The Consensus
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But it’s worth remembering what helped to get us into Iraq: a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that favors U.S. military intervention abroad whenever we may be able to accomplish something that looks appealing. That was our national approach under the past three presidents, and it’s a safe bet it will be our approach under the next one. ~Steve Chapman
Mr. Chapman’s argument that all three candidates endorse the interventionist consensus certainly makes sense to me, since I have been making the same one for months. After eight years of nation-building, cruise missile strikes and air wars, a candidate promising to stop doing all or at least most of those things was very appealing. I didn’t vote for that one, either. Now we are faced with the end of another two-term presidency marred by foreign policy excesses and failures, and we have a candidate who proposes not only to end one of the most egregious examples of the administration’s failure but also to change the “mindset” that led to it. That sounds fine, except that, as Chapman argues, he isn’t going to change the mindset or the assumptions about American “leadership.” Someone appalled by Kosovo might have been moved to vote for Gov. Bush and his “humble” foreign policy, only to find the new administration invading Iraq a few years later. Now many are tempted because of the disaster of Iraq to back someone else who accepts the same interventionist consensus. Eight years ago few would have guessed that Bush would plunge headlong into an invasion of Iraq, but the acceptance of the consensus view all but guaranteed some terrible foreign policy decisions. There is a level of confidence in Obama’s restraint among his supporters that never ceases to amaze me, but his acceptance of the consensus view all but ensures that he will use force counterproductively and in ways harmful to the national interest, because that it how interventionism works. I take Dr. Hadar’s point that Obama is more likely to withdraw from Iraq, but part of the “incomplete information” problem is that we cannot be sure whether he will inaugurate some brand new folly. I remain unconvinced that the best decision is to endorse one side of the interventionist consensus in an attempt to undermine another part of it.
Update: Brendan O’Neill’s cover piece from the 2/25 issue restates the case against Obama’s interventionism.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
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I think this is entirely right, Daniel, and it’s a key reason why I can’t bring myself to buy into the Obamacon arguments. Bacevich’s particular case – that electing Obama will solidify a national consensus that the Iraq war was a mistake, which constitutes a very small first step toward retrieving our sanity – is a strong one, but I fear that it will end up simply placating the anti-war movement in the same sorts of ways that the Republicans have paid lip service to social and small-government conservatives while doing very little actually to advance their agendas.
By the way, I’m not sure if you’ve read Bacevich’s piece on military policy in the March 28 Commonweal, but I think it deserves more attention than I’ve seen it get so far. It’s at the end, when he lays out a trio of specific objectives for a post-Bush Doctrine foreign policy (reclaim the just-war tradition and commit ourselves to the wrongness of preemptive war, adopt a policy of containment rather than working to rid the world of evil, and acknowledge that all of us, and not just our President, are accountable for the actions of our military), that he seems to me to expose the chief weakness in his case for Obama: namely, that it’s highly unlikely that he, and the Congressional majority that will support him, will be committed to anything like these goals.
Indeed.
This is why it continues to shock me that informed liberal partisans who strenuously oppose this imperilalist mind set, support Obama without any caveats.
The only hope I have in an Obama presidency is that he may be restrained by a Democratic congress and the liberal base that elected him. While he still hews to the imperialist mindset the progressive movement does not (or I believe). Now, of course, I may discover that progressives in particular and liberals in general are just fine with imperialism when its done to achieve their objectives.
In any case, I have found it extremely ironic that Obama’s candidacy is the one that inspires in me the most pessimism and fully converted me to misanthropy.
But this is exactly what will not happen. Those same people didn’t even manage consistently to oppose Bush; why should we think they will work to restrain someone whom they regard as one of their own, and who is widely viewed as the savior of their party and their movement? I suspect that you will discover exactly what you fear …
I find Obama rather engaging, and also interesting as a character. Both are insufficient reasons for electing a President.
Obama’s interventionism is more likely to be
>It is hard to imagine that in eight years, or even four, Obama would avoid sending troops to Zimbabwe, the Congo, Liberia or some such God-forsaken place.
Moreover, the suspicions of Israel’s supporters may well push him to be more aggressive in the Middle East than he would otherwise care to be:
I could be wrong, and I hope I am. The guy seems to be something new. The conservative in me, though, suggests that novelty is often to be feared.
You scoff at those who take Obama seriously (such as Bacevich) but offer no evidence to back up your cynicism. You claim that he has accepted the interventionist consensus, even though you admit his endlessly-repeated promise to “change the mindset that led to the war in Iraq” is in fact a direct challenge to that consensus.
It’s an unconvincing argument (except in the general sense that presdients almost always end up contradicting their promises in office). More specifics, please.
It’s disingenuous to blame a bipartisan consensus. From Wikipedia on the Iraq War Resolution:
- 126 (61%) of 208 Democratic Representatives voted against the resolution.
- 6 of 223 Republican Representatives voted against the resolution.
- 21 (42%) of 50 Democratic Senators voted against the resolution.
- 1 of 49 Republican Senators voted against the resolution.
