Friday, February 24, 2006

Fukuyama's Conclusions: A Response

As requested, here are my thoughts regarding Fukuyama’s essay from his upcoming book America at the Crossroads. As I already stated in class, I don’t have any major problems with his arguments throughout the body of his essay, besides the fact that I disagree with his opening statement that US efforts in Iraq will ultimately be viewed negatively by history. As to the successes or failures in Iraq following the ousting of Saddam, well, that is the topic of perhaps another blog entry. But in regards to my response to Fukuyama’s essay, my main objections stem from his conclusions/solutions. First, what strikes me is his continued adherence to the goals of neoconservatism stating something to the affect that it would be a tragedy for the US if it dropped the spread of democracy from its foreign policy agenda. Indeed, in an attempt to revise his previous positions, Fukuyama has chosen to retain neoconservative goals but taken out of the equation the very factor that would enable neoconservatism, and any viable strategies that would result from its attempted implementation, to succeed. If one believes, as I do, that neoconservatism is currently the driving force behind US Grand Strategy in fighting the war on terror, then essentially he suggests that the US make its military a supporting effort in its strategy in fighting this war. This is ridiculous in a post-9/11 world. And what’s even more ridiculous is what he recommends to assume the main effort role in the military’s place-international institutions! What??!! Doesn’t he himself admit in his essay that these institutions are woefully inadequate (in their present state) to deal with the types of threats the US currently faces? I quote from his essay: “The world today lacks effective international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action.” He goes on further in the essay to sum-up the traditional conservative critique of these international organizations (to which he has no rebuke) stating of these institutions: “while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both the democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues.” No kidding. I won’t even try to put it better myself.

Removing the military as our main effort in fighting the war on terror is also a fundamental shift in the United State’s view of the enemy which it is fighting. To not engage the enemy with arms is to suggest that these people can in fact be “managed.” Sorry. I disagree. As I have stated before in class, there is a short term and long term strategy in the war on terror. The short term calls for decisive military action to deal with an enemy that will not come to the negotiating table; an enemy that will again launch vicious attacks against the US if allowed to. It is also not to recognize that we are fighting an enemy that espouses a competing political ideology at extreme odds with liberal democracy. This ideology takes many forms—whether it be based on the Iranian model, Taliban model, or, as al-Zawahiri has alluded to, the establishment of an international caliphate. One ideology must be combated with another. Hence, enter the long term strategy. This is where neoconservatism comes into play. Which ideology would you prefer to be promulgated throughout the world? And I know what you are saying to yourself right now: “Yes, but why should we do it with the military?” To this I will answer, we don’t have time in the post 9/11 world to do it any other way. America always seems to train for the last war it fought. It is then taken off-guard when a new type arises. This war on terror is completely new, but make no mistake about it-it is a war and we must understand it as such. The battlefield is abroad and at home and the enemy must be fought at many different levels and on many different fronts---and it must be fought NOW, not later when international institutions and the international community in general decides its finally ready to confront it. Fukuyama’s insistence that the US should redirect efforts away from military operations to the restructuring of international institutions in order to enable them to achieve what are essentially neoconservative goals is naïve and dangerous. Don’t give those in the enemy camp that much credit. They are not interested in dealing with international institutions except, perhaps, for purposes of manipulation. Restructuring of international institutions should be a long term goal. But does anyone truly believe they will ever be able to operate efficiently enough to conduct the type of war that the US and its allies are currently engaged in? Give me a break.

