Or something. It isn't clear exactly what Krauthammer would do. The war in Iraq, the great campaign of modern Republican neo-conservative thought, was designed to show our capability to use our military to replace leaders we didn't like, and to intervene in Middle Eastern politics in muscular, assertive ways that better served our interests. That didn't go so well. With that disaster behind them, neo-cons like Krauthammer get a little clammy and quivery when it comes time to map out alternatives to Obama's foreign policy; quick to criticize it, they can't really offer anything in its place.
As I said in a previous post, Obama is clearly mapping out a foreign policy response to the Arab Spring that is designed to support the emergence of civil society and democratic institutions. In an address to the Group of 8, Hillary Clinton was specific:
The recent riots and protests throughout the region have
brought the challenge of transition into sharp relief. Extremists are clearly determined to hijack
these wars and revolutions to further their agendas and ideology, so our
partnership must empower those who would see their nations emerge as true
democracies.
This perspective isn't new, and it hasn't always been viewed as a sign of weakness or liberal limp-wristedness that we would use foreign policy and international aid to assist countries in their transition to democracy.
One of the most influential foreign policy books of the late 1960s was Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies. Huntington was an influential Harvard political scientist, whose views were more conservative than his peers'. In Political Order in Changing Societies, Huntington argued:
Most later modernizing countries lack traditional political institutions capable of successful adaptation to the needs of the modern state. Hence minimizing the likelihood of political instability resulting from the expansion of political consciousness and involvement requires the creation of political institutions, i.e., political parties, early in the process of modernization.
This seems hard to argue with, although I think it makes sense to expand the focus beyond parties, to include other organizations and mediating forces common to contemporary politics. The goal should be to develop civil society, the institutionalized network of groups that take grievances and political desires and refashion them into attainable agendas. Huntington captures this idea elsewhere in the book:
Political modernization involves the expansion of political consciousness to new social groups and the mobilization of these groups into politics. Political development involves the creation of political institutions sufficiently adaptable, complex, autonomous, and coherent to absorb and order the participation of these new groups and to promote social and economic change in the society.
Again, exactly right. What Huntington got wrong was his insistence that our policy should be to aid the military in democratizing countries as a way of creating order during the transition. As we saw throughout the southern cone of South America through the 1960s and 1970s, once given the keys to the palace, the military is reluctant to give them up. Huntington's views, like those of many in his generation, were shaped by his fear of communist expansion. In his view, communists possessed many of the attributes political parties needed to succeed in the transitional period leading to wider mass political participation. They had a temporary advantage. The military, as the only "modern" institution in these developing societies, could protect and cultivate less radical political parties, while suppressing the communists long enough to allow more acceptable alternatives to mature. I think it should go without saying, any U.S. approach to the Arab Spring formulated along these assumptions would be doomed to failure.
Romney's approach, if we take the effort to try to discern one from the fog of his imprecision and evasion, is equally misguided. At his recent address at the Clinton Global Initiative, Romney argued for replacing American foreign aid strategies with a new effort to funnel money to "innovators" and "entrepreneurs." Like his view of domestic policy, Romney seems to believe the only problem in Egypt and Libya is that we don't drop enough money into the laps of the wealthy. Huntington, himself, argued against this simplistic vision. Countries aren't unstable because they are poor, they become unstable as they become wealthier and more developed. One thing actors fight over in unstable, transitional societies is the growing inequality of wealth. And, again wearing his anti-communist lenses, Huntington sees this as formidable challenge. By focusing on inequality, radical voices gain an advantage in societies with vast gaps in income. In a Romney presidency, where we repurpose our foreign aid machinery to drop bags of cash into the hands of foreign plutocrats, we would see growing instability as the masses struggle to find political solutions without the benefit of successfully institutionalized parties and electoral systems. It seems clear that poverty and poor educational systems and economic backwardness creates misery and desperation in some Arab countries. But the solution isn't to make the wealthy richer. The solution is to build political institutions capable of giving a voice to all across the political spectrum, in ways that allow productive conversations about policy options. How we respond to the Arab Spring opens up an opportunity to create policy models we can put in place elsewhere, for example, in responding to the upcoming challenges we will certainly see in Africa over the next few years.
Update: For an additional comment on Romney's incomprehensible Foreign policy views, read Roger Cohen's recent column from the New York Times.
Most later modernizing countries lack traditional political institutions capable of successful adaptation to the needs of the modern state. Hence minimizing the likelihood of political instability resulting from the expansion of political consciousness and involvement requires the creation of political institutions, i.e., political parties, early in the process of modernization.
This seems hard to argue with, although I think it makes sense to expand the focus beyond parties, to include other organizations and mediating forces common to contemporary politics. The goal should be to develop civil society, the institutionalized network of groups that take grievances and political desires and refashion them into attainable agendas. Huntington captures this idea elsewhere in the book:
Political modernization involves the expansion of political consciousness to new social groups and the mobilization of these groups into politics. Political development involves the creation of political institutions sufficiently adaptable, complex, autonomous, and coherent to absorb and order the participation of these new groups and to promote social and economic change in the society.
Again, exactly right. What Huntington got wrong was his insistence that our policy should be to aid the military in democratizing countries as a way of creating order during the transition. As we saw throughout the southern cone of South America through the 1960s and 1970s, once given the keys to the palace, the military is reluctant to give them up. Huntington's views, like those of many in his generation, were shaped by his fear of communist expansion. In his view, communists possessed many of the attributes political parties needed to succeed in the transitional period leading to wider mass political participation. They had a temporary advantage. The military, as the only "modern" institution in these developing societies, could protect and cultivate less radical political parties, while suppressing the communists long enough to allow more acceptable alternatives to mature. I think it should go without saying, any U.S. approach to the Arab Spring formulated along these assumptions would be doomed to failure.
Romney's approach, if we take the effort to try to discern one from the fog of his imprecision and evasion, is equally misguided. At his recent address at the Clinton Global Initiative, Romney argued for replacing American foreign aid strategies with a new effort to funnel money to "innovators" and "entrepreneurs." Like his view of domestic policy, Romney seems to believe the only problem in Egypt and Libya is that we don't drop enough money into the laps of the wealthy. Huntington, himself, argued against this simplistic vision. Countries aren't unstable because they are poor, they become unstable as they become wealthier and more developed. One thing actors fight over in unstable, transitional societies is the growing inequality of wealth. And, again wearing his anti-communist lenses, Huntington sees this as formidable challenge. By focusing on inequality, radical voices gain an advantage in societies with vast gaps in income. In a Romney presidency, where we repurpose our foreign aid machinery to drop bags of cash into the hands of foreign plutocrats, we would see growing instability as the masses struggle to find political solutions without the benefit of successfully institutionalized parties and electoral systems. It seems clear that poverty and poor educational systems and economic backwardness creates misery and desperation in some Arab countries. But the solution isn't to make the wealthy richer. The solution is to build political institutions capable of giving a voice to all across the political spectrum, in ways that allow productive conversations about policy options. How we respond to the Arab Spring opens up an opportunity to create policy models we can put in place elsewhere, for example, in responding to the upcoming challenges we will certainly see in Africa over the next few years.
Update: For an additional comment on Romney's incomprehensible Foreign policy views, read Roger Cohen's recent column from the New York Times.
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