James Poulos alerted me last week to a provocative piece his fine new outfit Culture11 published, and I’ve been meaning to write about it ever since. Indeed, I still intend to.

In the meantime, however, Andrew Sullivan praised the piece as an attempt to rebuild “a conservative foreign policy” in the wake of Bush/Cheney and in the face of the perilous promise of McCain. If by “conservative”, Andrew meant “not reckless”, then yes, I agree: the above-mentioned piece (by Nick Gvosdev, formerly of The National Interest) is a good place to start the discussion.

But the term “conservative” grates on my ear when applied to foreign policy much like it rankles when Matt Yglesias bandies about a “progressive” agenda for foreign affairs. Quite simply put, such categories do not exist in any meaningful way. There’s a tradition of skeptical isolationism in American foreign policy, which I’d argue Gvosdev’s piece flirts with. And there’s a tradition that seeks to keep America engaged in the world. Among the latter branch, you’ll find realists, liberal internationalists, neoconservatives (or “assertive nationalists”), and a whole bevy of people who fall somewhere in between those three large categories.

Claims for “progressive” or “conservative” foreign policy, to my ear at least, seem to be attempts at capturing one or more of the above traditions in the service of some larger organizing political movement. As such, they are misleading and are not welcome. Neither party, nor either “political persuasion”, has had a monopoly on wisdom or on folly when it comes to these things. Given the enormous challenges we face, finding a “conservative” or “progressive” foreign policy is counter-productive. We should be concentrating on finding the best solutions, period.

After boisterously abusing UK foreign secretary David Miliband using colorful undiplomatic language the other day, it looks like Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov may be getting kicked up to vice premier. Medvedev apparently wants Lavrov out as the face of Russian diplomacy as he is the “living symbol of Russian-Western confrontation”, and steps are being taken to find his replacement:

Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily said that the informal working group on ‘moderate detente’ in relations with the West is headed by Deputy Chief of the Kremlin Staff Alexei Gromov. He has been entrusted with damage control after the Caucasus war, which include steps easing access for foreign investors, releasing persons, considered by the West as “political detainees”. Medvedev set up this group after the reaction of the US and EU on Moscow’s unilateral recognition of Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the daily claims. Several candidates are under consideration to fill Lavrov’s job, including Gromov himself, who is a career diplomat deputed to the Kremlin in 1996, according to the daily.

Detente! What a short Cold War it’s been.

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Christopher Hitchens’ claim that an Obama presidency will mean “more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less”, says:

I can face the idea of a president Obama taking on and finally defeating Osama. In fact, that’s the major reason why I favor his candidacy… . Obama will try to correct the massive stretegic error of the Iraq invasion and pivot Western allies toward a greater focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that Obama will be able to do this with much less global p.r. blowback than McCain and that the support president Obama will get from our European allies will dwarf McCain’s.

First of all, I should point out that I, too, would welcome a President Obama “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” For what it’s worth, I could face a Honeydew-Beaker Administration “taking on and finally defeating Osama.” (Hey, I wouldn’t even mind if it happened in the next 3-4 months, under Bush, but I get the feeling that happenstance might upset someone…)

What I really wanted to draw attention to is Sullivan’s assumption that Obama will be able to formally and officially expand the Afghanistan problem into an Afghanistan-Pakistan problem with “much less global p.r. blowback than McCain.” Au contraire. I expect there will be more blowback against Obama.

Right now, he can ride high on a wave of global public support, but those thronging masses in Berlin and elsewhere are supporting him because they expect something in return: a massive rupture with Bush-era foreign policy. Since this is inchoate mob opinion we’re talking about here, it wouldn’t do to overanalyze it; basically they want more talk, fewer bombs, and they think he’s the one who’s going to give that to them. Americans, on the other hand, seem more inclined to take him at his word on his promises to get tough with Pakistan (though they still favor McCain on national security issues).