As I stated in class, I’m not an ideologue. I don’t subscribe blindly to neoconservatism because I voted for President Bush or fought in the Iraq war. I subscribe to it because it is an idea that drives a strategy I believe will keep Americans safe while bringing better things, in the long run, to the rest of the world. If there is a better way of doing this, I’m all ears. But the alternatives I’ve heard all pretty much sound the same. They are relatively void of any truly new objectives combined with a softer approach to achieving these goals. This doesn’t cut it in today’s security environment. We must be activist and we must remain sure about the attractiveness of our freedoms and liberties....yes, sure enough to bet that in this shaky world if a dangerous regime that threatens the US, its neighbors, and its own people is toppled militarily we have the ability and courage to see the project through to a successful completion. I for one will never lose faith in either our military's or our nation's ability to do this. Why? Because, again as I have argued against some in class, I believe that the "values" the US and the West embrace truly are universal. Fukuyama apparently lost the conviction of his prior beliefs because things, from his perspective, haven't gone as perfectly as planned. Well, hate to say it, but things rarely ever do...especially in a place as historically volatile as the Middle East. But this doesn't mean we have failed, not by a long shot. In fact, I would argue just the opposite. But as I said at the beginning, that's for another discussion. Fukuyama's position also exemplifies the lack of creativity from those who oppose neoconservatism in establishing alternate strategies. Everybody loves to criticize neoconservatism, but once again, no one has managed to come up with a viable alternative strategy that meets today’s threats at the many different levels at which they must be met.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that in the "war on terror" there are short and long term measures that have to be taken. I don't disagree with what you propose on the short term side, but I do disagree on the long term. War is, and always will be, a short term solution to security threats. Institution building/development (Ex: Iraqi ministries, roads, electrical capacity, clean running water, private property rights, fair justice system, etc.) are the only cures for the long term. Smart WW2 planners learned their lessons after that war and didn't repeat the same mistakes they made after WW1. Hence, after WW2 there was no War Guilt Clause or reperations, just the Marshall Plan, NATO, and Bretton-Woods. Neoconservatism, at least in present form, does not address accuretly, how to wage the war on terror in the long term. Case in point: no postwar planning, not addressing looting problem, etc.
I don't believe that Neoconservatism makes America safer. I don't feel safer because of the war in Iraq, in fact I feel less safe. Al Qaeda has regrouped and now are gaining vital experience in Iraq. A new generation of terrorists have been harvested. According to terrorism experts like Peter Berger, Al Qaeda was on the ropes at the end of the Afghan campaign, both manpower wise and international support wise. We squander an opportunity to end them.
Lastly, I don't agree with the neocon philosphy because I don't believe that inherently America is a "shining city on a hill." We're human, that's all. Sure, there are a lot of great things about us, but one has to be infallible to put neoconservatism into practice, alas we're not. Lexington's column in this week's issue of The Economist does a great job elaborating my point.
So, I'll make a counter-proposal to the neocon position in the sake of an alternative strategy. Call it the MacGyver Doctrine Version 2.0. Here it is: at the end of the day this doctrine will work towards fewer people in the world that hate the U.S. What will do that? A combination of police action, development, investment in infrastructure, and war when an attack is preeminent. These actions will do more to win over the future generations of potential terrorists than a movement that disguises itself as benevolent when its actions are the opposite.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, my spelling is atricious.

Anonymous said...

get it? atricious?

Anonymous said...

For starters: "My question to you then, 'is there ever a time that you should have?' You sound incredibly naïve"

No, I always knew that terrorism was a potential threat and always will be, but after Iraq that threat has only been amplified. I'm anything but naive, I'm just a realist who looks at the cold numbers and sees that after Iraq moderate Muslims who were sitting on the fence would like to see America burn. Whereas before it was only the extremists out on the fringes. Were there best-selling Turkish films depicting American cruelty in Iraq before this past war? No, that society seems to have gotten off the fence.

But back to the broader point about the neocons, spreading freedom will not be the be-all, end-all to ending terrorism. This pancea is simplistic and weak when held under vigourous "cross-examination." Democracy is in Palestine, has extremism ended there? If neocons real goal in life is to spread freedom, then why aren't we in Belarus, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, or our "allies" in Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia? Again, they say they're looking to spread liberty but lets see if they ever want to invade resource-poor Zimbabwe, or regional ally Saudi Arabia. Seems they only promote the cause of freedom when convenvient.

Freedom will not end extremism. That is naive. A thriving middle class will. Hence India, with the second largest Muslim population in the word, is peaceful. A Global Pew Research Poll reported last year that 71% of Indians had a favorable view of Americans. Let me reinterate-India, with the second largest Muslim population in the world, had the second highest rating of any nationality in the world for the US after Americans themselves who were at 83%. Again, lets concentrate on building a middle class.

Lastly, T.E., I'm sorry that you didn't appreciate my quickly-thrown together military doctrine. I thought it was kind of funny and had fewer holes than anything Rumsfield has ever done.

Anonymous said...

Also, I meant to throw this in: How did the British deal with the Malay asymetric warfare? It wasn't just through combat. It seems that they also spent most of their time building infrastructure.

Lastly: "It all comes down, in my mind, to how one views the international security situation in a post-9/11 world. Mine is based on first-hand experience. Where is yours based?"

Be very careful before you make bombastic statements like these. There are some people in this program who know quite a few things from personal experience about war, poverty, and combat.

Anonymous said...

Al-Sadr is a moderate?

Robert Farley said...

Enforcer,

You didn't just refer to an elite agreement between established, hereditary nobles who essentially enslaved a vast peasantry democracy, did you?

Please tell me you didn't just do that....

