Empty Sloganeering
David Greenberg has a weird article in The New Republic slamming various liberals, including myself, who didn’t go in for hard-core anti-Russian demagoguery as an immediate response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia:
When the right language happened to come from McCain–who declared, “We are all Georgians now”–the general response among liberal pundits was to scoff. Writing on The Washington Post’s website, Andres Martinez told the senator to speak for himself. “I am not a Georgian,” he insisted, deriding the “over-the-top rhetoric about democracy and liberty” from McCain and Bush. Blogger Matt Yglesias, writing under the aegis of the Center for American Progress, called the statement “empty political sloganeering,” “downright irresponsible,” and “mawkish sentimentality.”
My initial thought was to respond to this by saying that I was right. McCain was engaged in empty political sloganeering that substituted mawkish sentimentality for an actual policy response. But Greenberg, stunningly, doesn’t deny that I was right — he just thinks that being right is no defense!
Why should the statements of liberal pundits trouble us? It’s not because their criticisms are necessarily wrong.
The rest of the article goes on to posit a supposed divide between noble idealistic liberals like Greenberg and bad ol’ cynical realists like me. But I think the real divide is captured by Greenberg’s admission that the statements he objects to aren’t necessarily wrong. On the one hand, you have some people who think that the purpose of foreign policy commentary is to try to elucidate the issues and point the way to practical policy responses that will improve the world. On the other hand, you have some people who think that the role of foreign policy commentary is to demonstrate that you have an appropriate emotional orientation to the world. To me, this is “mawkish sentimentality” rather than a serious, responsible, approach. And Greenberg agrees! But somehow I’m wrong anyway. Well, fair enough then.
44 Responses to “Empty Sloganeering”
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September 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I understand Greenberg is attacking you, but you really are not engaging with his argument here.
Greenberg writes:
This isn’t quite the same as “mawkish sentimentality”.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am
This is a somewhat fascinating phenomenon with my fellow liberals: liberal politicians and activists are desperate to show off how “reasonable”, thoughtful, and wonkish they are, while would-be liberal wonks like David Greenberg seem desperate to prove their credibility by aping the behavior of politicians engaging in demogogic, empty rhetoric to prove their moral bona fides.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:57 am
The true measure of America’s power and greatness is our ability to wallow in mawkish sentimentality. Other countries can’t do that.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:03 am
“Compassion for a nation under attack” = mawkish sentimentality.
“Above all, sympathy for a people who have been looking to the United States as a model of democracy” = mawkish sentimentality is the most important consideration.
On international law, this critique would be more valid had I, in fact, overlooked Russian violations of international law or had Greenberg (or TNR) exhibit some concern for these niceties when it was the US or Israel invading other countries.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:07 am
The Georgian government paid the lobbyists who run McCain’s campaign more than $800,000 for McCain’s bluster.
If they want me on board, they can send some of that money my way.
.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Greenberg also displays little contextual knowledge of the case in question: The degree to which the Georgian crisis is a function of poorly (or un-) thought out alliance overreach (holding out the hope of NATO membership/protection to Georgia); the degree to which Mekhail Saakashvili is a loose cannon; and other considerations relevant to casting a somewhat jaundiced eye at the full-holler, cold-war-boilerplate defense of “We are all Georgians now.” What does Greenberg know about being a Georgian? Some of them are pretty pissed off with their Gilbert & Sullivan prez (vis. the front page of today’s Wash Post).
September 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
1) The problem is when two-faced whores use “mawkish sentimentality” as cover for private agendas — and as deceitful justification for spending the lives of our sons and our taxes.
2) If not for Chevron’s investments in extracting Caspian Sea oil, the US Government would not give a hairy rat’s ass about Georgia. Just ask the oil-poor tribes of Africa.
3) And ask Greenberg to consider a 6,000 Rad fallout cloud over most of the Midwest –from Montana to Ohio. Does that make him choke up?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:18 am
If I am reading you correctly, why wouldn’t the NATO interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo be nothing more than mawkish sentimentality?
Sympathizing with victims of aggression seems to fit well within pretty mainstream foreign policy concepts, no?
—–
“On international law, this critique would be more valid had … had Greenberg (or TNR) exhibit some concern for these niceties when it was … Israel invading other countries.”
Israel is exempt from the rules in TNR’s ideology, of course.
If you want to generalize from there, of course you’ll get a profoundly psychotic worldview.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:22 am
When Ethiopia invaded Somalia, I suppose Greenberg was opposed on liberal moral principles?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:24 am
You find this kind of “logic” all the time in right wing arguments. Logically, we should ask for all of our weapons systems to be cost effective, but the right would like to shut down any discussion of national defense by accusing their opponent as being “weak on (fill in the blank)”. They short circuit the discussion and make it a wedge issue for political gain. Unfortunately, the net effect is that we end up doubling down on some real mistakes. Ultimately, this costs the taxpayers a lot of money and potentially puts lives at risk.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Petey, a lot of the debacle of Bosnia was driven by a mawkish sensibility: the reason why the US couldn’t do anything to stabilize the situation for so many years was because so many policymakers were obsessed with their vision of a “multi-ethnic, diverse Bosnia” which was, in fact, what no one really wanted, except for the Bosnian Muslims, but only because that was the only way they’d manage to keep themselves in power, particularly by selling this visions to western benefactors taken in by precisely this sort of “mawkish sensibility.”
