But greater political participation by Islamist groups is very likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can ultimately work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities around the world. The age is long since gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations and produce stability indefinitely. New social actors are mobilizing everywhere, from Bolivia and Venezuela to South Africa and the Persian Gulf. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing.
If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.
The Bush administration has been walking — indeed, sprinting — away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. Condoleezza Rice gave a serious speech in January about "transformational diplomacy" and has begun an effort to reorganize the nonmilitary side of the foreign-policy establishment, and the National Security Strategy document is being rewritten. All of these are welcome changes, but the legacy of the Bush first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarizing that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance American ideals and interests in the coming years. The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics.
Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.
I can't even express how much I want you to follow the link and go through the whole article. It is the most sympathetic, and yet still scary, exegisis of the neoconservatives' global good intentions that have had us on the road to hell these past years.
Like communism, neoconservativism is idealistic rather than pragmatic. In the words of one critic,
God save us from politicians who believe that the Platonic world if ideals will apply directly to the messy reality of true Democracy.
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Comments: 6
But, I'll take it as a sign of cracks in the veneer, and a signal of hope -- not because it shows weakness on the side of the neocons, but because it opens up a basis for dialogue at some important levels among people in widely separated philosophical positions.
This is not something for liberals to bludgeon neocons with, but even more hopefully, something for true conservatives to use to welcome neocons back into their fold.
I should rather be in dialogue with a true conservative, any day, rather than stonewalled by a neocon with ideology so strong that compromise and dialogue are impossible.
I agree with your last paragraph. I have had many a fruitful discussion with thoughtful conservatives. The people I can't talk with are the ones who shout doctrine at me. I thought Richard Nixon said it very well (though, as often happened with Nixon, he didn't live up to his own high-minded pronouncements) in his first inaugural address when he called for a lowering of voices. "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speek quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."
Unfortunately, with the Republican shouting going on, I'm afraid Democrats have to do some shouting of their own just to be heard -- which is why I don't share your distaste for Air America radio.
The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
What does largely Jewish add to our understanding of where neoconservativism came from? Is Fukuyama implying neocon support for Israel is based on their Jewishness, rather than other factors? Mentioning CCNY makes it clear that this group spent knew one another and shared a common educational background. What does mentioning their Jewishness add?
My Jewish relatives at that time period were mostly Communists and Syndicalists, and I think that the image of the general public of the Jewish intellectual certainly tends to thinking of all of them as liberals. That's less and less true, I think -- Lieberman perhaps being a prominent case in point.
It also appeals to my sense of humor in history to think of Moynihan as the token added to the original group, but then, I'm so un-PC sometimes.