Facing reality: toward a conservative foreign policy.

ANY consideration of a conservative approach to foreign policy must begin with the reality that there are serious divisions among conservatives on it. The most familiar division is that between neoconservatives and realists. But both schools divide further into smaller factions. Charles Krauthammer, for instance, has identified a split between democratic globalists and democratic realists within the broad neoconservative camp. (Distinction: Democratic realists would be the more choosy about where and when to intervene.) Realists come in both liberal and conservative versions. There is a third school of "assertive nationalists" who favor more intervention than realists but for narrower national purposes than the democracy-promotion of neoconservatives. A fourth school, whose program is sketched out in Francis Fukuyama's recent book America at the Crossroads, would promote democracy but rely on NGOs and civil-society mechanisms rather than upon armies and intervention to do so. Buchananite noninterventionists constitute a fifth school. And there are the extremes of tenderness and toughness in the conservative camp represented respectively by the Cato Institute and NR's own John "Rubble Don't Cause Trouble" Derbyshire.

Merely to list these different approaches suggests that seeking to reconcile them is probably not the best way forward. It would be too concerned with previous disputes and founder on the rocks of entrenched positions. Advocates of each school would naturally defend their established positions and criticize those of others. Discussion would tend to ignore important issues that cut across existing sectarian disputes. All this is the recipe for a debate that reinforces conservative divisions and never reaches a conclusion, let alone a broad consensus.

Much the same thing can be said about seeking to root a conservative foreign policy in "principles." Bismarck once said that he could as well follow conservative principles in crafting a foreign policy as walk through a dense forest with a twelve-foot pole between his teeth. The problem with a principled approach is that the principles are always less clear than they seem. An apparently obvious principle, generally favored by conservatives, is that foreign policy should pursue the national interest. But the national interest is sometimes obscure or clouded. Was removing the Taliban in America's national interest? Yes. Did more than a handful of people realize this before September 11? No. Worse, the national interest will inevitably be a matter of serious domestic dispute in a multicultural society where the very definition of the nation is uncertain. No European nation with a large Muslim minority is likely to reach agreement on what its national interest means in policy towards the Middle East.

Signing on to more high-minded aspirations is likely to have even worse consequences. For instance, Western countries have accepted a legal responsibility to intervene to prevent genocide when it occurs. This seems admirable. But it places an obligation on the signatory nations to risk American (and British, and French) lives for remote causes manifestly unrelated to their interests (and perhaps unforeseen under the original interpretation of the rule). So when the signatories wish to avoid intervening, as they did in Rwanda, they simply deny that genocide is taking place, adding hypocrisy to callousness. Other rules, such as the prohibitions on the transfer of populations, while understandable as a disincentive to ethnic cleansing, may nonetheless obstruct the resolution of particular disputes. When all is said and done, almost the only principle that a Bismarck can consistently follow in foreign policy is the rule of prudence. And prudence offers only the most general guidance on how to respond to a particular crisis, its first instruction being to learn about the facts of the case on the ground.

Nor will a third approach--consulting America's traditional posture in foreign policy--be of much help. To begin with, there is no agreement on the nature of that tradition. In his recent book Dangerous Nation, Robert Kagan delves into history to demonstrate that America's tradition is one of ideologically driven interventionism rather than one of isolationism. His critics, such as David Gordon in The American Conservative, retort that it is Kagan's interpretation that is ideologically driven, distorting the historical record to justify future interventions. Interesting though these debates are, and even supposing we could resolve them, they cannot give us a ready-made foreign policy. Knowledge of a tradition may allow us to predict the general drift of a nation's foreign policy. A tradition is a sort of national disposition. But it offers no guidance about what to do in a particular crisis or to meet a particular threat. After all, isolationists sometimes favor intervention--Pat Buchanan was a firm Cold Warrior--and interventionists shrink from involvements they think too risky. Once again, it is the particular circumstances that, in Burke's words, "give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind." So it is to circumstances that we must now attend.

AMERICA'S WORLD ORDER

What are the particular circumstances to which U.S. foreign policy should direct itself? The main facts of the current international situation are in fact modestly encouraging: The U.S. is the single most important power in a world organized largely along lines of national sovereignty and free trade that reflect American interests and values. To be sure, the present structure of world power has many flaws and imperfections. Because international relations are a more or less civilized struggle between independent states (and, increasingly, international agencies), that will always be the case. But the key points are clear.

