No One Could Have Predicted…
Here’s an interesting clip of Francis Fukuyama and Robert Kagan talking some time ago — before the war between Russia and Georgia — with Fukuyama presciently recognizing that America’s status quo “we get our way on everything, and Russia gives up on everything” approach to Russia was unlikely to be accepted. He offers what are, I think, some wise ideas that could have avoided the war:
To return to the bugaboo of mine, conventional punditry would classify Fukuyama here as the cold-hearted “realist” while Kagan is the morally infused “idealist.” But watching events unfold in the real world, there’s nothing especially moral about letting moralism push you toward policy that result in bad outcomes. At the end of the day, the “pro-Georgian” line in US politics and policy has not done Georgia any good. What people all over the world need are practical policies that deliver results. That’s pretty moral from where I sit.
27 Responses to “No One Could Have Predicted…”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
September 15th, 2008 at 8:26 am
There’s nothing moral about not giving the slightest damn about the likely actual consequences of the policies you recommend. This isn’t virtual reality. It’s an actual planet inhabited by real people who have to survive the idiotic policies that hawkish moralizers want to rashly experiment upon them.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:26 am
“What people all over the world need are practical policies that deliver results.”
Uh, Matt, the Bush administration has consistently delivered results. The problem isn’t a lack of results, it’s that the results have been bad.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am
There’s a line from a Robert Lowell poem about Munich that goes (paraphrased from a 30 year old memory of a not particularly good poem), “Do you blow up the world on a point of honor/Or choke in the vomit of your own cowardice?”
Lowell’s line, in its false dichotomy, was looking at Vietnam, and probably Nixon, who was famous for his false dichotomies. Neo-cons today wear their false dichotomies like beauty pageant sashes. It’s a way that other neo-cons can find each other without having to actually get down on all fours and sniff. I wish we had mature adults in charge who know that the world doesn’t run by first principles and corollaries. When Sarah Palin ran off her staccato “blink … blink … blink” I heard doom a’knockin. Neo-cons have no honor, but would blow up the world on a point of faux macho.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:47 am
The neocons, the Kagans, had an intelligent insight after 9/11 – we can’t expect to cozy up to dictators like the Saudis forever, completely ignore issues of democracy and human rights, and expect that there won’t be any problems, because doing so will 1) produce movements and individuals that, in the absence of democracy, channel their reform efforts and ideological projects into violence and 2) we’ll get a lot of the blame because we jumped in bed with their enemies.
Hey, fair enough. Liberals have been saying that for decades.
But they went so overboard in the other direction, they completely lose the ability in the real world. They only asked “Isn’t it better to have freedom and democracy than tyranny?” when the real question is, “What’s going to happen if we do X,Y, or Z to try to replace democracy with tyranny?”
It’s like asking if you’d rather be late to an appointment or on time, without bother to wonder if it’s really a good idea to drive 95 miles and hour through a neighborhood. Of course it’s better to be on time, but that’s not enough.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:50 am
The US will have “Georgia” problems as long as it extolls the virtues of “Democracies” that hold elections but fail to protect human and minority rights.
A problem for Georgia from the very start was breaking away from the FSU with claims on territory that contained majorities of ethnic minorities that would much rather stay with Russia than break away with Georgia. The use of force by Georgia against its ethnic minorities should have been condemned by the US. Instead we gave them the weapons they used against them.
If Anglo Canada used its army to attack its citizens in Quebec and tens of thousands of French Canadians started streaming across our northern border, would the US step in to stop the Canadian army? This is a close analogy of the situation in Georgia (except Canada respects the rights of its minorities).
There is nothing at all moral about supporting “Democracies” that are a tyranny of the majority. The greatness of the US is protection of minority rights to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. Elections are only one feature. Bush and many Republicans support policies that place little importance on human rights and great importance on elections. However, the moral standard is protection of minority rights, not holding elections.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:53 am
If you combine the number of Olympic medals won by the former Soviet Socialist Republics
(Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazachstan, Krygistan, etc.) the total is 149…far surpassing the US (110) and China (100). Russia obviously wants to reunite the CCCP to win the next medal count. We must be vigilant.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:57 am
The most attractive feature of Fukuyama-Kagan dialogue is that Fukuyama appears to be barely tolerating Kagan’s ranting, and particularly at the end where he quickly moves to an ‘thank you Bob, office hours are over’ position, just as Kagan is trying to get started on American exceptionalism. We should have FF on tv a bit more, but of course he’s a scholar, not a pundit-talkinghead.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:16 am
The comparison Georgia 2008 vs Czechoslovakia 1938 is completely false.
