Green Lantern Corps
Via NewsHoggers, I see that Sean-Paul has a question at the Agonist:
In many of the international relations critiques I read about American policy, usually written by Americans or Amerophiles, there seems to be an unspoken assumption at work. The assumption goes something like this: if the United States simply had the political acumen and will it could solve most of the problems it is now facing, like Iraq, Iran (nukes), Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, North Korea, Horn of Africa and finally Al Qaeda and its offshoots.
Do you agree with this assumption? If so, why? If not, why?
This is an interesting flip side of national-greatness “Green Lantern Theory.” And after all, there are many Green Lanterns.
The beginning of wisdom is to recognize the large set of these places where “the problems it is now facing” are not American problems at all. Lebanon, for instance, is not an American problem. It’s a Lebanese problem. The US ignored Lebanon for over a decade. From what I can tell, the place only improved during that period. The Horn of Africa was not an American problem. Rather, the Bush Administration needlessly and willfully involved itself in one of the oldest disputes on the planet, between Ethiopia and Somalia. Israel/Palestine is an American problem insofar as the US government feels compelled to continually square the circle of bottomless support for Israel while needing tolerable relations with its oil-producing adversaries. Iraq is an American problem because we went out of the way to make it one. Iranian nukes are a generalized nonproliferation issue, but less an “American” problem than, at one end, an Israeli problem and, at the other, a generalized world international issue.
US elites generally, on the right and left both, have an unbecoming conviction – an anxiety really – that if there’s a problem somehere in the world America must get involved in it. Right and left differ somewhat on the means and ends, but not on the core idea that we called all-time quarterback and have to be in on every play. It’s bizarre.
So, depending on what you mean by “solve,” no, the US can’t solve any of them. The reason is that other people exist. All of these places are filled with people who live there and have personhood; they are willful, and have constellated themselves into social arrangements that have to do with us only tangentially. They are not just a resistant material: they are themselves shapers.
Comment by Frank —
June 16, 2007 @ 7:52 am
Nicely put.
Comment by Frank —
June 16, 2007 @ 7:54 am
a bit condecending, but nicely put.
Comment by BruceB —
June 16, 2007 @ 8:24 am
Vigorous agreement here, Jim, but then you probably aren’t surprised by that.
Key questions ought to start with “Do we have anything vital at stake?” and “What reasons do we have for believing our intervention would help more than it hurts?”
Comment by Thoreau —
June 16, 2007 @ 9:01 am
US elites generally, on the right and left both, have an unbecoming conviction – an anxiety really – that if there’s a problem somehere in the world America must get involved in it. Right and left differ somewhat on the means and ends, but not on the core idea that we called all-time quarterback and have to be in on every play. It’s bizarre.
Yep.
Comment by Tim —
June 16, 2007 @ 9:27 am
US elites generally, on the right and left both, have an unbecoming conviction – an anxiety really – that if there’s a problem somehere in the world America must get involved in it.
No way. The elites aren’t that altruistic. We got involved in Lebanon for mercenary reasons, because people with financial interests (Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc) wanted us to.
Which is why the U.S. is going to keep doing it until the capability no longer exists.
Comment by Monte Davis —
June 16, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
Given that “fixing the problem” often aims at a democratic, rule-of-law end state…
Maybe it’s the good old nostalgia filter at work, but it seems to me that “classic” conservatives (of the Locke-Burke-Kirk lineage) tended to view that end state as the result of a very specific, fortunate, historically contingent European -> English -> American route — while the neocons are all too ready to posit it as the default if we just get rid of bad regime X.
NB: this has nothing to do with handwaving about who’s genetically, culturally, or ideologically ready for democracy. Rather, it’s about humility, given our still very limited understanding of how we got ready.
Comment by alec —
June 16, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
Who is going to miss Fatah in Palestine? I certainly won’t
Comment by Donald Johnson —
June 16, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
You’re right. I sorta think the US could bring about a just solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, but that’s because there’s some purely imaginary US in my head that is capable of being fair and even-handed and I don’t really believe that.
Comment by Mona —
June 17, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
Exactly right, and an excellent reply to Jim’s equally excellent post. There ar many nations I would be horrified to live in, but social and political evolution cannot be master-minded in neocon or Wilsonian think tanks.
Look at the nations of the former Soviet bloc. Most have hardly become exemplars of Enlightenment democracy in whihc the rights of the individual are vouchsafed. And not a few long for the “good old days” of Communist “stability.”
Comment by abb1 —
June 18, 2007 @ 3:21 am
Why, the US elites, right and left (including the media) want to control the world, and so any unsanctioned activity anywhere is their problem. Rome, Spain, Britain, and now it’s the American Century. This too will pass, but we will probably be dead by then.