Economic arrangements in today's globalized world protect the freedoms to trade and invest that American administrations since Hamilton have regarded as vital American interests. International political institutions are too weak and dependent upon U.S. goodwill to reduce U.S. sovereignty significantly unless Americans themselves pursue this course. And the U.S. has built up a network of alliances and bases that give it the strategic dominance to protect its interests throughout the world.

The current structure of world power thus embodies free trade, national sovereignty, and U.S. strategic predominance. These are interests well worth defending. Hence a world order that embodies them is well worth defending too.

Yet this international order is threatened. Everyone seems to agree on that point even though they disagree violently about the nature of the threats. Liberals and social democrats tell us that today's main threats to national and international security are novel ones such as world poverty, AIDS, and climate change. This is high-sounding nonsense. There are perfectly good reasons for seeking to cure these ills: namely, that it is better for people to live long, healthy lives in a pleasant environment rather than short, nasty ones in deserts or swamps. For these things to be threats to our security rather than simply social or natural evils, however, there would have to be serious powers seeking deliberately to worsen world poverty, spread AIDS, or heat up the world's climate in order to conquer or intimidate us (as in a James Bond movie).

In fact, apart from a few hysterical leftists who believe the U.S. is guilty of these crimes, everyone supports international cooperation to solve them. But people reasonably differ on the technicalities of how to do so, or on the level of resources that should be devoted to each problem, or even on the nature of some of the problems. No doubt these disputes will be resolved over time, after which poverty, AIDS, and climate change will be dealt with. Whether or not that happens, neither these ills nor dissension among governments over them amount to security threats. The campaign to discuss them under that heading is essentially an attempt by the Left to divert resources from foreign and defense spending to its favored social programs.

That might not matter overmuch if genuine and/or traditional security threats did not exist, as the Clinton administration sometimes seemed to think in the 1990s. Unfortunately, as the leading power of the international order, the U.S. is likely to face at least three major threats in coming decades: Islamist terrorism, a power-grab by "transnational progressives" in international institutions, and the rise of new powers, notably China, with different political and economic traditions. Together with such international trends as the demographic decline of Europe and Russia and the spread of Muslim immigration, these three challenges are likely to bring about massive change in the international order. And all three have America in their sights.

Islamist terrorism seeks to convert or destroy America. It regards America as the Great Satan and thus the main obstacle to the reestablishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate. Its ambitions seem extravagant. It is unlikely that jihadists will defeat a U.S. army, occupy America, and make Islam the federal religion. But according to the security experts, terrorists could one day destroy an American city with a weapon of mass destruction. Islamists are already weakening America's allies in Europe by a blend of immigration and cultural subversion. And they are gaining in strength and recruits as the U.S. seems to falter and show a lack of resolve in Iraq. Even if they are unlikely to gain their main objective, they might succeed in undermining American prestige, isolating the U.S. internationally, disrupting U.S. trade and investment, and occasionally inflicting costly loss of life through terror.

Trans-national progressives seek to bind America. International civil servants and officials in NGOs--who together constitute the transnational progressives or "tranzis"--generally regard the U.S. as overly powerful and seek to constrain its actions in various ways. These include bringing U.S. military interventions under the purview of the International Criminal Court, regulating its carbon emissions under the Kyoto agreement, and making European Union regulations the "gold standard" for international economic regulation, thus effectively forcing U.S. manufacturers to conform to EU rules. Such actions are part of a general assault by the tranzis on national sovereignty and the Westphalian order of nation-states. Since democracy is rooted in the nation-state, a secondary effect of this trend is to transfer power from democratic nation-states to non-accountable international agencies controlled by the tranzis. Though the U.N. and its agencies have been their main base until recently, the EU is an increasingly important source of tranzi influence--and an increasingly self-conscious ideological rival to the U.S. It is currently discussing, for instance, a proposal that EU officials launch a worldwide campaign for the prohibition of the death penalty.

China seeks to rival America. China's challenge to the U.S., though likely to be formidable, is the most traditional one and so the threat most amenable to orthodox deterrence and diplomacy. China seeks to be an Asian and world superpower and to exercise its hegemony over its near-abroad. That will nudge it into conflict with the U.S., in particular over Taiwan, but the importance of America as a market for Chinese goods will likely postpone any actual clash for a long time and perhaps indefinitely. To contain China within an Asian balance of power, the U.S. has quietly forged new alliances with Vietnam and India while keeping its relationship with Japan in good repair. At the same time Washington has upgraded its economic relationship with Beijing--the U.S. Treasury Secretary led a high-level delegation there recently--in order to manage any disputes before they get out of hand.

CHANGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The interrelationships between these different challenges produce some interesting results--and not always discouraging ones. For instance, both China and India are likely allies for the U.S. against Islamist terrorism. India's hostility to terrorism is well-known. Both the U.S. and the War on Terror are more popular there than in any other country, including America itself. But China also has Islamist factions. If Islamist radicalism grows there, it will provide Beijing with a further reason for maintaining good Sino-American relations and for cooperating with U.S. intelligence and police agencies in the War on Terror.

That would take place against a background of growing Chinese and Indian prosperity and influence. Several estimates suggest that China, India, and the U.S. will between them account--and account roughly equally--for three-quarters of world GDP by mid-century. Such estimates should be treated cautiously. But if they are even half-right, then both Asian powers will exercise growing influence in world politics and international bodies. As new superpowers exercising their new political clout, they will be very reluctant to sign on to the large tranzi project of chipping away at national sovereignty. They have already refused to sign on to such important tranzi projects as Kyoto implementation and the ICC. They are likely to resist the EU campaign for an end to the death penalty. They have suffered greatly from the EU's practice of using regulatory standards as a disguised form of protectionism. And except on issues where their specific interests dictate otherwise, they will probably drift toward informal support for U.S. resistance to the tranzi power-grab.

As the spiritual home of the tranzi project, Europe will lose influence owing to these developments. But it will suffer a decline in influence in any event. The same estimates that show China rising to 25 percent of world GDP show Europe falling to about 10 percent. Indeed, Europe will be hit on two fronts: In addition to losing international political clout, Europe will experience internal upheavals as the growing Muslim minorities exercise their own new political influence. They will seek to sway foreign policy, of course; it will become increasingly difficult for European governments to support the U.S. openly on Middle East policy or the War on Terror (though intelligence and police cooperation will continue discreetly). But they will also shift domestic policy on such questions as abortion, gay rights, abolition of the death penalty, etc. Until now the EU has been the leading proponent in U.N. conferences and other international venues of these new moral "rights." As Muslim influence grows, the tranzis may find that their European base for such policies disappears under their feet.

It is Russia, however, that faces the most ominous future. Blighted by a demographic collapse, governed by kleptocrats, still economically backward, hostage to ever-changing energy prices, relying on Muslims for a quarter of its troops, and separated from a growing China by a disputed border, Russia faces apparently insuperable problems. And if it were to fall into chaos, that would both embolden the jihadists and expose Europe to further risks.

America, in contrast, has ample room to maneuver within and between these challenges and contradictions. To do so successfully, however, its policy must be rooted in three things: a reputation for winning, a less utopian version of democracy promotion, and reliable allies.

WINNING AND LOSING

Let us at this point grasp the nettle of Iraq. Winning is important. It frightens enemies and heartens friends. There is no reason to assume that the U.S. has lost the struggle in Iraq and every reason not to lose by surrendering prematurely. American troops, our allies, and the Iraqi government with its forces together constitute the strongest military and political power in Iraq. If the U.S. had the stomach to maintain a substantial military presence in Iraq for another decade, there is no doubt that a stable, pro-American, and democratic Iraqi government would remain in power and eventually be able to sustain itself without external help. The problem, as in Vietnam, is on the home front.

If domestic U.S. pressures force Washington to scale down and withdraw our troops over the next two or three years, the outcome is much less knowable. But a reasonable speculation is that we face four possible long-term outcomes, two broadly favorable and two unfavorable. They are:

(a) a quarrelsome but largely stable Sunni-Shia coalition government, formally democratic and allied to the U.S., that controls Iraq but that for many years has to fight a weak and sporadic jihadist insurgency;

(b) a Shia majority government--elected democratically, constantly tempted toward sectarian repression, but restrained by the human-rights concerns of its American ally--that has to fight a strong and widespread Sunni insurgency supported by neighboring governments;

(c) an authoritarian Shia government, allied to Iran, that emerges from the chaos and civil war following an American withdrawal and that, in an alliance of convenience with the Kurds, quickly crushes any remaining Sunni resistance;

(d) a permanent civil war between Sunni and Shia, both supported by neighboring regimes, that informally partitions Iraq into different regions where warlords, terrorist groups, and tribal leaders rule under what is, at best, a weak central government and from which the Kurds opt out under U.S. protection.

In the event of either (a) or (b) but especially (a), the U.S. would be in a strong position in the Middle East. It would have prevailed, albeit after great travails, and kept its enemies at bay. Lebanese democracy would probably survive; the other Arab states would have to take greater heed of U.S. policy; and the neighboring crises in Iran and Afghanistan would become easier to handle.