If 1938, the Czech region Hitler was claiming also contained that country’s main defence line against a German invasion. France was Czechoslovakia’s military ally, so you could argue that it was France’s first line of defence too. Unlike the Polish-German frontier, the region and is hilly enough to make life difficult for armoured forces, and in 1938 the Wehrmacht was not the deadly war machine of 1940. Hitler’s officers blanched when they later saw the Czech defences.
The cession of the Sudetenland made Czechoslovakia vulnerable to invasion, and destroyed the French alliance.
Looking a Georgia on the map – a slim country between the Caucaucus and the Black Sea, it is nobody’s first line of defence. To me, a position for Georgia analogous to Finland during the Cold War is completely acceptable – the country keeps a free market economy and a democratic system. A tacit agreement would exist between parties to run a strictly neutral course in foreign affairs and persue no policy which has strategically negative consequences for Russia.
I do not see what is wrong with this deal, but (for example) Charles Krauthammer has specificaly ruled out “Finlandization” as some sort of surrender.
Small countries that exist adjacent to great powers usually have to find a modus vivendi with the great power if they wnat to remain any vestige of political independence. Becoming too much of a thorn risks annexation. Enlisting another great power is the riskiest because at some point in the future your erstwhile friend may find you expendable in view of its interests elsewhere.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:37 am
It needs to be said – the fact that FF now represents reason and realism in American politics (and for what it’s worth, I kind of agree that he does) shows just how insane our public discourse has become. In a sane world, he would be viewed as a provocative but deeply problematic scholar who has pushed, at various points, all kinds of weird right-wing positions. Now he’s practically understood as a liberal! Which goes to show how weak the real left is, and how strong the insanely far-right is.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:25 am
bakho’s point cannot be made too often. At the inception of its liberation from the former USSR, Georgia turned around and began persecuting ethnic/linguistic minorities in its midst, which, so far as I can tell, is the main reason why Ossetians want to be in the Russian and not the Georgian orbit. Imagine NATO being called upon to protect Belgium from a French invasion spurred on by a wholesale Flemish attack on the French speaking people of Belgium. Basically, that would be using NATO as a prop for the persecution of ethnic or linguistic minorities and whatever NATO’s mission is, that’s not it.
I know it’s ridiculous to contemplate, but the point is, democracies resolve their ethnic differences peacefully if not amicably, and in the extreme, as with the former Czechoslovakia, they might break up.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:58 am
“…there’s nothing especially moral about letting moralism push you towards policies that result in bad outcomes”. Exactly! And there’s no point in adopting extreme policy positions if you have no means of bringing them about. Unless of course you have a completely unrealistic idea about what your capabilities are in the first place.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
bakho:
At the inception of its liberation from the former USSR, Georgia turned around and began persecuting ethnic/linguistic minorities in its midst, which, so far as I can tell, is the main reason why Ossetians want to be in the Russian and not the Georgian orbit.
The question is how bad it was. And Russia was supplying the worst elements of the South Ossetians to fan the flames (like how the CIA is supposedly supplying the Kurds and ethnic minorities in Iran). And Russia provided diplomatic cover for the ethnic cleansign Serbs so sorry if I don’t take their word for it.
Some people just oppose whatever the US does. What Russia did was galvanize the Europeans. Even China and the central Asian dictatorships wouldn’t provide Russia with diplomatic cover.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Republicans seem to think that negotiating with the rest of the world should work on the model they have developed for negotiating with Democrats. Mistake: the rest of the world actually is inhabited by vertebrates.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Matt, I know it’s not reasonable to expect a full statement of your moral philosophy in any given blog post, but I highly doubt that you believe the last two sentences of your post, and not for the tendentious “good results/bad results” reason made above. Rather, it gives no attention at all to means used in achieving good results, and means are important.
Not particularly making an anti-utilitarian point either, obviously how much harm is caused by the means of trying to achieve a good end result weigh heavily in the utilitarian calculus.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I’m quite amused that you describe Fukuyama as a realist according to pundits. I think you need to retake your IR course. He’s a realist according to anyone.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Perfect work!Keep posting
==
http://street-wear.org/marc-ecko-garage-t-shirts-to-billion-dollar-philanthropist/
March 1st, 2009 at 6:04 am
viagra
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 1st, 2009 at 7:04 pm
cialis
Great site. Good info
March 11th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Incredible site!
March 12th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 14th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Incredible site!
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:25 am
tramadol
Incredible site!
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
buy viagra online
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:21 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I rarely comment on blogs but yours I had to stop and say Great Blog!! viagra