Condi Rice’s “Uniquely American Realism”

On Thursday, June 7, Secretary Rice gave a a speech at the Economic Club of New York that was the most sustained expression of her view of the world that we have seen any time since she became a significant force in national policy-making, back in January 2001.

Many people who have known her in the past have described her as “a conscientious staff person” and given her other damning-with-faint-praise accolades like that. But the statement of her view of the US’s role in world politics that she produced Thursday is worthy of some close study. Especially since, with Dick Cheney’s star in the decline and the President himself daily losing his political mojo, her position in national security decisionmaking is becoming stronger and stronger. (Stronger and stronger within an administration that is becoming weaker and weaker, that is.)

So I have started annotating her speech. I’m afraid I haven’t finished doing it yet. But since I’ll be busy for the next couple of days, I thought I would get this much up onto the blog, and try to get around to the rest later. (By the way, if readers would like to suggest their own annotations for some of the paras I haven’t yet gotten around to, just put that in a comment here and note the number of the paragraph.)


Condi’s
text 		My
comments
1.

In terms of foreign policy, Teddy
Roosevelt is often misunderstood. Some see him as a progressive
idealist; others as a cold-eyed realist. After all, the same Teddy
Roosevelt who sent the Marines to Cuba also won the Nobel Peace Prize
for helping to end a war between Russia and Japan. The same Teddy
Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal by any means necessary also used
American power to eradicate yellow fever and support public health in
the Philippines and in parts of the Americas. And the same Teddy
Roosevelt who spoke softly to our enemies never hesitated to carry a
big stick.

This was realism, to be sure,
but it was something greater, something nobler, a disposition that
perhaps we should call the uniquely
American Realism. It is this idea
that I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about tonight.

a.  Condi seems eager to
try to measure up to one of the weighty figures of US history… 
Actually, two of them: the Republican imperialist T. Roosevelt and the
Democratic Cold Warrior Harry Truman.  It’s as if she feels that
invoking Roosevelt’s name here will magically endow her and the
President for whom she works with some aura of “greatness”.

b.  I love her claim that the form of “realism” she describes is
“uniquely” American.  It’s as if she has never read any history of
other expansionist powers throughout history, all of whom cloaked their
expansionist actions with various forms of high-falutin’ and very
“idealistic”-sounding rhetoric.
2. American
Realism is an approach to the
world that arises not only from the realities of global politics but
from the nature of America’s
character: From the fact that we are all
united as a people not by a narrow nationalism of blood and soil, but
by universal ideals of human freedom and human rights. We believe that
our principles are the greatest source of our power. And we are led
into the world as much by our moral ideas as by our material interests.
It is for these reasons, and for many others, that America has always
been, and will always be, not
a status quo power, but a revolutionary
power – a nation with New
World eyes, that looks at change not as a
threat to be feared, but as an opportunity to be seized. 		This para states the heart of
her argument, and contains many intriguing aspects:

a. She asserts that Americans are united “not
by a narrow nationalism of blood and soil, but
by universal ideals…”  I am very wary of the claim that any
nation’s sense of itself is not linked to love of some specified
territory, for doesn’t that by implication give it permission to set
itself down anywhere it pleases?  Also, of course, the US is far
from the only nation that defines itself by its advocacy of “universal”
ideals– so did France in the heyday of its empire, and so did the
Soviet Union ditto.

b.  Her claim that Americans are “led into the world as much by our moral ideas as by our material
interests” is interestingly phrased.  It’s as though there is no
human choice or agency involved:  we are simply “led into” [the
rest of] the world by these ideals– and, yes, interests– that compel
us to engae with the world, while we are powerless to resist those
forces.  H’mmm.  What if all the other nations of the world
felt themselves similarly compelled/propelled to act in the rest of the
world the way that the US does?

c.  And then, we have her assertion that the US “has always been”
a revolutionary power.  I judge that assertion to be quite simply
false.  At the end of WW2 the US stood at the apex of its global
power  For the 55 years that followed, it sought to consolidate
that position of global primacy– and did so very effectively. 
But that was done by acting as a status-quo power, not any kind of a
“revolutionary” power.  I thought it was only convinced
institution-busters like John Bolton who thought that the global status
quo established in 1945 was not worth preserving?  But now that
Condi has finally proclaimed her own “doctrine” here,
I am disturbed to see how close it seems to Boltonism.

d.  Re the “New World eyes” business: Here she really does seem
like the most irresponsible kind of Trotskyist Permanent
Revolutioneer.  I suppose it is also linked with her claim that
the US national “character” is not one linked to any defined piece of
territory.  Altogether, she sounds like the most rootless kind of
cosmopolitan…

3. American
Realism recognizes that human
beings are flawed and fallible by nature – and that makes democratic
ideals more precious, and democratic
institutions more important.
American Realism affirms that decisions about war and peace, poverty
and prosperity, depend as
much on the domestic institutions of states
as on the distribution of power between them. And it is a
guiding
conviction of American Realism that we achieve our greatest and most
enduring goals when we unite power and purpose together – for, as Teddy
Roosevelt said, “power undirected by high purpose spells
calamity, and
high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into
effect is lacking.” 		a.  Yes, democratic
institutions are incredibly important.  Too bad, then, that the
administration this woman has been a key part of has done so much to destroy their integrity
and effectiveness at home, and when intervening in Iraq did so in a way
that destroyed  the country’s institutions of state power rather
than reforming them.