Something tells me that, if it comes to a choice between upsetting Americans’ expectations, and upsetting the world’s, the President of the United States is going to side with…well, the United States. And this is going to cut across a number of issues besides Afghanistan/Pakistan, as Slate pointed out awhile back:

If his diplomats or military advisers told him that the Iranians perceived his willingness to talk as a sign of weakness, he might reconsider his pledge to meet with the Iranian president as quickly as he now promises. Maybe when presented with confidential data gathered by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, he would be less keen to drop all the measures taken by Bush and criticized by the opposition. Maybe his belief that “the United States needs to lead the world in ending this genocide” in Darfur would put him at odds with reality or with some members of the international community. In each of these cases, Obama would suffer the consequences of high expectations. He would be trapped between the desire to preserve his high standing in the world and the need to act in ways that would erode that standing. Of course—his advisers would argue—it is better to have this political goodwill in the first place. But even if that were true, political goodwill should always be handled delicately. Starting modestly and building up is also an option, sometimes a better one if you aim to keep expectations realistic. (This, I think, is the way John McCain would play his cards internationally.)

It’s undeniable that the “get tough on Pakistan” rhetoric is good for Obama’s short-term political interests. The world simply isn’t listening as closely to the candidates’ statements as are Americans, so it’s easier for them to bask in the unadulterated glow of St. Barack. But if Obama wins in November, he may soon come to realize that hell hath no fury like a Berliner scorned.

It’s refreshing to see that intelligent people dealing with facts on the ground in Iraq—like David Petraeus—dismiss “victory” talk as too simplistic. It’s a shame that the Republican party, traditionally the party of cold-blooded realpolitik, has hitched its wagon to the neoconservative project, because it allows the other side to plausibly claim that mere sanity in foreign policy is somehow “progressive”.

I duly note Damir’s concerns about McCain-Palin’s scary Georgia statements.

And yet I note that Palin studiously avoided mentioning a military response or a military presence, unless one were to read “vigilance” and “support” as codewords for boots on the ground. I agree it makes Palin’s bit about NATO—shall we say—less than coherent. But Obama and his foreign policy advisers apparently agree almost point by point with this policy that Damir calls scary.

I think what this points to is the fact that certain elements of American foreign policy these days are idées fixes that cross party lines. And until someone comes along once again to smash these ideas with a hammer, Nietzsche-like, then we will find that foreign policy folly is a bipartisan issue.

UPDATE: I dumbly did not click through to read the original source comments on that Palin interview, where she spells out more explicitly that, yes, NATO membership means the possibility of a war. But I stand by the fact that Obama has unfortunately matched the McCain-Palin position.

ABC releases some snippets of the Palin interview:

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO? PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia. GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus. PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO. Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but… GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia? PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help. But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members. We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today. GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade. PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries. And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to. It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Where to begin…?

Sarah Palin is a quick study, a sharp pupil. Too bad she’s learning from some of the most dangerous people with the most pernicious ideas about foreign policy.

I know I’m a one-note kinda guy, but see Fukuyama:

If Cheney and McCain were really serious about protecting Georgia’s territorial integrity, why wait for NATO? We protect plenty of countries like Korea and Japan through bilateral arrangements, and could decide to deploy a battalion or two of American ground forces, or some squadrons of F-16s, to Georgia tomorrow.

Why not? Because if we could find the forces ready to go fight given our other global commitments, there would be no way to stop Russia from overwhelming them short of threatening nuclear war.

I don’t know if Palin’s thought through this with any amount of care, but that’s what her gambit boils down to: a nuclear standoff over Georgia and the Ukraine.

All while we’re trying to:

• contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions;
• deal with a deteriorating situation in Pakistan;
• if Kim Jong Il dies, contain the mess in North Korea;
• assure “victory” in Iraq, whatever that means.

This isn’t a criticism of Palin, of course. I’m assuming she’s just been indoctrinated. It’s a criticism of McCain’s reckless foreign policy which continues to scare the hell out of me.

[Edit: added the bullets. It was late and my writing was as clear as mud.]

A badly fractured (far right, pro-Russian) Radical Party in Serbia.

