The coming foreign policy civil wars: part 1 – The Democrats

While it is certainly true that as a campaigner, John Kerry reminds no one of the ghost of Bill Clinton, it is equally true that few regard him as foolish.

Kerry’s victory over the scary Howard Dean (those states whose names Dean screamed out in his moment of self-immolation now all have restraining orders against him) was largely about competence and dignity. In effect, Kerry told Democratic party voters that while they may sympathise with Dean’s more leftish positions, voting for the former Vermont governor is like voting for George McGovern, who campaigned against Richard Nixon in 1972 – it might feel good initially, but it is likely to lead to a Republican landslide, for the country is simply no longer as liberal as it once was.

A vote for Kerry, so the argument went, could lead to the defeat of the hated George W. Bush. With his seriousness and experience, Kerry was far more likely to woo disaffected moderates who are disgusted with both out-of-control spending and Iraq to take the plunge and vote for the Democratic party. In effect, Kerry’s primary victory validated something Republicans had suspected: Democrats hated President Bush more than they loved Howard Dean.

So why does the ultra-serious John Kerry hold such an unserious position on the issue of the day, Iraq? Kerry’s approach, in favour of the war but against the country’s reconstruction, makes absolutely no sense from a policy point of view. In the real world it is ridiculous. Simply breaking things and then immediately leaving the Iraqis to their own devices is not what one would expect to hear from a man who cares desperately about his reputation among the Democratic foreign policy establishment.

In fact, the positions of his two main political rivals in 2004, Howard Dean (against both war and reconstruction) and President Bush’s (for both) are at once more logical, more coherent, and more likely to lead to a positive foreign policy outcome than Kerry’s own.

So what is John Kerry playing at?

The answer lies in internal Democratic party politics. The prospective (still – the Democratic convention that will anoint Kerry is held in Boston from 26-29 July) Democratic nominee’s Iraq policy may make little practical sense – but it makes a world of sense from a political standpoint, and underlies the basic foreign policy division in the Democratic party.

One party, two wings

It is vital to remember that the Democrats split exactly down the middle in the senate over whether to give the president the power to make war in Iraq; half (including Kerry) voted with him, half against. This schism mirrors the fundamental foreign policy differences between “New Democrats” – former President Clinton, secretary-of-state-in-waiting Richard Holbrooke, and Kerry himself – and old-school McGovernite Democrats, epitomised by both Howard Dean and maverick leftist candidate Ralph Nader.

The New Democrats are comfortable with using force for humanitarian as well as national interests (which they look at broadly; Liberia, for example, is somehow a example of the latter), and seek as a priority multilateral validation for their interventions – such as Nato intervention in the Balkans in the mid-1990s. In the Iraq process, their approach pushed for an increased United Nations role at an earlier stage.

For New Democrats, the United States’s international legitimacy is to a large degree bound up in multilateral institutions – even if these institutions (like the UN) lack direct democratic accountability, are filled with dictators, and contain “allies” like the French who attempt to use the institution to hamstring American foreign policy initiatives. In the case of Iraq, this leads New Democrats to believe that international legitimacy (what the UN Security Council’s permanent members think) is at least as important as how Iraqis themselves view the occupation.

This is not at all how today’s McGovernites operate. Along with the far right in the US, they advocate a quasi-isolationist policy – though for diametrically opposed reasons: the far right thinks America is too good for the world, while the far left thinks the world is too good for America.

In both cases such thinking leads to the same policy prescription – do little outside of America’s immediate borders. McGovernites, rightly traumatised by Vietnam, are deeply suspicious of any American foreign policy intervention. They see such ventures as largely driven by the corporate greed of the military-industrial complex, whose resulting inflated defense budget shackles average Americans with an enormous and unnecessary bill.

McGovernites scorn the notion that Iraq is a humanitarian mission; for them, it is about American control of oil. In their eyes, New Democrats are either naïve, gratifying the defense-friendly Republicans, or, even worse, hypocritical, cloaking their own greed behind fine-sounding phrases like “humanitarian intervention”.

The price of victory

There is no doubt that New Democrats have been in the ascendant for some years in the Democratic party. Not since the ruinous polices of Jimmy Carter’s (1976-80) early days in office have McGovernites exhibited any form of dominance in foreign policy decision-making. Kerry’s crushing victory over Dean confirms this historical trend. But it does not make the McGovernites obsolete. In fact, they are central to any hopes Kerry has of becoming president, in a race that may well go down to the wire.

The conventional wisdom in Washington goes like this: Kerry must keep Dean happy to woo McGovernite voters to the Democratic ticket and away from Nader, who currently has the support of about 6% of the electorate – a constituency that, if it stands, could make the difference between a Kerry victory and defeat. Kerry must lean left toward the McGovernites, even if he knows such gestures render much of what he is saying on foreign policy practically incoherent. Kerry’s Houdini act consists of tacking left to secure wavering McGovernites, without alienating the very moderate voters he is ostensibly well-placed to persuade. Somehow he must do both at the same time. Hence, Kerry’s very odd Iraq policy.

The political price of a Kerry presidency is open to debate. One school of thought says that after any victory Kerry could largely ignore the McGovernites and govern as he would wish in foreign policy, from his New Democrat core. Yet in any event, McGovernites are certain to try to exact as high a price as possible in return for their vital support. Thus, a Kerry victory would signal the start of genuine Democratic party infighting – as early as the period between the November 2004 election and the January 2005 inauguration – rather than its end.

But if you think the Democrats are split over foreign affairs, their differences are smaller than the coming civil war between realists and neo-conservatives already breaking out in the Republican party. Intrigued? Watch this space.