Let's be as frank as possible; the insitutions of elective monarchy have virtually nothing to do with liberal democracy as conceived in the modern sense. They are founded on no concept of egalitarianism or of human rights. To invoke Russian elective monarchy as an historical example of the democratic form truly goes beyond the pale. This is equally true of the various other elective monarchy formulas in Europe during and after the medieval period.

It would be better, perhaps, to invoke Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, even though those two also fall far, far short of any modern concept of democracy. Nevertheless, the argument that democracy is some sort of "natural" form of government really does run up against the rocks of history; if it is natural, why is it so rare?

Robert Farley said...

Regarding Bernard Lewis and his discussion of the Middle East, it is quite right to recognize that the current regimes ruling the Middle East were installed by Western, democratic powers such as France and the United Kingdom. However, and perhaps I am simply ignorant on this question, I know of no predecessor regimes that maintained any of the institutions of liberal democracy, including egalitarian voting standards and an appreciation of basic rights.

What the Lewis argument evokes most clearly is the notion that there is no given form of government that is natural on unnatural to a particular people or region. Governments are dependent on institution building.

Robert Farley said...

"I would argue that if the historical record was examined, it could be demonstrated that representative government was present in most societies at some level at one time or another."

Setting aside the violence done to the history by the "Princes of Novgorod" comment, this doesn't fly even on its own merits. Were we to accept that the above statement is true (and there are some examples in some areas), it would say nothing about whether representative forms of governments are natural or no. If representative forms are simply one type that exist among a multiplicity of other forms, then it would be clearly wrong to treat them as some sort of "default" type that human societies revert to upon the collapse of tyrannical institutions. There would be no more reason to assume that tyranny on the scale of Ivan the Terrible was somehow "natural" than there would be to assume that elective democracy was natural.

Robert Farley said...

To follow up once more on the Princes of Novgorod point, consider how violently the Princes would likely have reacted to an attempt to install the kind of democracy and institutions that the United States is currently attempting to establish in Iraq; one person one vote, secure private property for everyone, religious tolerance, a set of individual rights protected from the state, a representative legislature with checks on executive power, and an independent legal system. Indeed, I doubt very much that the Prince of Novgorod would be notably different in their response to reforms of this sort than would Ivan the Terrible.

My point here is that people should resist this kind of facile analogy. I think liberal democracy is great, but you have to recognize that it exists as a set of institutions that take time and effort to develop. To treat it as a default state, or as one with plentiful historical forerunners, is to brutally misuse the historical record.

Robert Farley said...

And as a final final point, Bernard Lewis' status as THE expert on Middle Eastern history is in deep, deep question. Neocons love him, it is true, because he says things that they like. Scholars from other political viewpoints like some aspects of his work, but also argue that his body of research as a whole is deeply flawed. As such, it can't be plausibly argued that Lewis' work represents the scholarly consensus on questions of contemporary Middle East history.

Robert Farley said...

And as a final, final, final point, let me wonder aloud as to the basic connection neocons make between democracy and the collapse of terrorism. Democracies do sprout terrorist movements; this is the case in the United States, with left wing terrorism in the 1960s, right wing terrorism in the 1990s, and a history of terrorism in the South since the end of the Civil War. Ireland, a democracy since 1920, has managed to produce a robust terrorist movement. The same could be said of ETA terrorists in Spain and various left wing terrorist organizations in France, Germany, and Italy during the Cold War.

Liberal democracy is great, but I think it's premature to identify liberal democracy with the end of terror.

Robert Farley said...

Heh.

I have no idea about Dr. Stempel's attitude regarding Bernard Lewis. I have some sense (although a far from complete one) about the general academic appraisal of his work.

But, to return a bit to the Prince's of Novgorod point (and this must now be the longest discussion of the Princes on record in a blog), it's not quite enough for neoconservatives to say that a multiplicity of institutions have existed, and thus might exist in the future. I take this as self-evidently true, and would never argue that Middle Eastern culture somehow PREVENTS liberal democracy from taking root.

However, this isn't the point; if the Soviet Union had successfully invaded the United States with the purpose of replacing the US government with an authoritarian Communist dictatorship, I would expect that the process would take a very long time, would be very bloody and expensive, and might meet with only limited success even given a long term commitment. Replacing and recreating institutions, especially in areas that have no recent experience of such institutions, is dreadfully difficult work at best. This is the heart of Fukuyama's critique of the neocons; at least some of them believed that the simple removal of Saddam Hussein would be enough to bring about democracy in Iraq.

Now, there are now and there probably were then neocons who realized the extent of the task in Iraq. But this produces obvious questions regarding the willingness and ability of the United States to pay the long term costs necessary to supporting a neocon foreign policy.

Anonymous said...

Here is Hitch's response to Fukuyama:

http://www.slate.com/id/2137134/