globalization are rippling through the economy." In perhaps the most telling development, Democratic front-runner Mrs. Clinton says the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which her husband pushed through Congress -- has "serious shortcomings."

It's hard to shake the sense that American worked have struggled amid increasing global economic interdependence. Unfortunately, while Democratic proposals for "fair trade" policies stressing labor and environmental standards might play well in Peoria (or Waterloo), such a shift would mark a dangerous turn away from the centrist pro-integration trade policies of the Bill Clinton adminstration in the 1990s.

A recent article in Foreign Affairs, "A New Deal for Globalization," made a troubling case for an interventionist approach to trade adjustment, focusing on establishing redistributive payroll tax policies in exchange for "saving" American support of trade openness.

The Democrats are also joined by many Republicans, who have grown increasingly skeptical of free trade policies. Together the concerns of voters all around may be creating a perfect storm for the dismantling of the post-World War II trade consensus in the U.S.

The implications of a protectionist, redistributive turn on trade policy are far reaching. As Carla A. Hills, a former U.S. Trade Representative during the G.H.W. Bush administration, noted in a 2005 Foreign Affairs article:

The U.S. experience since World War II proves that increased economic interdependence boosts economic growth and encourages political stability. For more than 50 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has led the world in opening markets. To that end, the United States worked to establish a series of international organizations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)....

The results to date have been spectacular. World trade has exploded and standards of living have soared at home and abroad. Economist Gary Hufbauer, in a comprehensive study published this year by the Institute of International Economics, calculates that 50 years of globalization has made the United States richer by $1 trillion per year (measured in 2003 dollars), or about $9,000 added wealth per year for the average U.S. household. Developing countries have also gained from globalization. On average, poor countries that have opened their markets to trade and investment have grown five times faster than those that kept their markets closed. Studies conducted by World Bank economist David Dollar show that globalization has raised 375 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 20 years.

And the benefits have not been only economic. As governments liberalize their trade regimes, they often liberalize their political regimes. Adherence to a set of trade rules encourages transparency, the rule of law, and a respect for property that contribute to increased stability. Without U.S. leadership...the world would look very different today.

Candidates of both parties may find it hard to resist the protectionist persuasion, and the outcome of these trends may be one of the most important consequences of the 2008 presidential election.

Francis Fukuyama and America's Self-Defeating Power

Francis Fukuyama's got a piece up at RealClearPolitics arguing that the Bush administration's foreign policy has exacerbated global anti-Americanism:

When I wrote about the End of History almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, that is precisely what has happened, owing to four key mistakes made by the Bush administration.

First, the doctrine of "preemption", which was devised in response to the 2001 attacks, was inappropriately broadened to include Iraq and other so-called "rogue states" that threatened to develop weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, preemption is fully justified vis-a-vis stateless terrorists wielding such weapons. But it cannot be the core of a general non-proliferation policy, whereby the United States intervenes militarily everywhere to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.

The cost of executing such a policy simply would be too high (several hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq and still counting). This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel's air strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programmes.

The second important miscalculation concerned the likely global reaction to America's exercise of its hegemonic power. Many people within the Bush administration believed that even without approval by the UN security council or Nato, American power would be legitimised by its successful use. This had been the pattern for many US initiatives during the cold war, and in the Balkans during the 1990s; back then, it was known as "leadership" rather than "unilateralism".

But, by the time of the Iraq war, conditions had changed: the US had grown so powerful relative to the rest of the world that the lack of reciprocity became an intense source of irritation even to America's closest allies. The structural anti-Americanism arising from the global distribution of power was evident well before the Iraq war, in the opposition to American-led globalisation during the Clinton years. But it was exacerbated by the Bush administration's "in-your-face" disregard for a variety of international institutions as soon it came into office - a pattern that continued through the onset of the Iraq war.

America's third mistake was to overestimate how effective conventional military power would be in dealing with the weak states and networked transnational organisations that characterise international politics, at least in the broader Middle East. It is worth pondering why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation. At least part of the problem is that it is dealing with complex social forces that are not organised into centralised hierarchies that can enforce rules, and thus be deterred, coerced, or otherwise manipulated through conventional power.

Israel made a similar mistake in thinking that it could use its enormous margin of conventional military power to destroy Hizbullah in last summer's Lebanon war. Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a 20th century world of nation-states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.

