Pragmatism v. Ideology: International Relations

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I’ve been meaning to write a post about process versus ideology in response to the hand-wringing about Obama’s appointees. This post from Glenn Greenwald and this one from Daniel De Groot have pitched the issue in different terms, as pragmatism versus ideology. Both are fairly abstract posts, and both are, in my opinion, bad caricatures of the debate.

Here’s Glenn, equating principle with ideology (and therefore presumably suggesting pragmatism lacks all principle).

Because as a matter of principle — of ideology — we believe that it is not just to do it, no matter how many benefits we might reap, no matter how much it might advance our "national self-interest" (just as we don’t break into our neighbor’s home and steal from them even if they have really valuable things to take and we’re pretty sure we won’t get caught).

And here he is suggesting that pragmatic calculations would primarily involve a measurement of material gain balanced against cost (this seems to contradict the suggestion that pragmatists have no principles, since the valuation of material gain is itself a principle, albeit not a very laudable one).

First, is foreign policy really nothing more than "pragmatic actions in defense of national self-interest?"  If, on a pragmatic level, the consequences of attacking Iraq had been different than what they were — if we had been able to invade and occupy relatively quickly and derive substantial material gain from doing so, including somehow making ourselves marginally "safer" — would that have made the Iraq War a just and desirable action? 

Daniel picks up on Glenn’s post, synthesizing that pragmatism equals realpolitik (apparently conflating Kissinger’s ideological approach to diplomacy with Obama’s pragmatism).

His point here is a great one, that "pragmatism" as applied to foreign policy is little more than another term for realpolitik, the amoral pursuit of national power in a competitive and adversarial nation-state environment.   

De Groot then asks–but doesn’t answer–what the goals of pragmatism are.

There is another fundamental problem with the ideology of pragmatism (yes, "I hate ideology" is an ideology too!) – that can be expressed as a question:  What goals do these pragmatic policies advance?

And all of this discussion and all of their weird conflations are divorced from any consideration of actual foreign policy ideologies in this country and from Obama’s own statements.

Consider these excerpts from Obama’s 2002 speech opposing the Iraq War.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. Read more →

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About that Hillary as Secretary of State Thing

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Say. Did you notice how successful Colin Powell was at pushing the Bush Administration to adopt his less-horrible foreign policy solutions, like peace in Israel and a government in Iraq that included all factions?

Oh wait. I remember now. In spite of his national stature, in spite of the skills learned in a career of negotiating the bureaucracy and politics of the military, he was profoundly unsuccessful at influencing the direction of policy in the Administration.

There’s something missing from the discussions about whether Obama will indeed name Hillary his Secretary of State: a discussion of how that position has become much weaker in the last half century, as compared to the National Security Advisor or the Defense Secretary. Here’s the closest we get to an acknowledgment of this issue.

Friends said the potential loss of her independence, hard won by her election to the Senate from New York in 2000, caused Clinton to waver last week as she considered Obama’s offer. But advisers said the discussions got back on track after he promised she would have considerable input on staffing decisions and plenty of access to him. 

[snip]

Indeed, perhaps as a counterweight to the Clinton pick, Obama is likely to name James L. Jones, a widely respected former Marine Corps commandant and NATO commander, to be his national security adviser. Jones would lend a powerful voice on foreign policy matters right in the White House, while Clinton was at the State Department or overseas. 

National Security Advisor

The Secretary of State has lost power for two different reasons. The National Security Advisor has had proximity and–increasingly–operational means. As the person who convenes the National Security Council, the NSA has some ability to guide the agenda. She also would help the President balance the competing views of the other members of the NSC, so would have more sway over final decision-making. And, as the staff of the NSC at the White House grows, the NSA increasingly has the ability to implement presidential foreign policy plans directly, without the cooperation of the State Department (the best example of this was Iran-Contra, in which Ronnie and Poppy implemented entire foreign policy programs through NSC). 

