I disagree. Military historian John Lewis Gaddisargues that ending tyranny should once again become an American priority. In keeping with this goal, he identifies the Bush Doctrine with “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” In hindsight, this policy is a principled extension of actions taken by the Clinton administration, as witness your favorite testimony, submitted by former communications director for Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott:
As nations throught the region strove to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—than best explains NATO’s war. —John Norris, Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo, Praeger, 2005, p. xxiii
In relation to the goals of economic reform, mitigation of ethnic tensions, and broadening of civil society, the difference between actions in Iraq and Kosovo is only a matter of degree. Its elevation to principle takes place at the point where Gaddis relies upon our Founding Fathers seeing themselves as having seized a beachhead for liberty in a world run by tyrants, in the context of Robert Kagan’s emphasis on their knowledge that the beachhead would have to expand if it was to be secure: “This meant dominating the North American continent, so that liberty could align itself with power. It also meant propagating the first international revolutionary ideology, one that called, in a more distant future, for the overthrow of tyranny throughout the world.”
I am all in favor of this Western Liberationism. By contrast, the Putinist ideology is “sovereign democracy”, a self-conscious borrowing from the Taiwanese attempt to distinguish its national identity in the face of the threat of its absorption, posed by communist mainland China. In other words, Russia defines her nominal compliance with Western civic ideals through contradistinction from their corrosive effect on her national identity, rooted in universal submission to the sovereign. This overt reversal to Eastern Byzantinism originally trademarked by Konstantin Leontyev, leaves America alone to carry the torch of Western revolutionary humanism. I expect the historical place of the Bush Doctrine to be determined accordingly.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 04:09 pm (UTC)I am all in favor of this Western Liberationism. By contrast, the Putinist ideology is “sovereign democracy”, a self-conscious borrowing from the Taiwanese attempt to distinguish its national identity in the face of the threat of its absorption, posed by communist mainland China. In other words, Russia defines her nominal compliance with Western civic ideals through contradistinction from their corrosive effect on her national identity, rooted in universal submission to the sovereign. This overt reversal to Eastern Byzantinism originally trademarked by Konstantin Leontyev, leaves America alone to carry the torch of Western revolutionary humanism. I expect the historical place of the Bush Doctrine to be determined accordingly.