"Consider Ukraine. Idealism/activism says to back Ukraine on principle, because Putin is evil."
I push back on the question. There are some idealists who say we should back Putin. The population of eastern Ukraine is mostly Russian. That part was only made part of Ukraine for Soviet political reasons. The American-backed ouster of the pro-Russian government was wrong and Putin was reacting to undo that injustice.
I don't say that's right but it is idealism. For a more American example: A substantial number of people thought the United States should end the Vietnam war because the North would take over and they were better than anything in the South. True nationalists. Agrarian reformers. Etc.
There are lots and lots of different idealisms, depending on your ideals and on how you think the world is.
Yeah. More broadly I think foreign relations is another case where Bootleggers (realists) and Baptists (idealists) are usually on the same side.
Both deal with intent but both seem fundamentally activist.
Humility vs activism is good, but I think the intentional spectrum would be better defined by a more generalized desire for more or less relations.
Do we want more or less integration with the world?
Edit: sorry that got cut off.
"Humble/Integration" would be cooperative action within international norms. Your country is just another country. In Ukraine, we would diplomatically seek better relations, but wouldn't be sending over the CIA to influence outcomes.
"Humble/Non-integration" would be a situation where we don't pay much of any attention to the rest of the world. We don't care one way or another about Ukraine.
Activist/Non-integration sounds like a misnomer, but this would be the literal isolationist position where we reduce trade and other relations.
Activist/integration is pretty much the status quo. We aggressively seek to integrate the rest of the world to our way of doing things rather than integrate with the rest of the world's way of doing things. So we send in the CIA, provide arms, etc.
I guess it all depends on who we are talking about. Virtuous leaders with competent staff or vacuous power wielders with the typical quality of expert/technocrat?
When my kids were young, we lived close enough to the Pentagon that on 9/11 to smell the smoke and bits of have bits of charred paper all about the yard. Naturally when we were at the dinner table when Bush invaded Afghanistan the kids were very patriotic and eager for the war to exact justice. I was not popular when I told them that war is a sword that cuts both ways, we were likely to lose as much as we gained, that lots of ordinary people and soldiers were going to die, and did they really trust the government that allowed 9/11 to happen to competently execute a war? And what would the war actually accomplish? In light of the ensuing horror show, yes, this sounds incredibly smug now, and perhaps cynical, but, nevertheless, I am guessing such an attitude would put me in the realist – humility camp? This skepticism was only strengthened by the results of Obama’s Libyan intervention (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/17/libya-conflict-10-year-anniversary/ ).
When you have a virtuous leader who has talented and competent staff, however, it is a different story and perhaps then it is more appropriate to harbor idealist/activist sentiments. For example, Modi’s foreign policy management on India’s behalf has been nothing less than inspired. (https://www.orfonline.org/research/a-decade-of-modi-s-foreign-policy-india-shows-the-way ). Unfortunately, a Modi only comes along once in a generation or so. I can think of no other virtuous world leaders on the stage in this century.
I was all in for idealism/activism, until is became "Wilsonian"! Yuk! But I'm obviously more in favour of WRM's "a little from column A, a little from column B" approach. If they're my ideals, I'm all for them. Less so others.
Can you expand on your humility on Ukraine, please? Or point me at a previous column or article that does?
As I recall, when Obama first ran for President, he argued that Iraq was the 'wrong war,' while Afghanistan was the 'right war.' Given what was happening in Iraq (the insurgency problem), how did that make any sense? When he got into office, he sent more troops into Afghanistan, and we know how this all turned out -- Afghanistan ended in disaster, while there is still a residual force in Iraq. Then there was the Libyan fiasco, and the intervention in Syria (which is where I jumped off the neocon train). Others credit him for not responding to Putin's annexation of Crimea, but I don't buy that. He set the table for Hillary by prevailing over the ouster of 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian President Yanukovych, and sometimes I wonder whether the establishment's derangement over Trump has to do with his interrupting the plan to use Ukraine to 'extend Russia' (as the infamous 2019 Rand study euphemistically put it). All this is background for my rejecting AK's characterization of Obama as an idealist. I think he was and remains a pure opportunist. I don't think his decisions with regard to any of these interventions was based on moral considerations. Rather, his working assumption was that going along with military interventions was necessary to gain and maintain political power, and he didn't give a damn about the US troops or foreign victims killed or maimed as a result.