But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Hizbullah to Iran and Syria. This linkage does exist in the case of Hizbullah, but the networked actors have their own social roots and are not simply pawns used by regional powers. This is why the exercise of conventional power has become frustrating.

Finally, the Bush administration's use of power has lacked not only a compelling strategy or doctrine, but also simple competence. In Iraq alone, the administration misestimated the threat of WMD, failed to plan adequately for the occupation, and then proved unable to adjust quickly when things went wrong. To this day, it has dropped the ball on very straightforward operational issues in Iraq, such as funding democracy promotion efforts.

Incompetence in implementation has strategic consequences. Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?

But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America's founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.

Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.

My reading of Fukuyama is that he's stuck in a pre-surge mentality.

The justification for the U.S. invasion of has been debated ad nauseum (so that's a stale rehash). Fukuyama also fails to note the recovery of international views toward the United States (public opinion in our Western democratic allies has recovered since the early days of the Iraq war).

Further, we don't need to wonder why a hegemonic U.S. "cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation." It is well known among security experts that the effective deployment of American military power will be most difficult in the "contested zones" of international security, in countries like Somalia in the 1990s and Iraq in this decade. In these theaters irregular forces have used unconventional tactics to neutralize the preponderant advantages of American military technology. But America has adapted, and the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is now bearing fruit in Iraq, with most parts of the country seeing dramatic improvements in security.

Fukuyama's right that a dramatically lopsided distribution of global power will lead to international antagonism toward the system's leading state, which is currently the United States. But we will always face opposition to the forward exercise of American power, no matter who's in office. The Bush adminstration simply shook international opinion out of its Clinton-era stupor - national populations around the world had to reckon with an American hegemon intent on deploying power in its national interest.

The result has been costly, but progress is being made. It will be interesting to see how long Fukuyama will continue to make arguments such as this. Fukuyama's a top scholar in international relations, but he's flipped-flopped in his loyalties to neoconservative theory. Perhaps he's jockeying for a prominent foreign policy post in a Democratic administration. I wish him luck, but I'll be on him when he starts backpeddling from his criticism of America's mission in Iraq, particularly amid additional signs of progress in consolidating that nation's democratic regime.

The End of Democracy Promotion?

The Atlantic's polled a group of policy makers, political scientists, and pundits on the prospects for democracy promotion worldwide.

Obviously, the Bush administration's made things tough for would be neo-Wilsonians, although the findings - certainly pessimistic on the future of global democratic consolidation and expansion - aren't all that bad.

Here's one of the key question items:

"Is the U.S. capable of meaningfully affecting the prospects for democracy in most nondemocratic states?"

68% YES

“The Bush administration has given democracy a bad name. The U.S. can’t impose democracy or insist on democracy; it can only carefully support indigenous democrats (sometimes by staying far away) and the aspiration of human beings to live a better life. Most important in supporting the democratic impulse, the United States must ensure that it stays true to that impulse in its own deeds, not just its words.”

33% NO

“The U.S. can nudge nondemocratic states to head in a democratic direction by providing political and economic incentives. But the U.S. has little direct leverage over the domestic developments that decisively determine the character of a state’s government.”

The article doesn't say, but I imagine these are selected quotes from some of the respondents.

Check out the whole thing, in any case. When asked, "Do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?" one respondent indicated:

“Despite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, people who are free to choose (as Mrs. Thatcher said) do choose to be free. And the information revolution enables more people to see lives in free countries.”

Don't forget to check the "List of Participants," which did include a couple of neoconservatives.

Unfortunately, I think the findings reflect considerable Bush-fatigue, and perhaps even a little BDS.

After Bush has long left the White House, similar surveys will be more positive on the possibility of democracy promotion.

Note too, that even now the administration doesn't get enough credit for U.S. democracy promotion efforts outside of Iraq, as the New York Times points out, "In Kenya, U.S. Added Action to Talk of Democracy":

For more information, see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback: The Resurgence of the Predatory State."

Photo Credit: Atlantic Monthly

Netroots Takes Issue With Democrats' Fox Push

Well I don't normally find a lot of glee when blogging about the netroots, but I'm getting a little kick out of the Politico's piece this morning, "Fox Trumps Netroots; Bloggers Rebel."