In the event of (c) or (d), Iran, Syria, and their terrorist allies would dominate the region in the medium term with appalling but unforeseeable circumstances. The U.S. would restore its local position over time, as it did after Vietnam, but doing so would be costly in several ways. It would require a larger military buildup than otherwise. It would have to spend valuable resources to recover lost ground--probably in Iraq itself because of its strategic importance. And it would have to be more ruthless in gaining its objectives. The less your enemies fear you, the greater the blow you must strike to get their attention. So one paradoxical effect of an Iraqi defeat and withdrawal might be the greater likelihood of a military strike against Iran.

SPREADING DEMOCRACY OR ENCOURAGING LIBERTY?

Whatever its outcome, Iraq has raised the bar for future military interventions by the U.S. This is a political fact irrespective of whether it really follows from the Iraqi experience. It will be only marginally influenced by what kind of government eventually emerges in Baghdad. But this fact will itself influence the broader Bush policy of promoting democracy. If the military muscle of the U.S. is less available to support it, that policy will have to be both more cautious and more dependent on local political forces. It will have to become a policy of encouraging liberty and liberal institutions in current autocracies rather than promoting democracy, which inevitably threatens the existing ruler. It will have to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

That is probably desirable and perhaps necessary for other reasons. It meets America's major needs. It seeks to improve the life of Arab and Islamic societies so that they cease to be the breeding grounds of terrorism. It does not put Washington at odds with friendly regimes (though it will create tensions with them). And it would be consistent with a policy of opening up markets and freeing trade, since liberalism connects economic with other freedoms.

A policy of planting democracy in other cultures, on the other hand, is a form of liberal imperialism that would either fail or require the U.S. to be a presence for several generations as a tutor. Individual Americans would have to live and work in Iraq and other evolving democracies for their entire working lives. Nineteenth-century Britons were prepared to do that; 21st-century Americans are not.

Lest I be accused of wisdom after the event, let me quote what I wrote in NR more than two years ago:

   If promoting an abstract democracy is U.S. policy,

   then we become adversaries of those states--Jordan,
   for instance--that are relatively liberal autocracies and
   U.S. allies. Friendly encouragement to move in a democratic
   direction, however, is perfectly compatible with a
   policy of extending the blessings of liberty. It is also the
   approach that dovetails best with American interests in
   the region. Leaning on the Saudis to liberalize their
   semi-totalitarian society similarly makes better sense than to
   urge a premature democratization likely to produce an
   extreme fundamentalist anti-American government. As a
   general rule, indeed, extending liberty is less likely to
   threaten stability and bring Islamo-fascists to power than directly
   promoting democracy.

After all, America is a status quo power in its attitude to the international order. It seeks sensible reforms of existing structures, such as the U.N., to make them both more efficient and more accountable; and to prevent changes that would damage U.S. interests, such as a Kyoto-style body empowered to set binding carbon-emission targets on nations and corporations. Its legitimate interest in extending democracy is at this level: It should seek to rein in the trans-nationalist elites and subject them to the control of democratic national governments. One important reform in that direction would be to remove from the U.N. bureaucracy and its NGO hangers-on their role in setting a political agenda for the world through the device of U.N. conferences on various "rights." Another would be to establish a democratic bloc within the U.N.

Notwithstanding some rhetorical excesses by neoconservatives, the U.S. is not a revolutionary power that seeks to impose its system of government on other countries. And if it were, it would not be pursuing a policy that could be described as conservative in any tradition. The U.S. Navy in World War II outlined a genuinely conservative approach when it warned sailors visiting foreign ports that they would encounter many things that struck them as strange and repulsive but went on: "The principle we are fighting for in this war is 'Live and let live.'"

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES

Whether fighting the War on Terror or containing China, the U.S. needs allies. These are tasks that cannot be accomplished alone. But what allies--and what kind of alliance--should the U.S. seek? There are broadly four choices:

Coalitions of the willing. Given that the premise is the need for allies, the option of pure isolationism does not really exist. But those nervous of permanent or "entangling" alliances will tend to choose coalitions of the willing. These are ad hoc alliances, defined and determined by the mission. Their members share three characteristics: They share the same risk analysis; they have useful resources; and they are willing to act. John Bolton's Proliferation Security Initiative, one of the Bush administration's most useful foreign-policy innovations, was a good example. It has no permanent secretariat; it imposes no restraint on the sovereignty of its members; and it lapses into inactivity when there is no evidence of contraband WMD. Coalitions of this kind are extremely useful, but there is no reason they cannot be organized inside more formal alliance structures. Indeed, the phrase "coalitions of the willing" originated in NATO to deal with missions of which not all member-states approved. And they work more easily if the coalition members are used to working with one another and have compatible equipment. Thus, they are a useful part of America's quiver of military relationships, but probably not the whole thing.