b.  Decisions about war and peace “depend
as much on the domestic institutions of states
as on the distribution of power between them”?  It is unclear what
she’s trying to get at here.  Maybe it’s a reference to the theory
of the “democratic peace”– namely, the idea that democratic states
don’t make war on each other, and therefore the best way to avoid war
is to have all countries be democratic.  The trouble with that
theory is that western democracies have very frequently made war on
states they deem to be non-democratic…  But anyway, Condi, North
Korea got the bomb and you didn’t attack them, whereas Iraq didn’t and
you did.  It seems implausible to claim that the status of the
domestic institutions within each of these two states had as much
impact on your administration’s decision whether to go to war against
each of them as did the balance of power between the US and each of
them in turn…

c.  Incant after me: “As Teddy Roosevelt said; as Teddy Roosevelt
said… “

4. That
is not to say that there will never be
tensions, that we’ll easily bring day-to-day interests into perfect
harmony with our ideals. But that is a challenge for policy, not a
license to ignore our principles or our interests. It is a goal to
recognize in the long run that the two are inextricably linked. In
short, American Realism deals with the world as it is, but strives to
make the world better than it is. More free. More just. More peaceful.
More prosperous. And ultimately safer. Not perfect. Just better.
 a.  [The Uniquely] American
Realism strives to make the world “More
free. More just. More peaceful.
More prosperous. And ultimately safer…”?  Very, very sad then
that the President whom Condi serves has such a terrible
record of having radically decreased the freedom, justice, peaceableness, and prosperity
of the people of Iraq.  We can note, also, that 4.3 years after
the invasion of their country, Iraqis are quite evidently not “safer”
than they were before the invasion.  Who is she speaking to
here?  Oh, the “Economic Club of New York.”  But even those
august gents must surely realize that she’s talking a Newspeak form of
gobbledy-gook here.
5. It
was American Realism that informed the
work of American statesmen
in the early years of the Cold War – people
like Truman and Vandenburg, and Marshall and Acheson, and Kennan and
Nitze. It informed for years later by Kennedy, and Reagan, people who
understood that we had to deal with the reality of Soviet power but
should never forget the
malignant nature of that state’s character. It
was American Realism that led them to create an open international
order, rooted in free minds and free markets, self-determination and
national sovereignty,
not just to defend peace, and prosperity, and
freedom for us in the United States, but to expand it for others. And
of course, it was American Realism that led Secretary of State George
Marshall to visit Harvard – 60 years ago this past Tuesday – to lay out
a visionary plan to rebuild Western Europe as a pillar of a free world.
 a.  In this para, she is trying to claim that the prominent statesmen of the post-1945 era
whom she names here all subscribed to the same form of “revolutionary”
American Realism that she has defined above.  This is simply not
true.  Those men were all people who believed in the efficacy of
the (US-designed and -dominated) institutions established in 1945, and
behaved in ways that sought to preserve and strengthen those
institutions.

b. About never forgetting “the malignant nature” of the Soviet state’s
character: Well, that was a significant moral judgment to make. 
But throughout all those years of the Cold War, no US leader ever cut
off relations with the Soviets because of it, or refused to talk to
them because of it.  Nor did they seek to “roll back” the main
portion of the Soviet empire in Europe because of it; instead, they contented themselves
with “containing” it.  They were true realists– and then, over time,
the Soviet empire collapsed of its own weight and under the
democratically organized people power of the citizens of those
countries themselves.  Why should we be expected to believe that
Iran, or Syria, or the democratically elected government of the
Palestinians is so much more
malignant than the Soviet state that we cannot even talk to those
leaderships??  Beats me.

c.  Don’t you just love her reference to “national soveriegnty” as
a valued ideal?  Oops, too bad about the Iraqis and Palestinians,
eh?
6. Over
the past six decades, we have seen the
success of this open international order. It has turned communists into
capitalists, global rivals into emerging partners, and it has enabled
more people across the world to live with dignity and opportunity than
at any other time in human history.
7. Today,
economically, the international
order is undeniably better off than ever. The global economy is
experiencing unrivaled growth. But politically, it is increasingly
clear that the international system is perhaps unequal to our present
challenges. Transnational crime and terrorism, energy insecurity and
climate change, the spread of disease and weapons – global threats that
are testing not only our international institutions, but the state
institutions of every country on Earth, including our own. Many weak
and poorly-governed states are falling behind. Some are outright
failing. And in today’s interdependent world, when governments cannot
defeat threats within their own borders, their problems quickly become
our problems.
8. So
what must be our objective? I would
suggest that it is indeed transformation: to expand the circle of
well-governed states that enshrine liberty under the rule of law, that
provide for their people, and that act responsibly in the international
system. America cannot do this for other countries. Nor should we. It
must be their choice, and their initiative. But we can help and we must
help. This is partnership, not paternalism.
9. To
be sure, this is not a status quo
objective. But that does not make it impractical. Indeed, helping
states to transform themselves, to improve themselves, is the most
realistic approach to the problems we now face – for in today’s world,
we are led, both by our interests and our ideals, to the following
conviction: that liberty and justice within states leads to peace and
stability between states. Freedom is not an abstract principle. It is
the most practical way for states to organize themselves successfully,
to adapt to change, and to grow economically.
10.

To achieve this goal, we are
working
multilaterally with our friends and allies. We are drawing upon the
full spectrum of our national power. We are creating incentives that
reward and encourage transformation. And we are doing this in the
manner of American Realism.

With American Realism,
we are using free trade to help states transform – by expanding
opportunity and prosperity for their citizens.

11.

During the Cold War, there was a
solid,
bipartisan consensus in America that trade was not only critical for
our economic success, but also for our national security. We need to
regain that broad perspective, because today, more than ever, free
trade is a vital tool of our foreign policy.

Trade is an engine not only
of economic growth, but also of political transformation. Integrating
into the global economy helps to open closed societies. It helps new
democracies to deliver on the high hopes of their people. And it gives
governments a stake in the international system.

12. This
is how we should view the trade
agreements now before Congress – for Peru, Panama, Colombia, and Korea.
Asia is changing dramatically. New despots in Latin America want to
drag the region back into authoritarianism. Our free trade agreements
will help key allies to become democratic anchors of regional and
global stability. And there is one more task in that regard: We need to
complete the Doha Round, which would help lift tens of millions of
people out of poverty worldwide. Failing to realize the promise of Doha
would go down in history as one of the world’s great missed
opportunities.
13.