It turns out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's appearances on Fox News have pissed off the high and mighty of the leftosphere, and there's more than a little schadenfreude in that:

The nation’s top Democrats are suddenly rushing to appear on the Fox News Channel, which they once had shunned as enemy territory as the nemesis of liberal bloggers.

The detente with Fox has provoked a backlash from progressive bloggers, who contend the party’s leaders are turning their backs on the base — and lending credibility and legitimacy to the network liberals love to hate — in a quest for a few swing votes.

In a span of eight days, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are all taking their seats with the network that calls itself “fair and balanced” but is widely viewed as skewing conservative....

The Democratic leaders’ new openness to Fox reflects the liberal left’s diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once feared by the Democratic candidates, these activists are now viewed at least in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to clinch the nomination.

The Politico indicates that Obama promised to diss Fox on air during the broadcast, or what's what is referred to in the leftosphere as "delegitimation," in Adam Green's words:

It was a mistake for Obama to go on FOX’s Sunday show and treat the experience as if it was a real news interview. Democratic politicians need to understand that FOX is a Republican mouthpiece masquerading as a news outlet. When dealing with FOX, you either burn them or they will burn you.

It's well documented that FOX executives send morning memos to anchors and reporters dictating Republican talking points. In 2006, one said, “Be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents...thrilled at the prospect of a Dem controlled Congress.” Robert Greenwald's videos have shown FOX's consistent pattern of smearing Barack Obama, smearing Hillary Clinton, smearing African Americans, and denying global warming.

FOX's power lies not in its audience size – which is puny and consists mostly of unpersuadable voters. Instead, FOX's power comes from tricking politicians and real journalists into treating their “breaking stories” like real news, thereby propelling smears like the Swift Boats and Rev. Wright into the mainstream political dialogue. That's why progressives fought (successfully) last year to deprive FOX of the legitimacy that comes with hosting a Democratic presidential debate. And that's why Democratic politicians should never treat FOX like a real news outlet - including FOX's Sunday show.

Barack Obama's campaign made a promise before this weekend's appearance. They said he would "take Fox on" – inspiring hope among those who watched Bill Clinton in 2006, Chris Dodd in 2007, and progressive activist Lee Camp in 2008 delegitimize FOX on the air. But Obama didn't do that, and he suffered as a result.

What Green's doing is demonizing Fox for having a political viewpoint at odds with the "progressive" left. But it's typical - and anti-intellectual - to whine about Democratic appearances on the conservative network.

I think it's a lot more respectable for Fox to host interviews with Democratic candidates - who, if they're smart, can cut through efforts at ulterior subterfuge in the questioning - than it is for CNN to host a GOP YouTube debate with planted left-wing questioners.

All's fair in love and war, they say, which is a little wisdom apparently lost on the spurned netroots mandarins.

The Case for a League of Democracies

I love John McCain's proposal for a international league of democratic states.

The idea's bipartisan, (relatively) new, and exciting.

The notion of a concert of great democratic powers augmenting the moribund international institutions of the post-World War II-era couldn't come at a better time, as the United Nations descends into further irrelevance amid Third World radicalism that enables the worst excesses of rogue state manuevering in the new global system of transnational terror.

Current American preponderance will be more effective with a new array of structures conducive to cooperation among liberal democratic polities.

Robert Kagan makes the case for a league of democracies at the Financial Times:

With tensions between Russia and Georgia rising, Chinese nationalism growing in response to condemnation of Beijing’s crackdown on Tibet, the dictators of cyclone-ravaged Burma resisting international aid , the crisis in Darfur still raging, the Iranian nuclear programme still burgeoning and Robert Mugabe still clinging violently to rule in Zimbabwe – what do you suppose keeps some foreign policy columnists up at night? It is the idea of a new international organisation, a league or concert of democratic nations.

“Dangerous,” warns a columnist on this page, fretting about a new cold war. Nor is he alone. On both sides of the Atlantic the idea – set forth most prominently by Senator John McCain a year ago – has been treated as impractical and incendiary. Perhaps a few observations can still this rising chorus of alarm.

