Its unfortunate that so much foreign policy debate and analysis of the crises in the Arab-Islamic world is carried on as though ‘neocons’ are the only ones with any explaining to do.
Patrick Porter at Oxblog offers some useful analysis contrasting neo-conservative and realist foreign policy perspectives.
But before dissecting it, its worth making some observations about the broad political philosophy ‘neo-conservatism.’ Thanks to the horrific loss of life and anarchy in Iraq especially in late 2006, the word ‘neocon’, like the word ‘liberal’ in US domestic politics, has degenerated into an empty and lazy word for anything in foreign policy that is undesirable.
I might have written “…that is undesirable with the benefit of hindsight, a super-power that is denied to real leaders”.
<more> See also Kenneth Anderson’s review of Francis Fukuyama’s latest book After the Neocons. According to Anderson, Fukuyama offers “a replacement for neoconservative foreign policy, something that he calls “realistic Wilsonianism”.
….In the years after the publication of The End of History, the neoconservatives in foreign policy held the line that the basic institutions and values of democracy, human rights, liberalism, free markets and the emancipation of women were accepted worldwide and not open to question. Fukuyama himself moved on: in Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity (1996), he fleshed out certain of the cultural values that made liberal capitalism work; in State-Building: Governance and world order in the 21st century (2004), he addressed the problem of failed states; and in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution (2003), he considered how to avoid yet another modern dystopia.
During the early Bush years, as liberal and conservative thought in America became increasingly polarized, Fukuyama and other conservative thinkers continued to set the tone of the administration. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, as we now know, intellectuals with a very different idea were also at work. They too had a global political vision; but theirs was a dream, not of the end of history, but of a rebirth, a resumption of the long march of Islam, stalled by centuries of Western expansion but reinvigorated by contemporary global demography. The true challenge to neoconservative foreign policy came, not from liberals on the Potomac, but from armed theocrats in the Old World. The Islamist project is a paradoxical vision of history simultaneously old and new, premodern in its deployment of ancient Islamic doctrines but postmodern in its highly selective use of them. It borrows notions from the heart of Western thought – multiculturalism, anti-colonialism, ressentiment – but in the service of a radical alternative to secular liberal capitalism. Like Fukuyama himself, Islamists have an end-time ideology – in their case not a secular, democratic, civil society writ global, but the worldwide umma, as prescribed in the Koran. For a crucial period of time, the Islamist vision was almost invisible to the West, even as it was under elaboration; articulated in another language, in Arabic rather than English, its audience was not in think tanks in Washington but among the resentful leftovers of modernity in immigrant communities in the cities of Europe.
…As a positive political doctrine, Fukuyama says, neoconservatism is one of four principal approaches to American foreign policy. The other three are: first, realism in the mould of Kissinger, which emphasizes power and stability, and tends to downplay the internal nature of other regimes; second, liberal internationalism, which hopes to transcend power politics and move to “an international order based on law and institutions”; and finally, in Walter Russell Meade’s term, “Jacksonian” nationalism, tending to a security-related view of American national interests and distrust of multilateralism.
Recommended.
“Petraeus has a rare combination of great geopolitical skills as well as tactical and military ones,” says retired General Jack Keane, a fellow architect of the surge strategy. “He is good at working with ambassadors, with the Iraqi government, and he also knows how to cope with uncertainty and failure, which is what you get in an environment like Iraq.”
To appreciate the scale of the task Gen Petraeus took on, it is necessary to go back to February 22, 2006. Or, as Iraqis now refer to it, their own September 11. That was when Sunni-led terrorists from al-Qaeda blew up the Shia shrine in the city of Samarra, an act of provocation that finally achieved their goal of igniting sectarian civil war.
…But it should not overshadow his achievement this year: he has given another last chance to a country that had long since ceased to expect one. And for that, Gen Petraeus is Person of the Year.
RTWT
Every once in a while I am more thankful than ever for today’s technology which allows me to talk to you directly instead of having to go through the filter of the main stream media.
Some of them are intent on making the outcome of the campaign dependent upon their pre-conceived notions. Every once in a while their incomplete and slanted coverage makes this clear.
Today I had this story written about me regarding what I said at a Town Hall event in Burlington, Iowa by a reporter who wasn’t even at the event. Incidentally, I declined to be interviewed by this particular reporter yesterday for reasons which will soon be apparent.
In referring to me, she reported “he doesn’t like modern campaigning, isn’t interested in running for President, and will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win.
Below is a transcript of what I actually said in response to a question by a local Burlington resident which was the basis of the reporter’s story.
It is clear that there are those in the media who will exact a high price for candor and from those whom they consider to be insufficiently ambitious. But it is with increasing amazement that we see that those who are willing to slant or leave out important parts of a story to make their point.
If a candidate succumbs to this he will be reduced to nothing more than a sound bite machine.
<more> Though we don’t follow US politics, this Thompson Q&A is certainly a different kind of dialog.
Given your US zip code the EPA’s Power Profiler will show you charts comparing your electric utilities fuel sources to national averages.
…When historians look back on this period, they may well identify the inability of the West to keep its friends in the Muslim world alive as one of the key factors strengthening the extremists at every turn.
