Last week, according to David Brooks in hisJuly 17 Op-Ed “Heroes and History,” George Bush entertained a small but select group of supporters at the White House and gave them his assessment of the current situation in Iraq. As he spoke, he exuded a self-confidence both surprising and remarkable, given the less-than-ideal situation prevailing in that country. This self-confidence, Brooks tells us, “flows from two sources,” one pertinent to history, the other to heroes. The first source is the President’s “unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea.”
Crossposted at ProgressiveHistorians
Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.
Hence the “History” of Brooks’ title. History for the President has a progressive nature, and the progression is from one form or another of tyranny to one form or another of freedom. And it seems that for the President time and history were created by God for the express purpose of realizing in concrete form the abstract idea of freedom.
The second source, more personal, is nonetheless intimately related to the first. Bush, as Brooks describes it, “remains energized by the power of the presidency.” And it's a good thing he does, for freedom can only be made concrete in the process of history by great and powerful leaders acting through great and powerful nations. However, not all leaders who have at their disposal the power of great nations also have the will to promote the great cause of freedom, and Bush is “confident in his ability to read other leaders”:
And he is confident that in reading the individual character of leaders, he is reading the tablet that really matters. History is driven by the club of those in power. When far-sighted leaders change laws and institutions, they have the power to transform people.
Hence the “Heroes” in Brooks’ title. Heroes are those who use power to move history in the direction of freedom. Such movement of history from oppression and tyranny to freedom and democracy is disruptive, and those heroes—the great and powerful leaders of great and powerful nations—who move history towards its goal of freedom are inevitably seen as dangerous by those who cling to oppressive forms of government—and by those too weak and timid to oppose tyranny and oppression. The hero, though, persists in his devotion to freedom because he knows that however bleak the present situation may seem, he is moving steadily forward with the powerful and ineluctable current of history.
The President, it is obvious, has been diligently studying authors who understand the deep historical relationship between freedom and power—neocon authors. Perhaps the most important neocon apostle of power and freedom is Robert Kagan, and next time I’ll look at his 2003 essay on America’s role in today’s world, Of Paradise and Power.
This week, though, I’m going to return to the volume of essays that, in 2000, Kagan edited with Bill Kristol, Present Dangers, whose concluding essay, “Strength and Will,” by Robert’s father Don, I analyzed in my last series. Three essays from that volume, the "Introduction" by Kagan and Kristol and two others by James Ceasar and William Bennett, effectively present the worldview that George Bush not only theoretically espouses but in practice embodies, a worldview that understands the deep historical dynamic that has united freedom and power and heroism in the destiny of one great nation.
1. America’s Destiny: the Agent of Freedom
In his essay, “The Great Divide,” James Ceasar identifies three types of contemporary conservative: the isolationists, the internationalists, and the realists. The isolationists are often referred to these days as paleocons. The paleocons want to conserve the distinctively American way of life produced by two hundred years of history and insulate it as much as possible from foreign influence. Though they distrust and dislike cultural change, they know that they cannot prevent it. They can, however, control it by, for example, setting strict limits on immigration and making America’s borders less porous. Foreign elements are thus allowed into America, but those foreign elements, limited in number, will be easily assimilated into the American way of life. The foreign will be transformed into the familiar.
As the paleocons also know, a foreign policy that meddles too readily in the conflicts of other countries can also open America to uncontrollable change. Such meddling, as happened in Vietnam, can disrupt and unsettle American life and cause needless internecine strife and conflict, upsetting traditional modes of behavior and reordering time-honored values and ideals. God gave our nation two great oceans as protective barriers. Unless matters foreign impinge directly and immediately on our sovereignty and security, we should stay behind those barriers and with diligence and care protect our God-given way of life.
Most conservatives, though, are internationalist in their orientation and recognize that America must and will actively engage with other nations, in both peace and war. As I discussed in my previous post, such conservatives can be inventoried into two categories, the realists and the idealists. The realists are those conservatives who favor an active foreign policy for the sake of America’s political and economic interests. The idealists (the internationalists in Ceasar’s scheme) are those policymakers who seek to promote not only American interests around the world but also American ideals and values.
