"Liberal interventionists are just 'kinder, gentler' neocons, and neocons are just liberal interventionists on steroids," political scientist and blogger Stephen M. Walt, commenting on calls for U.S. involvement in Libya, asserted recently on this website, echoing a false equivalence that has sadly become a common conceit among foreign-policy thinkers. It was inevitable that pundits would compare the invasion of Iraq (an idea promoted by neoconservatives) to the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya (an idea promoted by liberal interventionists). Yet obscuring the difference between these two schools of thought threatens more than the vanity of a group of academics: It places the coherence and stability of the United States' long-term grand strategy in jeopardy.
While Walt, a self-identified "realist," develops a more sophisticated version of this false equivalence, there are, of course, obvious fundamental differences between neocons' triumphal nationalism and liberals' conviction that America can best advance its interests and values in cooperation with other democracies. Walt concedes the distinction, only to accuse liberals of being more cunning than neocons about concealing their will to power: "[T]he former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance."
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In Walt's estimation, intervention is intervention, no matter the avowed
motives behind a given mission, or the various circumstances that can justify
the use of force. Because George W. Bush and Barack Obama have each initiated a
military action, it follows for Walt that neocons and "liberal
interventionists" see the world much the same way.
This is bunk. Traumatized by U.S.
blunders in Iraq,
realists now misapply that war's lessons to Obama's decision to join
international efforts to protect Libyans from the wrath of a mad dictator.
While the president is being attacked by everyone from John Boehner to Dennis
Kucinich, it is critical to set the record straight.
Because Walt uses the terms "liberal interventionist" or "liberal hawk"
pejoratively, I'll refer to "progressive internationalism" instead. Progressive
internationalists aren't hard-core lefties, but rather progressives in the
original sense of the word: pragmatic liberals. We are ideological moderates
rooted in classically liberal understandings of individual liberty and equality
of opportunity -- at home and abroad -- who believe the world's problems should
be solved through tough-minded diplomacy and negotiation, whenever possible.
Further, the terms "hawk" or "interventionist" imply an overreliance on the
military. Walt accuses both neocons and progressive internationalists of
looking at every problem as a nail to be pounded by the hammer of U.S. military
might. While progressive internationalists certainly support a strong military
as the bedrock of America's
foreign policy, they also know that international affairs in the 21st century
seldom present black-and-white binary decisions of the sort that Bush
mistakenly sought to resolve with a good whack.
This no doubt brings to mind Iraq,
and I cannot go further without acknowledging the elephant in the room: Yes,
many progressive internationalists did support the decision to invade Iraq. (In 2003,
I was a civilian counterterrorism analyst at the Department of Defense and did
not take a public position on that action.) In hindsight, I believe
constructive critique of my colleagues is warranted and they have learned much
in Iraq's
wake. The only point I offer in their defense is this: It's just hard to
imagine that an Al Gore administration -- which would have been stocked full of
progressive internationalists -- would have ginned up that ideological charge
to war.
Progressive internationalists recognize that U.S. foreign policy is now a
holistic enterprise that must first summon all sources of national power to
deal with what goes on within states as well as between them -- direct and
multilateral diplomacy, development aid to build infrastructure and civil
society, trade to promote growth, intelligence collection, and law enforcement,
to name a few -- and only then turn to force as the final guarantor of peace
and stability.
Neocons, however, disdain multilateral diplomacy and overestimate the
efficacy of military force. Their lopsided preoccupation with "hard power"
creates an imposing facade of strength, but in fact saps the economic,
political, and moral sources of American influence. By overspending on the
military and allowing the other levers of American power to atrophy, neocons
misallocate precious U.S.
national resources in two ways -- leaving the United
States with too little of the "smart power" capacities
desperately needed in war zones like Afghanistan and an overabundance
of "hard power" capacities it will never use. The trick is to carefully
cultivate both, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen have
championed since Obama took power.
Walt allows some daylight between neocons and progressive internationalists in their willingness to defer to international institutions, but he again misses the true difference. He rightly characterizes neocons' disdain for multilateral talking shops (see: John Bolton) but wrongly suggests progressives are insincere in embedding U.S. power in international institutions. The fact is that we do indeed believe that international institutions make the world a safer place for the United States and other democracies by entrenching liberal norms around the globe. Can it really be an accident that America is embroiled in conflicts across the Middle East, a region whose countries are least touched by liberal democracy and adherence to internationalism?
Progressive internationalists believe the United States should be the unquestioned vanguard of democratic values, and that American leadership is strengthened when granted a sense of legitimacy that attracts others to our cause. Without a doubt, unilateral application of force in self-defense is a legitimate exercise of power, but legitimacy can evaporate under two circumstances: when America's actions betray its core values or when America acts offensively without an international mandate and the backing of close allies. My organization, the Progressive Policy Institute, in a 2003 manifesto on progressive internationalism, argued that "the way to keep America safe and strong is not to impose our will on others or pursue a narrow, selfish nationalism that betrays our best values, but to lead the world toward political and economic freedom."
Neocons, by contrast, pursue security interests at the expense of American
values and damage U.S.
legitimacy while doing so. That was George W. Bush: He betrayed American values
and alienated core international partners by torturing prisoners, denying them
any sense of due process, and falsifying a threat to justify an effectively
unilateral invasion of a Muslim country. He strove for the mere appearance
of legitimacy, forging ham-fisted, bribed coalitions of the somewhat willing.
The Obama administration's actions in Libya are surely legitimate. The
president chose to intervene after securing active support from the Arab
League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Gulf Cooperation
Council, not to mention the U.N. Security Council. The international
community's near-unanimity is an acknowledgement of the "responsibility to
protect" (or R2P), a U.N. norm that obliges the international community to
defend innocents in the face of humanitarian atrocities.
Realists like Walt disdain R2P because shielding other human beings from mass
murder does not fit within the realists' narrow band of core American
interests. To them, America's blood, attention, and treasure are not worth
spending unless there is an immediate quid pro quo payoff in terms of national
security. Ironically for Walt, realists are closer to neoconservatives on this
score: Bush and Cheney meshed realism with neoconservatism when they sold the
Iraq invasion as a quick and painless exercise of overwhelming American power
that would render an immediate payoff in the form of a decapitated threat and
an instantaneous "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East.
Progressive internationalists, like neocons, would define R2P as a core
national interest, and we would both advocate strongly for the protection of
innocent civilians who yearn to express their individual freedoms. We believe
protecting civilians from murderous dictators creates a more stable
international community and a safer America while promoting universal human
rights and values. But though our ends are similar, our
thresholds for intervention, our military methodology, and our justifications
for action could not be more different. Neoconservatives' disdain for smart
power and realists' shortsighted interpretation of core U.S. interests are poor
uses of national resources. In contrast, progressive internationalists seek to
use all of America's might to shape an international environment more congenial
to the country's true interests and democratic values.
These differences are hardly trivial. Conflating them, as Walt does, is a
transparent attempt to reframe U.S. foreign-policy debates around a choice between
intervention and nonintervention. But time and again, the American people
stubbornly refuse to make those choices in a moral vacuum. This leaves the
United States with a messy, imprecise, unscientific approach to international
politics, just like its approach to domestic politics. Yes, this pragmatic
progressive tradition has sometimes proved chaotic in practice, but
Obama should be commended, not chastised, for aligning American interests and
values, seeking international legitimacy, and looking to shape the world as
both more democratic and ultimately safer.
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