Is Restraint Unpopular?
Ilan Goldenberg writes that one reason academic realists have become marginalized in policy debates is that politicians think a policy of restraint isn’t politically feasible:
These days the realist perspective is all but non-existent in Washington. A large part of that has to do with the fact that their ideas are so politically unpopular that they are simply dismissed out of hand as unrealistic. Many realists have come to the conclusion that as an unfettered unipolar power the United States will inevitably overextend itself and scare others into aligning against it, and thus over time weaken itself. The best prescription for this is retrenchment that includes dramatic reductions in military spending and the reduction of our presence around the world – very politically unpopular ideas.
These two formulations are slightly different, and I think it’s important to distinguish between them. The public doesn’t tend to have detailed views on foreign policy issues, but it’s generally sympathetic to the idea of more restrained foreign policy. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs does a regular biannual survey of the American public, and the 2008 edition found “that a strong majority of Americans (63%)
want the United States to play an active part in world affairs” but also that “as Chicago Council polls have found in the past, Americans do not want to play the role of world policeman, with 77 percent believing the United States is playing this role more than it should be.”
There can, however, be other kinds of political impediments besides public opinion. The congressional politics of a restrained defense budget are terrible, because the main projects are deliberately located in the districts of the key committee members. The incentives of the news media tend toward amplifying hysteria and overreactions when specific incidents emerge. Presidents tend to be biased toward foreign policy activism because they can play a more unrestrained hand in that field than they can on their domestic issues. And virtually all the key interest groups working on national security policy do so in order to advocate a forward-leaning posture.
And beyond all this, elite opinion in the United States is much more gung-ho about foreign involvements of various kinds than is the public at large. So there’s a lot going on besides popularity. And foreign policy is hardly the only issue on which that’s the case. Big-time politicians have pretty good reasons for not making single-payer health care the core of their domestic policy agenda, but those reasons aren’t really about what’s “popular,” they’re about what’s possible in a constrained system.
13 Responses to “Is Restraint Unpopular?”
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April 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Some librul socialist fascist wrote:
I’m sure I’ll remember who after a stiff drink.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I’ve often thought a way to temper the “elites” enthusiasm for overseas adventure would be a required two year military service for all 18-32 year olds in the time of any military action (no deferrals). If it’s important enough to kill, its important enough to die. I bet enthusiasm dries up pretty damn quick when mommies little Johnny get’s shipped off right after graduation.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I can’t agree that ‘big time politicians’ don’t back single payer healthcare because its not possible within the system. This is pretty simply a matter of being bought and paid for by the massive influence of the pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies. There are plenty of Congressional Reps who believe in Single Payer, but Senators for the most part (Sanders aside), Dem or Rep, just do whatever they have to to keep the $$ coming in. If the single payer movement created a lobby which could hand out billions to unscrupulous politicians (sorry if that’s redundant) it would make a lot of progress, really fast.
That and also they’re just wusses who know what’s right and are too chickensh!t to stand up for it, precisely because they’re also worried its UNpopular.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I play golf on a rotating basis with 6 or 7 hard core conservatives. When talk turns to Afghanistan, to a man they all agree we should get the f~ck out of there. “what the hell are we doing there, what good can come from it,” is the general refrain.
When I point out that if my side of the political ledger decided to up and leave Afghanistan they would all howl in unison that we were a bunch a pansy ass pussies. This is argument is met with, mostly, vigorous agreement.
This is anecdotal evidence of the lowest denominator. Still, my Bush-gut tells me this core hypoccrisy is the essence of average Joe conservative’s foreign policy outlook.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Obama asks forgiveness for the actions of America, its past, present and the rest, he apologizes for everything. Relations with Russia deteriorated, lack of respect for Islam, poor relations with Iran, the bickering with Europe, the lack of adulation for Fidel Castro, while it is good to beat the breasts of America.
More importantly, it celebrates the contribution (totally nonexistent) of Islam to the rise of America, and it splits the reverence of a bloody sectarian and king of Arabia, Abdullah of hatred. It cancels the anti-missile belt located in Alaska and offers an unnecessary nuclear disarmament.
Putin, the dictator, has risen from ten years of hatred and aggression towards the West, Russian, addressing the fact to its neighbors and by all other means in the United States, not to mention . Therefore, it should be, it can only be the fault of Uncle Sam
The fault of America for 30 years if relations with Islam are degraded by American lack of respect. Nasser, dictators Syrian, Iraqi, Soviet influence, do not talk about it.