The idealists are currently in the ascendant, and the paleocons languishing in their shadow, because the idealists have seen clearly the historical link between the value on which the American way of life is founded—freedom—and America’s destiny as a nation. The paleocons seem to think that freedom is a particular value applicable to only a few peoples and a few nations. It is not. As the idealists have long known, freedom is a universal value applicable to all peoples and all nations.
Further, the idealists contend that it is America’s fate and destiny as a nation universally to apply that universal value, to promote freedom throughout the world until it has become, in real and concrete terms, truly universal. And the universalizing of freedom is specifically the destiny of America above all other nations because America came into existence as the concrete embodiment of freedom. For the first time in history the revolutionary idea of freedom was incarnated, made flesh, and given specific form when the Founders acted to create and constitute this new revolutionary nation. Thus the idea of freedom gave birth to America, and in America found its dangerous and revolutionary potential for the first time realized.
This universal principle was originally incarnated in one particular nation, but it was not brought to birth to remain sequestered in that one particular nation. The universal principle was given concrete form in one nation so that that nation, America, the embodiment of the universal principle of freedom, could proceed to universalize it. No other nation had been founded on freedom, had originated in the idea of freedom. No other nation, therefore, was and still is fitted to carry and propagate this essential value throughout the world.
Such an enterprise might seem utopian to some, but conservative idealists “find worth and dignity in the nation committing itself to this kind of enterprise; it allows America to pursue a noble purpose on the stage of world history,” the noble and heroic purpose that it was born expressly to pursue and the purpose “that our Founders intended that it should serve” (27).
2. Nationalism: the Particular and the Universal
The Founders knew that the American revolution and the establishment of the American nation were of fundamental importance to “the whole human race.” They understood that the revolution was born out of more than their own particular circumstances and that the American nation was founded on more than their own particular interests. They understood that the revolution had been in essence born out of, and the nation in essence established on, a universal human value: freedom. The isolationist strain in America has been content to protect and preserve that value within American borders. But the idealist strain in America has been impelled to propagate that value beyond the borders of America precisely because the value out of which America originated is a universal one that applies not only to America but to all nations.
American nationalism, therefore, as William Bennett argues, cannot be construed as particularist. The nationalism of all other nations, Bennett says, has derived from just such a particularist origin.
Individuals formed profound bonds with the land itself, the religion of their fellow citizens who inhabited it, their common language, shared racial identities, particular cultural characteristics, and the myths and history of the region. (291)
American nationalism, however, is universalist. America has as its very source and origin not a particular race or language or religion but the universal ideal of freedom, and it is to this ideal, rather than to a particular race or religion, that Americans swear their deepest allegiance. Because of their attachment to freedom, “Americans believe,” according to Bennett, “that the progress of other governments toward this ideal completes the natural order of things even as it assures our own safety” (293).
America, therefore, will not rest, cannot rest until it has carried freedom to every other nation of the earth, not only in order to guarantee its own safety, since free peoples are peace-loving peoples, but also in order to carry to its conclusion “the natural order of things.” This natural order seeks its completion in the freedom of all peoples, and America, the nation that emerged at its origin from the concept of freedom, is the natural agent of this natural order, born for the express purpose of conveying freedom from its point of origin to every people on earth.
Because freedom is the very source and origin of America, idealists, as Ceasar puts it,
see no difficulty in squaring the assertion of universal principles with a belief in the nation and the national purpose. What is more an expression of the particular mission of this nation, they ask, than to give voice to the universal principles on which it was founded? (38)
There are those, both conservative and liberal, who refuse to face the universal implications of the ideal at the origin of the American nation. Those conservatives and liberals, Ceasar argues, seemingly are incapable of entertaining the paradox at the heart of the American identity, namely that America is at one and the same time a specific nation and the universal nation. Our very specificity has universal implications, and to relinquish those implications “would be to relinquish our own specificity” (39). Thus, the fact “that America rests on a different foundation from that of most other nations…is surely no reason to abandon what is our own.” What is our own is not only the principle of freedom but also the responsibility to make that which is conceptually universal concretely universal. A good nationalist should not renounce this responsibility. “A good nationalist should rather proudly assert it” (39).
3. The Benevolent and Prudent Hegemon
America’s first century-and-a-half was preparatory. Americans lived and worked and fought behind the protection of their great Atlantic and Pacific shields, keeping a comfortable distance from the noxious disputes in Europe and Asia. And even if America had had the national will to meddle in those disputes, it certainly did not yet have the military strength.