The idea of a concert of democracies originated not with Republicans but with US Democrats and liberal inter­nationalists. Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, tried to launch such an organisation in the 1990s. More recently it is the brainchild of Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert and senior adviser to Barack Obama. It has also been promoted by Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton university, and professor John Ikenberry, the renowned liberal internationalist theorist. It has backers in Europe, too, such as Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, who recently proposed his own vision of an “alliance of democracies”. The fact that Mr McCain has championed the idea might tell us something about his broad-mindedness. But Europeans should not reach for their revolvers just because the Republican candidate said it first.

American liberal internationalists like the idea because its purpose is to promote liberal internationalism. Mr Ikenberry believes a concert of democracies can help re-anchor the US in an internationalist framework. Mr Daalder believes it will enhance the influence that America’s democratic allies wield in Washington. So does Mr McCain, who in a recent speech talked about the need for the US not only to listen to its allies but to be willing to be persuaded by them.

A league of democracies would also promote liberal ideals in international relations. The democratic community supports the evolving legal principle known as “the responsibility to protect”, which holds leaders to account for the treatment of their people. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, has suggested it could be applied to Burma if the generals persist in refusing international aid to their dying people. That idea was summarily rejected at the United Nations, where other humanitarian interventions – in Darfur today or in Kosovo a few years ago – have also met resistance.

So would a concert of democracies supplant the UN? Of course not, any more than the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations or any number of other international organisations supplant it. But the world’s democracies could make common cause to act in humanitarian crises when the UN Security Council cannot reach unanimity. If people find that prospect unsettling, then they should seek the disbandment of Nato and the European Union and other regional organisations which not only can but, in the case of Kosovo, have taken collective action in crises when the Security Council was deadlocked. The difference is that the league of democracies would not be limited to Europeans and Americans but would include the world’s other great democracies, such as India, Brazil, Japan and Australia, and would have even greater legitimacy.

Note Kagan's key point: The new body would act when "the UN Security Council cannot reach unanimity," which is most of the time!

During the Cold War, precisely two major multilateral actions were taken under traditional theories of collective security: In Korea in 1950, when the Soviet Union boycotted the Security Council vote on North Korean aggression, and in 1990, at the end of the Cold War, when both President G.H.W. Bush and Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev joined together in a New World Order to authorize the repellence of Iraq's invasion Kuwait.

Despite the democratic league's origins in Democratic Party foreign policy circles, the proposal will be resisted vigorously by leftists now that McCain's endorsed it.

McCain's recently backed off the proposal, but he shouldn't.

The idea offers a genuinely important alternative to the postwar system of international institutions. As Kagan notes, the traditional order of multilateral institutions will not be replaced, but facing a little competition, they might improve their speed and efficiency in responding to the world's contemporary crises.

Hillary Clinton and American Foreign Policy

The "Campaign 2008" foreign policy series continues over at Foreign Affairs with a new essay from Hillary Clinton, "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century." Clinton's article arrives amid great anticipation, at least on my part (and I imagine on the part of a number of others who follow the foreign policy-making literature). Unfortunately, Clinton's piece is a let down: The article recycles much of tired criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign policy, while at the same time offering a half-baked validation of much liberal internationalist gobbledygook common among leftist foreign policy specialists.

Here's Clinton's boilerplate attack on the Bush administration's foreign policy record:

The tragedy of the last six years is that the Bush administration has squandered the respect, trust, and confidence of even our closest allies and friends. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the United States enjoyed a unique position. Our world leadership was widely accepted and respected, as we strengthened old alliances and built new ones, worked for peace across the globe, advanced nonproliferation, and modernized our military. After 9/11, the world rallied behind the United States as never before, supporting our efforts to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and go after the al Qaeda leadership. We had a historic opportunity to build a broad global coalition to combat terror, increase the impact of our diplomacy, and create a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.

But we lost that opportunity by refusing to let the UN inspectors finish their work in Iraq and rushing to war instead. Moreover, we diverted vital military and financial resources from the struggle against al Qaeda and the daunting task of building a Muslim democracy in Afghanistan. At the same time, we embarked on an unprecedented course of unilateralism: refusing to pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, abandoning our commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and turning our backs on the search for peace in the Middle East. Our withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and refusal to participate in any international effort to deal with the tremendous challenges of climate change further damaged our international standing.

