Saving the System by David Brooks, New York Times
All around, the fabric of peace and order is fraying. The leaders of Russia and Ukraine escalate their apocalyptic rhetoric. The Sunni-Shiite split worsens as Syria and Iraq slide into chaos. China pushes its weight around in the Pacific.
I help teach a grand strategy course at Yale, and I asked my colleagues to make sense of what’s going on. Charles Hill, who was a legendary State Department officer before going to Yale, wrote back:
“The ‘category error’ of our experts is to tell us that our system is doing just fine and proceeding on its eternal course toward ever-greater progress and global goodness. This is whistling past the graveyard…
Comments
Bill C.:
When you teach somebody to read, write and figure that is a revolutionary and transformative thing. But when you do so it is reasonable to expect and demand that the newly literate person not use that new knowledge to perpetrate crimes. So it is with the world. We can reasonably expect and demand that the king of the kleptocrats, Putin the would be Great, not go around conquering his neighbors.
Given that Brooks has referred us to Walter Russell Mead, let us look at what Mead said earlier about "stability," "the system" and who, in truth, is threatening same:
"So again, the interesting thing for me about American foreign policy in all this, and something I write about in the book, is that America is a contradictory force in the world. On the one hand, we want stability. We're a hegemonic, status-quo power. We want everything in the world to stay more or less the way it is. But at the same time, our economy is a transformative revolutionary force, and our democratic ideology is a transformative revolutionary force. So we are changing everything with the one hand, and with the other we're trying to keep everything the same."
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Mead/mead-con2.html
Thus, once again, and as relates to threats to "the system"/"stability", etc, I suggest that we look:
a. Not at the small fry (or the "reactors" as I would call them), to wit: Russia, China and entities within the Middle East, but, instead,
b. To the world's premiere and most powerful actor, to the elephant in the room, to the 800 pound gorilla, to the winner of the Cold War and to the mover and shaker of the post-Cold War world, to wit: to the United States.
Herein we might ask: Should the United States, realistically, expect to be able to both have its cake (stability; the status quo) and eat its cake also?
Brooks is such a scholar and practitioner, he teaches a course at Yale? Only the very best scholarship, eh Yalies? Is that Yale dept. Walter Russell Mead territory, the man of the trip to India and Pakistan where he essentially blogged, "I don't know much about this part of the world, but trust us, we Americans will get the policy right." Or is he somewhere else?
Our elite classes only know the system so they cannot help the American people transition to a new and better one. They lack imagination and know-how for this sort of stuff. Plus, how can they admit we need less of their kind of foreign policy spinners-of-magic and that the old ideas don't work? Unless a Victoria Nuland type is outed, most Americans have no idea all the meddling these fools do behind the scenes. Given the Gene Sharp love of some in the SF community, I guess I am barking up the wrong tree around here. Meddle meddle toil and trouble....
Carl,
I think you are missing what is happening around you. There is nothing new in "convert or die". Happened all over Europe in the middle ages up until the 1800s. Kleptocracy is nothing new either. In fact, what you are seeing across the globe has already occured in Europe as a result of their growth in wealth. The Arab Spring is a redux of the Revolutions of 1848. The 1848 revolutions did not result in democracies, neither will the Arab Spring. What it does herrald is a change from ethnic and religious identity to nationalistic identity - and then war.
I disagree with Brooks and Hill about both the nature of the change and what the future holds largely because I don't think Brooks and Hill have the slightest idea what is happening around them. They are attempting to hold on to the past; to isolate the West from the changes happening both outside and inside that little sphere. It can't be done. It should not be tried.
Curmudgeon:
Mr. Brooks quoted Mr. Hill as saying "The replacement era will not be modern and it will not be a nice one." That is not surprise given that the challenges to the system are coming from kleptocratic and murderous regimes like Putin's Russia, Iran and Red China; and from takfiri killers whose religious and political stand can be most cogently be stated as "Convert or die."
So I think understanding the change is quite simple, rule by the knife. Managing the consequences will be simple but hard to do, along the lines of doing your best to control the bleeding.
If we let that system slip away through inaction, our descendants will curse us for our cowardice.
Bill C:
Your post is the ideal response to what I wrote below because it so perfectly illustrates the attitude and opinion of so many of our elites, they don't truly believe in the liberal international system and therefore can't really get up any enthusiasm for defending it. To put it more bluntly, they don't really know who the good guys are. This is a greater menace to the system as it has existed in the hard won recent past than any lack of any lack of weapons, any lack of resources or any lack of the much longed for strategic vision. If you ain't got no fight in you, you can't win.