With American Realism, we are also
using
our foreign assistance to help states transform – by promoting good
governance and fighting poverty.

During the Cold War, there
was a debate about international development that reflected the broader
division of that struggle. Some saw foreign aid as a tool to influence
strategic partners; others as a means of doing good in the world.


Today, this old division is
giving way to a new unity of purpose. In a world where some of the
greatest challenges we face emerge within states, and not between them,
global development is both a moral ideal and a national interest. As a
result, with the full support of Congress, President Bush has launched
the largest international development agenda since the Marshall Plan.

14.

We have embarked upon a $1.2
billion initiative to fight malaria, because no one should die for lack
of a $2 mosquito net.


And we have launched a $15
billion contribution to the global fight against AIDS, doubled now by
the President to $30 billion. The President’s Emergency Plan is the
largest effort by one nation to combat a single disease.

15. As
we increase the quantity of our foreign
assistance though, we have worked to improve its quality. Our foreign
assistance needs to be an incentive for transformation, not a source of
dependency: It must support the efforts of developing countries
themselves to govern justly, reform their economies, and invest in
their people. This is the idea behind the Millennium Challenge Account.
We are now working to bring a similar logic to all of our assistance.
And that goal is simple: We’d like to get out of the business of
foreign aid entirely, but the way to do that is by helping countries
meet their own needs through the development of effective democratic
institutions and economic institutions.
16.

Finally, with American Realism, we
are
using all the elements of our power to help states transform, because
in the face of violent enemies, those who seek freedom sometimes need
more than persuasion to prevail.

In Darfur, victims of
genocide are grateful for our humanitarian relief, but they also know
that the United States will continue to sanction the Sudanese
government, until the violence against innocents stops.

In Colombia – a state that
was on the verge of failure just five years ago – our democratic ally
needs the trade agreement we promised, but it also needs the military
assistance to finally win its long war against narco-terrorists.


In Afghanistan, the
freely-elected government of Kabul does not want another feasibility
study. It wants U.S. and NATO troops to fight at the side of the new
Afghan army until we break the back of the Taliban together.

17. And
of course, in Iraq, on the frontlines
of the war on terror, we are fighting for a democratic future for the
Iraqi people and a safer future for us. I know that the American people
are weary of the violence and the sacrifice. And so are ordinary
Iraqis. Iraqis want democracy to work for them. They want their
neighborhoods to be safe. And they want their country’s future to
belong to patriots, not to foreign terrorists. A stable Iraq will be a
pillar of a different and better Middle East. And when we and our Iraqi
partners succeed, it will have been because we clearly understood our
interests, because we stayed true to our principles, and because we
persevered to win the day.
18. In
all of these endeavors, the United
States is joining great power with great purpose. We are writing a new
chapter in the history of American Realism. But to continue as a force
for good in this world, we must also look to one more task. And that is
to make certain that we are, in fact, strong at home.
19. t is
fitting that we celebrate your
centennial this year – for the challenges that America faces now, in
2007, are not completely unlike those we faced in 1907. Today, as
before, our way of life, our way of relating to one another, is in the
midst of another tectonic shift – this time, from an industrial to an
information-based society and economy. Today, as before, we are working
to assimilate a new wave of immigrants. Today, as before, a new era of
globalization is creating unprecedented opportunities for prosperity,
but clearly many Americans don’t really feel that they’re sharing in
those opportunities. And today, as before, the landscape of geopolitics
is shifting beneath our feet.
20. As
in 1907, there is a real sense of
uncertainty among many Americans today – a concern that our common
identity is shifting somehow … that changes abroad may be hurting us,
not helping us, here at home. This is even leading some to speculate,
again, that the American Century is giving way to the era of American
decline. This mood hangs over many of those articles and news reports
that we see these days about the rise of China and India, and perhaps
the coming of somebody else’s century. We are to believe that America
has had a good run, but it must be all downhill from here.
21.

Well, I think it won’t surprise
you that
I don’t believe that for a minute. I’m optimistic about America and
about America’s future. I’m optimistic because Americans value success,
and we cheer success in one another. We push one another toward greater
achievement. We’re a competitive people.

I’m optimistic because in
America it does not have to matter where you came from. It only has to
matter where you want to go. I’m optimistic because America’s pioneer
spirit is stronger than ever, our ability to adapt to change and rise
to challenges, our desire to get in the game, not sit on the sidelines.
Our national disposition to always look upon the future with hope, not
with fear — as something we will shape, not something to which we will
submit.

22.

I’m also optimistic because I
think from time to time about vignettes from our history. I spent some
time a summer ago reading some of the biographies of our Founding
Fathers. And I took a couple of things away from that. First of all, a
lot of our Founding Fathers didn’t like each other very much. But they
still managed to come together to give us a basis for this more perfect
union. I came away thinking that by all rights, by every stretch of the
imagination, facing the greatest imperial power of the time, the United
States should really never have come into being. Then, a few months
ago, I read a wonderful book about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
And again, I thought: We should never have survived that, either — our
violent divisions — and come out free. Both of those events, those
outcomes, must have seemed impossible at the time.

23.

And then more recently, in my
own history, I stand before you tonight as a woman born in Birmingham,
Alabama – the Birmingham of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan … the
Birmingham of church burnings, and police dogs, and water cannons … the
Birmingham in which my little classmate, Denise McNair, died in the
bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church by homegrown
terrorists. Yet, I stand before you tonight as the 66th
Secretary of State. And should I finish my term, I would not — I would
say to you, and don’t start thinking that we need affirmative action.
There would not have been a white male secretary of state for 12 years.
(Laughter and applause.)

24.