Our nation has paid a heavy price for rejecting a long-standing bipartisan tradition of global leadership rooted in a preference for cooperating over acting unilaterally, for exhausting diplomacy before making war, and for converting old adversaries into allies rather than making new enemies. At a moment in history when the world's most pressing problems require unprecedented cooperation, this administration has unilaterally pursued policies that are widely disliked and distrusted.

Yet it does not have to be this way. Indeed, our allies do not want it to be this way. The world still looks to the United States for leadership. American leadership is wanting, but it is still wanted. Our friends around the world do not want the United States to retreat. They want once again to be allied with the nation whose values, leadership, and strength have inspired the world for the last century.

Clinton then goes on to say that she'll restore America's global standing in the world. Actually, she won't have that hard a time of it, since things aren't as bad as she makes out. The last couple of years have seen great improvement in global sentiment regarding the United States. According to a Pew Global Attitudes Report from 2006, strong majorities in all of America's major current treaty allies - Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan - held a favorable opinion of the U.S. Even in Britain - where opinion is often characterized as deeply opposed to the Bush adminstration - 56 percent of those polled held favorable views of America.

America as international bogeyman gains some support among Third Word nations in the Pew survey, but in truth the nature of global anti-Americanism is much more complicated. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in a 2005 Foreign Policy essay, even during the initial outrage following the American invasion of Iraq, people around the world continued to see the America as the world's beacon of liberty, and in a number of countries - like India, the Philippines, and South Africa - majorities evinced "mainly positive" views of the U.S.

Applebaum also notes large generational differences in public support. In countries like Poland, for example, anti-American opinion after Iraq was isolated to younger cohorts who have little recollection of American support for Poland during its historic resistance to Communist oppression during the Cold War. Applebaum highlights the tremendous latent good will toward the U.S. in international attitudes. Such positions make understanding international opinion more involved than we might get from Clinton's the-U.S.-as-bogeyman meme. (Don't forget as well the tremendous outburst of lasting respect for the United States in Indonesia, which followed America's strong leadership in tsunami humanitarian relief efforts.)

Also questionable are Clinton's obligatory statements on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. One can place little trust in such statements, because Clinton has shown very little consistency on Iraq policy in 2007, endlessly shifting her positions to satisfy the most important constituency demands of the moment. Because of the sheer logistical and strategic impediments to a rapid withdrawal, Americans ought not to expect a rapid drawdown of American forces in Iraq. To do otherwise would invite a collapse of order, and indeed the potential release of violent elements intent to restore a reign of murder in the wake of America's precipitous exit:

Here's Clinton:

We must withdraw from Iraq in a way that brings our troops home safely, begins to restore stability to the region, and replaces military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in securing Iraq's future. To that end, as president, I will convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council and direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home, starting within the first 60 days of my administration.

While working to stabilize Iraq as our forces withdraw, I will focus U.S. aid on helping Iraqis, not propping up the Iraqi government. Financial resources will go only where they will be used properly, rather than to government ministries or ministers that hoard, steal, or waste them.

As we leave Iraq militarily, I will replace our military force with an intensive diplomatic initiative in the region. The Bush administration has belatedly begun to engage Iran and Syria in talks about the future of Iraq. This is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. As president, I will convene a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all the states bordering Iraq. Working with the newly appointed UN special representative for Iraq, the group will be charged with developing and implementing a strategy for achieving a stable Iraq that provides incentives for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey to stay out of the civil war....

As we redeploy our troops from Iraq, we must not let down our guard against terrorism. I will order specialized units to engage in targeted operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorist organizations in the region. These units will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent that such training is actually working.

Nothing new here. Recent reports indicate dramatic U.S. successes in beating back al Qaeda's operations, and the U.S. military is engaged in a wide-variety of security initiatives with local forces to accelerate the operational independence of the Iraq security apparatus.

