Kristol's Purple Persuasion
One thing we didn’t have time for: Irving Kristol’s attitude toward foreign policy. Kristol made two main points. One, it is in the good nature of America to defend democracies wherever and whenever attacked. Two, and in part (but only in part) for that reason, America should defend Israel. This second point Kristol made in the context of the spending debate: America should defend Israel even if that means a bigger-than-otherwise military budget — and Jews should, likewise, favor a bigger military budget than they might otherwise (i.e., if Israel didn’t need so much American support).
I think this monetary spin on the enduring Israel issue is now rather naive or outdated, and everyone seems to agree that the issue when it comes to a neoconservative foreign policy isn’t captured in dollars and cents but in passions and deeds. Which brings me to point one. Kristol’s affirmation of democratic defense was merely a Cold War truism which carried over quite plausibly, and mostly uncontroversially, right up until 9/11. The right’s problem with Clintonian interventions was that they inserted America into internal conflicts. And indeed the left’s problem with Bush’s war in Iraq was in its essentials the same.
This is significant because it indicates something of a gap between Kristol’s foreign policy tilt and the agenda of full-dress neoconservatism as we know it today. Kristol at least implies that other democracies might not be so important as Israel — not that we wouldn’t come to their aid when invaded or assaulted, but that the people of Israel stood in a special relationship to the people of the US, unlike the people of at least some other democracies. It turns out to be consistent with ‘neocon values’, or at least Kristol’s values, to decide, especially in tough or ambiguous cases, that certain democracies facing certain perils ought not to be treated as if they were Israel facing the sort of peril Israel has characteristically faced. Georgia, to be perfectly blunt about it, is not Israel.
Nor, to push the point a step further, is the fate of Georgia inextricably linked to the fate of Israel — at least not in any way deeper than that in which the fate of all democracies is linked, which, as an empirical matter, is far from obvious, however intense or praiseworthy our natural pro-democratic passions may be. The attempt to universalize the Israeli predicament may have done more to harm the neocon cause than a blatantly ethnocentric approach might have done — another unnecessary misfortune we can hang around the neck of anti-Semitism. It’s okay to be forthrightly in the tank for Israel in the same way we’ve kept our cultivated pro-British sentiment pinned to our sleeves. After all, there are Israelis enough in Israel who find opportunity and reason enough to disagree with Bibi Netanyahu or your generic neocon. At any rate, Israel’s unique history points toward a clarity of affinity — at least in my estimation — which the unique history of Georgia, to stick with that example, just doesn’t. The end of the Cold War might have been a squeaky-clean affair here and in Germany, but further east it was a sloppy debacle. To try to impose onto the Georgias of the world a standard of moral clarity analogous to the one Kristol and his heirs would apply to Israel is to fall afoul of a category mistake. The only reason to tolerate this is a state of crisis so extreme as to validate the risks and costs of action. Jihadism might amount to such a crisis, but the behavior of, say, Russia does not.
Of course, there is one point at which the Russia/Georgia question intersects with the Jihad/Israel question — Iran. It’s still an open question as to whether even full Russian support for ‘our team’ could neutralize or even greatly mitigate the Iran problem. But this knotty intersection exists at the intersection of multiple policy frameworks, too. Both heirs and critics of Kristol’s foreign policy dispositions are capable of approaching the problem with a degree of finesse and nuance and a set of red lines and core commitments.
Great points in general and esp. on comparing the U.S. commitment to Georgia v. Israel, as it sheds light on various “neo-conservatisms.”
One detail, though, Georgia has a spotty, short, and unconsolidated history of being democratic. So it doesn’t quite serve your comparison as well as you’d like it to.
Agreed that Israel has, does, and ought to matter to Americans for more reasons than it being a) democratic, and b) an ally.
— Carl Scott · Sep 22, 07:08 PM · #
Occam’s Razor suggests that Kristol’s foreign policy views were simply an elaborate rationalization for his ethnocentrism, just as are the foreign policy views of many Cuban-Americans. The difference is that while the Cuban Lobby boasts of its power over American foreign policy, and thus everybody else is free to point out the ethnic basis for our country’s Cuban policy, the Israel Lobby tries to demonize those who point out its power and construct elaborate and disastrous universalist ideologies to cloak its sheer ethnocentrism.
I would be content to see the Israel Lobby continue to drive American foreign policy toward Israel, if only they would be as honest about it as the Cuba Lobby.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 22, 07:22 PM · #
Keep in mind that Georgia’s government, prior to their aggression against Russian-held territory in 2008 worked hard to build an image of themselves as Israel Jr. in the American press. For example, Georgia’s 29 year old defense minister was an Israeli and there was another Israeli in the cabinet. The Prime Minister, who had lived in New York, succeeded in getting credulous coverage out of the American bigfoot media for about a week.
As you’ll recall, the initial reports from lowly AP stringers and the like were:
Georgia attacks Russia
Then, for about a week, the big names in the American media all assumed:
Russia attacks Georgia
Finally, over time, the facts became so overwhelmingly clear that Georgia had started the war that the story changed back to the original
Georgia attacks Russia
Still, you can see how nearly successful the Georgian government’s strategy of co-opting American neocons and neolibs was.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 22, 07:28 PM · #
In fact, Georgia had hired so many Israeli ex-military men as advisers that there was a big struggle within the Israeli government between the military, who wanted a de facto alliance with Georgia, and the Foreign ministry, which thought it was nuts to provoke Russia.
The Georgian Prime Minister, who had spent years in New York, understood how easily he could redirect atavistic anti-Tsarist emotions among some Jews toward Putin. He almost got away with it.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 22, 07:44 PM · #
I think it’s a bad misrepresentation to ascribe leftist objection to Bush’s war in Iraq to an aversion to American intervention into a foreign state’s internal affairs. The Bush administration’s rationale for that war hinged on the allegedly imminent danger Saddam Hussein posed to America and the international community in general, and the objection was and continues to be that no, he didn’t. Sure, the arguments on both sides were (a little) more complicated, but there was never any controversy over the proposition that Hussein was a brutal dictator; rather, the arguments of both sides revolved around his possession of WMD and the likelihood of his making use of them. Conflicts between rival factions of Iraqis were of far less importance to American policy in 2002 and 2003 than they are today.
It might be fair to say that the left’s general disillusionment with continued American involvement in Iraq amounts to an aversion to being bogged down in the internal affairs of a foreign state, but the question of whether American involvement in this war ought to be prolonged is a different one from whether America ought to have gotten involved to begin with.
— jessebeller · Sep 24, 05:35 AM · #