While Condi was a disaster at this role and Hadley only slightly better, that role of internal foreign policy advisor was basically taken over by Cheney in this White House–but there, too, the lesson of an internal force setting policy–including much of the war on terror–remains valid. Read more →

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Putin Logic

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To shamelessly borrow a great story from scoutprime:

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” — a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

[snip]

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared. 

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

You know, I know the Villagers have a lot of polite reasons for not holding Bush and Cheney accountable. But doesn’t this present a really compelling reason for investigations and consequences? Not so much to protect Mikheil Saakashvili’s balls, mind you, but as a check on Vladimir Putin?

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Playing Pakistan

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The NYDN captured both aspects of McCain’s mistakes last night on Pakistan (Update: here’s a much better article from Strobel and Landay).

The one that leapt out was McCain, kinda like George Bush in 2000, getting the name of Pakistan’s president wrong. (Bush didn’t know it.)

“Now, the new president of Pakistan, Qadari (it’s actually Asif Ali Zardari), has got his hands full,” McCain said.

He also said, “I don’t think that Sen. Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power,” referring to former President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup 1999. Although Pakistan sure had problems, many people didn’t regard the country, then a nuclear-armed one, as a failed state.

Admittedly, I once starred as the villain of a Matt Bai novel because of my obsession with Pakistan, so I’m surely biased. 

But unlike McCain’s mangling of Ahmadinejad’s name, I think these two mistakes ought to qualify as a significant issue.

Central to the debate over who has better judgment in foreign affairs, after all, is whether or not it was correct to draw troops away from Afghanistan in 2002 and dump them into Bush’s war of choice. McCain maintains that was a smart decision, whereas Obama has been saying we should have–and still have to–focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan for some time. 

McCain botching the name of a guy who just became Pakistan’s president–that I don’t so much mind (though someone following closely enough to understand Benazir Bhutto’s role in the country would have known Zardari’s name from his time as First Gentleman). 

But for someone running on a neocon platform of supporting the spread of democracy to explain away Musharraf’s coup by claiming Pakistan was a failed state is just inexcusable. If you don’t even know which countries have democratic elections and which don’t, after all, you’re bound to find yourself invading Venezuela in the name of democracy (heh). Furthermore, if Pakistan had been a failed state at any time since 1998, when it tested nukes, it would completely undermine the logic behind McCain’s myopic focus on Iraq and Iran at the expense of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

In other words, McCain’s mistakes on Pakistan last night ought to be definitive proof that Obama’s claim–that McCain has focused unwisely on Iraq to the detriment of the more urgent central Asian war–is correct.

And while we’re talking about Pakistan, it’s worth looking at how well Eliza Doolittle learns. Read more →

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Operation “The Surge Is a Success–Bury the Afghanistan NIE”

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John McCain has a narrow road to the Presidency. He has to bank on his claimed greater qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief to attract the votes of those who still believe the Global War on Terrorists and the Nations We Occupy (GWOTANWO) is our biggest concern. To win his Commander-in-Chief argument, McCain has to downplay the fact that Obama’s gradual withdrawal from Iraq is in fact the plan Maliki supports (and McCain has to hope Bush remains successful in shutting Maliki up about it), emphasize the spin that Obama has said the surge was a success, and hope no one remembers that McCain was a big hawk on the Iraq war back when we could have avoided it.

Oh, and he has to hope no one talks about how the McCain-Bush Iraq myopia led to the utter neglect of Afghanistan, thereby letting the terrorists regain a foothold in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

And to that end, the Bush Administration will not tell us what its NIE on Afghanistan says.

Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community’s 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final "coordination meeting" of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.

According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.

After all, the only way the Iraq surge can look even remotely successful is if we remain ignorant of the opportunity costs we paid to execute it.

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Well, I Guess We Knew There’d Be Demands…

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From Helena Cobban (h/t MinnesotaChuck).

China’s President Hu Jintao has now explicitly linked his country’s readiness to show good cooperation in resolving the US financial crisis to the question of Taiwan.

Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency reported today that Hu and Pres. Bush conferred thusly about the crisis yesterday evening (Washington time):

Bush briefed Hu on the latest development of the U.S. financial market, saying his government was well aware of the scope of the problem, and had taken and would continue to take necessary measures to stabilize the domestic and world financial markets.

Hu [said he] hoped the measures would soon take effect and lead to a gradual recovery of the financial market, which he said not only serves the interests of the United States, but also those of China, and benefits the stability of the world financial market and the sound development of the world economy.

… He said China is ready to work with the U.S. side to intensify dialogue, exchanges and cooperation, and properly handle issues concerning mutual interests and of major concern, particularly the Taiwan question, in a bid to push forward the sustained and steady development of the Sino-U.S. constructive and cooperative ties.

How long do you think Hu has been waiting for the moment he had Bush by the balls?

When you come begging to your banker, you’ve got to expect him to issue demands, I guess.

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McCain’s Still Fighting the Mexican Revolution

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emilianozapata.thumbnail.jpgYou’ve all heard, by now, that McCain got really confused when asked a question about Spain’s President, Jose Luis Zapatero, in an interview yesterday.

INTERVIEWER: Senator finally, let’s talk about Spain. If elected president would you be willing to invite President Jose Rodriguez Louis Zapatero to the White House, to meet with you?

McCAIN: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion.

And by the way President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I’m glad we are now working with the Mexican government on the Merida Plan, and I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders to the White House.

INTERVIEWER: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government? To the president himself?

McCAIN: Uh, I don’t, I, ya know, I, honestly, I have to look at the situations and the relations and the priorities. But I can assure you, I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

INTERVIEWER: So you have to wait and see. If he’s willing to meet with you, would you be able to do it? In the White House?

McCAIN: Well, again, I don’t — All I can tell you is I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region.

There’s been some debate over whether McCain simply thinks Zapatero, a NATO ally, isn’t supporting American policies, or whether he simply had a senior moment … a really bad one.

Me, I think John McCain is still fighting the Mexican Revolution. Seriously.

From the transcript, it’s obvious that McCain thought the interviewer–who had asked about Venezuela and then Cuba–was asking another question about a third Latin American country, Mexico. His immediate response, after all, was to emphasize his support for Calderon, the conservative President of Mexico. Read more →

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The Devil Went Down To Georgia

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Well, okay, it was Dick Cheney. Close enough. From The Los Angeles Times:

Appearing alongside beleaguered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday criticized Russia’s conduct in its short war with Georgia and pledged to continue American support for reconstruction and humanitarian aid.
…
Cheney’s remarks probably will further inflame Moscow, where officials have railed against the United States’ alliances with the former Soviet states. This week, President Dmitry Medvedev said bluntly that Moscow expected to maintain a "privileged" sphere of influence in the region of the former Soviet Union.

However, U.S. officials Thursday brushed off criticism that the White House is deliberately approaching the brink of confrontation with Russia.

"The United States is not trying to paint Russia as an enemy," said Robert A. Wood, a State Department spokesman. "We’re very concerned about its behavior and what that means for the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. We’re looking at all aspects of our relationship with Russia, in terms of how we go forward."

Russian officials also have been dismayed by the apparent staying power of Saakashvili, often referred to in Moscow as a "war criminal" for launching the military operation in early August in the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in troops to defend the pro-Russian enclave, which broke with Georgia’s government more than a decade ago. The fighting ended with Russia continuing to occupy parts of Georgia proper to enforce the separation from South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that the world should impose an arms embargo on Georgia until Saakashvili is out of power.

Georgian officials have said the United States will help rebuild the country’s crushed military. But that was not directly affirmed during Cheney’s visit, which came a day after President Bush said the U.S. would provide up to $1 billion in nonmilitary assistance.