There was essentially no Republican opposition. We can perhaps point the finger at the Dems for having an interventionist foreign policy, but in the instance of the Iraq War the Republicans own this particular interventionist debacle. And the Republican Party and Conservative movement have fought any and all opposition to the war tooth and nail every day of these past 5 years. It’s a no brainer why an anti-war con would want a Democrat in office at this point, because the Republicans simply are not a valid option.
It would only be a “direct challenge” to interventionism if it actually meant anything other than “get us out of Iraq so that we can go meddle elsewhere”.
John, the direct challenge to liberal interventionism is US casualties. Bill Clinton was derided for his approach of not putting boots on the ground and of lobbing cruise missles from a million miles away. The modern democrat has no stomach for dead American soldiers. McCain and Republicans do. We heard the sentiment from Huckabee in a debate that we can’t end the Iraq War because it diminishes the honor of the fallen. So more must fall indefinitely. This is something McCain undoubtedly agrees with. Obama may very well get us into some humanitarian mess, but when we start taking casualties that is when the plan to withdraw begins. For McCain there isn’t any plan for withdrawal. It’s not a part of the way he thinks.
This is what some people don’t understand about Romney and why Kmiec probably supported him but now supports Obama. Romney had an analytical mind, Much of what he said was said to get elected. That’s how he operated in Massachusetts (called “His Expediency” by the opposition here). Even though Romney said certain things about Iraq, there existed in his mind some equation where X cost exceeded Y benefit, and we would leave.
In McCain’s mind success and continued occupation is the only thing there. And success is unfalsifiable. There does not exist a situation that is not evidence of success. He did this on Fox News just today. What happened in Basra is evidence that the surge worked. This unfalsifiability of success is the continued position of the Bush administration. When violence was high that was good sign. When violence was low that’s a good sign. Everything is a good sign!
As someone who doesn’t think that “lobbing cruise missiles from a million miles away” is any more just, or any less damaging to American credibility, than an approach that ends us up with “dead American soldiers”, I don’t see why the approach you describe here should be regarded as a good thing. There’s a lot more that’s wrong with the Iraq war than the number of Americans who have died in it, and if those death the only thing that’s been driving the “modern democrat” to push for withdrawal, then theirs is a shallow anti-interventionism indeed. I’m not saying that McCain anything but much, much worse in this respect – he is, but in my eyes this is a reason to vote third party (or not vote at all), not to support a candidate whose rhetoric is very much in the same interventionist tradition as our current President, and whose sole anti-war bona fide is his inconsistent and opportunistic opposition to the war in Iraq.
There is only one way to determine if Obama is what he claims to be. Since Ron Paul will not be on the ballot in November, I am inclined to give Obama his chance to prove himself. The foreign policy and economic disasters the next President will inherit may prove too much for any individual to resolve, but at least an Obama presidency will have the benefit of the doubt… something that neither Clinton nor McCain would be able to claim.
Anyway, I think the best weapons for advancing US values abroad are economic, not military. How about a 10% tariff on imported goods from nations who fail a human rights test? Plus a separate tariff on goods from nations whose environmental laws are too lax, or not enforced? Such a neo-Hamiltonian approach would fill the Federal coffers, while stimulating domestic manufacturing. The “free” traders wouldn’t like those ideas, but calling what the WTO promotes “free trade” is an abuse of the English language.
It amazes me that anti-war cons concede that everybody but them, including Obama and other left-wing Democrats, have the “interventionist” pathosis, yet somehow they never question whether that might indicate they themselves are the ones with the mental abnormality. That would be the simplest diagnosis. Where were y’all during the Clinton years? Here’s a prediction: You’ll do another disappearing act (along with your conservatism) if Obama is elected. Then it won’t be interventionism; it’ll be humanitarianism.
“The modern democrat has no stomach for dead American soldiers. ”
But the modern democrat hasnt in the past shed a tear for all the Serbs who were bombed in a ‘humanitarian’ fashion.
Barack Obama 2008 might be like George W. Bush 2000? There are plenty of arguments against Obama, but this is truly a reach.
Bush was and is a duplicitous neophyte, and in 2000 he could not tell an interviewer one world leader’s name. He is a moron. Obama, for all his faults, is not.
In your zeal to laundry list all the potential problems with a President Obama, you’ve have finally jumped the shark.
It’s true, he’s not like Bush in all respects. Obama believes in U.S. hegemony and he is a lot sharper than Bush. That’s a worrisome combination. Actually, in some ways Obama in 2008 already talks like Bush c. 2005 when he has said that our security is connected to the security of every other country. Replace security with liberty, and you have Bush’s crazy Second Inaugural.
I have provided the “specifics” of this charge time and time again. Read his speech to the Global Affairs Council from last year, or his AIPAC speech, or listen to any of his remarks from the debates on Iran or Kosovo. Look at how he brags about his support for the bombing of Lebanon.
Also, we on the antiwar right were critiquing “humanitarian” interventions back in the ’90s as well. We called it interventionism then, and we’ll keep calling it that.