"Occasionally the conflict between "what we stand for" and "what we do" has been forthrightly addressed. One distinguished scholar who undertook the task at hand was Hans Morgenthau, a founder of realist international relations theory. In a classic study published in 1964 in the glow of Camelot, Morgenthau developed the standard view that the U.S. has a "transcendent purpose": establishing peace and freedom at home and indeed everywhere, since "the arena within which the United States must defend and promote its purpose has become world-wide." But as a scrupulous scholar, he also recognized that the historical record was radically inconsistent with that "transcendent purpose."
We should not be misled by that discrepancy, advised Morgenthau; we should not "confound the abuse of reality with reality itself." Reality is the unachieved "national purpose" revealed by "the evidence of history as our minds reflect it." What actually happened was merely the "abuse of reality."
The release of the torture memos led others to recognize the problem. In the New York Times, columnist Roger Cohen reviewed a new book, "The Myth of American Exceptionalism," by British journalist Geoffrey Hodgson, who concludes that the U.S. is "just one great, but imperfect, country among others." Cohen agrees that the evidence supports Hodgson's judgment, but nonetheless regards as fundamentally mistaken Hodgson's failure to understand that "America was born as an idea, and so it has to carry that idea forward." The American idea is revealed in the country's birth as a "city on a hill," an "inspirational notion" that resides "deep in the American psyche," and by "the distinctive spirit of American individualism and enterprise" demonstrated in the Western expansion. Hodgson's error, it seems, is that he is keeping to "the distortions of the American idea," "the abuse of reality."
Let us then turn to "reality itself": the "idea" of America from its earliest days."
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Well, the realist school, which by the way, was really promoted by Reinhold Niebuhr and then Henry Kissinger, does state that America should approach the world with two notions in mind:
a. Our resources are not unlimited
b. We are subject to error and "sin" (if you want to put it religiously), and should not "crusade" around the world
One of my mentors in college did his PhD on Niebuhr, and this area was practically my major during college (I studied International Relations).
The author of that article, Noam Chomsky, is the opposite of a realist, he is a Marxist internationalist.
Every Democrat president in the past 100 years has been an internationalist, not a realist. Traditional Republican foreign policy, before "W" Bush was far less internationalist, far more careful, far more realist, and far less interventionist. FDR, Truman, and John F. Kennedy were all in that internationalist mindset. So were the "neo-cons", who were traditionally Democrats, but then turned Republicans. Ronald Reagan was more in the line of the realists in some areas. For instance, he once stated in his memoirs that the Mideast is inherently unstable and that the U.S. should NOT try to commit troops there and be "transformational".
The realists talked about the "arrogance of power". Even if you are so-called "morally pure", which is not possible of course, power still tends to corrupt, and arrogance is a danger. Of course, this arrogance has not left America untouched, either. All you have to do is look at the U.S. mercenaries like Blackwater, to see the full expression of this "arrogance of American power". Along with it goes cultural, historical, and political ignorance and naivete.
The realist view is that America should realize this, learn from it, and not try to "transform" other countries. America should only use its military if necessary, and only then, when real U.S. interests are at stake. And we can debate what that means (I think that traditionally for realists, it meant defending NATO and western Europe, defending the Gulf of Hormuz (the oil sea lanes), and that was about it. If the taliban take the SWAT valley or even Pakistan, if the Israelis fight the Palestinians until the end of the world, if Al Quida takes over Somalia, or Hugo Chavez adventures in the jungles of Latin America, or there are wars in Africa, America would of course by morally concerned, but would not intervene militarily.
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: America, America...
John,
If you have a moment and would like to specifically critique some of Chomsky's statements of fact, I would find this useful in my reading of him. I often put up articles that I have only partially read in the hope of gaining an additional perspective from our brainstorming and debates here. Are there any blatant inaccuracies in this article?
(I see that my request crossed your editing in the mail. Thanks for those extra paragraphs!)
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1752 Joined: April 13, 2007 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
John, I am not sure why you posit "internationalist" and "realist" as opposites. The opposite of an internationalist is a non-internationalist, whatever that means, and not a "realist." The opposite of a realist is a non-realist, not an "internationalist." It seems to me that one could be both a realist and an internationalist, or neither.
While you studied international relations, I studied international law, which is a field that is very much the opposite of reality.
