Peter Beinart's TNR piece, "AN ARGUMENT FOR A NEW LIBERALISM: A Fighting Faith" has attracted a lot of attention around here in the last week. I posted an early diary on it (
TNR's Peter Beinart says you're the problem) and have contributed to the discussions that have gone on since.
I'm loath to add another diary on the subject, but I wanted to post some further reflections on it, in a more extended way than a comment would allow. So I offer these as my final thoughts, with the solemn pledge never to mention Beinart's piece again after this diary.
A comment elsewhere on DKos suggested that if you ignore Beinart's "characterization of the Democratic base, [and] his Cold War analogy" he's got some good things to say. Since his piece is built around a Cold War analogy, and suffused with his contempt for the party's liberal base, I think there's precious little left once you throw them out. Still, below is my most charitable effort to identify what the worthwhile elements of his piece might be--and why I think Beinart ultimately doesn't have much to offer on them, either.
1. Linking liberalism abroad and at home:
Beinart says that liberals need to make explicit the links between the issues/principles that guide their foreign and their domestic policy, as a means of strengthening both. Here is Beinart's analogy on that point:
During the early cold war, liberals repeatedly argued that the denial of African American civil rights undermined America's anti-communist efforts in the Third World. This linkage between freedom at home and freedom abroad was particularly important in the debate over civil liberties. One of the hallmarks of ADA liberals was their refusal to imply--as groups like MoveOn sometimes do today--that civil liberties violations represent a greater threat to liberal values than America's totalitarian foes. And, whenever possible, they argued that violations of individual freedom were wrong, at least in part, because they hindered the anti-communist effort. Sadly, few liberal indictments of, for instance, the Ashcroft detentions are couched in similar terms today.
There are any number of problems with this.
- The historical analogy is faulty in ways that are just too numerous to detail. Okay, I can't resist pointing out one. While it's true that US politicians, in trying to address the Third World, were clearly embarrassed by Jim Crow, this was in large part not because of their own liberal enlightenment--hey, we're reaching out to dark skinned folks abroad, but treating them badly at home--but because of relentless Soviet propaganda, and the efforts of African-Americans at home. And that embarrassment, in itself, produced little concrete action to change Jim Crow in the US--JFK may have been a resolute Cold Warrior, but he was a pretty laggard and mealy mouthed Civil Warrior.
- There are in fact plenty of liberal/progressive Democrats who have pointed out the contradiction between whittling away civil liberties at home (and violating international law at Gitmo) in the name of fighting a global war for freedom. So Beinart's "sadness" here seems misplaced.
- There are even more liberal/progressive Democrats who see the importance of linking the principles we pursue at home to the same issues abroad. But that very goal makes us suspicious of many of our allies in the WoT, like Pakistan and esp. the Saudi government, which opposes our principles hardly less than Bin Laden himself. Precisely the same problem arose during the Cold War--many of America's allies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were corrupt, repressive, and anti-democratic regimes. But when anybody on the left dared raise this point, anti-communism was used as an excuse to silence them--that is, the critics were called soft on communism and lectured about the distinction between "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" governments. People in Vietnam, El Salvador, and countless other places paid a very high price for that nice distinction.
- It's true that national security is a problem for Dems at the polls--but we didn't need Beinart to tell us that. People who supported Bush because of the War on Terror did so because they're scared and they think Bush can do a better job of keeping them safe. In a post to my earlier diary, flyovercountry suggested, far more coherently and eloquently than Beinart, that "liberal internationalism [might be used] to create an ideology that will strengthen perception of the Democratic Party on national security concerns." I'd like to hear flyovercountry or anyone else explain that, because Beinart is never able to break out of his simplistic hard/soft dichotomy to address it clearly. I'm ready and willing to affirm liberal internationalism on principle, but I don't hold out much hope that it will help Dems win over voters who have been scared and misled by Bush.
2. A new Marshall Plan?
Beinart suggests that, just as at the beginning of the Cold War, the US needs to fight its enemy abroad not just via military means but also economic ones. And the analogy he uses here is of a modern day Marshall Plan:
Many Democratic foreign policy thinkers favor a far more ambitious U.S. effort. Biden, for instance, has called for the United States to "dramatically expand our investment in global education." But, while an updated Marshall Plan and an expanded Peace Corps for the Muslim world are more naturally liberal than conservative ideas, they have not resonated among post-September 11 liberal activists. A new Peace Corps requires faith in America's ability to improve the world, something that Moore--who has said the United States "is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe"--clearly lacks. And a new Marshall Plan clearly contradicts the zero-sum view of foreign aid that undergirded Kerry's vote against the $87 billion. In their alienation over Iraq, many liberal activists seem to see the very idea of democracy-promotion as alien. When the Times asked Democratic delegates whether the "United States should try to change a dictatorship to a democracy where it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs," more than three times as many Democrats answered "stay out," even though the question said nothing about military force.
While I'll second the the aim of promoting democracy abroad, Beinart has hardly outlined a very useful plan for pursuing it.
- The historical analogy, again, is fundamentally in error. The Marshall Plan funded the economic reconstruction of Europe after the physical and human devastation of WW2. Its chief recipients were established liberal democracies, (relatively) stable Western European governments that were already our allies and that welcomed our aid.
- The current situation is very different. The likely recipients (targets?) of a new Marshall Plan are countries that lack liberal democratic institutions in the first place, so the challenge isn't to support existing liberal democracies but to create new ones--which is a fundamentally different and much harder task, and one that would in many cases be opposed by the very ruling elites and regimes with whom we are currently allied. Does anyone honestly imagine that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or even Egypt would welcome an "expanded Peace Corps for the Muslim world" (Beinart is mixing his analogies here, but never mind)?
- In this regard, moreover, it's important to recognize that the War on Iraq was not merely misguided in conception, but fundamentally counterproductive in the larger project of promoting liberalism and democracy: it detracted from US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, it drove us tighter into the embrace of the Saudi and Pakistani governments, it further alienated and inflamed much of the Arab world, and it's unlikely to result in a functioning and stable democracy in Iraq. (If Beinart took the example of the Cold War more seriously, he'd see that there are precedents for at least the last three of these developments, but I won't belabor them here.)
Where does this leave us? I think it leads back to the position of much of the liberal Democratic base that Beinart wants to reject. We're not indifferent to the promotion of liberalism abroad, as Beinart seems to think, but we regard the Bush administration's policies as an obstacle to that end. And we won't be silenced in our opposition to this administration for fear of being labeled "soft."