Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  This mode of thinking is in marked contrast to the old Christian tradition. Christianity has always stressed the imperfect, sinful nature of man and warned against placing too much faith in manmade political institutions and measures. St. Augustine (354–430) is only one of the earliest and least sanguine of many Christian thinkers over the centuries who would have rejected out of hand the idea that mankind is destined for great progress and political perfection, to say nothing about the possibility of salvation through politics. Although Christianity has stressed that rulers must serve the common good and behave in a humane manner, it has been reluctant to endorse any particular form of government as suited to all peoples and all historical circumstances. Here Christianity agreed with the Aristotelian view.

  The New Democratism

  Democratism has long had more than a foothold in American government. A look back in modern history is appropriate. President Woodrow Wilson, with his belief in America's special role and his missionary zeal, gave it a strong push. Harvard professor Irving Babbitt (1865–1933), perhaps America's most incisive and prescient student of modern Western and American culture, commented in the early years of the twentieth century on the imperialistic trend in U.S. foreign policy. Babbitt, the founder of what has been called the New Humanism or American Humanism, was formally a professor of French and comparative literature, but he was also a highly perceptive as well as prophetic observer of social and political developments. He noted that the United States was setting itself up as the great guardian and beneficiary of mankind. “We are rapidly becoming a nation of humanitarian crusaders,” Babbitt wrote in 1924. Leaders like Wilson viewed America as abjuring selfish motives and as being, therefore, above all other nations. Babbitt commented:

  We are willing to admit that all other nations are self-seeking, but as for ourselves, we hold that we act only on the most disinterested motives. We have not as yet set up, like revolutionary France, as the Christ of Nations, but during the late war we liked to look on ourselves as at least the Sir Galahad of Nations. If the American thus regards himself as an idealist at the same time that the foreigner looks on him as a dollar-chaser, the explanation may be due partly to the fact that the American judges himself by the way he feels, whereas the foreigner judges him by what he does.1

  By the time of President Wilson the idea had long been common in America that in old Europe conceited and callous elites oppressed the common man. There and elsewhere things needed to be set right. Thomas Jefferson had been a pioneer for this outlook. But from the time of George Washington's warning of the danger of entangling alliances, a desire for heavy American involvement abroad had for the most part been held in check. By the time of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, it was clear that the wish for American prominence and activism in international affairs had thrown off earlier restraints. Woodrow Wilson reinforced the interventionist impulse, not, of course, to advance selfish American national motives but, as he said, to “serve mankind.” Because America has a special moral status, Wilson proclaimed, it is called to do good in the world. In 1914, even before the outbreak of the European war, Wilson stated in a Fourth of July address that America's role was to serve “the rights of humanity.” The flag of the United States, he declared, is “the flag, not only of America, but of humanity.”2

  Babbitt pointed out that those who would not go along with Wilson's “humanitarian crusading” were warned that they would “break the heart of the world.” Babbitt retorted: “If the tough old world had ever had a heart in the Wilsonian sense, it would have been broken long ago.” He added that Wilson's rhetoric, which was at the same time abstract and sentimental, revealed “a temper at the opposite pole from that of the genuine statesman.” Wilson's humanitarian idealism made him “inflexible and uncompromising.”3

  The Post-Cold War Imperative

  The notion that America had a mandate to help rid the world, not least Europe, of the bad old ways of traditional societies with their undemocratic political arrangements has remained a strong influence on American foreign policy. In World War II, FDR's sense of American mission may have been as strong as Wilson's.

  For a long time during the cold war, most policy makers and commentators saw that war as a defensive struggle to protect freedom or liberty against totalitarian tyranny. But some of the most dedicated cold warriors were also democratists. They had a vision for remaking the world that differed in substance from that of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes but that was equally universalistic. With the disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union, these cold warriors did not argue for substantially reducing the American military or the United States' involvement in international affairs. On the contrary, they believed that America should continue to play a large and, in some respects, expanded role in the world; that, as the only remaining superpower, America had a historic opportunity to advance the cause of democracy and human rights. This language had long been gaining currency in the centers of public debate and political power, and soon government officials and politicians in both of the major parties spoke routinely of the need to promote democracy. Many did so in just the manner here associated with neo-Jacobinism. It seemed to them that the American ideology had not only survived the challenge from the other universalist ideology, but had prevailed in a contest that validated the American ideal as applicable in all societies.