I also take optimism from our
history in the world. In 1989 until 1991, I was lucky enough to be the
White House Soviet specialist at the end of the Cold War. It doesn’t
get much better than that. I was there for the liberation of Eastern
Europe, the unification of Germany, and the beginnings of the peaceful
collapse of the Soviet Union. And it was a heady experience because
every day you came in and the world was going our way. But I realized
in retrospect that, of course, we were just harvesting good decisions
that had been made in 1946 and 1947 and 1948. I realized that it must
have been very tough to see that vision of a future in 1946 when the
question was not, could communism be stopped in Eastern Europe, but
could communism be stopped in Western Europe; when the communists won
48 percent of the vote in Italy and 46 percent of the vote in France;
when, in 1947, 2 million Europeans were still starving because of
failed reconstruction, the Turks had civil conflict, the Greeks civil
war; when, in 1948, a young Jewish state had to be recognized by Harry
Truman; Germany permanently divided by the Berlin crisis;
Czechoslovakia, the last free country in Eastern Europe, to fall to a
communist coup; in 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear
weapon, five years ahead of schedule; the Chinese communists won their
civil war; and, in 1950, the Korean War broke out.

I have to say that few would
have thought that freedom was on the march in those days. And yet,
somehow, because the architects of our great Cold War victory kept
faith with our highest principles, supported them with national power,
kept their optimism, and practiced a brand of distinctly American
Realism. We had the chance in 1989 and ’90 and ’91 to see the emergence
of the Europe for which they had hoped. .
25.

It is also the case that in
2006, I was fortunate to go with President Bush to a NATO summit in
Latvia. Who would have ever thought it possible? You see, I’m really
optimistic because in the large course of human events, when the
tectonic plates are indeed shifting, things that seem impossible one
day very often, in retrospect, seem quite inevitable. And so I am quite
certain that if America stays true to her principles and practices this
brand of American Realism, decades from now people will look back on
this time and say, “Who could have ever doubted freedom’s triumph?”

26. At
the dawn of the 20th
century, Teddy Roosevelt sent a message to our ambassador in Great
Britain: “Our nation,” he wrote, “glorious in youth and strength, looks
into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a
race.” America has now entered a new century. A new global race has
begun. And as always, we will run it with optimism, and vigor, and
purpose. And as in the past, not only will our people succeed – so will
our principles. Thank you very much

27 thoughts on “Condi Rice’s “Uniquely American Realism””

  1. Bless you Helena for what you are doing!
    This banquet you have created of Condi’s speech, inviting all of our comments, makes it humanized and approachable and important to formulate opinions about, rather than simply mere words to glance at passively – because, powerless us, what’s the use?
    Also, I’m so sorry for the Monitor that they will be bereft of you! Good luck in your new directions!
    Anne
    (I’ll return with comments later)

  2. I would like to courteously venture that
    “And of course, in Iraq, on the frontlines of the war on terror, we are fighting for a democratic future for the Iraqi people and a safer future for us.’
    is utter horse hockey. That’s as to the point as I can get.

  3. Helena,
    With all due respect, I believe this to be not worth your time. I am sure you can find better things to do with your valuable hours than to annotate this rubbish. There is so much Bullocks (yes, with a Capital B) in this, that it is hard to even skim through it with a straight face, and without an anti-emetic on board. I must say though, it suits her audience perfectly.
    I have read this cretin’s pretentious prose quite a bit. Seems to me she has been struggling all her life to prove she’s not just a black Southern girl. How many international diplomatic figures keep talking about their hobbies and how good they think they are at it? How many of them are known for the boutiques they shop from? Do you know anything about Angie Merkel’s, or Maggie Thatcher’s, or even (to stoop as low as possible) Hillary Clinton’s fashion preferences? The whole scene is nauseating: “I may be …. but I was the yada-yada at Stanford, talk with HK, I wear nothing but Ferragamo and call Salvatore on his personal cell to check my next shoe choice with him, and the thing I miss most when traveling is playing my grand piano before bedtime.” So calling her a “cosmopolitan” or a “Trotskyist Permanent Revolutioneer” is going way over her head.
    And regarding the substance of her drivel, is it any different than what you expect to hear at a history lesson at PNAC, Hudson, Ford, Woodrow Wilson, or any of the other great “foundations”? Self-congratulating imperialism, if you will. If I was willing to part with $15 I would mail her Howard Zinn’s summary history of “Uniquely American Realism”. But alas it would be a futile waste of paper, and $15.

  4. I have no idea why my little essay deconstructing Ms. Rice’s oxymoronic concept didn’t make it past the forum censor, but to save even more time disposing of this one, let me just note how completely Orwellian our “uniquely American” officialdom has become.
    “The stuff that was coming out of [her] consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.”
    Even more than their intolerable duckspeaking, our government factotems resemble no one so much as the character Symes who said to Winston Smith in the Ministry of Truth: “You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. … Has it ever occured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand a conversation such as we are having now?”
    Since I don’t believe a single human being can understand Ms. Rice’s conversation now, I’d say we’ve arrived at the destination Orwell had Symes predict for us — only about forty-three years early. What next: a “uniquely American” gravitational constant?

  6. What is there that is especially godawful, or GOP-characteristic, or otherwise worthy of detailed comment about this performance in particular?
    Look on the bright side: Miss Rice
    (1) did not here try to defend what her crew have been up to in the former Iraq, whether by appealing to “American Realism” or to anything else;
    (2) did not here insinuate, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have, that one is patriotism-challenged if one does not care for their doings; and
    (3) did, together with Karen Hughes, persuade her boss to drop that “Islamic fascism” rigmarole that he lapsed into for about a month last fall. (That is to say, she understands well enough in practice that one can’t tell the fiends of the world to their faces how fiendish they are and negotiate with them too. Ideological pleasure and diplomatic business do not mix well. Cf. Column B, item 5.)
    None of this is outstandingly praiseworthy either, yet why dump on the poor critters when they seem to be trying to do a little better for a change?

