The Nationalist Problem
Posted on July 20th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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This does not mean they [Republican voters] cannot be persuaded by non-interventionist arguments, but doing so will require a message stripped of all traces of humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook. ~George Hawley
While I was away, there was a debate over non-interventionist rhetoric that is worth discussing. The above quote from Hawley sums up the argument he has been making, which elicited responses from Jack Hunter and Matt Barganier. As someone who does sometimes employ moral arguments against aggressive war and empire, I don’t accept that repudiating aggression and empire as both unjust and imprudent necessarily makes non-interventionists “sound like Code Pink.” It is a strange sort of outreach that takes for granted that one’s target audience is morally bankrupt. It is also an odd way to try to appeal to core Republican voters by starting with the assumption that the far left has some kind of monopoly on the language of justice, which is therefore unavailable to war opponents on the right. More to the point, non-interventionists almost never use rhetoric that could be confused for “humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook.” Indeed, what distinguishes non-interventionists from most realists, antiwar leftists and liberal internationalists is our belief that global interdependence is vastly exaggerated and global governance is impossible.
What Hawley is proposing is to have the non-interventionist right adopt a defensive crouch in foreign policy debates (because such me-tooism has worked so well for post-’72 Democrats over the years) and to try to change the rhetorical presentation and image of non-interventionists so that hawkish nationalists will not immediately dismiss our arguments. Having conceded that exuding “toughness” is what really matters in these debates, Hawley would put non-interventionists in a contest with actual hawks that we can never win. The only way to compensate for a so-called “tough guy problem” is to play part of the “tough guy,” which would inevitably mean endorsing policies that non-interventionists currently find unacceptable in order to show their “toughness.” You cannot use the language of power projection and global “leadership” and simultaneously oppose the policies that these things require for their maintenance. Even if it is merely implicit, you cannot accept the view that rejecting U.S. power projection has something to do with “anti-Americanism,” which is what all of these rhetorical contortions suggest. Once you grant this, you have endorsed the view that opposing aggressive war and empire is a kind of disloyalty. In the end, framing antiwar and anti-imperialist arguments by saying, “Well, at least we’re not like those lousy hippies” doesn’t get you any credit with the hawkish audience, but it simply confirms in their minds how idiosyncratic your arguments are.
As Barganier correctly noted in his response:
The funny thing is, the warbots are not allergic to “humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook” – in fact, they devour it when it’s in the service of American imperialism. Anyone who watches Fox News knows how quickly right-wingers can pivot from “kill ‘em all” to “aww, purple fingers!” The problem is not that peaceniks have tried the wrong arguments on them; they will accept any argument, no matter how heterodox it appears on its face, so long as it reaches the correct conclusion…
Barganier is right about this, but even more troubling is the ease with which war supporters can switch from from the most severe moral indifference to the most extreme universalism and back again: the rights of other nations are irrelevant when our security is at stake, but everyone ought to be free and must be made free by force of arms (and you hate other kinds of people if you disagree), but if a few hundred thousand are killed and millions displaced in the process these are acceptable costs in the pursuit of a vastly exaggerated definition of national interest. The nationalist oscillation between the will to dominate and the benevolent quest for liberation is an old one.
Non-interventionism doesn’t have a “tough guy problem,” but instead very simply has a nationalist problem. Most nationalists do not and cannot accept non-interventionism because of the fundamentally aggressive nature of most forms of nationalism. Non-interventionists cannot credibly appeal to such people without ceasing to be non-interventionists. For the latter, the national interest is quite limited, definite and obtainable, while for nationalists it is expansive and virtually unlimited, because this is the only kind of national interest commensurate with their idolatry of the nation. To say that some foreign quarrel is none of our business is to impose a limit, which in the eyes of nationalists is to diminish the nation, and this they will never tolerate. How do you persuade such people that we should forego empire and aggressive war? For one thing, you have to challenge rather than pander to their nationalist assumptions.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
” It is a strange sort of outreach that takes for granted that one’s target audience is morally bankrupt.”
Any successful outreach has to start with where your target audience actually is: In this case, people who beleive deeply and sincerely that their liberty and well being of their nation is intimately tied to the well being of the poor huddled masses in Wherever-stan. The GOP base does have an enormously large Jacksonian contingent that I think could conceivably be persuaded by “not our damn business” type of arguements. Right leaning non-interventionists are not going to “solve” the nationalist problem, but we can approach the issue in a way that does challenge those “imposing a limit assumptions”.
This little dust-up reminds me of a comment you made awhile back about your disagreements with Reihan Salam over the war, where you reflected on the difficulty, not to say outright futility, of conversations where starting principles are not shared, regardless of how amicable the participants may be. Here you seem most concerned with the philosophical integrity and coherence of the non-interventionist position, while Hawley is interested in making non-interventionism more competitive among the GOP faithful. Each of you may, in your own respective domains, be right.
But even from the standpoint of political tactics, Hawley is overlooking some facts. If he is correct – as I think he is – that some of the GOP base may be inclined to support a “screw foreigners” non-interventionist platform, then precisely such a ”tough-guy”, nationalist vision of this politics is going to germinate anyway, independent of any pandering from the Larisons and Raimondos and other putative sissies. Wait a second now- one already has! Indeed, its almost as if Hawley has never heard of John Derbyshire, or the small one-man revolt he conducted in the pages of the National Review. Principled non-interventionists should be ecumenical enough to welcome and support such developments, as we do not have many other options. But let be wary of the limitations, too. The “To Hell with ‘em Hawks” position is to allow acts of militarism and then righteously complain when they are not terminated swiftly enough. I love the Derb as much as anyone, but his main achievement has been to retain employment at the National Review, rather then to advance non-interventionist politics.
Another problem presents itself. Hawley is right that right-wing interventionists will often sound as sentimental and rootless as any left-wing globalist, which should not suprise us, since they share the same foundational assumptions, however much they differ on praxis. But the parties of intervention, especially in the GOP, are usually shrewd enough to sound hard-headed and self-interested at the start. At the beginning, most wars are justified by exaggerating some foreign threat or nemesis. Only after the threat has been conclusively eliminated – and the propaganda value of scare-mongering therefore exhausted – are we paraded with all the Purple fingers piety. The effect of the Hawley style is to make us more competitive after the intervention has begun, while neutering us during the critical opening stage of the debate. The maximalist goal of non-interventionism, obviously, is to prevent interventions, not to simply end them or win the argument about them after the fact. I have noticed that many champions of American hegemony are willing to make retrospective concessions. Almost all these people will admit to mistakes in the past; some of them will even admit the whole affair was a mistake, while loftily reminding us of the need to “get over the past” and “salvage some good” from the whole episode. A nationalism built on contempt for foreigners will almost always, in the clutch, err on the side of the war. They may grow disgruntled with the enterprise more quickly, but that will occur only after most of the damage has been done. Its like punching a cloud: the possibility of invading some foreign country is raised, we follow Hawley and say dont invade, “screw foreigners!”, and the right-wing interventionist nods along saying “yes, screw foreigners”, which is precisely why we should no qualms about slaughtering them.
Very seldom do political tacticians appreciate the fact that almost half the country doesnt even vote. Some of these people, being apathetic or illiterate about politics, can never be expected to vote. But it is plausible that some of them have reached the accurate conclusion that there is little difference between the major parties, as these are both sibling wings of the same establishment. It is in this pond, not the dried up well of the GOP, where the fishing is most profitable. Any bridge built to the GOP base may come at the expense of energizing an altogether more interesting and reliable constituency.