Chris and I pick up where Freddie and James left off, yakking about American foreign policy; Obama and his magic mirror trick; Bush; the future of interventionism (or lack thereof as the case may be); articulating a forward looking, non-reactive, positively defined foreign policy in a post-cold war world; our favourite foreign policy guru Thomas Barnett, why we love him and why when you love someone you have to set them free; the limits of superpowerdome; the relationship between economics and foreign policy; cultivating a greater American modesty; and working towards a mutually invested and appreciative, multipolar, dynamic geo-political stability.
Links to pieces we mentioned:
Our series on Barnett’s Great Powers
Andrew Sullivan’s Cato lecture
Patrick Cahalan 
Cornelius 
wardsmith 
Tod Kelly 
Tom Van Dyke 
Murali 
James Hanley 
Jaybird 
Borat: “I do a picture, only small, of the Tishnik Masacre. Where many Uzbeks…crushed!”
Kindly Gray Hippie: “How did you feel when you drew this?”
Borat: “Very proud!”.
KGH: “I’m just listening with sadness…a little sadness for your people…?”
Borat: “Yes…no, it is not sad. It is us who do the kill!”
When in doubt,
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“Bush; the future of interventionism (or lack thereof as the case may be);”
I think it would be fair to say that American interventionism is, for a generation at least, a dead concept. Not even Iran going nuclear or NoKo aquiring ever more sophisticated delivery systems is going to work up the publics appetite for another war. Maybe heavy airstrikes or proxy wars, but not direct intervention. I think we’ve learned.
I’m not sure we’ve “learned” so much as we’d like to think. We’ve just burnt out – for now. I don’t think it takes much to spin the masses back up into a pulpy fury of “patriotism.” I remember the days and weeks leading up to the Iraq invasion and it still startles me to think how quickly and ferociously Americans can be stirred to war. But yes, for the next eight, twelve, maybe twenty years we probably won’t see much beyond airstrikes, proxy wars, and smaller operations.
I think the concept of “nation building” is dead. Half argue that we ought not impose our culture on others, the other half argue that we ought not treat our soldiers like kindergarden teachers (look at the last time we tried that sort of thing!).
The idea that a well-placed bomb could kill the worst of the bad apples will always have a group of supporters.
Certainly for right now with Iraq on-going and Af-Pak and a worldwide financial emergency (with mass domestic repercussions) the attention, forces, etc. are all used up.
Down the road who knows. In an era when there is no real threat of great power to great power war, then wars continue to be proxy fights, ethnic cleansing, civil wars, etc. And the question will always arise: are we just going to sit around do nothing and let another Rwanda happen? I appreciated Freddie’s honesty in his talk with James. But I think that is a tough sell politically. We’ll see. It’s tough to predict where things go 6 to 10 years out.
Hey guys, that was a very long and thought provoking conversation. Thanks for giving my eyes a break with the pod/skype/Scott cast.
You two spent some time lamenting the lack of non-reactive, long term goals for contemporary American Foreign Policy. I wonder if it is even possible for American foreign policy to be anything but reactive. Foreign policy in America is as much defined by domestic politics, the relatively short tenure of policy makers, and America’s fairly short attention span as anything else. So, really, can a democracy engage in the type of long term strategic thinking that you (and I) find noticeably missing?
The other thought I had – and tell me if it’s crazy – that there are two critical aspects to understanding the effectiveness of the non-defensive military power of a state. The first is a state’s ability to fight a shooting war. The second is the state’s ability to achieve its war aims/post-war goals.
For centuries, hegemonies, strong powers, empires, and the like have successfully prosecuted the first part of the equation and then risen or fallen on the second.
Today, however, the post-WWII world order has significantly limited what war aims/post-war goals hold validity. Territorial conquest, genocide or de-population, resource extraction, and revanchism, are – with a few notable exceptions – mostly dead concepts.
So if warfare as a foreign policy tool is so heavily encumbered in the contemporary age, doesn’t that necessarily blunt the importance and effectiveness of military superpowers?
If that’s the case, then despite our military strength, limitations on our postwar actions have called into question not our status as a superpower but the usefulness of the distinction itself.
Huzzah! We have confirmation that at least one person actually listened to that whole conversation all the way through. You may well be the only person who has checked out this post and actually listened to the whole thing, Kyle. In fact, I think it likely the case, even amongst our fellow contributors.
Congratulations, you are truly a blogospheric warrior. If you send me your address, Chris and I will mail you off some kind of prize. Perhaps a picture of he and I at my wedding, where next we’ll be face-to-face, in which we will give you the “Extraordinary Thumbs Up From A Couple of Ordinary Gentlemen”, a much sought after possession to be sure.
In all seriousness, good questions. I’ll try to fire some answers tonight. Look for Dierkes’ response, it’s sure to be better than mine.
Kyle, to your first point, I would suggest that the swing of the democratic pendulum is, while not insignificant, perhaps not as extreme as your comment suggests. It is true that different administrations will have different goals and different conceptions, but there is a whole bureaucratic super structure that maintains a certain institutional memory and momentum. Our discussion about Obama not being structurally different from a George W. Bush circa 20o7-2008 highlights this point nicely, I think. If a reactive institutional culture can be enacted, there is nothing necessarily saying that a more proactive, forward looking, and comprehensive approach couldn’t also be cultivated — however hard that task might seem/be.
To your second point, I think that was essentially what I was trying to get across in mentioning James Poulos’ article for Culture 11 to which I remain disappointed I can’t link. Poulos essentially argued, if I read and remember him correctly (hint: James jump in here any time) that our notions about what the distinction “superpower” conferred upon a nation-state’s ability to actually affect significant outcomes on a deeper, again, structural level were based more on a myth of “superpowerism” than the reality with which we had been forced to come face-to-face.
As the world goes increasingly multi-polar, a la Zakaria, I think nation-states like the US are going to have to shift their approach to geo-political situations, both military and economic. Hence my focus lately on envisioning and attempting to articulate an explicitly decentralized and, for lack of a better word, organically generated sort of global meta-order in which each player is recognized and appreciated for both what they bring to the table and that they bring themselves to the table in the first place.
In this regard, the importance and influence of foreign policy don’t disappear altogether and so our discussion isn’t rendered moot, but it is placed in a more appropriate and realistic context.
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