  7. Interesting to read Rice’s speech in the light of the political sea change that’s just taken place in France? And also Belgium it seems. Is this New Europe emerging? Finally joining the Bush/Blair/US/UK economic bandwagon?
    Also on CNN one is being treated to the astonishing spectacle of the Albanians clamouring to hail George W Bush and US democracy. What can this mean? Not all that long ago Albania was as psychotic and desperate a state as North Korea is. And isn’t Albania a Muslim country?
    While in Albania, George W proclaimed US backing for an independent Kosovo. They’re Muslims too. Whatever W can be condemned for, and there are many things, backsliding on his democracy committment after 9/11 is not one of them. I’m forever mystified why the Left opposes this?

  8. Hello again!
    Looking the speech over once more, I found it soporific – and perhaps unworthy of our attention as such – and stopped at this, section 9:
    “we are led, both by our interests and our ideals, to the following conviction: that liberty and justice within states leads to peace and stability between states”
    This seems like a testable hypothesis rather than something requiring ideology. What is her historical evidence for it?
    Also, is she aware that the US has the world’s largest prison population? And that our justice system is in danger of being politicized?
    Anne

  9. Re bb’s comment:
    After the communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell, they were largely replaced by right-wing govenments, democratically elected. After a few years, their new governments having failed in many ways (as governments always do), their left-wing opponents (including rump communist parties) took over. And now there is a swing back to the right in many places. The political pendulum swings both ways – that’s what pendulums do.
    As for Albania’s adulation of GWB – he’s telling them just what they want to hear (like all too many politicians do). To other Europeans, including the Russian government, he is once more meddling in the affairs of countries of which he is terminally ignorant, and, more importantly, of which his advisers are also largely ignorant, where they are not actively sowing mischief.

  10. Reference Paragraph 2, your comment C: as Paul Craig Roberts recently pointed out on Antiwar.com, the US became a superpower precisely because the other major countries of the world were totally ennervated by the Second World War: we stepped into the vacuum and grew our markets because there was no one else who could provide production during the late 40s and the 50s.

  11. Bb, your: Whatever W can be condemned for, and there are many things, backsliding on his democracy committment after 9/11 is not one of them.
    I am firmly convinced that a “commitment to democracy”, to be real, has to consist of both a commitment to (a) the integrity of all the institutions of democracy, and (b) a commitment to respect the outcome of democratic processes, even when the side we favor doesn’t win.
    GWB has exhibited neither of these commitments! His attacks on the institutions of democracy have been myriad, both at home and abroad. And his commitment to the outcome of democratic processes certainly doesn’t extend to the Palestinian elections of January 2006, or to the idea that the massively US aid-receiving government in Egypt should be expected/urged to allow free and fair elections there.
    The adulation he received in Albania had very little to do with democracy either there or in Kosovo. It had much more to do with Albanians’ nationalist longings/sentiments. Nothing wrong with such longings, in general, provided they are responsibly pursued in a way that does not harm the rights of others. (We should ask the ethnic Serbs and the Roma in Kosovo about that.) But let’s not conflate nationalist longings with the idea of any commitment to democracy: sometimes they coincide but far too frequently they don’t.

  12. Thanks for replying, Helena. Absolutely agree with your first point. Albania and Serbia are both joining the EU which means they are on their way to building democratic institutions after enduring many decades of tyranny. Kosovo is likely to follow suit if it obtains independence don’t you think?
    After I had written the earlier comment it occurred to me that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Tony Blair of course would be equally if not more adulated in Albania, and that therefore the reception given to W was not so much personal, but symbolic of their gratitude to the west for having liberated them and their fellow Muslims in Kosovo. It surprises me that so much of the left doesn’t recognise this and give Blair etc the credit.
    Re Bush: Agree with your skepticism in that his democratic “vision” arose solely as the result of 9/11, before that he was your FAQ Kissinger realist and anti-democrat.
    However since then surely he has demonstrably kept his word? Afghanistan now has a democratically elected govt and the opportunity to build democratic institutions.
    After the fall of Baghdad Bush overruled Rumsfeld et al who were intending to install an Iraqi “strong man” ie Chalabi, and insisted Iraq had to have a democratic constitution and elect the government of its choice, which is what happened in Oct and Dec 2005.
    Regarding the Palestinian elections it was the US who insisted Hamas be permitted to contest the election over Israeli objections. The subsequent financial boycott from the US,EU, UK was to do with the separate issue of Hamas refusing to endorse agreements signed by the previous Palestinian government which were the whole basis upon which the donor countries were providing the funding. Once Hamas meets its obligations to the agreement, then the funding to the PA will resume, so it’s hard to see it as an issue of not accepting democracy! After all the donor countries are not obligated to continue “donations” if one side unilaterally breaks the agreement. And in any case the donor countries are channelling the funds through NGOs etc. The ball is back in the PA’s court now that there is a unity govt, assuming it lasts.

  13. I agree with David. Why waste time reading the words of someone whom completely lacks credibility?
    They LIE. They will say ANYTHING to avoid the consequences of their actions. Rice has agreed with EVERYTHING this administration has done, from illegal wire taps to detaining AMERICANS without trial, forever. And when the bombs start to fall on Iran, she will agree with that.
    She was at one time a ‘scholar’ of the old Soviet Union. Yet she was WRONG there also, believing every right wing myth about their insurmountable military lead, right up until they fell apart. How did she miss the collapse? (one that I called in 1980). She missed it because she was blinded by ideology. She has been wrong about every single thing she has put her mind to. She has had two important roles in this administration during the greatest strategic blunder in our history.
    She is a third rate mind with NO analytical abilities.
    The only value that a statement from her has is as an example of the barrenness of original thought in the present administration. Don’t listen to them, don’t take them seriously, it only encourages them.
    .