[Edited by David Kallans on May 20, 2009 11:22 AM]
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
The term realist in my view has to do with how you view the application of power:
- an internationalist would have a "wide" view of this, and would be far more willing to let's say commit troops to places like Somalia, Darfur, and Iraq.
- a realist would have a far more narrow or limited view of how power can be projected or applied ("only use if if you have to").
Think Condoleza Rice vs. Colin Powell...
Re Noam Chomsky, what can I say, the man is a Marxist. I have read some of his stuff, and I see no difference between him and "traditional" Marxists.
More on Chomsky and the "case" against him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Criticisms_of_political_writings
One example (this reminds me of the New York Times reporter, Durant, who in the 1930s, commenting from his posh Moscow apartment for the Times, about the Soviet decimation of the Kulaks and other groups, using mass murder and mass starvation: "Sometimes, when you make an omelet, you have to break some eggs" [!])":
"Keith Windschuttle writes in the New Criterion that "Chomsky was well aware of the degree of violence that communist regimes had routinely directed at the people of their own countries. At the 1967 New York forum he acknowledged both 'the mass slaughter of landlords in China' and 'the slaughter of landlords in North Vietnam' that had taken place once the communists came to power. His main objective, however, was to provide a rationalization for this violence, especially that of the National Liberation Front then trying to take control of South Vietnam. Chomsky revealed he was no pacifist.[citation needed]
I don’t accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this—and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved."
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1752 Joined: April 13, 2007 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch
The term realist in my view has to do with how you view the application of power: - an internationalist would have a "wide" view of this, and would be far more willing to let's say commit troops to places like Somalia, Darfur, and Iraq. - a realist would have a far more narrow or limited view of how power can be projected or applied ("only use if if you have to").
I see what you're driving at, but I think the terms are open to confusion. At the moment I am thinking of Otto von Bismarck, who was motivated by what is called "Realpolitik" but was also a strong proponent of military intervention. Was he a realist or an internationalist? Or does the term only have relevance in the post war context?
Expert Mother tongues: Polish, English Posts: 2907 Joined: September 13, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch on May 20, 2009 11:26 AM
"terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this—and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved."
I don't think any use of terror is justified, unless you are takig down a nazi-like regime which killed thousands of people, but even then cases have to be viewed individually. Why would use of terror be justified in the Philippines, and not in Russia or France during the revolution?
Or was it justified in France: as far as I know this use of terror is considered one of the greatest things in the history of humanity and the beginnning of democracy, isn't it so? So where is the line?
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1807 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
David, I think that Bismarck would clearly be viewed as a realist. He did not believe in "crusades", and he did use his power very wisely and very conservatively.
The "ultimate" idealist (which is the opposite of a realist) was Woodrow Wilson, with his notion of the U.S. "spreading democracy" around the world.
As I mentioned before, traditional Republican foreign policy before Bush ("W") was realist and very conservative (in all debates in the 1950s and 1960s, Republicans urged caution and the Democrats were for intervention and "expanding democracy"). Bush seems to be heavily influenced by neo-cons like Wolfowitz (Democrats who left the party and then called themselves Republicans), who clearly are in the Wilson-JFK mode of "spreading democracy".
The realist answer to that would be:
a. Do we have the resources (probably not) ?
b. Is it in our interest to intervene in [Country X] ?
c. What will be the costs of intervention ? (in terms of "blowback", etc.) ?
d. Will such intervention lead to an "arrogance of power", even if we do it "right" ? [the famous 1960s novel, "The Ugly American", was about just such arrogance of power, of young Americans in Vietnam).
Here is a particularly bad example of this, from a Blackwater mercenary poster:
http://www.geocities.com/cwphantomfan/blackwater.jpg
Another realist is the CIA's Bin Ladin expert, Michael Scheuer, who - agreeing with Reagan that the Middle East is inherently unstable and cannot be rationally understood or influenced by the U.S., urged non-intervention in the Middle East. Reagan wrote that in his memoirs. Ron Paul, the Republican politician, is another good example of a traditional Republican realist.
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1752 Joined: April 13, 2007 Location: United States
RE: America, America...
Originally written by John Bunch
The "ultimate" idealist (which is the opposite of a realist) was Woodrow Wilson, with his notion of the U.S. "spreading democracy" around the world.
You definitely have that right. It was Wilson, it might be noted, who pushed self-determination as a concept in eastern Europe and the Middle East which led, among other things, to the creation of the modern state of Iraq as the remnants of the Ottoman empire were carved up.
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