First, you have no recognition of the meaning of the ascendency of the neoconservatives in establishment circles.
Dumb me. How could I have forgotten that?
Your current nemeses are exactly the one's most prone to pursuing an activist pro- democracy agenda.
I am quite well aware of that but read it as cover for empire building not human rights concerns. I don't doubt that some neocons may in fact believe the democracy talk. But I don't think the Bush foreign policy is based on it. Witness the failure of Afghanistan for one. And, unfortunately, there are likely to be future failures. In which the point is to create client states which don't harbor terrorists, to use their language, rather than to create genuine democracies with growing economies.
As for the debates you invoke, one can argue that much of that was about broad or narrow definitions of national self interest. Kissinger, as the most articulate spokesperson, had fairly narrow. I tried to use the adjective "narrow" in describing those aims. The striking thing about Carter is that the justifications went beyond either narrow or broad definitions of self interest and into claiming moral grounds. Again, that was central to Carter's efforts. And it's implementation was consonant wiht those justifications. As for Clinton, which is the point I thought you would address, the Bosnia-Kosovo and even Haiti bit I invoked was justified on the basis of broad definitions of self interest and, sometimes, on moral grounds which transcend it. That argument is less clear.
So, the short of it is, I recognize that some neocons argue for a foreign policy which puts encouraging democracy and economic development above narrow definitions of self interest (realism). But the Bush administration has adopted that rhetoric only as a way to move populations, not as a serious self-justification.
And then there is the militarization of foreign policy under the Bushies. Which will have the unfortunate effect of creating more terrorists. No serious attention to building better societies.
And the failure to seriously, as I said above, build democracy and economic growth in Afghanistan. |