I like thought experiments like this. One can pick a quadrant and maybe that is something useful but it's more interesting to think about the framing inherent to the question(s).
- idealism/realism - in the Ukraine example, this has no bearing on the decision of what to do. It could make a lot of difference in how to do it.
- isolationism is opposite of activism not humility. One can act and still have humility. For example, one can be humble and still take action to protect shipping lanes.
- while I am very much against isolationism (which seems to be Trump's focus more than humility) it seems to me the four attributes presented are all important and no decision should be made based on one or two of them.
- one could argue that the other three are all part of realism. Acting is generally good but has to be tempered with a bit of humility and an understanding that deviating from what is seen as moral has both benefits and perils. The more one diverges from the moral, the greater the perils. Understanding differing cultural views of what is moral is also important.
I'm for realism/activism as long as led by people like Jeanne Kirkpatrick. I'm totally against Mearsheimer's version of realism/humility. He has shown his true colors in the Ukraine war. Some mix of the quadrants does seem most useful as the world is complex. Any chosen path requires wise leaders to be successful.
Also, Substack doesn't change the date on this post even if you've unpublished it, so it won't be at the top of a chronological list.
Note: I meant for this post to go up on Saturday. Save your comments for then, when I will post it again.
"Consider Ukraine. Idealism/activism says to back Ukraine on principle, because Putin is evil."
I push back on the question. There are some idealists who say we should back Putin. The population of eastern Ukraine is mostly Russian. That part was only made part of Ukraine for Soviet political reasons. The American-backed ouster of the pro-Russian government was wrong and Putin was reacting to undo that injustice.
I don't say that's right but it is idealism. For a more American example: A substantial number of people thought the United States should end the Vietnam war because the North would take over and they were better than anything in the South. True nationalists. Agrarian reformers. Etc.
There are lots and lots of different idealisms, depending on your ideals and on how you think the world is.
Yeah. More broadly I think foreign relations is another case where Bootleggers (realists) and Baptists (idealists) are usually on the same side.
Both deal with intent but both seem fundamentally activist.
Humility vs activism is good, but I think the intentional spectrum would be better defined by a more generalized desire for more or less relations.
Do we want more or less integration with the world?
Edit: sorry that got cut off.
"Humble/Integration" would be cooperative action within international norms. Your country is just another country. In Ukraine, we would diplomatically seek better relations, but wouldn't be sending over the CIA to influence outcomes.
"Humble/Non-integration" would be a situation where we don't pay much of any attention to the rest of the world. We don't care one way or another about Ukraine.
Activist/Non-integration sounds like a misnomer, but this would be the literal isolationist position where we reduce trade and other relations.
Activist/integration is pretty much the status quo. We aggressively seek to integrate the rest of the world to our way of doing things rather than integrate with the rest of the world's way of doing things. So we send in the CIA, provide arms, etc.
I guess it all depends on who we are talking about. Virtuous leaders with competent staff or vacuous power wielders with the typical quality of expert/technocrat?
When my kids were young, we lived close enough to the Pentagon that on 9/11 to smell the smoke and bits of have bits of charred paper all about the yard. Naturally when we were at the dinner table when Bush invaded Afghanistan the kids were very patriotic and eager for the war to exact justice. I was not popular when I told them that war is a sword that cuts both ways, we were likely to lose as much as we gained, that lots of ordinary people and soldiers were going to die, and did they really trust the government that allowed 9/11 to happen to competently execute a war? And what would the war actually accomplish? In light of the ensuing horror show, yes, this sounds incredibly smug now, and perhaps cynical, but, nevertheless, I am guessing such an attitude would put me in the realist – humility camp? This skepticism was only strengthened by the results of Obama’s Libyan intervention (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/17/libya-conflict-10-year-anniversary/ ).