But more specifically, US strategy in Pakistan is now in a comprehensive mess. Washington wanted the forces of secularism in Pakistan to reunite. In that equation President Pervez Musharraf represented the broadly secular military and Bhutto represented the civil society: the judges and lawyers and academics, and also the ordinary poor people of Pakistan who throughout their history have been mostly religiously tolerant and politically moderate.
These two forces were expected to be reunited by the general election on January 8. Musharraf would remain President. His hand-picked successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, would head the army. And Bhutto would be prime minister, achieving her position through democratic election and adding a sheen of legitimacy to the Pakistani power structure.
Greg Sheridan’s analysis is the most useful that I’ve encountered. Recommended.
Economist Greg Mankiw offered this:
My Harvard colleague Sendhil Mullainathan and his coauthors opine on how to fix the mortgage market.
Looks like a sensible plan to me — though what it would look like after mangling by Congress…
Today’s clean diesels, such as this engine from a Euro-spec 2007 VW Polo, can offer better fuel economy (74.3 mpg) and produce fewer greenhouse gases than some gas/electric hybrids.
Even relatively sophisticated observers will attribute American interest in the Persian Gulf to Uncle Sam’s insatiable thirst for crude, combined with an effort to gain lucrative contracts for American oil firms. The U.S. on this view is something like a global Count Dracula, roaming the earth in search of fresh bodies, hoping to suck them dry.
Senior CFR fellow Walter Russell Mead does a nice job of explaining U.S. policy. And a better job than I, explaining why this popular leftist propaganda is precisely upside down. Why is U.S. public information so inept?
True, the security of America’s oil supply has been an element in national strategic thinking at least since Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz in the waning days of World War II. And true, the U.S. government has never been indifferent to the concerns of the major oil concerns. But the security of our domestic energy supplies plays a relatively small role in America’s Persian Gulf policy, and the purely commercial interests of American companies do not drive American grand strategy.
The U.S. today depends on the Middle East for only a small portion of its energy supplies. Still the world’s third largest oil producer and holding large coal reserves, America is significantly less dependent on foreign energy sources than the other great economies. Imports account for 35% of U.S. energy consumption versus 56% for the European Union and 80% for Japan. Nearly half the oil and all the natural gas imported by the U.S. comes from the Western Hemisphere; sub-Saharan Africa supplies most of the balance. Only 17% of U.S. oil imports and less than 0.5% of our natural gas come from the Persian Gulf; 80% of Japan’s imports come from the Gulf, and by 2015 70% of China’s oil will come from the same source.
While U.S. import needs are projected to grow significantly, U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf energy is not, thanks largely to expected production increases in the Western Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. U.S. energy imports from the Persian Gulf are expected to remain below 20% of total consumption. The oil market, of course, is global, and if something were to happen to the Middle Eastern supplies, prices would rise world-wide, and the U.S. economy would be seriously disrupted. But domestic supply is not the key to American interest in the Gulf.
For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power — with help from allies and other parties — maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way. Thanks to the American umbrella, Germany, Japan, China, Korea and India do not need to maintain the military strength to project forces into the Middle East to defend their access to energy. Nor must each country’s navy protect the supertankers carrying oil and liquefied national gas (LNG).
For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters. The Soviets had to be kept out during the Cold War, and the security and independence of the oil sheikdoms had to be protected from ambitious Arab leaders like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. During the Cold War Americans forged alliances with Turkey, Israel and (until 1979) Iran, three non-Arab states that had their own reasons for opposing both the Soviets and any pan-Arab state.
When the fall of the shah of Iran turned a key regional ally into an implacable foe, the U.S. responded by tightening its relations with both Israel and Turkey — while developing a deeper relationship with Egypt, which had given up on Nasser’s goal of unifying all the Arabs under its flag.
Today the U.S. is building a coalition against Iran’s drive for power in the Gulf. Israel, a country which has its own reasons for opposing Iran, remains an important component in the American strategy, but the U.S. must also manage the political costs of this relationship as it works with the Sunni Arab states. American opposition to Iran’s nuclear program not only reflects concerns about Israeli security and the possibility that Iran might supply terrorist groups with nuclear materials. It also reflects the U.S. interest in protecting its ability to project conventional forces into the Gulf.
The end of America’s ability to safeguard the Gulf and the trade routes around it would be enormously damaging — and not just to us. Defense budgets would grow dramatically in every major power center, and Middle Eastern politics would be further destabilized, as every country sought political influence in Middle Eastern countries to ensure access to oil in the resulting free for all.
The potential for conflict and chaos is real. A world of insecure and suspicious great powers engaged in military competition over vital interests would not be a safe or happy place. Every ship that China builds to protect the increasing numbers of supertankers needed to bring oil from the Middle East to China in years ahead would also be a threat to Japan’s oil security — as well as to the oil security of India and Taiwan. European cooperation would likely be undermined as well, as countries sought to make their best deals with Russia, the Gulf states and other oil rich neighbors like Algeria.
America’s Persian Gulf policy is one of the chief ways through which the U.S. is trying to build a peaceful world and where the exercise of American power, while driven ultimately by domestic concerns and by the American national interest, provides vital public goods to the global community. The next American president, regardless of party and regardless of his or her views about the wisdom of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, will necessarily make the security of the Persian Gulf states one of America’s very highest international priorities.
The New York Federal Reserve offers a number of educational products — an unusual one is their comic book series. The materials are free of charge, unless you order large quantities.
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