  14. As I essentially said in my analysis that never made it to publication here, the complex oxymoron, “unique American reality,” warrants no further scrutiny: logical, historical, or grammatical. Anything so obviously stupid on the face of it cannot amount to anything more than a flimsy and transparent Halloween mask worn by an extortionate child hoping to frighten adults into coughing up some candy lest the little gremlin play a “trick” on them.
    As I once wrote in a poem about this incredibly credulous crew:
    The little lost girl didn’t know where she was
    The Tin Man, he hadn’t a heart
    The Lion lacked courage, and so couldn’t roar
    The Scarecrow, he wasn’t too smart
    So Condi and Colin and Richard and George
    Went off to the wizard in vain
    To ask for a plane ticket back to The Farm,
    Some courage, a heart, and a brain
    From “The Best and the Brightest” in Vietnam to “The Worst and the Dullest” in Iraq — and all in less than a generation. Seldom do empires collapse so quickly, yet this corrupt crowd of miscreant morons has (mis)managed it. Now I know what Madame de Pompadour meant when she looked at pre-revolutionary France with its swell, new Versailles Palace and predicted: “After us, the deluge.” I just hope the kids and grandkids can scrape up enough (devalued) dollars to buy themselves a few rafts and umbrellas.

  15. Rice’s version of the past is one that bears no relationship to what has actually occurred in the world. It is a shadow history inhabited by people involved in events that induce in us a sense of déjà vu, they remind us of real events but are quite different from them.
    Here are a few comments on the paragraphs numbered.
    1/We recall a Teddy Roosevelt who “built” the Panama Canal and fought a genocidal war in The Phillipines but the matter of doing so to eradicate yellow fever has never struck us as being germane. “We wiped out the village to spare it from disease.”
    We recall a Roosevelt who “spoke softly” and “carried a big stick” but where were America’s enemies? He wasn’t talking about them. He was talking about America’s neighbours.
    2/ is actually less suggestive of Trotskyism than of Naziism. It was the Nazi state which saw itself as being against the status quo of Versailles and revolutionary in its ambitions. The Bush rhetoric with its New World Order, Homeland, Blood and Soil and other coinings is full of Freudian yearnings for the past in which Gestapo men fighting terror did not flinch at employing “enhanced interrogation techniques” and defying Geneva.
    3/ we have a denial of the conventional bromides regarding the importance of morality “How many divisions has the pope?” asked Stalin
    “As many as he needs, so long as he does what we want” Rice replies, wondering if bombers will do instead.
    6/This is very debatable; the argument obviously is that there are more rich consumers than ever before. Whether that means that they live with dignity and opportunity is debatable. What is much more significant is that there are many more people dying of starvation and preventable diseases than ever before. There was a time when this would have saddened society.
    7/ Again the economic premiss is false.
    10/” Full spectrum”: more yearning evidenced in the employment of this term.
    11/ Trade is certainly a means of political transformation but it has had, for centuries, devastating consequences for most countries, substituting latifundia for communal ownership, caudillos for clan elders and peonage for independence.
    12/ The usual, utterly dishonest, swipes at states like Venezuela and Cuba. This is the Big Lie technique which has become so common that speeches seem empty without it.
    15/ Foreign assistance is here clearly defined as imperialism.
    16/ One used to think of them as grinning slyly to themselves as they came up with ever more creative spin, now I suspect that they have been schooled (in places like Regent Law School) to believe in this fantasy world. The constant piling up of lies and distortions is reaching a tipping point after which the historically accurate skeleton, upon which the propaganda is hung, disappears and the entire organism collapses. Rice’s “realism” is built upon a history that simply never occurred. The minor distortions and elisions add up to a picture that is wholly false but which serves as the justification for an aggressive foreign policy.
    16/ is an interesting reminder of what happens when the truth is left behind: the victims of genocide are dead people. And then “to sanction” means to allow. Literally this means the people killed in massacres are happy that the US government permits Sudan, until the violence against innocents ends. Perhaps this sanction is recompense for Sudan’s assistance in Iraq. Words long ago lost their meanings so that now we can go on to describe the Colombian government (notoriously the instrument of narco-terrorists) as needing US assistance in its war against narco-terrorists. If you swallow that you will have no trouble with the descriptions of the Afghan government as being “freely elected” and wanting US and NATO troops to fight at the side of (what is laughingly referred to as ) the new Afghan army.
    17/ devoted to Iraq is so densely packed with “antifacts” that it should be examined by a physicist. Passing by the “democratic future” one wonders why the “American people are weary of the violence and sacrifice.” To suggest that theirs is an experience shared with the Iraqis suggests a very high level of squeamishness on the one hand and a brutish indifference to pain on the other. Heightened though American sensibility may be the Secretary of State can still talk of the “foreign terrorists” in Iraq without conscious irony. Or is she taunting us? Is this an underlining of the “we make our own reality” doctrine?
    24/ The argument here is that the “liberation” of Eastern Europe was a US victory, the harvest of seeds planted by Washington in 1946-8.
    The problem is that she might well believe this. She might have heard the “great Cold War victory” line so often that she really believes it. The Secretary of State might, despite having a PhD in the subject, be quite ignorant of the history of Europe. It is possible that she has simply risen to her eminence by repeating falsehoods learned by rote.
    It’s rather like hearing the Federal Reserve chairman casually remarking that 2 and 2 add up to seven then adding “and two sevens make an apple.” But one suspects that she is not so dumb: there is something very ominous and evil about the cold recitation of “facts” (Blake wrote “a truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent”). For many people in 1946 the march of freedom had begun in the western suburbs of Moscow, passed through Stalingrad and rolled westward. Why was Europe starving? There was food enough but Congress had a tight grip on it, realizing the power it gave the US. In 1946 for the first time Britain was reduced to rationing bread, what the U Boats never managed the Republican Congress, suspicious of Socialism, full of men who had never been reconciled to the war in Europe, achieved without turning a hair. The seeds sown from 1946 were the seeds of hegemony, food, capital, fuel, arms and force were employed to secure European subservience. That was the bargain that Truman made with Vandenburg and Taft which bound isolationists, segregationists and liberal imperialists into an alliance against socialism, or any other resistance to US hegemony, anywhere in the world.
    What really happened was that the United States government systematically subverted every opposition current in Europe, using the enormous power which it had gained by its role in two world wars. It was not a pretty sight but what happened elsewhere in the world was ugly beyond description. Or, perhaps, just a different kind of ugliness. The terrible things done to the bodies of people in Indo China and throughout south east Asia, n almost every country of America south of the Rio Grande and west of Bermuda, in Africa, every corner of which has been fought over by armies hired, armed or inspired by the US, are all understood by anyone who has been paying attention. But what has happened to the intellectual tradition in Europe and north America is much less well understood, suffice it to say that those who nod approvingly at Rice’s parody of history are also reconciled to the open and avowed use of “rendition”, the existence of Guantanamo Prison, the incarceration of millions of Americans, the inauguration of an invisible empire spanning all branches of government, the junking of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. All of which sits comfortably on an intellectual foundation in which all traces of dissidence have been marginalized. The seeds planted in 1946-48 were the seeds of Totalitarianism. Had Rice looked carefully she will have noticed in Latvia, at the NATO summit, that around the table were the hereditary legatees of all the proto-fascist movements that formed the basis of the short lived New Order of 1940-43. In Tony Blair, for example she was looking at the successor not to Churchill, Atlee or even Chamberlain but to the original New (Labour) Party charmer Sir Oswald Mosley
    Our newspapers, our politicians and now even an increasing proportion of our academics have forgotten how to think critically. What has ended is not history but the re-evaluation of historical experience. Why should people who know everything want to learn? That is the marvelous thing about full spectrum dominance: a ruling class that can kill anyone anywhere, can silence any voice anywhere, which means that it can insist on the acceptance of anything it desires.
    That’s the theory anyway, its just not very realistic.