The whole Georgia/Russia war in, and over, the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions in the Caucasus seems somewhat surreal. In spite of the critical nature of what happened, and continues to happen there, there has been a paucity of credible reporting in the United States. What are still the two nuclear superpowers in the world, and a clear step toward cold war renewal, were all involved as were, of course, the people who actually live in those areas. Some of them are no longer living; and, yet, we still don’t know who the true aggressor was. And, strangely, the American educated, Cheney confidante, Georgian President Saakashvili was literally plastered on American television during the entire conflict in an unprecedented manner for a foreign leader. While there may be slight confusion over who started the Georgia-Russian war; we do know who ended it, the Russians handed the Georgians their own rear ends.

Juan Cole relates:

All sides have committed massacres and behaved abominably. There are no clean hands involved, notwithstanding the strong support for Georgia visible in the press of most NATO member countries. (Georgia has been jockeying to join NATO, something Moscow stridently opposes.) Still, not everyone in NATO agrees that Saakashvili is a hero. While traveling with the negotiating team of President Nicolas Sarkozy, one French official observed that "Saakashvili was crazy enough to go in the middle of the night and bomb a city" in South Ossetia. The consequence of Russia’s riposte, he said, is "a Georgia attacked, pulverized, through its own fault."

Far as I can determine, that is about right. Tiny Georgia made a gutsy, and monumentally ill advised, move on South Ossetia, an area that wanted independence and that was under the protective eye of Russia. Despite initial heavy losses, Georgia did not back off, and Russia rolled over them until there was basically no way for Georgia to continue fighting.

Read more →

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Eliza Doolittle, Neocon

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The McCain campaign’s efforts to claim that Sarah Palin’s "trip" to Ireland and her osmosis with Siberia qualify her to handle the vice presidential foreign policy portfolio have utterly failed. Here’s Lindsey Graham trying to put the best face on her inexperience.

"She can do fine in foreign policy because of the infrastructure we have around us. She’s smart, and she will learn over time," he said, adding that when it comes to selecting a vice president, "there is no perfect person. If we could have found someone who’s an expert in everything, we would have picked ’em, right?" 

But they’re not giving up. Since the awkward revelation of Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy, Palin has been holed up in a hotel, cramming on foreign policy.

Which is why it will be so interesting to see what the McCain campaign does with the blank slate that is Sarah Palin, foreign policy expert. First out of the blocks, in fact, were Joe Lieberman and his AIPAC buddies, eliciting promises that Palin would expand the US relationship with Israel.

She spent Tuesday in her hotel suite meeting with campaign aides and working on her speech. She had private sessions with Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and members of the pro-Israel group AIPAC, said people familiar with her schedule. An AIPAC spokesman said Gov. Palin told its members she would "work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Israel."

That’s a pretty radical departure from the antisemitic rant she heard the other day in church:

An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.

“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.

[snip]

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

Moreover, Lieberman’s (and AIPAC’s) views are also a departure from Palin’s earlier hopes that McCain had a plan to end the war.  Read more →

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Those Who Forget Never Knew the Past…

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I wonder how Dana "Pig Missile" Perino is going to keep this story…

A top U.S. Air Force officer warned on Tuesday that Russia would be crossing "a red line" if it were to use Cuba as a refueling base for nuclear-capable bombers.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, whose nomination to become the Air Force’s top military officer is being considered by the Senate, was asked at his confirmation hearing how he would advise U.S. policymakers if Russia were to proceed with such a plan.

Russia’s Izvestia newspaper this week quoted a "highly placed source" as saying Russia could land Tu-160 supersonic bombers nicknamed "White Swans" in Cuba as a response to a planned U.S. missile defense shield in Europe, which Moscow opposes. [my emphasis]

…straight from this story tomorrow?

In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID’s deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba.

The executive director of Grupo de Apoyo admitted that an employee used the organization’s credit card for thousands of dollars in personal items and then billed them to the grant aimed at bringing democracy to Cuba, Driesler’s memo said.

[snip]

A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ”direct, on-island assistance.” The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.

The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba. [my emphasis]

But I can assure you it’s one of those days when I wish I had a White House Press Pass and a cheap plane ticket to DC.

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