Don't Boot the Russkies
Behold, I am in complete agreement with Madeline Albright and Bill Perry:
We cannot expect help from a government we are attempting to blackball, nor would it be in our interest to push Russia further in the direction of an alliance of autocracies with such countries as China and Iran.
This is the kernel of the Clintonians’ brief against McCain’s Boot-the-Russkies-from-the-G8 plan, and it is the decisive argument. Our inappropriate and ill-fitting task of upholding, virtually alone, the West’s moral, economic, and political interests all around the world will go from moderately difficult to totally impossible with Russia as our enemy.
Only after many years, with an amount of work few want to take on, will Russian interests actually grow closer to ours on things like NATO and the missile shield. But as it stands, we need Russia. The West always has needed a Russia with one and a half feet in the West. Even when the West ruled most of the world, attending to an assertively anti-Western Russia was a full-time job with no guarantees. In the world of today, where former backwaters of power (Africa, China, the Middle East) have become fundamental problem areas for the West, pulling Russia off the bench and promoting it to the top of the crisis and antagonism list is literally about the stupidest idea I can conceive of when it comes to foreign policy.
Notice that this is true whatever you think about Iraq, Iran, or terrorism. Or global warming. Or rising food costs. All it requires of us is a stronger stomach when it comes to the ‘suffering’ of the Russian people. Emotional weakness on the suffering of strangers, here as elsewhere, has the great potential to do us more harm than good. Not a very happy lesson, but an important one.
Why do you think your (compelling) considerations are opposed to a practical concern for ‘the suffering of the Russian people’? And why does it matter that they are ‘strangers’? You’re right about the geo-politics, but I don’t think your ‘unhappy lesson’ follows.
— matt · Jul 9, 02:30 PM · #
Yes, I did slip that in at the end, huh. Far as I can tell the neocon and liberal interventionist arguments for getting tough with Russia (and China…and Zimbabwe…and Burma) boil down to the notion that ‘we can’t’ just ‘sit by’ and watch a government oppress its own people and deprive them of ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’ human rights. The hook is that even though these oppressed millions are perfect strangers to us, and even though their country is sovereign, we have some kind of affirmative moral duty to intervene so as to stop their suffering and at least open to them a fair possibility that they can enjoy a minimum level of social, economic, and/or political flourishing.
That’s a powerful argument, but I think I’m right in pegging it as the argument for intervention and/or enemy-making around the world — and on that count I see it as promising more harm for us than good. Of course I suppose the even deeper argument is that we somehow owe suffering strangers in the rest of the world at least an element of risk in harming ourselves so as to help them, the geopolitically least well off. Something else to argue about, but the issues crystallize, in my estimation at least, around the question of suffering that I’ve identified here and elsewhere. Si o no?
— James · Jul 9, 02:46 PM · #
I guess I take it that what makes liberal internationalism liberal is its requirement that intervention must be constrained by principles binding on all nations— eg, self-determination, sovereignty, etc. I imagine there are some liberal internationalists who believe such principles are in themselves sacrosanct (ie, we would wrong citizens of nation x by violating their sovereignty), and also some who think we can only secure a “minimum level of social, economic, and/or political flourishing” for others by acting within said constraints.
The Iraq adventure suggests that the latter sort of liberals may be right. Even if you took the suffering of those Iraqi strangers as your highest concern, the invasion is looking like it was a pretty bad idea.
— matt · Jul 9, 03:49 PM · #
Well, right. Perhaps we’re not so different, you and I. Most of the confusion and anxiety in our foreign policy today stems from the gap, in normative theory, positive theory, and practice, between agreement and action. We aim, for instance, to raise awareness and attain a spirit of solidarity — but these agreements have no necessary bearing on what decisions are made and then acted upon. As a foe of the therapeutic, I’m keen to point out the way that managing our own ‘action gaps’ becomes invidious, mendacious, and destructive (our boy Hamlet did this incessantly). But as a foe of the Eros lo Volt crowd and the cult of helpy heroism, I do want to emphasize how we can all agree, for instance, that genocide is taking place in Sudan, yet not act upon that agreement. Is this good or bad? Well, it’s good insofar as it reminds us that we can and should, at least sometimes, dislike things that happen in the world without feeling damned for not doing everything we can to try to stop them. But it’s bad insofar as the reason why nothing’s happening in Sudan is largely the product of a disintegration of Western leadership: in an ideal world, Europe, particularly, would have the cultural wherewithal to join the New World in a massive exercise of neocon-meets-neolib burden sharing. Right? Maybe not, but if the answer really is maybe not, I suspect the reason behind that answer has something to do with the character of suffering in the world, and the limits of our duty to mitigate it.
Of course, if the suffering of strangers really is your highest concern, you might be against the Iraq war on the grounds that it would so actually increase suffering (enough, in the short term) that measuring those losses against hypothetical future gains (Trotsky style) would be absurd and unjustifiable. But you might be in favor of all other kinds of measures — economic and political isolation, tough talk, cruise missile strikes, clandestine plans for regime change, etc., etc., etc. And in the case of Russia, you might warn McCain or Obama not to invade, but you might cheerlead for a much more adversarial and confrontational approach than the one I support.
— James · Jul 9, 04:11 PM · #
Let’s not think in terms of rewarding or punishing Russia. Let’s look at economic reality: the G-8 is supposed to bring together the countries that are the biggest players in the international economy. As one of the world’s leading energy suppliers, Russia certainly qualifies as a major player. Hence, we HAVE to have them in the G-8. NOT as a favor to them, or as an endorsement of their policies, but because any attempt at international economic accords is worthless without Russia’s approval.
I’d much rather live in Ontario or Tuscany than anywhere in Russia or China, but the fact remains, Russia and China are far bigger economic powers than Canada or Italy. A “G-8” that includes Canada and Italy, but not Russia or China seems increasingly like a waste of everyone’s time.
— astorian · Jul 9, 05:09 PM · #