In Progress magazine (‘Foreign Affairs,’ September 2008) Ken Gude,
the Associate Director of the George Soros-funded Center for American
Progress, trashed the idea of a league or ‘concert’ of democracies as nothing but ‘a
neoconservative dream,’ which would ‘undermine the UN’ and ‘re-ignite
great power conflict’. The idea, he wrote, was part of John McCain’s
‘dangerous quest’ for ‘new conflicts’ and ‘wars in the Middle East’.
Having made the case for the concert of democracies in this column, and because the idea was floated in the green paper of Progress’ Progressive Internationalism group, a reply is called for.
Gude’s argument is wrong for three reasons.
Neoconitis or Analysis?
First, Gude has a bad case of ‘neoconitis’.
The truth is, as McCain advisor Robert Kagan has admitted, ‘The idea of
a concert of democracies originated not with Republicans but with US
Democrats and liberal inter¬nationalists’.
To find out why progressives have backed the idea, Gude only needed to turn to the writings of Ivo H. Daalder, special adviser on national security at his own Center for American Progress.
According
to Daalder (who is also an advisor to Barack Obama) the problem with
the UN is that it routinely ignores its own democratic principles
because anti-democratic tyrannies have a veto over its actions.
‘The
council failed to authorize NATO’s intervention in Kosovo designed to
prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. It failed to act in
time to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, and is equally divided on how
to respond to the genocide in Darfur. It has done nothing in response
to North Korea’s violation of its obligations under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.’
Daalder knows this dilemma isn’t resolved by partisan sneering at John McCain.
‘What,
then, are states wishing to act on the principles of intervention … to
do if the UN Security Council refuses to authorize the use of force?
[U]nilateral action in such circumstances is a recipe for chaos and
anarchy. But so is doing nothing.’
Daalder thinks the answer is something like the concert of democracies.
‘The
NATO model in Kosovo suggests that in the real world, [writes Daalder]
states have an alternative to going it alone or doing nothing when the
UN Security Council cannot agree on action. And that is for like-minded states – especially the world’s great democracies – to band together and act when the UN will not.
Of course, every effort must be made to get Security Council
authorization for using force to uphold international order. But when
such authorization is blocked by a few states – especially by states
like Russia or China that do not share the values that unite
democracies – then the responsibility to act must devolve to the
democratic states that depend on maintaining a just and secure world
order.‘ (emphasis added)
Partisans of this approach
include Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the
liberal internationalists Anne-Marie Slaughter and G John Ikenberry,
Tony Blair, as well as Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime
minister, and Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister.
The
case for the concert of democracies – which can’t be imposed: if
countries don’t want it, it wont happen – is straightforward enough. It
could promote liberal ideals in international relations and give teeth
to the ‘responsibility to protect’. It could exercise the power of
attraction, a soft power that might act as a goad to democratic reform
in many countries seeking the benefits of membership. It could
re-anchor the US in an internationalist framework and enhance the
influence that America’s democratic allies wield in Washington. The
concert, perhaps 100 strong, would seek to protect interests, defend
principles, reconcile differences, reach consensus, gauge and grant
international legitimacy to actions, signal a commitment to the
democratic ideal and show solidarity with those movements ‘trying to
pry open a democratic space’ as McCain’s advisor, Robert Kagan puts it.
Partisan or Bipartisan?
The second problem with Gude’s argument is that it does not help us nurture the bipartisan consensus we need to defeat the multi-generational threats we face.
To
forge a broad consensus able to withstand the ups and downs of the
electoral cycle, conservatives must act differently, for sure. But
progressives also have work to do. We must cure ourselves of this kind
of neoconitis, and resist the temptation to exploit foreign policy as a
vote-grabber at home.
Gude fails on both counts. He paints a
caricature of GOP candidate John McCain as ‘eager for new conflicts,’
seeking to start a new cold war, and ‘amazingly …casual’ about
promoting further wars in the Middle East. McCain is on ‘a dangerous
quest for top-down democratic transformation achieved through
confrontation and force’.
Meanwhile, the actual John McCain is a hard-headed internationalist who sounds like Blair or Brown or Miliband. Here is his foreign policy manifesto in Foreign Affairs:
‘We
must also revitalize our public diplomacy. In 1998, the Clinton
administration and Congress mistakenly agreed to abolish the U.S.
Information Agency and move its public diplomacy functions to the State
Department. This amounted to unilateral disarmament in the war of
ideas.
Defeating the terrorists is vital, but just as important is preventing
a new generation of them from joining the fight. As president, I will
employ every economic, diplomatic, political, legal, and ideological
tool at our disposal to aid moderate Muslims — women’s rights
campaigners, labor leaders, lawyers, journalists, teachers, tolerant
imams, and many others — who are resisting the well-financed campaign
of extremism that is tearing Muslim societies apart. My administration,
with its partners, will help friendly Muslim states establish the
building blocks of open and tolerant societies. And we will nurture a
culture of hope and economic opportunity by establishing a free-trade
area from Morocco to Afghanistan, open to all who do not sponsor
terrorism.’
