A great international policy discussion...

Four really great essays around Bush's policy in Iraq in the Winter 2005 edition of the National Interest...

The National Interest...

It never ceases to amaze me how the most recognized authors are, generally, the ones who have the most valuable things to say...

Conservative Daniel Pipes and liberal Joe Nye write two of the four essays and they are both very nice reviews of both the the very thoughtful essay by David Hendrickson and Robert Tucker in the previous Fall 2005 edition of the National Interest...

Hendrickson and Tucker make a powerful case for both an idealism that seeks to spread democracy and freedom...and yet a serious concern about how force may be used to accomplish that...and a very powerful case that America's founders, of all ideological stripes, looked upon such efforts with suspicion...

Joe's skepticism of the idea that democracy can be forced on a population is compelling (a notion I agree with, though I think, as does Joe, that there is much good that can come -- and has come, in the case of Iraq -- with military intervention in tyrannies, as long as such interventions support and are supported by grassroots efforts and more democratic impulses within those countries...a situation that Iraq is a unique case for, rather than a general example of, and a case of where such democratic impulses must be more fully engaged to ensure that fewer innocent Iraqis and American and other soldiers die for that cause)...

Pipes calls for a modest, patient idealism in the cause of advancing democracy abroad...he is still more complacent about the problems that come with using force to promote more modern, democratic governments than I or Joe...

Daniel Pipes...Defending and Advancing Freedom...Commentary Magazine, November 2005...

...but his idealism that a commitment to democracy should be expected for Arab governments and societies is a patient and tempered one that I agree is the more useful outlook...

Pipes doesn't seem to recognize the likely, albeit complicated, causality of fundamentalist Islamist reactions and subsequence governance in Algeria and Iran from our support of modernizing dictators -- the two examples he cites of to justify American support of modernizing autocrats to avoid radical fundamentalist reactionaries taking power - and instead excuses it with the reasoning that the likely consequences from our actions justify the policy that likely created the consequences that we were trying to avoid...I, too, sympathize with the reasoning for supporting the more civilized, though dictatorial, governments amongst a terrible set of options...but I do think that America and international policy thinkers should take note of the consequences of supporting such dictators without addressing in our diplomacy the problems with those dictatorships for the people who they rule...meaning, if we want peoples in places like Algeria and Iran to turn away from fundamentalists, we better support both better governing coalitions, in those countries, with our words more than with our arms or our money, and openly criticize the autocratic tendencies of those dictatorships, as President Bush has done a very fine job of doing, I believe...

Joe points to both the very serious advances that have come with a better expectation of Middle Eastern governments and societies and the very serious problems that come with using force to advance the cause...Joe notes the advances of democracy with municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the withdrawal of Syrian troops and elections in Lebanon, modest allowances for opposition in Egypt, and democratic progress in countries like Bahrain, Morocco, and Togo...but he is skeptical of the idea that such progress and future progress is or can be promoted through threats of military upheaval...the difficulties arising from indigineous resistance to the American presence in Iraq being the clearest caution to such a notion...

Pipes and Nye both see the powerful idealism that animates this war...and the advances its promoted...and share Hendrickson and Tucker's concern about promoting such efforts through force...though Pipes is more ambivalent about the question of whether such efforts might work, expressing some support for them in the Commentary article, while expressing doubt about whether they will be effective, long term, in Iraq...

One of the important implications of Pipes' and Nye's concerns is a powerful correction to the notion in the Administration, right now, that it will be successfully in threatenening and use military force to transform governments in Syria, Iran, and the like...Daniel seems less sure that such efforts will work...whereas Joe shares my concern that they do not work, generally, not just in the case of Iraq...a notion that has produced caution amongst most of the Administration's observers except for its most serious cheerleaders...and their thoughts are certainly corrective to Robert Kaplan's foolhardy notion of American empire...

Nye's essay is predictably brilliant...and Pipes' essay is as good as always...but what is particularly important about Pipes' comments is that he is pointing the direction to a more authentic, idealistic and democratic conservativism, in contrast with the cynical and ugly rationalizations of Robert Kaplan's thesis of American empire...

The future of the world...of America...and of American conservativism, liberalism, and independent and non-partisan thinking is around classical and important values of freedom and democracy...values that we are foolish to abandon for fantasies of world power...fantasies that both scare others in a way that undermines our credibility and leadership and the values and example we seek others to emulate, learn from, and grow with, along with Americans and our government...

And Daniel Pipes and Joe Nye illustrate why the strongest thinkers are so committed to such values...even as they share, as do I, a commitment to ending tyranny in all its forms...

Check out this discussion when you get a chance:):)...

Love,
Ben