Obama = Truman?

Brooks makes the case that Obama’s foreign policy is starting to shape up like something we haven’t seen for a long, long time.

In 2007, he spoke about the way Niebuhr formed his thinking: “I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”His speeches at West Point and Oslo this year are pitch-perfect explications of the liberal internationalist approach. Other Democrats talk tough in a secular way, but Obama’s speeches were thoroughly theological. He talked about the “core struggle of human nature” between love and evil.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Christian Realism – NYTimes.com.

This makes for a compelling frame to understand the President’s speech on just war theory, as well his decision-making approach to foreign policy in the coming years.

Assumptions and Worldviews | What Have You Gone, Neocons?

Our assumptions about country roles and intentions shape our foreign policy.  One view of late–that represents what was not a well-known view until the administration of George W. Bush–is that of neoconservativism.  Although a political view of this era may be a series of unmitigated disaster, this approach has a much longer history than may be apparent–and represents a viable idea, even if it was ineffectively implemented, as noted by Francis Fukuyama in After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads.

One idea driving neoconservative thought comes from an assumption about enemies:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is there still an Axis of Evil?

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Yes, and it’s growing. It lost Iraq, but now counts Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Russia.

LOPEZ: Are we an “Accomplice to Evil”?

LEDEEN: That’s the whole point of my book. We have once again failed to see evil — Iran is the prime example — when it was right in front of us, and we have deliberately blinded ourselves to the war that the Islamic Republic has been waging against us for 30 years.

via The Problem of Evil by Interview on National Review Online.

The inability of neoconservatives to achieve their stated goals in Iraq has cost them social, political, and economic capital over past nine years, as Amy Chua writes in the NYT Week in Review:

Enter neoconservatism. At its core, the neoconservative program was premised on the aggressive, interventionist use of American military force, with or without international approval, to effect regime change and nation building. If 9/11 sent neoliberalism into a tailspin, the Iraq quagmire did the same for neoconservatism.

Then came the financial meltdown of 2008, which dealt the deathblow to both. Neoconservative power depended on immense disposable wealth to finance American military might abroad. Neoliberal economics assumed that American capitalism would produce that wealth. Today the dreams of both lie shattered, and policy makers are at sea.

What comes next?  She guides us toward the idea of a Roosevelt revolution–or rather, a return to his approach:

And what of the Obama administration? Richard Posner, most recently the author of “A Failure of Capitalism,” sees in current policy a case of “Roosevelt envy.” There may be some truth to this. Like the Roosevelt White House, the Obama administration seems committed simultaneously to renewing internationalism, overhauling regulation and spending its way out of economic crisis.

 

Booklist – Top 10 IR Must Reads

Another great post from Stephen M. Walt at FP.com on some essential IR reads.  Of note:  the Kennedy Center’s own Valerie Hudson as an honorable mention here and in another list on key IR books by women. Walt notes:

[On Bare Branches:] I mentioned this in my earlier discussion, and can’t resist highlighting it here. The argument is simple but striking and could have far-reaching implications. Short version: if a cultural preference for male offspring leads to too many unattached men in your society, look out.

The full list:

1). Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.

2). Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

3). Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence.

4). James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

5). David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

6). Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics.

7). John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

8). Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

9). Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years & Years of Upheaval.

10). Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

So that’s ten, but I can’t resist tossing in a few others in passing: Geoffrey Blainey The Causes of War; Douglas North, Structure and Change in Economic History; Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population; Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars; T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars; R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution; Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War; Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies; Tony Smith, The Problem of Imperlalism; and Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth-Maker. And as I said, this just scratches the surface.

IR System Drifts from US Goals | Where the “Rest” is Going

The US may be readying itself for a new leader, but the rest of the world moves on.  (In the 1990s a major debate was occurring about the nature of a New World Order.  Insights from Parag Khanna about how we’re so far beyond that….in the Guardian UK:

But this time the conditions are very different. The world has stopped waiting for the US – and its next president — to declare its roadmap for the future. Instead, the other 96% of the planet has decided to move on with its business. And business is booming. The major emerging powers, production centres and financial capitals — Russia, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates and others — are creating connections among themselves. While some Americans gloat that the global economic slowdown is evidence the world has not “decoupled” from it yet, the situation would have been much worse if emerging markets were not robust centres of growth.

