Tension between realists and idealists is healthy, to a point

I happened upon a great analysis of the creative tension between idealist and realist streams of thought in American foreign policy in the current edition of Andrei Cherny's new journal, "Democracy: A Journal of Ideas." (Incidently, Mr. Cherny was a member of Vice President Gore's speech writing team and I had the chance to meet him several times through common friends and on the campaign trails. He is very bright young man with a promising future. His journal may be accessed on-line by going to http://democracyjournal.org.)

The article is titled "Bipolar: American foreign policy will never be wholly realist or idealist–and that's a good thing." Written by "Democracy" managing editor Clay Risen, the article's central thesis is that a kind of perpetual dialectic has existed in American foreign policy circles since at least the time of President Truman to the present. Further, Mr. Risen argues that neither side every really gets the upper hand, which is good for America. I've attached a short paragraph below for your review. Please visit the web site for the full article.

"...[American theologian Reinhold] Niebuhr’s most vaunted achievement (in this realm, at least) is to continue reminding us that we are a morally compromised nation and that humility must be a part of any foreign policy. But his subtler, though no less significant, lesson is that the genius of American political life lies in its refusal to be captured by one way of thinking. Speaking of the tension between liberalism and conservatism in "The Irony of American History," Niebuhr wrote, 'The triumph of the wisdom of common sense over these two types of wisdom is, therefore, primarily the wisdom of democracy itself, which prevents either strategy from being carried through to its logical conclusion. There is an element of truth in each position which becomes falsehood, precisely when it is carried through too consistently.' And just as the strength of our democratic system arises from the never-resolved tension between two political beliefs, so too does the strength of our foreign policy arise, pragmatically, from the eternal tension between idealism and realism. Our foreign policy will always be protean, because we can never be truly idealist or realist–indeed, if we were, we would no longer be American.

Mr. Risen's analysis is refreshing after listening to endless diatribe's from the two camp's partisans. Perhaps this tension between the idealists and realists is good for a democracy. I only hope that enough common ground can be found between the two opposing sides to take corrective action before irreversible harm weakens America abroad and at home.

Antonio can't save the kids by tacking between the unions and reformers

Los Angeles has been all aflutter since Antonio Villaraigosa won his race for mayor. As the first 100 days ticked by, the city waited in hushed anticipation for the expected whirlwind of proposals and ideas to transform our city. Now many hundreds of days later, what does Mr. Villaraigosa have to show for himself: a pilot project for him to dabble in a half-dozen inner-city schools; a call for more trees in the city; and now a mayorial veto of a lawsuit settlement from a black firefighter who was fed dog food by his white station mates.

Let's examine the fire department lawsuit for a moment. It is telling about the current state of affairs in Los Angeles politics. A black firefighter is fed dog food by his white mates. When he complains, he is harassed by the fire department. He is humiliated and embarrassed. He finally files a lawsuit after his complaint is ignored. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo negotiates a two million dollar settlement with the firefighter, which the Council approves. Then conservative talk radio hosts fan the flames of redneck ire. Mayor Villaraigosa vetos the settlement, followed soon thereafter by Councilman Weiss and other members who do an about face and also rail against a settlement (even though they had been aware of all the mitigating evidence.

Mayorial politics is partially about appearances. What does the Mayor's action say about whether racism will be tolerated in the Fire Department? I believe that the Mayor's decision will cost the City a great deal more than $2 million in future years by allowing such behavior to go unpunished. What does Councilman Weiss' behavior say about whether he is qualified to be City Attorney after Delgadillo is termed out? It says that the chances of him being something more than the Mayor's lap dog as City Attorney is diminishing my the minute.

Unfortunately, this failure to deal with this crisis in a direct manner shows a serious lack of leadership and leaves us all with a bad taste in our mouths.

Say it ain't so, Antonio!

America's proverbial ass can't be saved by ideology alone

Since my last post, there has been a sea change in Washington. The Democrats took control of Congress, Secretary Rumsfield resigned and the Iraq Study Group has released its caustic findings with regard to our strategy in the larger Middle East scene. So where do we go from here?

The realists, clearly on the ascendancy, appear to be calling for a slow disengagement from Iraq with a greater emphasis put on advising the balkanized Iraqi government. Additionally, much to Israel's chagrin, the study group linked the Israeli-Palestine conflict with the civil war in Iraq. Implied in the group's findings is the barely veiled message that we should clean up our mess and get back to business as usual.

If we follow their stated and implied aims, our ground forces will slowly fade into remote desert bases and train an officer corp that is at least nominally devoted to preserving the Iraqi Constitution (and U.S. interests) while they are not off moonlighting as death squad commanders. Under the realist view, the situation will reach a status quo in a few years and we can continue pumping oil out of the ground to feed Western economies while world attention fades and propped-up dictatorships continue to put the screws on their restive populations.

Meanwhile, the men formerly known as neo-cons are spending their time denying they are or ever were members of the vast right-wing cabal or else blaming Bush for bungling their perfectly idealized plan. "If only we had leveled a few more countries while we had a chance," you can almost hear them lament.

In my view, both paths lead to defeat for America. Let's start with the easy one first. No one but a few self-important think tank geeks and meth-smoking evangelical preachers ever really believed that America, Britain and Israel could transform the Middle East into a new Garden of Eden by killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, turning Sunni against Shia and ramming a comically-naive Constitution down the throats of shell shocked survivors. America's democracy was created at the barrel of American muskets. It appears that the neo-cons expected to create Middle East democracy at the barrel of American warheads. Democracy doesn't work that way.

Let's face it, we are an occupying colonial power. It's nothing to be ashamed of. The Greeks, Romans and Brits did it for centuries. Let's just not pretend we're something that we're not. (Newt Gingrich has pointed this fact out on national television recently in what appears to be an almost erotic glee. Good for him... not that he's right but because he had a little thing poking around in his pants at the thought of himself as Viceroy of Iraq, I mean.)

So I guess what I'm saying is that all the nice talk about promoting democracy, and all, from the neo-cons was really about promoting American imperialism. Hmm. But aren't all those authoritarian governments in the Middle East pro-American (at least when they're not funding terrorists)? Hmm. So let me think this through since I get confused so easily. The neo-cons want to overthrow the authoritarian but pro-American Middle East governments in order to create a group of American colonial possessions in their place. I'm not the most sophisticated guy around but is seems like a lot of work to get us right back to where we already were at the dawn of this decade.

Which gets me to the realists. As I stated in my previous post, the layout of the Middle East IS our creation. We made it and have maintained the current status quo since the 1950s. So why is one hand of American government trying to destroy what another half spent a half century building?

Well, I guess that's what happens in a democracy. The realists spent lifetimes triangulating and posturing and drinking tea with sultans to get a situation whereby American was free to stoke the fire of free enterprise with cheap oil. All the Prius drivers with smug looks are delusional if they think they're not culpable because their energy efficient cars and the roads they drive on were built with the blood of dead and tortured people in the Middle East. It is not pretty but it is true.

So we have a situation where realists and neo-cons are having what is generally viewed as a somewhat abstract policy debate over foreign policy. Well the consequences of their in-fighting is tearing our country apart. The worst thing that could happen now would be for a stalemate between the two camps.

Here's a possibility. Perhaps we could pull our rear out of the fire with a bit of realist house cleaning. When that is done, we need to take a little bit (emphasis on little) of neo-con idealism to help work through the slow process of creating a world that is safer and freer for its inhabitants. It can be done but true believers need to keep their feet planted on the ground and the real-politicos need to put on their dancing shoes.