Yes, the Bush Administration approached Kosovo’s recognition reflexively and without much forethought. But in this case, their decision seems to be paying dividends.

(Why it matters: here and here.)

Ezra Klein (via Monsieur Poulos) reads an interview with McCain foreign policy guru Randy Scheunemann and rightly gets scared. I take issue with part of his great power conflict analysis, however (as does James):

One thing worth keeping in mind about great power conflicts is that they’re rarely inevitable. At times, France and England have been at war, and at times they’ve been allies. A lot of it has to do with how leaders interact with each other, and whether they aggressively court conflict or publicly seek a constructive relationship. If you court conflict, soon enough, the other country does, and both sides build up a narrative of slights and provocations — many of them quite real — that lead to war and discord. But it is a choice: You can decide whether you want a relationship defined by transgressions and stare-downs, or whether you want a relationship where the overriding narrative is of alliance and both sides work to play down points of disagreement. Scheunemann, here, is courting conflict, and as McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, that’s a pretty good indicator for how a McCain administration would look.

Yes, the American electorate will choose one candidate over another. And some small subset of the voters may in fact base that choice on the candidate’s foreign policy views. So in that very narrow present tense sense, we do face a sort of choice between confrontationalist nationalism and consensus-building internationalism.

But in the grand historical scheme of things, I’d argue that great power conflict is indeed inevitable. One should look at Scheunemann and McCain as merely the latest incarnation of the “hard-liner” type, one that will forever be with us, and one that will sporadically come to power in our nation and in others. No number of institutional frameworks will prevent this all too human tendency from bubbling up at the most inopportune times in history.

To admit this is not to be fatalistic—this election matters and I find the McCain team’s rhetoric unsettling. I just reject the suggestion that great power conflict is a recurring simple error in judgment (one that can be implicitly corrected in the enlightened future) rather than one of the main, enduring motors of history.

This kind of strategy (via Yglesias), vague as it is, would work hand-in-glove with “dignity promotion”. And as a statement of purpose, it’s better and more hard-nosed than what Obama’s team offered. Nevertheless, passages like these give me pause:

Arrogant talk of helping rising powers become “responsible stakeholders” should be replaced with words of respect derived in part from America’s enduring position of strength. There is no obvious reason why China should be considered a strategic competitor rather than partner, and talk of inevitable conflict is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There’s an underlying assumption here that it’s American haughtiness which is leading to international instability. I couldn’t agree less. I’d say, rather, that words of respect ought to be derived from America’s recognition of the limits of its strength. There’s no obvious reason why we should assume a priori that China wants to partner with us rather than compete with us. We may want to cooperate with them because we realize that our era of dominating East Asia is at an end.

What’s required is candid assessment of our positions of strength and a retrenching of sorts. A healthy dose of “Smart Power” could help us reclaim a certain legitimacy in the world, to be sure, but we must not forget the uncompromising, bleak nature of the international system. There’s nothing to indicate that we, the human race, are past the bloody-minded scramble for supremacy that has marked every single epoch of our existence to date.

Spencer Ackerman’s done the legwork and interviewed a slew of Obama’s foreign policy advisors to get a sense of his administration’s direction and priorities. Spencer’s thrilled, I’m less so.

This is why, Obama’s advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise—because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place.

Dignity promotion sounds like something USAID or the World Bank should be doing. It’s a valid goal, one which an Obama’s administration ought to pursue by generously funding agencies tasked with achieving it. And as a means of fighting terrorist organizations, it makes far more sense than the balls-out military approach which has been so spectacularly failing these past 7 years.

But in his drive to transcend the mindset that got us into Iraq, Obama seems to be staking far too much on this new approach. We should be thinking about our relationships with China and Russia, about the extent of our commitment to Taiwan, Georgia and the Ukraine, and about energy security for us and our allies in the face of rising competitors. Dignity promotion gives short shrift to big picture geostrategic thinking by promoting nebulous notions of global welfare above those of individual state actors. We ignore the fact that China and Russia are playing a zero-sum self-aggrandizing game at our own peril.