And it is not just a matter of articles. The 2007 surge in Iraq
wasn’t called ‘the McCain Surge’ for nothing. The new
counter-insurgency strategy – of which the surge was but one part –
turned Iraq around by employing something like the ‘different kind of
transformation’ that Gude says Obama wants.
However, while McCain was one of the architects of the surge, and stuck
with it when ‘Iraq’ seemed to have sunk his Presidential chances, Obama
opposed the surge, and – the primary season refusing to end – continued to oppose it long after it was clear it was succeeding.
The Democratic Party: some inconvenient truths
And there is the third problem. It would be crazy for us to think
our internationalist duty could be discharged by cheering on the US
Democratic Party. For when one looks at the Democrats record in recent
times there is little to cheer and much that is deeply worrying.
Within
months, many Democrats decided the war they had voted for was nothing
but ‘George Bush’s war.’ And four years on, 2007 saw the Democrats
launch a sustained surge-against-the-surge that gave every impression
that they were invested in defeat.
‘I’m confident it
will not work’ said John Kerry. ‘It will do nothing’ chimed Chris Dodd.
Howard Dean, Party Chairman, said the ‘idea that we’re going to win the
war in Iraq is just plain wrong’. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
said, to his shame, ‘This war is lost and the surge is not
accomplishing anything.’
In June 2007, Reid and Pelosi wrote
publicly to Bush declaring the surge a ‘failure’, and in July, James
Webb captured the mood among Democrats: ‘I don’t care what the
(Petreaus-Crocker) report says next week. I don’t care what it says in
September’.
Joe Biden sponsored a resolution opposing the
troop build-up, and informed the public that the upcoming report on the
progress of the surge by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker
was ‘dead-flat wrong’ – and this was before Petraeus gave it. When it
was presented to Congress Democrat leader Rahm Emanuel spoke of ‘the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction’. Hilary Clinton said to Petreaus’ face,
‘The reports you provide to us really require a willing suspension of
disbelief’. Carl Levin, Democrat Chair of the Armed Services Committee
attacked the report as ‘a litany of delusions’.
Worse,
Moveon.org ran a full-page advert in the New York Times calling
Petraeus a traitor. No Democratic presidential candidate dared condemn
Moveon.org out of hand. Harry Reid pushed more legislation to cut off
all funding for the war within one year.
In July 2007, as the
surged force was beginning to turn things around, Barack Obama said ‘My
assessment is that the surge has not worked’. As late as November 2007,
when every serious observer had registered its huge impact – the surge
had reduced civilian causalities by 80 per cent, routed AQ, and
established the security for the beginnings of political reconciliation
– Obama said ‘not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re
actually worsening, potentially, a situation there’.
The
inconvenient truth is this. The Iraq policy of the Democratic Party in
2007/8 was to oppose the surge, demonise the political and military
leadership in order to demoralise the public and defund the war, ending
in a precipitate withdrawal of US combat troops regardless of the
conditions on the ground, the view of the Generals, or the wishes of
the elected Iraqi government. Had this policy been followed Iraq would
have been lost, with devastating local, regional and global political
consequences: full-scale civil war, genocide, a base for AQ, an
incalculable boost to the global jihadi movement and a blow to the
solar plexus of the democracies that may have taken a generation to
overcome.
European social democrats need to understand the
changing power-structure of the new Democratic Party before they go
looking to it for advice. A place to start is The Argument:
Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics,
(Penguin, 2007) in which Matt Bai charts the burgeoning power of
liberal billionaires, such as George Soros and Peter Lewis, bloggers
such as Daily Kos, pop-culture celebrities like Michael Moore, and
activist organisations such as MoveOn.org.
The Democratic
Party was once known for JFK’s inaugural address, when he sent the word
out to friend and foe alike that a new generation of Americans would
‘pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty’. Many in
the party still represent that tradition and one hopes they will make a
comeback. But it will be tough. A Pew Survey found that Democrats are
now twice as likely as Republicans (55% vs. 27%) to say the US should
‘mind its own business internationally’ and not worry about other
countries. On CNN this week Michael Moore (for whom the new Democratic
Party rolls out the red carpet) made clear to Larry King just how far
the Party has travelled from that cold Washington morning in January
1961. Asked by an Iranian caller if he thought Iran should be allowed
to get a nuclear bomb, Moore replied, ‘I don’t give one lick about Iran!’
Gude
is wrong on the political lineage and meaning of the idea of a concert
of democracies, wrong to damage the prospects of a bi-partisan
consensus that could form around the idea by his demonising of John
McCain, and wrong to give the Democrats a free pass. We social
democrats need to understand why the Democratic Party went off the
rails so that we don’t repeat that experience. Gude is no help in that
task.