  16. BB:
    1) Elections, even “free and fair” elections, which neither Afghanistan’s nor Iraq’s was, do not constitute a democracy.
    2) The “elections” in Iraq did NOT come about in anything like the way you described.

  17. bevin, when you say “For many people in 1946 the march of freedom had begun in the western suburbs of Moscow, passed through Stalingrad and rolled westward.” are you asserting that you think STALIN was the one who was going to bring freedom to Europe?

  18. Shirin:
    For an account of how Bush over-ruled the Pentagon’s plan to hand over to Chalabi and insisted instead there had to be a democratically elected govt:
    James Risen “The State of War – the Secret History of the CIA and the bush Adminstration (Free Press)
    For a detailed account of the writing of the Iraqi constitution by the Iraqis and the the US (Bremer etc) being forced to take a back seat:
    Rajiv Chandrasekaran “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” (Bloomsbury)

  19. BB, I followed the events very closely and in detail as they were happening. Bush is not the one who insisted on elections. There would never have been elections had Ayatullah Sistani not demanded them and backed the Americans into a corner.
    As for the “democratic constitution” – yeah, right! And if you believe that I have some lovely oceanfront property in Baghdad that I am sure you would be interested in.

  20. By the way, I am in awe of anyone who can read Condi’s smelly can of rubbish and keep their lunch down, let alone analyze it. I can barely get through the first paragraph without having to make a mad dash for the vomitorium.

  21. Fair enough but were you in Baghdad at the time the Iraqi constitution was drafted? Chandrasekaran was there reporting for the Washington Post. He is not pro Bush or pro war, far from it.
    Similarly Risen is not pro Bush or pro War. He is a reporter for the NYT. His account of Bush quixotically over-ruling the Pentagon and upending all their plans for Chalabi “strong man” rule is backed up by other accounts of what happened at the time.
    Bush is criticised in the book for his naivity, but interestingly his instincts proved sound as Chalabi proved unable to even win a seat in the Parliament in the Dec ’05 election.
    Both books are worth reading.
    Am not trying to turn W into “St George”, merely pointing out he cannot be criticised for failing to do what he promised: ie to bring democratic constitutions and elections to both Afghanistan and Iraq which would lay the foundations for the building of democratic institutions in the future.

  22. BB:
    As the vast majority of news reports demonstrate very clearly, having been in Baghdad, or even in the Green Zone, at any given time does not equate with knowing anything about what went on there. By the same token, not having been there does not equate with not knowing.
    Having said that, I do know who Risen and Chandrasakaran are, and am aware of their books. In fact, I own Chandrasakaran’s book, and have read much of it. Unfortunately, I have beem inable to find the specific passage(s) in the book that says what you say it does. Perhaps you would be kind enough to provide page numbers for both books so I can read them.
    In the meantime, I feel certain that you will find if you look at all the relevant facts/timelines, etc., that it was not Bush, but Ayatullah Sistani who forced the U.S. to hold elections – such as they were. I am equally certain that your interpretation of the two events you cite is not supported when one examines them in detail or looks with real care at the timeline, or the context in which they took place.
    Initiating a democratic process in Iraq was the impetus behind neither the upending of the Pentagon’s plans for Chalabi, nor the writing of the constitution (lower case intentional).