  The first President Bush thought of himself as a competent pragmatist, but, as is often the case with persons who lack philosophically grounded convictions of their own, he was susceptible to adopting the language and ideas of intellectually more focused and ideological individuals. The rhetoric in his administration about a New World Order often had a distinctly democratist ring, in considerable part probably because of the ideological leanings of speechwriters. In 1991 James Baker, President Bush's secretary of state, echoed a neo-Jacobin refrain when he declared that U.S. foreign policy should serve not specifically American interests but “enlightenment ideals of universal applicability.” Whether such formulations originated with Mr. Baker or his speechwriters, the Secretary clearly liked the sound of them. He advocated a “Euro-Atlantic community that extends east from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” This “community,” he said, “can only be achieved on a democratic basis.” The enormous size and political and cultural diversity of the region he described did not give him pause or make him question the United States' willingness or ability to take charge of such a daunting cause. No, the United States should promote “common … universal values” in those parts of the world, he said, and “indeed, elsewhere on the globe.”1 American power was there to be used. It seemed appropriate in cases such as these to talk of virtually unlimited political ambition.

  The surge of globalist political-ideological aspirations was even more blatantly and pointedly expressed by the Bush Sr. administration in a draft Pentagon planning document that was leaked to the New York Times. It had been produced under the supervision of then-Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The draft plan dealt with the United States' military needs in the post–cold war era, setting forth the goal of a world in which the United States would be the sole and uncontested superpower. The draft plan assigned to the United States “the pre-eminent responsibility” for dealing with “those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.” The goal of American world dominance was presented as serving the spread of democracy and open economic systems. American military power was to be so overwhelming that it would not even occur to the United States' competitors to challenge its will.2 This vision of the future might have seemed the expression of an inordinate, open-ended desire for power and control, uninhibited by the fact that the world is, after all, rather large. But significantly, many commentators considered the vision entirely plausible. The Wall Street Journal praised the draft plan in a lead editorial favoring “Pax Americana.”3

  Bill Clinton made clear in his 1992 presidential campai
gn that he would pursue a foreign policy similar to, if not more expansive than, the Bush administration's. In 1993 his Secretary of State-designate, Warren Christopher, addressed a group of neoconservative Democrats, including Penn Kemble, Joshua Muravchik, Peter Rosenblatt, Albert Shanker, and Max Kampelman, to assure them that he would fully back the President's commitments to making promotion of democracy a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy.4 Christopher's successor, Madeleine Albright, was even more comfortable with this stance. Democratist ideology was by now clearly dominant in top policy-making circles in Washington and elsewhere. It both generated and sanctioned an assertive, expansive use of American power.

  When running for President, George W. Bush appeared to have substantial qualms about this broad use of American might. He questioned the desire to impose solutions to problems in all regional and local trouble spots around the world, seeming to recognize that such efforts betrayed arrogance and an undue will to power that other countries might resent. His adoption of a wholly different, far more assertive tone after the 9/11 attacks was surely induced in large part by war-like conditions. Although the change was probably motivated more by pragmatic than by ideological considerations, President Bush's rhetoric began to take on a neo-Jacobin coloring, as when he spoke of the “axis of evil,” a phrase coined by neocon-servative speechwriter David Frum.

  In subsequent speeches, the President has often come to resemble Woodrow Wilson in assigning to the United States, the exceptional country, an exceptional mission in the world. He has asserted that an attack upon the United States was an attack upon freedom: “A lot of young people say, well, why America? Why would anybody want to come after us? Why would anybody want to fight a war with this nation? And the answer is because we love freedom. That's why. And they hate freedom.”1 Identifying America with the universal cause of freedom, Bush has even adopted Wilsonian imagery. Echoing Wilson in 1917, he said that the American flag stands “not only for our power, but for freedom.”2 Although the President used the term “freedom” rather than “democracy,” which is the one favored by the new Jacobins, he seemed to agree with the notion that any enemy or critic of the United States is an opponent of universal principle. “They have attacked America,” he said three days after 9/11, “because we are freedom's home and defender.”3

  Proponents of American empire had moved with great speed to head off any reluctance on the part of a devastated and disoriented American public to deal quickly and comprehensively with terrorism around the globe. Already on the morning after the attacks, when it was still not clear who was responsible, the Washington Post carried an article by Robert Kagan calling for sweeping countermeasures. The U.S. Congress should, Kagan insisted, declare war immediately on the terrorists and any nation that might have assisted them. The situation required that America act with “moral clarity and courage as our grandfathers did [responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor]. Not by asking what we have done to bring on the wrath of inhuman murderers. Not by figuring out ways to reason with, or try to appease those who have spilled our blood.”1 On the same day William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Jeane Kirkpatrick issued a statement calling for war against the “entire” Islamic terrorist network.2