It is puzzling to me why the elites think this way given the tens going on hundreds of millions of innocent live the Russians and Red Chinese have taken in the last 100 years, and the millions "the actors of the Middle East" would take if only they could get their hands on the right weapons. The dopey flyover people I know don't seem to have as much trouble making a judgment. Those dead millions make it pretty easy for us to decide.
Brooks would seem to have the shoe on the wrong foot.
Using Brooks own criteria, one can see that it is the United States here who better fits the role of international "bad actor:"
"When Hill talks about the modern order he is referring to a state system that restrained the two great vices of foreign affairs: the desire for regional dominance and the desire to eliminate diversity."
During the Cold War, what restrained the United States from pursuing the twin vices of foreign affairs (the desire for regional and, indeed, global dominance and the desire to eliminate diversity) was not a "state system" but, indeed, the character of the international environment (bi-polar) and, specifically, the power of its (the United States') great power rival, to wit: the former Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union was gone, the United States was free to pursue both of these vices; which it did with a vengeance.
"Throughout recorded history, large regional powers have generally gobbled up little nations. Powerful people have generally tried to impose their version of the Truth on less powerful people."
This description aptly fits the actions of the United States, post-the Cold War, as it (the United States) undertook -- via all its instruments of power -- its mission to undermine, eliminate and replace (with western models) the ways of life, ways of governance and values, attitudes and beliefs of other states, societies and peoples.
"But, over these centuries, civilized leaders have banded together to restrain these vices."
This how we should see the actions of -- not the United States -- but, indeed, China, Russia and the entities of the Middle East, as they have acted, as best they could:
a. To prevent the United States from achieving regional and/or global dominance.
b. To prevent the United States from eliminating political, economic, social, etc., diversity. And
c. To prevent the United States from imposing its version of the Truth on less powerful people.
So: If the "fabric of peace and order is fraying," then look, I suggest, to the actions of the United States. This, because it is the US, post the Cold War, that traded "stability" for the chance to transform other states and societies more along modern western lines. China, Russia and the actors of the Middle East simply reacting to this blatant grab for greater power by the United States.
Dayuhan:
Those people responding to the poll questions (whatever they may be and however they are posed) naturally don't think much about foreign affairs. They have things to do today like pay the electric bill right now because they forgot to pay it last month. They, we, leave most of that stuff to the leadership to keep an eye on and alert us when things get tight. That is the job of the leadership, look and judge and call to action when needed, like now. Looking at polls and following them as a puppy follows a soap bubble blowing in the wind is not leadership. It is an excuse for inaction. Even Mr. Brooks uses that one in his article. Leaders lead.
Very good point about getting the economic house in order. Not so odd though that it wasn't left out of the article since that wasn't the main point.
<i>The electorate isn't the real problem. The real problem are the political elites. </i>
Have you been following opinion poll numbers on engagement in Syria or the Ukraine? Interest is very very low, across party lines: it seems to be one of the few things Democrats, Republicans, and Independents seem to agree on. I think you'll find that what little enthusiasm there is for involvement in these affairs comes from within the Beltway, not from the populace at large.
I find it interesting that an article on "saving the system" pays so little attention to the possibility that the greatest threat to "the system" is not Russia, China, radical Islam, or any combination of the above, but rather the persistent inability of "the system" to get its own economic house in order.
This is an extremely prescient article, but he gets one thing wrong I think. In the article he asks "How do you get the electorate to support the constant burden of defending that liberal system?" The electorate isn't the real problem. The real problem are the political elites. They don't seem to recognize the worth of the system and if they don't they can't convince the electorate of anything. So the question should actually be "How is the liberal system supposed to stand if its most prominent members don't believe in it and don't believe it is worth the struggle to preserve it?"
This is a terrible pity because the forces assailing us as mentioned by Mr. Brooks aren't that powerful and there are many potential allies available to us. Putin's Russia is economically very weak and the front line NATO countries, because of their history, seem quite willing. Red China has no naval tradition, as bad a geographical position as a naval aggressor could have and there are many quite capable countries who fear them. But all of that avails us nothing if we don't show some willingness to actually do something to defend the system. We, the US, and whether we like it or not it is we that is the leading light of that system and if we don't step up, now, that system will be destroyed. As mentioned in the article, the replacement system will not be a nice one and time may not be on our side.