After the Neocons, What?

Illustration (c) The Economist 2007

American idealism remains as essential as ever, perhaps even more so. But in the new world order, its role will be to provide the faith to sustain America through all the ambiguities of choice in an imperfect world. Traditional American idealism must combine with a thoughtful assessment of contempory realities to bring about a usable definition of American interests. Henceforth, ... the fulfillment of America's ideals will have to be sought in the patient accumulation of partial successes.

--Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (1994)

In this week's Economist magazine, the columnist "Lexington" points out the amazingly swift decline in influence of the Republican "neoconservative" movement over the past three years. Rumsfeld "resigned"; Wolfowitz disgraced by nepotism; Libby convicted; Conrad Black on trial for fraud; Dick Cheney himself so unpopular that even BYU students have protested against his appearance on campus. Neoconservatism began, Lexington observes, as a "critique of the arrogance of power." It ironically ends in confusion and disgrace, resulting from its adherents' own arrogance.

The British magazine suggests that American foreign policy is now returning to the "realism" that British diplomacy has always embraced. "Britain does not have friends, only interests," remarked the nineteenth century prime minister, Lord Palmerston. Lexington feels that Condolezza Rice herself "is returning to her 'realist' roots at the State Department, now that Mr. Rumsfeld is out of her hair."

Well, I'm not so confident that Condi's embrace of neoconservatism was merely a tactical tool that permitted her to survive in a neoconservative administration. However, I'm willing, for a short period, to give her the benefit of the doubt. (I may just have a weakness for attractive Stanford grads who play Brahms when they aren't plotting invasions.) We shall see.

In any event, a full Palmerstonian "realism" is not the only alternative to our current foreign policy of imposing "democracy" on other cultures by devastating them. Henry Kissinger, who never ranked high in my pantheon of heroes -- but certainly was no idiot, either -- pointed the way to a more "nuanced" (the word that drives George Bush crazy) foreign policy in his history of American diplomacy. If "realism" is conceived as a foreign policy whose only objective is maintaining American security in a hostile world -- or more broadly, as also protecting American business interests abroad -- we have not pursued a purely realistic foreign policy for many decades, if ever.

American diplomacy has always been concerned with pursuing both friends and interests.

Most Americans care about the welfare of people throughout the world. They've proved their concern within the past two or three years by their outpouring of contributions to aid victims of the tsunami in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia, and of the earthquake in Kashmir. They care about people living in areas that have no oil, no wealth, no conceivable strategic value to American geopolitics -- places like Darfur in Africa. When Americans seem not to care, it is more apt to be because they do not know of human suffering, not because they don't care about it.

The first duty of foreign policy, of course, is always to protect against direct threats to the security of the United States. But this country is the undisputed superpower of the world. Threats to national security are not the major concern that they were during the Cold War. (Terrorist threats pose what is largely a police problem, I would argue, not a foreign policy problem.) Our country is therefore free to pursue idealistic goals as well -- promoting freedom from poverty and starvation, minimizing threats of warfare, encouraging development of democratic forms of government that are consistent with each country's culture and values.

As Kissinger suggested, such a foreign policy can't be based on military threats, let alone military invasions. It can't be based on hostile embargoes and isolation, such as we have futilely imposed on Cuba for nearly a half century. Instead, it should be based on careful delivery of foreign aid, on help with education, on encouragement of other countries in developing their own skills and resources. It should be based on enthusiastically inviting foreign study in the United States, and the study overseas of American students -- not on crippling such international student exchanges by impossible visa requirements and quotas. It should be based on a sincere effort -- by government and citizens -- to appreciate the values of other cultures, a willingness to work with other cultures within those values, while maintaining faith in our own values, and the humility to recognize that other nations have histories far longer than our own. The temporary fact that their people do not all own iPods does not mean that their national (or tribal) experiences have been worthless, or have taught them nothing.

And as Kissinger concludes, patience is a virtue. A series of gradual successes should be our goal, not the overnight kind of "success" that we sometimes seem to think we must achieve by invading a nation, or assassinating its leaders. Societies evolve, they rarely change radically within a decade. Like every other country, we have the right to encourage such evolution. We have no right to impose it, and we have little hope of long-term success when we try.

The neocons waited for decades for their moment. They seized the opportunity that the Bush adminstration provided, botched it, demonstrated the fallacies of their ideas, and are now getting the boot. Let's pray for a more carefully reasoned foreign policy, more consistent with American ideals and less impatient in its demands for instant success, in the years to come.