  23. Chandrasekaran : pages 268 – 272 of the hardback edition. It is towards the end of the chapter “Missed Opportunities” in the passage beginning “The November 15 Agreement called for an interim constitution to be written by February 28 …”
    Have long ago lent Risen’s book out so it is not to hand.
    However it was reviewed by Mark Danner in the NY Review of Books
    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19720
    The relevant passage reads:
    “When it came to Iraq,” James Risen writes in State of War,
    the Pentagon believed it had the silver bullet it needed to avoid messy nation building—a provisional government in exile, built around Chalabi, could be established and then brought in to Baghdad after the invasion.
    This so-called “turnkey operation” seems to have appeared to be the perfect compromise plan: Chalabi was Shiite, as were most Iraqis, but he was also a secularist who had lived in the West for nearly fifty years and was close to many of the Pentagon civilians.
    Alas, there was one problem: the confirmed idealist in the White House “was adamant that the United States not be seen as putting its thumb on the scales” of the nascent Iraqi democracy. Chalabi, for all his immense popularity in the Pentagon and in the Vice President’s office, would not be installed as president of Iraq.
    Though “Bush’s commitment to democracy was laudable,” as Risen observes, his awkward intervention “was not really the answer to the question of postwar planning.” He goes on:
    Once Bush quashed the Pentagon’s plans, the administration failed to develop any acceptable alternative…. Instead, once the Pentagon realized the president wasn’t going to let them install Chalabi, the Pentagon leadership did virtually nothing. After Chalabi, there was no Plan B.”
    Shirin, this account gells with virtually every other reputable account, in that Jay Garner, who was Bremer’s precedecessor, was briefed by the Pentagon and intended to hand over power very quickly to a Chalabi-led Government. The Pent was expecting to be mostly out of Iraq by the August.
    However, early up Bush over-ruled Rumsfeld (as in Risen’s account), Garner was knifed and Bremer was appointed as Bush’s personal envoy and de facto Vice Roy. He was charged with getting a democracy up and running and he reported personally to Bush. After that Rummseld was cut out of the political loop and Bremer acted for months without even much consultation with the National Security Advisor (Rice).
    Bush and Sistani were not at odds over the democracy issue; only over it’s timing. Bremer wanted at least two years. Sistani forced the issue, and in turn W et al forced Bremer. By that stage the insurgency was beginning to rage, so this had a hand in the decision in Washington to bring everything foward.
    But if it hadn’t been for Bush, then Chalabi would have been installed as the unelected Prime Minister soon after the fall of Baghdad and one can imagine what would have happened after that.

  24. BB, I don’t have time to go into it now, but your reasoning is extremely faulty, and overlooks quite a few inconvenient facts and aspects of the events as well as their context.
    Just for starters, you seem to be unaware of the facts that Garner’s intention was to hold national elections within 90 days, and that he set out immediately to schedule local elections. When Bremer came onto the scene one of the first things he did was to cancel all the local elections, and overturn the results of any democratic or quasi-democratic processes that had taken place, some at the independent instigation of Iraqis themselves, replacing any leaders that had been chosen by the Iraqis with his own, often baffling, choices. He appointed, for example, as mayor of Najaf, perhaps the holiest city in the world for Shi`as, not only a Sunni, but one who was well known for being extremely corrupt.
    You also overlook the very real and obvious fact that elections – even truly free, fair, and valid ones without the interference of an occupying power with its own very self-serving agenda – do not constitute democracy.
    I will try to address this more completely soon.

  25. BB, I don’t have time to go into it now, but your reasoning is extremely faulty, and overlooks quite a few inconvenient facts and aspects of the events as well as their context.
    Just for starters, you seem to be unaware of the facts that Garner’s intention was to hold national elections within 90 days, and that he set out immediately to schedule local elections. When Bremer came onto the scene one of the first things he did was to cancel all the local elections, and overturn the results of any democratic or quasi-democratic processes that had taken place, some at the independent instigation of Iraqis themselves, replacing any leaders that had been chosen by the Iraqis with his own, often baffling, choices. He appointed, for example, as mayor of Najaf, perhaps the holiest city in the world for Shi`as, not only a Sunni, but one who was well known for being extremely corrupt.
    You also overlook the very real and obvious fact that elections – even truly free, fair, and valid ones without the interference of an occupying power with its own very self-serving agenda – do not constitute democracy.
    I will try to address this more completely soon.

  26. Shirin, really appreciate the exchange but think this site is a not forum for extended personal arguments.
    You asked for my sources, I have provided them. You can look them up and read them If you don’t agree, think we should leave it at that. You can always seek clarification from the authors? That would be better, imo.

  27. Nice attempt to end the discussion, bb! I guess you don’t know me very well yet, though. :o} Interesting how you want to back out of the dicussion now that you realize you are talking to someone with a bit of real knowledge and comprehension of the events, and a bit of analytical ability.
    For the record, this site most certainly IS and always has been, a forum for just this kind of argument. It is much more a forum for this kind of argument, in fact, than it is a place where someone can expect to come and post half-baked, claims based on partial information and made-up definitions without being challenged. Therefore, I will post my responses to your arguments. It is your decision whether to continue trying to make your case after that or not. (I cannot imagine where you got the idea that this is a personal argument. It is not in the least personal.)
    Yes, you have provided your sources, which so far fail completely to support your assertions, particularly when put into the context of the whole story, but I will give them due consideration, and if they do NOT support your claim, will tell you why they fail.
    Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find the passage you cited in Chandrasakaran’s book, since the page numbers you provided are incorrect. I have read through much of the “Missed Opportunities” chapter and skimmed the rest, but have yet to find the passage you refer to, so I will have to read throught the whole thing more carefully.
    As for the review of Risen’s book, unfortunately, I cannot access it online without paying a fee. However, the portion you quoted simply does not support your conclusion at all. It mentions nothing about Bush pushing for any kind of democratic process. Rejecting the Pentagon’s plans for Chalabi does not equate with insisting upon democratic elections in any way whatsoever. On the contrary, according to the portion of the review you quoted, the rejection of the plan to install Chalabi as president (or was it prime minister? You are inconsistent on this point) was followed by a lot of inaction, not immediate preparations for a democratic election.
    And there IS the little matter of timing, which you do mention when you say the Americans did not want to hold elections for another two years. How that constitutes insisting upon democracy is hard to fathom. In fact, refusing to allow Iraqis to hold even local elections, cancelling or overturning elections scheduled by Garner, and insisting upon putting into place Bremer’s often bafflingly inappropriate handpicked appointees (including the aforementioned Sunni mayor of Najaf who was well known for his corruption, and as mayor of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, Dane, of all things – and not even a Dane of Arab background) would appear to be quite the opposite of insisting upon democracy.
    My guess is nothing in Chandrasakaran’s book will support your assertion either. We will see.

Comments are closed.