Partisanship and the National Interest

I don't mean to make this Bill Kristol week around here, but ... while reading through the responses to that dreadful Ignatieff piece, I came upon this from Henry Farrell:

When the intellectual history of the lead-up to the Iraq war is written, I suspect it will have to disentangle at least four different causal chains to understand why so many public commentators supported it (or, if they failed to support it, expressed their disagreement sotto voce ). First – the use of the Iraq war and the spread of democracy by force by a particularly unscrupulous crowd of conservative public intellectuals to, as they hoped, establish Republican hegemony. This was never a secret – read Kristol and Kagan’s 1996 Towards a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy for the blueprint – an argument in which the good of the oppressed of the world and the good of the USA inevitably redound to the dominance of the Republican party.

I'm afraid I don't see how thinking that what's good for the United States of America is also good for your political party counts as being intellectually "unscrupulous." And if it does, then Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan hardly have a monopoly on the vice. Practically every pundit and public intellectual thinks that their pet idea - whether it's neo-Reaganism, Sam's Club Conservatism, or whatever the heck Peter Beinart was selling his fellow liberals - is at once the solution to America's ills and the ticket to a lasting political majority. This can produce some deep silliness, like Linda Hirschman's argument that the repudiation of John Rawls will cement a new Democratic majority, but there's nothing particularly sinister about it.

In the case of Kagan and Kristol, one might add that nothing either one has written since things turned sour in Iraq suggests that they value GOP dominance more than their ideas about how the U.S. should act in the world. It's very clear that for both of them, the neo-Reaganism comes first, and the fate of George W. Bush and the Republican Party comes second.

Comments

This offers a fine contrast with how many of the Democrats, and I am principally thinking of Obama, have valued Democratic Party dominance -- or at least success in 2008 -- over their ideas about how the US should act in the world. I assume they thought that using US military power to stop genocide was good for the United States and just good in general, before they began to see it as a political liability: http://www.lastliberalhawk.com/2007/08/genocide-they-can-live-with-it.html

Posted by Last Liberal Hawk | August 10, 2007 3:48 PM

There's a distinction here that Ross is missing. The distinction is between:

1. Favoring a war and believing that the war will, in addition to being good foreign policy, will be successful and redound to your movement/party's benefit electorally because your party will have "won the war".

-and-

2. Favoring a war and believing that the war will allow you to put the country in a siege mentality which you can use to make the opposition look treasonous, unpatriotic, and ignorant of the threats posed to the country.

I think Kristol fits in category number 2 and that category 2 is sleazy.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 10, 2007 3:57 PM

I hate to be rude, but what Bill Kristol is about is Israel. He sees the Republican Party as the only force that will guarantee Israel's existence, and he believes that the Republican Party can only win elections when foreign policy is the main issue. Before 9/11 he insisted that the U.S. needed an "aggressive" foreign policy to defend itself against the evil empire of China. Since 9/11 his basic goal has been to maintain an American army in the Middle East. As for Mr. Kagan, his goal appears to be run his mouth as "geopolitical expert."

Posted by Alan Vanneman | August 10, 2007 6:52 PM

Bill Kristol, a man who sticks to his principles no matter how wrong they're proven to be. The only thing he has left is to try tarring the opposition.

Posted by Bill | August 11, 2007 8:30 AM

Yeah, to put Dilan's point another way, there's a difference between thinking the success of your policy will give you electoral benefits, and thinking the means of your policy will give you electoral benefits. Kristol and Kagan sincerely believe in their policy. But they seem to be lamenting electoral effects of the successful end of the Cold War.

It would be like liberals lamenting how everyone is rich so they can't rile up voters for a class war.

Posted by Consumatopia | August 11, 2007 10:25 AM

I think Kristol fits in category number 2 and that category 2 is sleazy.

That only makes sense if he really doesn't believe that Saddam, Islamic terrorism, and China present genuine threats to American interests. If you have any evidence that that is the case, by all means share it with us.

Yeah, to put Dilan's point another way, there's a difference between thinking the success of your policy will give you electoral benefits, and thinking the means of your policy will give you electoral benefits.

Or it could be that your policy is more likely to be implemented & carried out by one party rather than another.

Posted by Mike S. | August 11, 2007 8:00 PM

Or it could be that your policy is more likely to be implemented & carried out by one party rather than another.

I did not deny this (in fact the very next sentence after what you quoted stated exactly that) and it is not inconsistent with what I said at all. They sincerely believe in the policy. Nonetheless, they seem to believe, in Taoist terms, "success is as dangerous as failure". The beginning of the piece explains political problems caused by the successful end of the cold war.

As I pointed out, this is a common problem on all sides of the spectrum--if you actually solve the problem, there's no reason to keep you around. No good deed goes unpunished. Or, as Lenin may have said "the worse, the better".

Posted by Consumatopia | August 11, 2007 8:22 PM

"successful end of the Cold War?"

We lost and China and Russia won?

Claims of American victory in the Cold War looks like just another wingnut "Mission Accomplished" banner moment these days.

Posted by alphie | August 12, 2007 1:32 AM

Mike S.:

Your rejoinder makes no sense. The point is, Kristol may or may not believe that these things constitute threats to American interests. But it is possible to support a war WITHOUT making claims that war opponents are a bunch of unpatriotic, treasonous naive simpletons who simply do not "get" the threats to the country.

That's the problem with Kristol. If he wants to support the Iraq War, fine. He's wrong, but many others were wrong as well. If he wants to believe that the Iraq War will be a smashing success that will make Republicans more popular, that's also fine. But using the questioning the patriotism and intelligence of the opposition as a political strategy is NOT fine.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 12, 2007 1:53 PM

Kristol was on Stewart's show tonight and he claimed that the war in Iraq was going well - no surprise there. But he actually went further than that and said "no one doubts that."

Perhaps he was only referring to members of his immediate family, but I think it's a perfect illustration of Kristol's pure dishonesty. If no one doubts that the war is going well, then no one doubts that demonic possession is the cause of all mental illness.

If Kristol had to tell the truth for one full 24 hour period, would his head explode?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | August 13, 2007 11:37 PM