Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Rumsfeld 3: Realists versus Idealists
CaptainB, whom God preserve, of Kennington draws my attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Michael Rubin. It is headlined Rumsfeld and the Realists, this is the link, but you probably have to pay. Rubin's point seems to challenge my own instincts about Rumsfeld. James Baker and Robert Gates are now leading a new approach to Iraq and the Middle East. Gates and Baker are, in diplomatic terms, realists. This means, in essence, that they do not seek to change foreign regimes, but to engage with them as they are. Idealists - basically, the neocons - believe in making the world better and freer by the application of American might. Rumsfeld was being a realist when he shook hands with Saddam Hussein in December 1983. It didn't work. Iraq and Iran fought on for another five years and then Saddam invaded Kuwait. Rubin gives other examples of failed realism in the region that implicate both Baker and Gates. Bush has pursued the opposite policy with Rumsfeld playing a new, idealistic role. The sacking of Rumsfeld seems to indicate a return to realism, a move which has been welcomed by the left, who, Rubin notes, appear to be suffering from severe amnesia about previous realist disasters. Rubin is, of course, right. Engagement with these terrible regimes has not, in the past, paid off. On the other hand, idealism has also failed. The debacle in Iraq has crippled American global power and seems to offer nothing better than either an electorally catastrophic Israeli solution of perpetual war or a hasty withdrawal and a strategically significant loss of face. Perhaps the real problem is that people get trapped by words. Realism and idealism are mere tribal badges. The wearers of one badge define themselves negatively by their opposition to the wearers of the other. The rest of us can only drift onwards, appalled.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I don't understand the enormous benefiting of doubt when it comes to the neo-cons. I don't see any evidence as to the neo-cons desire to make the world "better or freer" in an ordinary sense. Being idealists doesn't mean the ideals are necessarily "good". The Nazis were idealists, and in their minds the world they wished to shape would be freer and better- but for whom and what. Being American doesn't mean we shortcut our critical faculties and assume the Americans involved stand for the traditional values associated with that place. This is how Paul Crig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, and creator of what was known as Reaganomics, described the current US establishment. "What is surprising is that conservatives with a long tradition of adulation for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights have not been up in arms against the Bush regime’s all out assault on the foundation of America’s political system" which Roberts directly associates with fascism.
ReplyDeleteJust to add, I think when we assume idealism means the ideals are admirable we are, as you say, being trapped by words.
ReplyDelete"Perhaps the real problem is that people get trapped by words. Realism and idealism are mere tribal badges. The wearers of one badge define themselves negatively by their opposition to the wearers of the other. The rest of us can only drift onwards, appalled."
ReplyDeleteThis is the epigraph for the age in which we live, Bryan.