Jul
23
Realism and idealism
July 23, 2008 |
Excellent and thought-provoking piece today on On the Square today from Joseph Loconte on the ideological pulls of realism and idealism. First he notes the change in the Bush administration’s approach as regards nation building.
The Bush doctrine has been pilloried either for its Wilsonian idealism or its Machiavellian realism. A restatement of the doctrine, authored by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. Called “American Realism for the New World,” it admits the seismic shift in U.S. priorities during the Bush administration. “We recognize that democratic state building is now an urgent component of our national interest,” writes Rice. “And in the broader Middle East, we recognize that freedom and democracy are the only ideas that can, over time, lead to just and lasting stability, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
As is well known, the Bush doctrine represents a remarkable about-face for an administration that initially swore off “nation-building.” Its repudiation of decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East—stability at the cost of freedom—has been no less astonishing. Nevertheless, despite its candor, the document leaves probing questions about America’s democracy agenda unanswered. Can a self-declared Islamic state, for example, support the political doctrines of equality, pluralism, and individual freedom? How can the United States promote democratic reform in societies that have little or no experience with these ideals?
He goes on to discuss on the connection between virtue and republican self-government, and the Framers’ views on the the matter. From the start, America has had to deal with the question of how to deal with the reality of human nature in a polity where the citizenry largely controls the form of government. And now we are confronting this issue in the Middle East.
What she doesn’t say, what the Bush administration has mostly failed to explain to the American people, is the fearsome difficulty—and the terrible frailty—of this task in states ravaged by despotic governments and religious extremism. How many Americans believed in late 2001, after the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, that the nation today would remain threatened by the forces of tyranny and nihilism? Even now in Iraq, with the latest successes against the cohorts of radicalism, America’s military commanders openly admit that all of their progress is “reversible.” There is nothing—nothing whatsoever—inevitable about democratic development. Neither human nature nor an honest reading of human history allow us the illusion of believing otherwise.
This, in part, is why Machiavelli’s Prince introduced such a shock to the system. He did not describe political leaders as many hoped they might behave under the right circumstances; he described them as they actually do behave much of the time. Machiavelli changed the discussion from whether the prince should obey the moral law to when he should obey it. His answer to the question, “Is it better to be loved or feared?” was always the same. The essence of Machiavellian virtue “is to know which of these paired courses is appropriate to the moment,” Pocock writes. “But other things being equal, the better course is always the more aggressive and dramatic—to be audacious, to act so as to be feared. To be loved takes time.”
In the face of Islamic radicalism, a democracy that seeks to be loved by extremists is a democracy headed for extinction. In this sense, a measure of Machiavellian aggression—or something like it—seems prudent.
Loconte proceeds to caution against overuse of hard tactics. Since not all (or perhaps most) Muslims are not extremists, some degree of soft power and diplomacy is necessary. And sometimes we will have to assist non-democratic states such as Saudi Arabia who are otherwise our allies in fighting terrorism.
Loconte concludes:
Are we faced, then, with a choice between Machiavellian cynicism and democratic idealism? Perhaps what’s needed is a revival of “Christian realism”—a hopefulness about the influence of American democratic values on the world stage, tempered by a severe realism about the moral ambiguity of human nature and human societies. Christian realism came of age in the 1930s, as American theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr rejected liberal schemes of appeasement in the face of fascist aggression. “Some of the greatest perils to democracy arise from the fanaticism of moral idealists who are not conscious of the corruption of self-interest in their professed ideals,” warned Niebuhr in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. “Democracy therefore requires something more than a religious devotion to moral ideals. It requires religious humility.”
It requires, in other words, that democratic leaders maintain a stark view not only about themselves, but also about the limits of their democratic influence. As the Christian realists of an earlier generation understood, barbarism is the easy way. Civil society, human rights, democracy—this is the road less travelled.
It’s a terrible balancing act that requires us, in some ways, to be both Wilsonian and Machiavellian. (Would that certain commentators and critics of so-called neocons realize that it’s a bit foolish to bemoan the idealism AND Machiavellianism of the neoconservatives, seeing as how the concepts are at odds.)
It seems to me that Loconte’s approach is the most sensible, and not just as it relates to foreign affairs. We will never cease to be disappointed if we cling to a utopian world view that sees the possibility of near-perfect world. Yet we can’t let our heard-headedness stand in the way of at least trying to make some progress in the here and now. Our choices should not be confined to either doing nothing or re-inventing the world. In general, of course, it is best to remain leery of trying to do too much - it is after the correct, Burkean approach to political affairs.
As regards to the specific concept of democratic nation-building, the Bush administration’s ideas are acceptable only insofar as they understand the limitations of this approach and are able to communicate to the public that they do not anticipate democracy as being able to cure all for what ails the Middle East. Even if the administration is fully capable of understanding the limits of democratic nation-building, I wonder if it has been able to demonstrate to the public that it appreciates said limits. Perhaps what has gotten the Bush administration into trouble is that it built up public anticipation of what a post-Saddam Iraq would look like and did not adequately explain that it would not necessarily look all peachy-keen right from the moment that Hussein was removed from power. The failure for utopia to break out in Iraq immediately after the invasion has disappointed many who perhaps had unrealistic expectations to begin with. Even with Iraq now relatively stabalized, the slightest incident will spark renewed doubts about the long-term prospects for Iraq, as though the only proof of success is complete peace and harmony.
Unfortunately, unrealistic idealism is more a part of our national character than we might have ever realized.
Comments
2 Comments so far
That is a fascinating essay, indeed.
It does raise (and never answer) the question of ‘limits,’ and there are some of those. Obviously, Ms. Rice didn’t answer that question, either.
Next stop: Rhodesia??
It does raise (and never answer) the question of ‘limits,’ and there are some of those.
I suppose its implicit in the concept of realism itself. The essay discusses specifically Saudi Arabia and Egypt and why we have not and would not invade these countries despite their undemocratic and despotic regimes. If one holds to a realist concept of foreign policy, that in and of itself would provide the limitations on the desire to use force or engage in nation building. So even an “idealistic” realism should be marked with an appreciation for the limits of nation building.