Letters to the Editor
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What would it take
For more American media to realize that there are a lot of people interested in serious foreign policy questions, and maybe, they could even make a buck by presenting some? Anybody?
Or do they feel people in the US are too scared to think about the world without blinders on?
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Your point about the bi-partisan nature of this area is interesting...
but if a Republican had said the same thing as Obama, wouldn't the mainstream media have reported it as both "practical" and yet "tough?"
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There are a few dissenters out there
There are a few foreign policy dissenters that have been dissenting for quite a while, Zinn, Chomsky, Fisk, and ... uh ... a handful of other professors. But none of these guys are ever allowed into the "scholar at a think tank" club. You can't even mention those names on television without getting your mike cut. The whole "serious" thing is just a ruse to keep certain ideas from ever being mentioned.
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By their works : The Baker Hamilton Report
The pattern over the last 6 years has been that the crazies in the Bush Administration do whatever they want & then the Establishment convinces itself that it's being listened to by getting even crazier itself. Their epic work last year was the Baker-Hamilton report, which, though ignored in practice, provides a very clear map to Establishment thought. What got my attention was the huge level of often self contradictory detail. The first point about the oil industry was that we should convince the Iraqis that we don't want to control their oil. This was followed by 6 very detailed points about how the Iraqis should run their oil industry & distribute its revenues.
Yeah, they're eejits.
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Ignorance and cowardice
In reality, the great majority of those who are labeled by themselves and by others as foreign policy experts are anything but. Their only real expertise is to figure out the prevailing orthodoxy, particularly when an aggressive right wing regime is in power, and generally conform to it. How many of these "experts" were actually willing to discuss the very fundamental issue of whether a country has the legal and moral right to send its military into another sovereign country and occupy it. Take O'hanlon for example. I could have a 5 minute discussion with him and prove to anybody needing a proof that his knowledge of Iraq is rudimentary at best and that he wouldn't be able to tell the difference if the level of violence at any given time was either up or down by 50 percent. The scary thing is that most of those so called experts are actually more ignorant and more clueless than him.
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The "unserious" Anthony Cordesman
Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack weren’t the only ones on that trip to Iraq there were others like Anthony Cordesman, but he came back with a completely different view that didn’t serve the administration’s propaganda blitz - so he’s not to be taken seriously.
The “unserious” Cordesman:
“It is scarcely surprising that my perceptions of a recent trip to Iraq are different from that of two of my traveling companions and those of several other recent think tank travelers to the country.
From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence.”
Nothing to see here, just move along. It’s time to look for someone “we know who is serious or honest enough to talk to regardless of what their politics may be.”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/08/breaking_iraq_t.php
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Glenn, I think you are way off base here
Foreign policy circles in Washington may or may not be lamed in the same way as the Beltway media. But the development of foreign policy does not work at the behest of the press, and its "seriousness."
And so far, none of the major Democratic candidates appears to be hostage to the ideas of Beltway (or even Ivy league) thinkers. Foreign policy is shaped by domestic as well as international actors and agents, HRC and Edwards both seem aware of this.
Samantha Powers may have done some pathbreaking work on the way that the US has paid lipservice to the jus cogens norms against genocide without really enforcing them, but her memo really only delineates the differences between what the democratic field as a whole would do and what GWB has done. It doesn't really set out a new paradigm for foreign policy, just some common-sense approaches that probably all the democratic nominees would feel comfortable with.
If you want a sense of what a real, path breaking foreign policy might look like, here are some suggestions:
(1) The US should work to dismantle sovereign immunity for violations of international law by: (a) subjecting all US persons to the full jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court; (b) charging our own war criminals, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush for their crimes against the Iraqi people
(2) Systematically creating and enforcing international legal norms against torture and genocide;
(3) Creating an enforceable norm against pre-emptive war in all circumstances outside of those authorized the the UN Security Council.
(4) Creating and sustaining an international legal order against environmental damage and global warming;
(5) Taking real steps to eliminate the US nuclear arsenal and create enforceable norms against nuclear proliferation;
I could go on.
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People and mandarins
Well, we will talk about such things, and we will vote, whether the mandarins like it or not. Their pole star may be American military power, and our willingness to use it, but ours is not. (I think that's what you call democracy. Everyone gets a ticket to the Disneyland of political discourse, and an E-ticket at that.)
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Just how wrong and for how long?
One of the best questions I heard posed at YKos was just how wrong do these expert scholars have to be and for how long before people stop listening to them and quoting them. I guess a bit longer.
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I don't know that I agree...
The issue, if there is one, with Obama's comment is not that he was discussing with the American people our foreign policy. It's that he was discussing with the Pakistani people our foreign policy.
Bush was rightly excoriated for saying openly that, if China attacked Taiwan, we would defend them. It was not foolish to say this "on its merits"--most people here would agree that defending Taiwan would be both a moral and strategic imperative--but because it emboldens pro-independence forces in Taiwan, and creates a face-saving problem for the Chinese government, which they generally respond to with bombast and threats. It costs us money and international reputation.
Obama's comments, aguably, create a similar issue by giving Pakistani "Islamists" a stick to beat Musharraf with; and while Musharraf is no great friend or ally, we need to ask ourselves: who will rule if he falls? How does it benefit us to weaken his standing?
The principle at issue here is strategic ambiguity, and all nations use it as an important foreign policy tool (e.g., China's ambiguous assertion of sovereignty in the South China Sea). I'm also not sure I agree with your assertion of "secrecy" on the part of the foreign policy community; you can find a lot of frank discussion of the very issues you speak of in, say, Foreign Affairs. It doesn't really matter, from a policy perspective, if you or I or some other gadfly or even a Serious Foreign Policy Analyst™ says that we should attack Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan with or without the approval of the sovereign ruler of that country. If and when Barak Obama becomes president, however, is previous unambiguous statements on the subject will, without doubt, have substantial foreign policy implications, not only for the U.S., but for Pakistan as well.
The only thing left to argue about, really, is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. By making such a statement, Obama has failed to walk softly; however, this could even work to his advantage, as long as he carries a big stick.