But check out as well Clinton's platitudes on global multilateralism:

Contrary to what many in the current administration appear to believe, international institutions are tools rather than traps. The United States must be prepared to act on its own to defend its vital interests, but effective international institutions make it much less likely that we will have to do so. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have understood this for decades. When such institutions work well, they enhance our influence. When they do not work, their procedures serve as pretexts for endless delays, as in the case of Darfur, or descend into farce, as in the case of Sudan's election to the UN Commission on Human Rights. But instead of disparaging these institutions for their failures, we should bring them in line with the power realities of the twenty-first century and the basic values embodied in such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here Clinton systematically ignores the role of interests in international politics. The U.S. will resist multilateral initiatives that work to subordinate American international priorities. The Bush adminstration in fact began efforts to reform global bodies like the IMF and U.N., only to meet vicious opposition from some of the most corrupt bureaucrats on the planet. Hillary Clinton needs to propose an increase in such efforts, not the abandonment.

Finally, Clinton's international agenda evinces hallmarks of 1990s-era foreign policy as social work:

To build the world we want, we must begin by speaking honestly about the problems we face...We will also have to take concrete steps to enhance security and spread opportunity throughout the world.

Education is the foundation of economic opportunity and should lie at the heart of America's foreign assistance efforts...As president, I will press for quick passage of the Education for All Act, which would provide $10 billion over a five-year period to train teachers and build schools in the developing world. This program would channel funds to those countries that provide the best plans for how to use them and rigorously measure performance to ensure that our dollars deliver results for children.

The fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other dreaded diseases is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity. These diseases have created a generation of orphans and set back economic and political progress by decades in many countries.

These problems often seem overwhelming, but we can solve them with the combined resources of governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We can set specific targets in areas such as expanding access to primary education, providing clean water, reducing child and maternal mortality, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. We can strengthen the International Labor Organization in order to enforce labor standards, just as we strengthened the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements. Such policies demonstrate that by doing good we can do well. This sort of investment and diplomacy will yield results for the United States, building goodwill even in places where our standing has suffered.

Read the rest. Clinton goes on to propose American pocketbook leaderhip on global warming, international energy investment, human rights, gender equality:

U.S. leadership, including a commitment to incorporate the promotion of women's rights in our bilateral relationships and international aid programs, is essential not just to improving the lives of women but to strengthening the families, communities, and societies in which they live.

These are essentially human development issues. But what's missing is a discussion of the fundamental importance of markets and trade in promoting economic growth in Third World countries. The U.S. can continue to build the international infrastructure of global prosperity through policies of trade expansion and international openness. Greater economic development will precede greater human development. According to Clinton's manifesto here, though, rather than a reliance on traditional trade practices, we see an aggressive call to lift up all nations through a Herculean American social policy effort.

There's much that's admirable about such goals, and we shouldn't reject innovative approaches in helping to solve the globe's most intractable problems. But Clinton's paper is almost like a wish list for the future of America's global role. Her discussion of vital interests and Ameican policy is cursory, and she avoids any tough talk beyond quick talking points on "firmness" and "resolve" (she derides the Bush administration as advocating the use of force as the preferred policy to most international problems).

Hillary Clinton's deeper problem is her notion that American foreign policy is a moral failure, and that we must "regain our authority" in international affairs. The U.S. hasn't lost its authority. The country remains the world's indispensible nation, and when global crises demand benign leadership for the provision of international goods, the U.S. will continue to get the call. We've faced difficulties in Iraq, which has made sustaining momentum and support more difficult. But we're gaining the upper hand, and to now feed the terrorist a victory through withdrawal would be folly. In the realm of opinion, much of international anti-Americanism is based on a resistance to America acting on the basis of its self interests. This is not new, and opinion trends are already turning back towards increasing acceptance and support (and recent elections in France and Germany have demonstrated how powerful the impulse to bandwagon on American power remains).

The U.S. needs to make adjustments, indeed, but not in the direction proposed by Hillary Clinton. America should leverage its improvements in Iraq to foster increased international efforts to combat the forces of terror, both transnational and state-sponsored. Diplomacy is key here, of course, but we have no desire to negotiate away our vital interests in regional and global security. We can, as well, increase spending on defense and expand the armed forces. We must increase efforts at vigorous public diplomacy to clarify America's interests in democracy promotion, economic development, and nuclear nonproliferation. We must not denigrate the great power that we enjoy. We can exercise robust leadership amid our substantial capabilities in ways no less "warm-hearted" than in earlier eras. In short, we need to continue to get things right, to follow-up our current victories against the forces of nihilism with more success. The "American idea" continues to glow, yet its illumination burns brighter amid a backdrop of competence and progress.