Rice’s “Democratic Peace”

by CKR

As part of the administration’s current public relations push, Condoleezza Rice wrote “The Promise of Democratic Peace,” an op-ed in the 11 December WaPo.

Ivo Daalder, at TPM Café, says he doesn’t get it. I had a hard time reading it, too. It bounces around and tosses off too many phrases we’ve heard too many times already.

She’s right about one thing: the end of the Soviet Union changed the world in many ways that have not been well accommodated.

What is needed is a realistic statecraft for a transformed world.

Nobody’s come up with a new paradigm yet. She may think this is it:

Our experience of this new world leads us to conclude that the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power.

Rice’s reputation when she joined George Bush on the campaign trail was that of a realist. The specialized meaning of that word is “someone who analyzes international relations in terms of power.” In the WaPo piece, she attempts to stitch realism together with what the administration likes to consider idealism.

Like the ambitious policies of Truman and Reagan, our statecraft will succeed not simply because it is optimistic and idealistic but also because it is premised on sound strategic logic and a proper understanding of the new realities we face.

Perhaps the contradictions and mistakes within her piece signal the difficulty of this endeavor.

My predecessor's [Dean Acheson’s] portrait is a reminder that in times of unprecedented change, the traditional diplomacy of crisis management is insufficient. Instead, we must transcend the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests.

“Traditional diplomacy” isn’t just crisis management. It’s building alliances and structures for trade and other interactions. The most compact contradiction in the piece is “volatile status quo.” If it’s volatile, does it last long enough to qualify as a status quo? The last part of that sentence, though, is the tipoff: there’s something out there that doesn’t serve our undefined interests. The overall message seems to be that stability is to be eschewed unless it’s the stability of a world of democratic states. The old stability was bad, but we’re working toward stability.

Weak and failing states serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons.

It was China’s strong security and secrecy apparatus that allowed the spread of SARS, not a failing state. It’s the strong North Korean state that can spend on developing nuclear weapons while its people starve. Iran isn’t exactly failing either. Iraq wasn’t a failing state until the invasion. Even an idealist needs to understand the situation she’s starting from.

Attempting to draw neat, clean lines between our security interests and our democratic ideals does not reflect the reality of today's world.

Is anyone doing this?

The "freedom deficit" in the broader Middle East provides fertile ground for the growth of an ideology of hatred so vicious and virulent that it leads people to strap suicide bombs to their bodies and fly airplanes into buildings.

Does she really believe that it’s hatred driving these acts? Seems to me I’ve seen research that suicide bombings are frequently a nationalist protest against occupation.

Implicit within the goals of our statecraft are the limits of our power and the reasons for our humility.

That one speaks for itself, humility echoing that long-ago debate statement by Bush.

But enough of quibbles. There are two things very wrong about Rice’s piece: it ignores the need for justice and human rights, and it pretties up the act of war with lightweight rhetoric.

The word justice appears only once:

…our statecraft must now be guided by the undeniable truth that democracy is the only assurance of lasting peace and security between states, because it is the only guarantee of freedom and justice within states.

The closest she comes to human rights is in the next paragraph:

Our power gains its greatest legitimacy when we support the natural right of all people, even those who disagree with us, to govern themselves in liberty.

The only right that’s fit to mention is for people “to govern themselves in liberty.” The US’s founding fathers recognized a few more. The gratuitous “even those who disagree with us” is petty, but I suspect it was intended to be generous.

But of course this is a reflection of the conservative dogma that free government and markets are all the rights anyone needs. In a world where the only “natural right” is to govern oneself in liberty, a “freedom deficit” will inevitably lead to hatred. There’s a consistency there, but it doesn’t accord with reality.

Most irresponsibly, the piece is written so that the proverbial man from Mars would never know that a war is in progress.

[Bush:] "It is 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."

[snip]

For the first time since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the prospect of violent conflict between great powers is becoming ever more unthinkable. Major states are increasingly competing in peace, not preparing for war. To advance this remarkable trend, the United States is transforming our partnerships…

[snip]

Though the broader Middle East has no history of democracy, this is not an excuse for doing nothing. If every action required a precedent, there would be no firsts. We are confident that democracy will succeed in this region not simply because we have faith in our principles but because the basic human longing for liberty and democratic rights has transformed our world.

[snip]

Unlike tyranny, democracy by its very nature is never imposed. Citizens of conviction must choose it -- and not just in one election. The work of democracy is a daily process to build the institutions of democracy: the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free media and property rights, among others. The United States cannot manufacture these outcomes, but we can and must create opportunities for individuals to assume ownership of their own lives and nations.

[snip]

How could it have been prudent to preserve the state of affairs in a region that was incubating and exporting terrorism; where the proliferation of deadly weapons was getting worse, not better; where authoritarian regimes were projecting their failures onto innocent nations and peoples; where Lebanon suffered under the boot heel of Syrian occupation; where a corrupt Palestinian Authority cared more for its own preservation than for its people's aspirations; and where a tyrant such as Saddam Hussein was free to slaughter his citizens, destabilize his neighbors and undermine the hope of peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

Perhaps most irresponsibly,

He [Acheson] certainly could never have predicted that nearly four decades later, war between Europe's major powers would be unthinkable, or that America and the world would be harvesting the fruits of his good decisions and managing the collapse of communism.

Acheson provided hope to people via reconstruction in the wake of a devastating war. His good decisions had to do with containing Communism and constructing a Europe that no longer would be motivated to war. The Bush administration has brought war to Iraq with little in the way of reconstruction. There is some faint hope from the removal of a dreadful dictator. But nothing in Iraq resembles Acheson’s promotion of the Marshall Plan. And this piece doesn’t resemble George Kennan’s long telegram.

Comments

[PHK]

My view? This certainly demonstrates that Rice is no Dean Acheson. I can't imagine that the Washington Post would have published this incomprehensible commentary if she weren't SecState.

[CKR]

It's easy to dismiss Rice's piece and hard to read it. It would be hard to give a passing grade to it if it were a paper for a sophomore political science class.

But it's worth reading closely because it does come from the SecState amid a campaign by the administration to create support for its policies.

Her reference to the need for new policies in the post-Cold-War world tweaked one of my continuing concerns, even if she didn't offer much beyond the usual administration platitudes. We're fifteen years on now, and still fumbling without the equivalent of the Long Telegram.

As the Soviet Union crumbled, Rice was placed very much as Kennan was at the end of WWII. Kennan was in Riga, and Rice was negotiating the reunification of Germany. Both were specialists in the Soviet Union, and both were in the middle of an old world giving way to the new.

So we might fault her for not coming up with today's long telegram over those fifteen years. Perhaps she is aware of this too.

Her WaPo piece, like the President's speech last night, relies on the strength of repetition and spinning the story as favorably to their views as possible. Both devices are transparent, especially in the administration's overuse.

But it made me read the Long Telegram again. Kennan hit on some things that are useful after the Soviet Union. I hope to get into that soon.