This parallels the observation in the Times that US economic hegemony is ending, as well.

“One thing seems probable to me,” Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, said recently. “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system.” At another time, that remark might have sounded like mere nationalist bluster. Right now, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous to ask whether 2008 will come to be seen as the first year of a distinctly non-American century.

Which is the Right Terrorism Theory to Shape Washington’s Policy?

If you wonder why policy matters, consider this debate.  It breaks down roughly into a discussion as to whether structural or interpersonal factors are most important in combating terrorism.  At stake is a country’s strategy, billions of dollars, and maybe even the future success/failure of these efforts:

On one side is Bruce Hoffman, a cerebral 53-year-old Georgetown University historian and author of the highly respected 1998 book “Inside Terrorism.” He argues that Al Qaeda is alive, well, resurgent and more dangerous than it has been in several years. In his corner, he said, is a battalion of mainstream academics and a National Intelligence Estimate issued last summer warning that Al Qaeda had reconstituted in Pakistan.

On the other side is Marc Sageman, an iconoclastic 55-year-old Polish-born psychiatrist, sociologist, former C.I.A. case officer and scholar-in-residence with the New York Police Department. His new book, “Leaderless Jihad,” argues that the main threat no longer comes from the organization called Al Qaeda, but from the bottom up — from radicalized individuals and groups who meet and plot in their neighborhoods and on the Internet. In his camp, he said, are agents and analysts in highly classified positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The UN: Essential or Irrelevant?

This is the big debate on the UN, played out during the Bush Presidency through the appointment of John Bolton as combative ambassador, and now the other with with an Afghan-American who moves quietly in the diplomatic corridors to further US interests.  So what better way to explore the two (or more views) than through a real live debate!

Global leadership, American exceptionalism, and sovereignty

Does the US want to lead the world? This critical question for the American electorate has implications based on how we think about international organizations and our approach to foreign policy.

How a candidate feels about America’s leadership role touches on other issues: participation in international bodies, the size of the military budget, the welcome given to immigrants and — especially — the nature of patriotism.

For the sword under which America leads is double-edged. Claiming world leadership is both the epitome of patriotism and a threat to it. America deserves to lead, a patriot might say — it’s the greatest democracy. But once you engage with foreigners on democratic terms, you become dependent on their good opinion — and possibly more accountable to the world than to your own citizens.

This and more, from Christopher Caldwell in the Sunday NYT Magazine, as well as some background (PBS interview) to explore the Niebuhr dimension of what Andrew Bacevitch of Boston University claims:

Americans claim the privileges and prerogatives of exceptionalism (like consuming exceptional amounts of oil and running exceptionally high credit-card balances) while sloughing off its unpleasant responsibilities. They have lost sight, he thinks, of what the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called “the point of concurrence between the parochial and the general interest, between the national and the international common good.”

Keep in mind–we tread on an ancient debate, as A.A. Long reminds us in Daedalus:

Cosmopolitan, the English equivalent of the older French word cosmopolite, derives from the ancient Greek term kosmopolites (kosmos plus polites) to signify “citizen of the world.” The original Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (c. 390–323 B.C.), notorious for his “in your face” discourse and readiness to do everything in public, probably coined this expression and first applied it to himself.

IR Theory Debate: Neocons v. Realists

If you want to talk shop with the international relations jet-set–or delve deeper into how the international system is framed theoretically, a bit of, er, theory, would be useful.  And there’s nothing more exciting than a debate to wake you up…

Muravchik:

The war in Iraq grew out of Bush’s neocon strategy, whether or not it was a necessary part of that strategy. Since the war turned into a fiasco, neocons rightly receive much blame, just as they or their ideological predecessors did over the war in Vietnam. But Vietnam was a flawed and painful episode in what proved ultimately to be a sound, even brilliant, strategy. The strategy that led us into Iraq may also in the end be vindicated. Meanwhile, neocons take their lumps for Iraq. But realism remains as barren of answers to the threat of global terrorism as it was to the threat of global Communism.

Walt:

As the label implies, realists believe foreign policy must deal with the world as it really is, instead of relying on wishful thinking or ideological dogmas. Realism sees the international system as a competitive arena where states have to provide security for themselves. Realists know that states get into trouble if they are too trusting, but that problems also arise when states exaggerate external dangers, misjudge priorities or engage in foolish foreign adventures.