September 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Ugh, I agree with Petey.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Greenberg seems to be ingoring the fact that Russia posses thousands and nukes and that the United States can do nothing to respond. Other liberals like myself want to abolish nuclear weapons and that we need Russia’s help to acheive that goal. I personally believe that there should be a new type of liberalism that should be concerned with the greater threats of global warming and nuclear war. Obama got it right when he said that “I’m a citizen of the world,” unfortunately american nationalists like Greenberg, McCain, and Palin do not get this new dynamic.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Who is the consumer of this stuff? When you strip off the liberal bells and whistles it’s straight up American exceptionalism: Our bullshit is good and their bullshit is bad. There is no debate to be had there. Your “America, Fuck Yeah!” guy bellyfeels this and doesn’t need to polish up the turd. Greenberg bellyfeels it but seems to understand on a certain level how stupid it all is and needs to build a non-sensical superstructure on it. Is there someone out there who likes this stuff?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Tyro, was it a good thing that the Bush gang wasn’t so sentimental about Iraq and Baghdad and allowed the Shia and Sunni to ethnically cleanse one another?
I’d think the “cleansed” wouldn’t think so.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Peter K., quite honestly, I would have thought it to be ridiculous if the Bush administration kept encouraging each faction in Baghdad to keep fighting in order to “stand up for the principle of a multi-ethnic Baghdad.” Because that really would have been a “mawkish sensibility.”
Americans are extraordinarily narcissistic and believe that the rest of the world has the same neuroses that they do, and that’s the source of the “mawkish sensibilities” that we’re mocking.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:52 am
You give away too much to GreenBerg, matthew. You had several posts noting that Russia’s actions were wrong. Contra Greenberg, Your response was _not_ dictated by simple anti-Bushism, it was instead a distinctly Yglesian View of the world.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Petey: Greenberg has a point, but there’s a big difference between general outrage at and condemnation of Russia’s action vs. “We are all Georgians now.”
The problem is that, while Russia was clearly the aggressor and any and all aggressors should be publicly held to account for their actions, if only to keep a strong precedent against this sort of thing, the underlying, behind-the-scenes reality is very different.
Russia is still a force to be reckoned with, and doubly so with their key role in negotiations with Iran. Georgia borders Russia and they have a long, somewhat contentious history. We know Russia has been more combative and hostile of late. We have influence in Georgia but not Russia. Given that we have no direct influence over Russia, then, regardless of the morality or legality of their actions, we must recognize their rational basis, when and where they are most likely to occur, and seek to minimize their triggers.
Additionally, we have not only militarily overstretched ourself in Iraq, meaning our warnings now have no force behind them, but our unilateral invasion there, regardless of its ultimate conclusion, has weakened the case the international world has against aggressors in general.
I find it interesting that, as Greenberg puts it,
Obama’s response was exactly the correct one for this situation, if not the best public face. Yet according to Greenberg he ‘bungled’ it because he didn’t publicly ‘recoil instinctively at Putin’s invasion or to express solidarity with Georgia.’ So Greenberg can read Obama’s mind well enough to know he took no issue with the Russian invasion? And ‘expressing solidarity with Georgia’–well, perhaps he should have, but why risk pissing Russia off even more when there’s so much else at stake?
Greenberg praises what he calls ‘beneficial small-r realism’ while blasting ‘appall[ing]‘ Kissingerian ‘doctrinaire Realism’, implying that the lackluster support for Georgia is due to the latter. Well, international relations ain’t all fun and games–sometimes ‘realism’ involves having to choose between options which really are appalling to a greater or lesser degree. Would he prefer a nuclear Iran just to guarantee Georgian sovereignty?
Greenberg is either being intellectually dishonest or just plain ignorant. Liberals didn’t ‘cede’ their principles to the neocons, they just watched as the Bush White House took them to tragic extremes. I can’t decide whether this article is just bad or dangerous.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
“Above all, sympathy for a people who have been looking to the United States as a model of democracy”
If Georgia is really looking to us to do anything besides fund their military, then why don’t they, you know, have free elections and respect human rights?
The problem is that, while Russia was clearly the aggressor
Clearly? Bullshit.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Investing emotional rhetoric in a situation we are powerless to affect is counterproductive.
In Bosnia and Kossovo, we were reluctant, not powerless. Rhetoric in that case could be used to pressure the administration to act. Whether it was proper or not, the proponents of intervention increased the likelihood that their policy choices would be enacted by engaging in rhetoric. In the case of Georgia, we are not going to do anything. Rhetoric only underscores our weakness in this specific situation. That actually encourages Russia to make the most of it.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
We’ve been hearing a lot about respect for territorial integrity as a kind of supreme principle in international relations. It’s a good practical guide, no doubt, but whatever happened to other principles, like political self-determination? You know, for the Ossetians and Abkhazis?