  If the President thought that American actions might have contributed to the hostility to the United States in the world, he did not, and in the circumstances perhaps could not, say so publicly. What he did say and has said repeatedly is that the United States must be diligent, active, and forceful – preemptive even – in dealing with present or potential threats of terrorism. Paradoxically, given his earlier calls for American humility, he has presided over a massive push for greater American involvement in the world and for a vastly more intrusive role for government in the daily lives of U.S. citizens. In fairness to a politician who is not also an intellectual and a historian, war has its own logic, and it may be premature to draw definitive conclusions about the President's statements and actions in the wake of 9/11, which was an act of war. But the fact is that President Bush's assertive approach and universalistic rhetoric has been seized on by American democratists who have been preparing the ground for a war and for a wider pursuit of empire. Charles Krauthammer praised the President for applying “the fundamental principle of American foreign policy – the promotion of democracy.”3 Political activist and writer Midge Decter pointed out that after 9/11 America could do something to clean up the world. She urged her countrymen “to hang onto what is most important to remember: that our country, the strongest on earth, has been pressed by circumstance – I would say, has been granted the opportunity – to rid the world of some goodly measure of its cruelty and pestilence.”1

  In mid-September 2002, President Bush sent to the U.S. Congress the President's annual statement on strategy, the National Security Strategy, which gave clear evidence that he was abandoning his earlier calls for a more “humble” U.S. foreign policy. Though the report was framed as a strategy for combating terrorism, the stated objectives supererogated any need to respond to acute external or internal threats. The report defined what amounted to a new and highly ambitious role for America in the world. Released the day after the President asked the Congress to authorize the use of preemptive military force against Iraq, it provided justifications for American intervention against potential security threats, while also formulating a new and much broader international agenda. The report in effect set forth a doctrine of American armed hegemony. The President justified this ascendancy as serving both America's security needs and its efforts to promote freedom, democracy, and free trade. The Washington Post said that the Strategy gave the United States “a nearly messianic role.” It meant not only acceptance but also extension of the old Wolfowitz draft plan. Indeed, Wolfowitz later became deputy secretary of defense and remained a highly vocal and assertive proponent of American activism around the world. According to the report, America's strength and influence in the world is “unprecedented” and “unequaled.” The United States, “sustained by faith in the principles of liberty and the value of a free society,” also has “unparalleled responsibilities, obligations, and opportunities” beyond its borders. The report calls for possessing such overwhelming military power as to discourage any other power from challenging American hegemony or developing weapons of mass destruction. It overturns the old doctrines of deterrence and containment. Committing the United States to a much expanded understanding of security, it argues that the United States must reserve the right to act preemptively and unilaterally against potentially threatening states or organizations. But the President approved an even wider goal. The Strategy commits the United States to making the world “not just safer but better.” In explaining the report, a senior administration official said that besides leading the world in the war against terrorists and “aggressive regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction,” the United States should preserve the peace, “extend the benefits of liberty and prosperity through the spread of American values,” and promote “good governance.” In familiar-sounding words, the report describes America's strategy as a “distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.”1

  A New Kind of War

  The foreign policy of George W. Bush's immediate two predecessors, Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, had a strong Wilsonian tilt. But neither President followed any sustained, consistent strategy. By contrast, the Bush Doctrine as set forth in the National Security Strategy and other places commits the United States to a bold, comprehensive, and elaborate foreign policy. The publicly and formally stated U.S. goal, in sum, is to establish global supremacy. The United States would set itself up as the arbiter of good and evil in the world and, if necessary, enforce its judgments unilaterally.

  Reservations expressed in Europe and elsewhere about American unilateralism and global aspirations have been scorned and dismissed by proponents of empire as a failure to recognize the need to combat evil in the world. Kenneth Adelman, a former deputy ambassador to the UN and a
highly placed advisor on defense to the U.S. government, couched his advocacy of imperial designs in terms of fighting terrorism. “I don't think Europeans should cooperate with the United States as a favor to the United States. They should be very grateful to the United States and cooperate because we have a common enemy – terrorism. In my mind, it's a decisive moment in the conflict between civilization and barbarism.”2

  Since America is at war it is, in a way, not surprising that some of its leaders should be portraying America as being on the side of good and those not eager to follow America's lead as aiding and abetting evil. Stark rhetoric has been used before to get Americans to support or sustain war, but the war aims spoken of today are derived from a consciously universalistic and imperialistic ideology. Therein lies an important difference, and a great danger.

  The belief in American moral superiority knows no party lines. In an article critical of the George W. Bush administration's way of preparing for war against Iraq, Richard C. Holbrooke, ambassador to the UN under President Clinton, expressed a view ubiquitous in the American foreign policy establishment: “Over the past 60 years, the United States has consistently combined its military superiority with moral and political leadership.”1

  The word “consistently” is telling. The notion that, unlike other nations, America is above moral suspicion, provides the best possible justification for the desire to exercise American power.

  It seems to the proponents of the ideology of American empire that, surely, America the virtuous is entitled to dominate the world. Some of them have worked long and hard to make this point of view dominant in American foreign policy. President Bush was merely echoing what others had been saying when he stated: “There is a value system that cannot be compromised, and that is [sic] the values we praise. And if the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others.”2