Guilty by definition. The insanity of war and hatred of the West that characterized since the forties, the Ayatollah Khomeini? The conversion of the general Iranian intelligentsia to the far left anti-imperialist? The rescue of millions of Muslims by America to the four corners of the barbarity that is Islam? The rhetoric of Bush genuflections to “Islam, a religion of peace?
Europe, frightened by his shadow, hesitant to take up arms if only a penknife (dangerous weapon of aggression), which showed millions against “Euro-” and Ronald Reagan, and even against Clinton? It still is always the fault of America. “We do not speak Russian! It’s your fault. ”
But where Obama has he learned this nonsense? Where does this accumulation of disappointments in the world, misconceptions and distorted? Where did this pruritus of you-I ask for forgiveness? It is used to Jimmycartérisme, who put on all fours before Khomeini ( “a saint”), the USSR, Cuba, the third world, Muslim terrorism. Why has qu’Obama – leader of a republic – the bent head before the king of Arabia?
For 20 years, Wright was his mentor, who lodged in the circles of the Black Theology in Chicago who initiated the ideas of the black version of “liberation theology”.
And what did Wright say ? “Not ‘God Bless America,’ but ‘God damn America’. “God does not bless, but it overwhelms America! That America is slavery, that AIDS was “invented” by the U.S. government to exterminate blacks, and so on.
Wright hates America with all his being, even if it gets any dividends imaginable … The theology of “liberation” black is the American equivalent of the worst perversions Castro, Guevara, Fanon: America is satanic, and all other victims of America, are angelic.
Twenty years, and it gets sermons. It is Wright who is a graduate of Harvard who is now a stirrer local (community organizer), for a politician in Chicago. Do not forget that the local political career Obama has been launched by the fanatical hatred of America, the extreme left of the Weathermen terrorist in Chicago who repeat and confirm the same ideological antiphon. All aquariums where the tadpole swam had the same water.
Obama is the manicured Wright: he went to Harvard. It he does not drool, it does not show his fist. He does not swear words continuous jet as his guru. Elegant, it is honey – but the pills, even covered with sugar, are no less pepper. The background is the same. Wright insult America, Obama asks forgiveness: in both cases, it is guilty. Wright is pastor, Obama is president.
Moreover, this deplorable America has sown disorder and evil everywhere. Instead of working multilaterally with all work well together with Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Bashir al-Assad, et Cie, the unbearable Bush has made enemies.
What a shame! We must redress the wrongs committed. America will find his redemption in the withdrawal, penitence, contrition, and a form of extinction. Submerged in multilateral and international organizations covered by the unanimous UN harmonized with Europe, leaving its own sovereignty in favor of an “international law”, which judges do not worry democracy and are accountable to people – as the European Union that abolished democracy and replaced it by government lawyers and commissioners. Jeremy Wright wants apocalypses; Obama wants to change everything in soft version by avocasserie.
That is why his administration is full of lawyers who look with condescension and disdain the U.S. Constitution, voters, elected officials, their peers are the international jet-set of multinational lawyers, legal NGOs, judges of international courts.
They want not so much the rule of law and international law as the rule of lawyers. They want to put a soldier behind every lawyer and bring the war – which is ultima ratio regis, the ultimate argument of the king, as it was written on the canons of Frederick II – outlaws.
Only they do, while gangs of killers roam the streets and alleys of the megalopolis. They look absolutely the smallest acts of soldiers, men of intelligence, government, and not only submit to censorship, but also punishment, self-disarmament by means of utopia, while the other sides, with no have cure, continue their depredations.
This is what one learns in law school at Harvard, where Obama graduated. Any action should be regulated by the dictatorship of the short paragraphs of Unitholders and sub-interpreters, lawyers.
We must at all costs, find common ground with everyone. It should go far, far away, in the concessions: the other side eventually understand. Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, Ayatollah Khamenei, Assad, Hamas, there are compromises necessary for a deal with the lawyers for the opposing party.
Without agreement, it falls into the bad habits of American honnie. America, what horror is allowed to go to defend its allies against their enemies. We fought in Vietnam and Korea against the communist aggressor. We fought against Soviet Communism. What do you think of the Obama campaign has served in Berlin, saying, with delusions that the world had won the Cold War “joining” as if there was a camp alone in this war!