September 9th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I would observe that all of that stuff about “sympathy” for people under attack from the Decent Left types and lovers of color-coded revolutions seems quite hypocritically selective. Joe Biden went to Georgia during the crisis, and when asked about the misery, death and destruction visited upon South Ossetians, who seemed nearly universally to blame the Georgian government for their plight and welcome the Russian intervention, Biden derided the suggestions and humiliated and repudiated the South Ossetians and their claims. Maybe he thinks South Ossetians are just a bunch of whiners.
Georgian opportunists chose to involve themselves in a provocative game of geostrategic and commercial hardball over pipelines, NATO expansionism, Middle East politics and other anti-Russian schemes of unreconstructed cold warriors, and their people paid the price.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Of course, Greenberg’s rhetorical question can be read differently — i.e., “It’s not because their criticisms are necessarily wrong” = “*though* their criticisms are necessarily wrong, that’s not why they should trouble us.” The question is whether the emphasis of falls on the entire phrase or the predicate.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
“Obama’s response was exactly the correct one for this situation, if not the best public face. Yet according to Greenberg he ‘bungled’ it because he didn’t publicly ‘recoil instinctively at Putin’s invasion or to express solidarity with Georgia.”
I think Greenberg is pretty clearly correct here.
—–
“In Bosnia and Kossovo, we were reluctant, not powerless … In the case of Georgia, we are not going to do anything. Rhetoric only underscores our weakness in this specific situation.”
It’s precisely because we are powerless in regards to Georgia that the rhetoric matters.
We’re not going to send in troops to defend Tblisi, but we can say who we side with. That’s not underscoring weakness, it’s projecting moral clarity.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I think Greenberg is pretty clearly correct here.
Care to explain how?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Yet again, the people who respond to an international crisis calmly, candidly, and with a degree of caution appropriate to the uncertainties of the facts on the ground, are declared to be “wrong.” Yet again, the cranks who respond with bluster, dishonesty, and a phony certainty grounded in abject ignorance of the facts on the ground, are declared to be correct. Worse still, the McCain campaign has a paid shill of the Georgian government in a high-ranking position and hardly anyone even seems to consider this inappropriate.
And naturally, Obama was forced to backtrack from the correct posture after selecting the very serious and respectable Joe Biden as his VP candidate, thus giving McCain a free hand to claim that he was right along.
Same story, different year. This country is so ideologically committed to mythology, empty symbolism, and Green Lanternism in our foreign policy that it’s apparently politically suicidal to even give a shit about whether we’re doing the wrong thing.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Matthew may not have done a particularly good job of engaging Greenberg’s argument (as Petey points out in comment #1), but Greenberg doesn’t provide much substance to engage with.
In 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, liberals rightly condemned the action. In 2008, when Georgian tanks rolled into South Ossetia, the situation has seemed less clear to many liberals, in part because the Georgians were stopped by Russia, whose own agenda may not be a good one. Greenberg claims that liberals should side with Georgia in this conflict, but rather than making a case for this, he attacks liberals who fail to agree with him.
Shorter Greenberg: liberals should agree with me with the same degree of commitment they had in 1956, even though my position is close to the exact opposite of the position that liberals took in 1956.
I’m not saying that Greenberg is wrong–the situation is complicated and I don’t fully understand it–but if he thinks that he knows what the correct position for liberals to take on the fate of South Ossetia, he should make the case rather than attacking liberals for not agreeing with him.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Re Petey’s comment “We’re not going to send in troops to defend Tblisi, but we can say who we side with. That’s not underscoring weakness, it’s projecting moral clarity.”
————–
It is projecting two-faced deceit — when all the evidence shows that what Bush/Cheney are really defending is their right to support dictators in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan so that they can steal Caspian Sea oil out from under Iran and Russia.
And the BIGGEST evidence for that is the strange silence our News Media is observing on the subject. If you want to know what is really going on, you don’t look at what the New York Times is saying –you look at what it is refusing to talk about.
I worked decades on national systems during the Cold War. Early on, I worked on sonar systems at the nuclear ballistic submarine bases at Groton, Conn and Charleston, SC. I knew the purpose of those subs was to turn Russian cities into piles of ashes –and I didn’t have a problem with that. Because MAD was the only way to defend the USA.
But the rules of that game are pretty fucking clear and have not changed. You don’t bully a nuclear-armed power and you don’t try to bleed them/dismantle them slowly the way we have been doing in Eastern Europe. The Cuban Missile Crisis taught both powers to avoid direct aggression toward one another.
We would not like it if Russia poured a ton of covert funding into Florida’s elections in order to elect a governor who would secede from the USA and let Russia drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Bush and Cheney have used the military powers of the USA to promote private business agendas. They provoked the Sept 11 attack and the Iraq War. They are the ones betraying this country.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Spot on, Kenneth. But reading Greenberg’s article, he’s not particularly interested in the facts of the situation, or any other. It’s about rhetoric, not policy. I get the impression he doesn’t care who started the shooting, and may not even know.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
There isn’t moral clarity in this situation. If we project it, we’re doing something wrong.
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