And his atrocious meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs in 2014 (https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy ) may or may not have been the proximate cause of Russia’s invasion but certainly did nothing to advance international harmony. And then there was Hillary Clinton’s disastrous meddling in Honduras. (https://www.latinousa.org/2016/04/29/hillary-clinton-honduras-lefts-benghazi/ ). It is difficult to think of a US foreign policy establishment success in the past few decades.
When you have a virtuous leader who has talented and competent staff, however, it is a different story and perhaps then it is more appropriate to harbor idealist/activist sentiments. For example, Modi’s foreign policy management on India’s behalf has been nothing less than inspired. (https://www.orfonline.org/research/a-decade-of-modi-s-foreign-policy-india-shows-the-way ). Unfortunately, a Modi only comes along once in a generation or so. I can think of no other virtuous world leaders on the stage in this century.
I was all in for idealism/activism, until is became "Wilsonian"! Yuk! But I'm obviously more in favour of WRM's "a little from column A, a little from column B" approach. If they're my ideals, I'm all for them. Less so others.
Can you expand on your humility on Ukraine, please? Or point me at a previous column or article that does?
As I recall, when Obama first ran for President, he argued that Iraq was the 'wrong war,' while Afghanistan was the 'right war.' Given what was happening in Iraq (the insurgency problem), how did that make any sense? When he got into office, he sent more troops into Afghanistan, and we know how this all turned out -- Afghanistan ended in disaster, while there is still a residual force in Iraq. Then there was the Libyan fiasco, and the intervention in Syria (which is where I jumped off the neocon train). Others credit him for not responding to Putin's annexation of Crimea, but I don't buy that. He set the table for Hillary by prevailing over the ouster of 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian President Yanukovych, and sometimes I wonder whether the establishment's derangement over Trump has to do with his interrupting the plan to use Ukraine to 'extend Russia' (as the infamous 2019 Rand study euphemistically put it). All this is background for my rejecting AK's characterization of Obama as an idealist. I think he was and remains a pure opportunist. I don't think his decisions with regard to any of these interventions was based on moral considerations. Rather, his working assumption was that going along with military interventions was necessary to gain and maintain political power, and he didn't give a damn about the US troops or foreign victims killed or maimed as a result.
I like thought experiments like this. One can pick a quadrant and maybe that is something useful but it's more interesting to think about the framing inherent to the question(s).
- idealism/realism - in the Ukraine example, this has no bearing on the decision of what to do. It could make a lot of difference in how to do it.
- isolationism is opposite of activism not humility. One can act and still have humility. For example, one can be humble and still take action to protect shipping lanes.
- while I am very much against isolationism (which seems to be Trump's focus more than humility) it seems to me the four attributes presented are all important and no decision should be made based on one or two of them.
- one could argue that the other three are all part of realism. Acting is generally good but has to be tempered with a bit of humility and an understanding that deviating from what is seen as moral has both benefits and perils. The more one diverges from the moral, the greater the perils. Understanding differing cultural views of what is moral is also important.
"Idealism/humility says not to back Ukraine because it’s our fault Russia invaded in the first place (or so this type of person alleges)."
I don't follow. Maybe there's humility in not thinking one can fix everything they broke but where's the idealism?
I'm for realism/activism as long as led by people like Jeanne Kirkpatrick. I'm totally against Mearsheimer's version of realism/humility. He has shown his true colors in the Ukraine war. Some mix of the quadrants does seem most useful as the world is complex. Any chosen path requires wise leaders to be successful.
Also, Substack doesn't change the date on this post even if you've unpublished it, so it won't be at the top of a chronological list.
Realism/humility, while pushing as close to idealism/humility as possible.