At the beginning of the 20th century, though, the long process of preparation was complete, and America stood forth as one of the indisputably great economic and military powers on the international scene. And though many in America were still determined to avoid their destiny and remain aloof behind the oceanic buffers that safeguarded them, history decided otherwise.
It wasn’t so much the brutal aggression of the Nazis but the advent, after World War II, of another universalizing force, Communism, that once and for all spurred America to assume its destined world-historical role. The Soviet Union too originated in, and was brought to birth from, a universal concept. According to the Communist ideology, the powerful and ineluctable current of history was moving towards a single goal, the universal liberation of the proletariat from the chains of wage slavery, and out of the fires of the Bolshevik Revolution was forged the nation, the Soviet Union, whose destiny it was to achieve that goal.
This Communist ideology of freedom, however, quickly proved to be a sham. Masquerading behind the ideal of working-class liberation was a murderous lust for power. The ideal out of which the Soviet Union was born was not freedom but freedom’s anti-ideal, tyranny, and the Soviet Union’s destiny was not the universal liberation of the working class but the universal destruction of free market capitalism, representative democracy, and individual liberty. Like its great universalizing opponent, America, the Soviet Union was expansionist and sought to promote its ideal not just within its own borders but throughout the world. And like its great ideological opponent, it would not and could not rest until its historically appointed task had been completed.
As both the original embodiment of freedom among nations and militarily the most powerful nation on earth, America was finally forced to assume its destined role. No other nation had the power, either the moral power or the military power, to oppose the Soviet Union and to defend the great and powerful Ideal of Freedom against the equally great and powerful anti-Ideal of Communist Tyranny. And America did its job. Confronted by a power that was intent on universalizing tyranny, America shouldered its task, accepted its role as leader of the free world, faced down its great enemy, and emerged in glory as the victor.
The conclusion of the Cold War and America’s complete and total victory, Ceasar observes, set the stage “for the next phase in further extending the benefits of free government to the whole human race” (31). But even though, in its epic confrontation with the Soviet Union, America’s historical role as the great agent of freedom was vindicated, to many, both in Europe and in America itself, that role has now become mere pose, an ideological veneer that tries, and fails, to mask an impulse of imperialism. In its arrogant drive to universalize freedom, America, rather than introducing liberty to the nations of the world, stands revealed as a threat to their dignity and sovereignty and peace.
The evidence, Bennett contends, does not support such a contention. For example, America’s decision, after World War II, to help Germany and Japan economically reconstruct and politically reform shows that America’s intent is an honorable one. America has not and will not attempt to occupy other nations for the purpose of economically exploiting them or politically controlling them.
America is not interested in territorial conquest, subjugation of others, or world domination. Behind our attempt to advance American ideals abroad has been the belief that basic rights are unalienable, universal, God-given, and therefore all people, wherever they may be, are deserving of them. (294)
Those who are suspicious of America’s motives fail to recognize that in trying to universalize freedom America is assuming its destined role of moral leader in the global community. When its role as the world’s moral leader is combined with its preeminence as the world’s military power, it is only natural that lesser nations—and even those Americans who timidly flinch away from power and its use—will suspect that its motives are something other than benevolent. But as Kristol and Kagan point out, it is precisely because America has accepted its moral destiny as the agent of the universal principle of freedom “that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power” (22).
Still, even though its motives are demonstrably worthy and good, America must use its daunting power cautiously and carry out its great mission with prudence. That America is devoted to the eradication of tyranny and the establishment of freedom “does not mean that the United States must root out evil wherever and whenever it rears its head,” Kagan and Kristol caution. “No doctrine of foreign policy can do away with the need for judgment and prudence” (13). Prudence, therefore—wisdom and constraint in the use of power—is one of the most important political virtues of the nation whose moral leadership is indisputable and whose military strength is unchallengeable.
4. There is Prudence and Then There is Prudence
In 2000 such prudence, even to neocons, seemed appropriate. Dangers loomed that threatened the benevolent hegemony of the US and the peace that it was destined to protect. But those dangers were embodied in single states, like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, that posed threats to specific regions but that did not embody, as had the Soviet Union, a threat of world-historical and universal dimensions. And in the face of these limited threats prudence prevailed.