America needs to be reduced in its pretensions and its power. The world must be reduced to one side, the makers of peace, with which the agreement is always found.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
You forget one important element of this debate: university professors. Most of them are always justifying imperialistic wars and looking for the next country to invade. Yet unlike politicians and journalists, you can’t blame this attitude (entirely) on their dependence on the military industrial complex.
For an example, look at Anne-Marie Slaughter, now an official at the State Department. For the Iraq War, for a McCain-style “Council of Democracies” fighting the communists and terrorists forever.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
“elite opinion in the United States is much more gung-ho about foreign involvements of various kinds than is the public at large. So there’s a lot going on besides popularity.”
So, why is elite opinion so gung-ho?
April 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Besides, we have seen that if the governemnt WANTS to engage in an international military adventure, they merely present it as countering a real national security threat and then all the people’s desires to avoid being the “world’s policeman” vanish under the hype of the “existential threat”.
Smoking gun, mushroom cloud, restraint no longer an issue. As long as they have the power to manipulate American public opinion in the short term, any desire the people might have to avoid international entanglements will be moot…
mikey
April 17th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I simply do not believe this claim that reduction of the US presence around the world is unpopular. Bush’s most successful line in the 2000 race was when he was asked about US foreign interventions and replied that he though the US could doing with being a little more humble rather than assuming it had to solve every problem everywhere on Earth.
I think foreign interventions are one of those things where the population can be swung in pretty much any direction their leaders wish. If the leaders want to push a narrative of how we MUST go to war they can (successfully) do so — vide Iraq. On the other hand, if they want to push a narrative of how we should not get involved, there are dozens of ways to do that. Obviously you don’t push the line that doing so would be expensive, or that the US doesn’t have the capacity; but you do push the line that these people have to work it out for themselves, that these sorts of interventions are never successful, that the US will stand by ready to help with aid and diplomacy, and so on.
April 18th, 2009 at 1:10 am
The sense I get is that the vast majority of America is sick of these international adventures, don’t let anyone sandbag you into thinking otherwise.
The challenge going forward politically would be getting people to support FP adventures, except maybe close-to-home stuff like giving more intense focus on the situation in Mexico.
Smacking down some pirates seems like the kind of romantic, risk-averse thing you could probably get the public to support right now, but the issues and challenges revolving around that are more complex than many imagine, so don’t expect any dramatic action on that front (at least, outside of covert action and common-sense measures to massively reduce risk to ships in that area in the short-term, probably by arming a few men on the boat, whether they be the captain and first lieutenant or blue helmets or other security).
The RPG and missile element does give me some pause, but just one or two of those incidents would basically sink the pirates boats, so to speak, as it would greatly reduce profit for them as ships started to avoid the region and/or would greatly focus a massive common interest in private owners and publics to smack down the vandals once and for all, because this is far from an insolvable problem, it’s really just a matter of political will, imagination, and private economic interests.
April 18th, 2009 at 7:28 am
raivo pommer-www.google.ee
raimo1@hot.ee
Bank of America.
The last three months have been a painful time for the Charlotte, N.C.-based banking giant. There has been the never-ending string of headaches associated with last year’s fateful purchase of Merrill Lynch, including a bonus scandal that the company can’t seem to shake.
At the same time, there has been no shortage of criticism from shareholders about its stock price. Management has also been working hard to convince investors that last year’s purchase of mortgage lender Countrywide was a smart move.
Elevating the stakes even further is the fact that many of Bank of America’s peers, such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), have shattered profit expectations so far this quarter.
April 18th, 2009 at 8:55 am
“Many realists have come to the conclusion that as an unfettered unipolar power the United States will inevitably overextend itself and scare others into aligning against it, and thus over time weaken itself.”
I’m not unsympathetic to the policy prescription, but that seems awfully naive to me. Other powers will align against us no matter what we do. At some point, it will be in their interest. If that interest isn’t driven by excluding American soldiers from their sphere of interest, it will be driven by something else (expansion of those spheres of interest, obtaining more favorable trade terms, parochial disputes with American allies, dissent from an emerging international legal framework, etc.). Whether or not other countries get scared of us is really neither here nor there when you’re talking about geopolitical polarities.
April 18th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
It strikes me that the American economy either on its own terms or set against the rest of the worlds economies is simply unable to sustain indefinite global domination.
America did best with a light touch of minimal force and consensus building.
The big mistake would be trying to use military force to counter political and economic decline. That’s pretty much been the death knell for any other historic empire. There’s no reason to think that America would be exceptional.