John C. Hulsman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to The National Interest. He is also an openDemocracy contributor. Currently on the road across America for his book tour (he is the co-author of Ethical Realism: A Vision For America's Role In The World), he agreed to blog his adventures on oD Today.
The Magical Mystery Tour, or How Ethical Realism Fares in the United States
Stop 1: The CATO Institute, Washington, DC. “Where Has He Been?”
In these pages I have recently called for a civil war in the Republican Party. But in many ways what I’m suggesting is more in line with the idea of restoration. Its long past time that the GOP-traditionally the party that champions small, effective, local government, the party of individual liberty, the party of balanced budgets and fiscal sanity-return to its roots. Instead of being the party of neoconservative permanent revolution, sprawling budget deficits, of empire, of an almost limitless view of the powers of the executive branch, of Abu Ghraib and warrentless wiretaps, it is time to remember who we are, and more importantly where we came from. Lets be the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, not Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Even better, I issued this clarion call with a blueprint of redemption to hand, the book I have just completed with my good friend Anatol Lieven, Ethical Realism: A Vision For America’s Role In The World, just published this month by Pantheon Press. In it, we try to rediscover and update the old American creed of ethical realism to take the place of the disastrous sameness of a bellicose but dim neo-conservatism on the right, and the ineffectual bluster of liberal hawks on the left.
In chapter one, we lay out a political road to redemption; the triumph of the moderate doctrine of containment, as championed by those very different men, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. They saw off the challenge of the appeasing left, clustered around Henry Wallace, as well as the Neanderthal Right, exemplified by Douglas MacArthur. In chapter 2, we look at the folly of supporting one of history’s ideological losers, preventive war, a doctrine that failed to work in the Cold War, yet curiously continues to be pushed by such ‘convinced’ supporters of Truman as those clustered around the President on the right, and liberal hawks like Peter Beinart on the left. In chapter three, we look at the attributes underlying the ethical realist creed, as articulated by Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and George Kennan. These include: prudence, humility, study, responsibility, and patriotism. In chapter four, we look to an historical example of a largely successful ordering power that dealt with curiously similar circumstances to those America now finds itself in-Britain between 1815-1914-as a template for how an ordering power ought to maximize its position, as well as create a reasonably stable and tolerably just world.
Finally, and most importantly, we put our creed to the test. Too many books (in fact almost all lately) take well-deserved shots at neo-conservatism, the Bush administration, and the debacle in Iraq. While this is emotionally satisfying, it is intellectually lazy. For without putting something in its place, that is, without developing an alternative and then applying it at the crucial policy level, such intellectual stunts amount to practically nothing. We take ethical realism and apply it to the major foreign policy challenges of today: the Greater Middle East (the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon) and the War on Terror; China and East Asia; Russia; International Trade and Development. Personally, this is what I have found most satisfying about the whole adventure. Delineating a philosophy, from it formulating a strategy, and from this in turn developing policy to deal with the problems of today. It is just such a holistic approach that just might stand a chance to turn both the intellectual and political tide.
But the proof is in the electoral pudding. As Justice Holmes put it, “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Anatol and I are just embarking on a book tour to push book sales into even higher gear. But for both of us it is far more than that. For the next few months we will get a unique chance to test what we’ve written out of the hothouse environment in Washington, getting to see how much of America (and indeed folks in the UK and Germany as well) react to what we are saying. It is this political and intellectual journey that we’d like to share with you, our impressions of America on the edge of critical elections, and indeed, at a real turning point in history. (I’ve enclosed a link here of our present tour stops, though undoubtedly there will be more).
Showdown At The CATO Corral
The first major event occurred this past Tuesday October 10th, at the CATO Institute. A crowd of around 150 (plus C-SPAN) listened to Anatol and I make our case, followed by comments from the diverse panel of Joe Cirincione and Lawrence Kaplan. Anatol had a good day, delineating both the broad principles underlying ethical realism and how they can be used to develop a radically different ethical realist strategy in the Middle East from that practiced by the hapless Bush administration. I followed by following it through to the policy level, specifically looking at the Iran crisis through an ethical realist lens and arriving at startlingly different conclusions from that of the Washington establishment: that moves to weaponization should be the diplomatic line we draw with the Iranians; that reading the NPT literally was an underused diplomatic tool to build consensus among the Permanent Security Council Members (plus Germany); and that an investment freeze threat by Europeans and security guarantees by the Americans were the best coordinated way to change the calculations of the mullahs in Iran. Joe tore the paint off the walls, kindly praising the book, and describing neo-conservatism as a ‘virus that needs to be eradicated.’ We were all on good form, in a bombastic pent-up manner that characterizes the present resurgence of realism. But it was Lawrence Kaplan’s seemingly shocked response to all this (plus the highly sympathetic questions from the audience) that was in many ways most interesting.
For he seemed genuinely puzzled at the vitriol directed at his movement, jokingly saying we should not use the ‘n-word’, slightly distancing himself from the neoconservative movement. But he seemed genuinely surprised that a largely libertarian audience, tough, practical men of the left like Joe and Anatol, and an old Burkean admirer of Eisenhower like myself had found so much in common, and that it centered on replacing all vestiges of the Bush administration’s credo.
This leads to two final thoughts. As someone who constantly travels to Europe, to meet with generally hostile European audiences (rational and otherwise) I certainly admired Lawrence’s courage for showing up and arguing his case in a room that would never be for him. And indeed a number of other neoconservatives turned down the chance to debate us, instead preferring to duck us in favor of continuing to beat up on hapless leftist academics from the East Coat. But I couldn’t help thinking, ‘where has he been for the past two years?” Such is the insular nature of thinking in Washington, which amounts to little more than a series of cottage industries, that we talk only to those who agree with us, whatever our views. Getting away from this sterile approach is a major goal of the tour, and generally a cardinal fault of the neoconservatives.
Secondly, in line with the Euro-federalists who they despise, neoconservatives are going through the claasical stages of dealing with dying. In this case, the victim is their worldview. Lawrence pleaded with us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, not to shelve neo-conservatism and aggressive democracy promotion, just because it led to such a calamity in Iraq. This is a classical case of ‘bargaining’, of trying to keep something (or someone) alive, despite it being far too late. Look for coming variations on this theme, from both liberal hawks and neoconservatives, of the ‘Bush is a moron’ defense. That it’s all the fault of the bumbling administration, and the precepts underlying what they attempted remain good. This reminds me of what a certain type of particularly bankrupt European intellectual says today about communism: ‘it was a fine idea miserably implemented.’ Actually it was a god-awful idea miserably implemented. The same goes for the coming apologies from the neoconservatives and the liberal hawks. It is up to the rest of us to keep our eye on the ball, and not let this shell game escape us. For while it is undoubtedly true (given the torrents of new books out on the subject) that the Bush administration was tragically inept, that should not obscure the central truth: An abhorrent ideology got us into this mess, and it must be junked on the ash heap of history.