And then everything changed. On September 11, 2001, an unprecedented threat of universal world-historical dimensions appeared.
Radical Islam might not seem to be a threat comparable to the Soviet Union, and in terms of sheer military force it is not. But in two essential and fundamental ways Radical Islam reproduces the Soviet threat. First, Radical Islam is universalist. Al Qaeda and the states that support it are intent on establishing a universal Islamic Caliphate and subjugating all the peoples of the world to the Sharia law of Islam. True, Radical Islam has its basis in a religious text rather than in the secular theories of Marx and Lenin. But that makes it potentially an even more fanatic force, since the rewards it promises its jihadis are not temporal and limited but eternal and infinite.
Second, the Soviet Union had a method of negating the sense of security that Americans possess because of the two oceanic barriers protecting our shores, and so too does Radical Islam. The Soviets had an arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that could effectively breach our oceanic shields. Radical Islam has a different sort of vehicle that can negate those shields and wreak havoc within the borders of the US: the terrorist.
The specter of nuclear holocaust provoked a deep unease in the US during the Cold War. The specter of Islamic terror also provokes a deep unease in the US, and one that is even more unsettling because the vehicles of its hatred and rage might already be here, quietly planning and patiently awaiting their moment of mass destruction. And if we leave Iraq before establishing there a government dedicated to freedom and peace, many more Islamic terrorists will penetrate our ocean barriers, bringing with them precisely those devices of mass terror and death that the Soviets always had the potential to deliver but never did.
It is thus no exaggeration to say, as Norman Podhoretz has said, that we are in the initial stages of World War IV. And now that we are engaged in such a war, the sort of prudence that might have characterized foreign affairs a mere six years ago is no longer appropriate. Islamic terrorism must be rooted out now, before it has the chance to flourish, and it must be rooted out in precisely that area of the world that offers it a natural environment of growth, the Middle East.
George Bush understands the sort of prudence that America now needs. When he made the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, he was prompted not by a mundane prudence but by a higher prudence, a heroic prudence, the prudence of great leaders who have the vision and will to leap beyond the blinkered perspective of short-term political tactics to a larger and more spacious view of history.
George Bush knew that in this great world-historical confrontation between freedom and Radical Islam, he must take on the role of the heroic warrior, face down the lethal and unappeasable enemy, and establish in the heart of the enemy’s domain the value for which history and America have been created: freedom.
A higher heroic prudence characterized the invasion of Iraq. Unfortunately, after the initial military victory a different military strategy, counterinsurgency, should have been put into practice but was not. That clearly was a mistake, and the mistake is now being corrected. However, since the surge was instituted only three and a half years after the initial victory, it has much to make up for and will not have a quick and decisive effect.
Our clear and present danger is that the left and the Democrats will not allow the counterinsurgency to work. After three years of strategic neglect in Iraq, the surge needs extended time to demonstrate its effectiveness. But if given that time, its benefits will bit by bit accrue, and the democratic government that we have established in Iraq will take root and serve as an example of enlightened freedom to all peoples in the Middle East.
As Fred and Kimberly Kagan have recently pointed out, the surge is only now beginning the second of its three projected phases, and it’s the third phase, scheduled to begin some months from now, that will prove to be the decisive one. The left and the Democrats—always timid, weak-of-will, and fearful of power—of course want prematurely to curtail the surge and thus to derail our destined mission in Iraq.
But George Bush, though opposed by these weak and timid defeatists intent on undermining American power, will not relent. He will persist, and though he is too modest to make the claim himself, he is clearly emerging as a Warrior Hero whom history will vindicate and honor and even glorify: the hero who, with fortitude and foresight, advanced one step further the great American enterprise of universalizing the great universal value of freedom.
This narrative, the neocon narrative of the Iraq War, is in the process of being written. One canto in this great epic is the surge, and in future posts I’ll discuss the neocon narrative of the surge, especially as it’s being written by Fred and Kimberly Kagan. Next time, though, I’ll look at the distinction between paradise and power made by the most influential of the neocon apostles of American power, Robert Kagan, and at his vision of America, a nation whose destiny has made it preeminently great and preeminently dangerous.