Continentalism. Ahemispheric alliance or EU-style economic union for the Americas is a recurring illusion of the American Right. As 9/11 showed, there is no underlying sympathy for the U.S. and its economic arrangements and diplomatic stance of the kind that would be necessary for such an alliance to work. Almost no Latin American country was prepared to join America's military effort after 9/11. The economic fashion for "neo-liberalism" on the Reagan-Thatcher model was brief and has been followed by financial and political instability in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and elsewhere. There are some success stories, Chile famously, but better economic performance on the U.S. free-market model and better trade relations with the U.S. have not been accompanied by significantly closer diplomatic positions, let alone hints of a military alliance. President Chavez in Venezuela is extending the life of revolutionary Castroism at the very time that Castro is dying. He is also forging links with Iran and other Islamists in an avowedly anti-U.S. alliance. Since the U.S. now has millions of immigrants from Central and Latin America, this makes uncontrolled and illegal immigration a serious national-security risk. Elite plans for a North American Economic Union, dismissed as the fantasies of the "black helicopter" crowd but then confusingly confirmed by the establishment participants, are an escape from the real choices for U.S. policy and doomed to fail. But European experience suggests that they should be carefully watched since the fact that something cannot succeed almost guarantees that it will be tried.

Our European allies. Though they are all in NATO, the allies range from genuine and active friends of the U.S. (Britain, Poland) to outright anti-Americans and neutralists (Spain). Muslim immigration is weakening their attachment to the U.S. They were weak to start with since their addiction to welfare states has reduced their defense spending to less than 3 percent of GDP. And a whirlwind of anti-Americanism is roaring through Europe, sometimes encouraged by governments as a way of building a European "identity." The U.S. cannot afford to dispense with the European allies, however. Though weakening, they represent some of the world's largest economies and some of its most efficient armed forces. If the alliance is to continue to be effective, however, the U.S. must radically change its policies towards Europe. It should cease to encourage European unity, which is now an engine of anti-Americanism; it should seek to divide pro-American states from anti-American ones; it should in particular seek to detach the British from their growing involvement in European military integration, since this puts at risk the close integration between U.S. and British military forces; and it should launch a campaign to combat anti-Americanism equal to the CIA campaign against Communism in the 1940s and 1950s. For some time, however, the U.S. must expect to be disappointed by the performance of its NATO allies. Changing this will be a long task.

The Anglosphere. Finally, we have the embryonic alliance that has emerged in the last few years among the countries of the English-speaking world. The U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and recently even Canada have cooperated in Afghanistan and Iraq. That cooperation builds on long relationships--the Aussies fought in every American war in the 20th century (and on the same side, too). The U.S. has also recently begun to forge a new military and diplomatic alliance with India. This new type of "coalition of the willing" works well because the cultural similarity between its peoples ensures that they see the world in roughly the same way. Ideally, the Anglosphere would function as a subsidiary alliance to NATO if the older alliance recovered its spirit. Otherwise, it could form the basis for U.S. policy on terrorism and the containment of China, and even serve as a balance against the anti-Americanism of a separatist Europe. For that to happen, however, the British would have to be weaned off the Europeanism to which we have been directing them since 1950.

It is in the nature of things that statesmen will not select one of the above broad strategies as a result of cool reflection, but instead will pick and choose among them as circumstances dictate and, if we are fortunate, blunder into the right combination of policies and stick to them. No approach will succeed, however, if we remain mired in our current cultural masochism. As writers as different as Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens have pointed out, this deprives us of the clear-sighted confidence to recognize and defend the rights of others as well as of ourselves.

Both the West and the Anglosphere are visibly rooted in the traditions of Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the scientific and industrial revolutions. The Anglosphere is in addition rooted in the ideals of Magna Carta and fairness that have led it to a position of unprecedented global power. Yet the Anglosphere in particular recognizes that its own dominance was not planned by philosophers or ideologues, and that man is severely limited in his ability to design the future progress of history. The ideas at the core of Western character cannot simply be dictated to others, any more than they were dictated to us in the first place. But they remain true ideas, and--if the West advances them with intelligence, prudence, and sensitivity to circumstances--will improve the life of mankind in the 21st century.