History is Happening Now

It’s painful to watch the following Web ad, recently released by the McCain campaign, showing clips of big shot Democrats praising John McCain. It’s important to understand that this ad, more than anything else, explains why John “the maverick” McCain won the Republican primary and why he has a reasonably good shot at winning the general election, in spite of the damage George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress have done to their party’s reputation. McCain has benefited tremendously from the praise he has received from well-respected Democrats.

I painfully admit that I too used to have positive things to say about John McCain, perhaps because I foolishly thought that by praising a Republican who supported a reasonable immigration policy, spoke out against torture, called Jerry Fallwell and other Christian leaders “agents of intolerance,” fought for campaign finance reform, etc., that I could lend credibility to my arguments that the Republicans who take scarier positions on these issues are extremists.

Little did I know that McCain would embrace radical Christian nutball Rod Parsley as a “spiritual guide,” support legislation that allows the CIA to continue torturing, abandon his immigration plan in favor of “border security,” embrace the Bush tax cuts, take a warmongering approach to Iran and Russia, and make the sort of ridiculous campaign promises (balancing the budget by the end of his first term, for example) that would make his supporters sick to their stomachs if they were paying attention (but alas, most McCain supporters and most of the traditional media are too caught up in the great debate over Obama to hear anything McCain has to say.)

The Democrats in these ads sounded so happy and pleased-with-themselves as they praised McCain. They did so, I think, because they thought it would lend them credibility to patronize a “moderate” Republican. “See!” they seem to be shouting, “Look how fair and non-ideological I am. Look at how reasonable and transcendent I’m being in praising a politician who is loyal to the other party!”

The question is: Are Republicans a threat to this country or not? If they are, then under what circumstances is it appropriate for Democratic politicians to be praising Republican politicians? Under what circumstances does it make sense for Democrats to praise their own party’s candidates for being “bipartisan” or “independent”? I don’t think it’s good strategy to alienate honest, well-meaning Republican Americans by demonizing their beliefs (ignorant and misguided as those beliefs may be), but I also don’t think it’s a good strategy to pretend the lesser of two criminals is actually a law-abiding citizen.

McCain scares me. I’m worried he’ll lead us into more unnecessary war, as he has in the past. I’m worried that he’ll cut taxes while federal spending continues to explode, creating the conditions for further economic disaster. I’m worried that he will undermine or destroy the insitutions that protect many Americans from unnecessary poverty and suffering. And I’m disappointed with my party’s leaders for creating a Frankenstein with their self-serving praise. Am I wrong?

Such is the sage judgment of Robert Kagan writing in the Washington Post about the war between Georgia and Russia.

This op-ed is an almost textbook example of neoconservative militaristic fantasy, in which a big Nazi-like enemy (like the Iraqi Hitler we recently faced and the Iranian Hitlers we are heroically facing now) attacks a peace-loving pro-Western lily-pure democratic country because it (our Enemy) hates freedom and democracy.  In the terms of this fantasy, anyone who points out the inaccuracy of this picture, who brings up uncomfortable details like the fact that Georgia was the country that chose to launch a military offensive against the separatist South Ossetia, is accused of being anti-Western, a proponent of “appeasement,” a wimpy accommodationist, etc.

This line of neoconservative reasoning is also usually self-serving and self-enriching.  Kagan writes:

Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia’s attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even — though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities — the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives.

A very convenient diagnosis coming from the author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

One should note that Kagan is the preferred foreign policy pundit of the McCain campaign and neoconseratives more generally.  McCain even wrote a blurb for Kagan’s book.  “In this important, timely, and superbly-written book,” McCain professes, “Robert Kagan shows that the ‘end of history’ was an illusion. Today’s global challenges pose a stern test for the world’s democracies. This book is a wake-up call and should be read by policymakers, politicians, pundits and all who want a guide to the dangerous waters of 21st century geopolitics.”

Put roughly, Kagan’s thesis is that the next worldwide geopolitical conflict will be between the world’s “democracies,” like the US and the nations of the European Union, and the world’s “authoritarian” regimes, like China and Russia, a return to nineteenth century power politics, except of course we are virtuous and only motivated by the desire to do good in the world, while the authoritarians we face think purely in terms of cynical Realpolitick.  ((See “The End of the End of History” in TNR))  This is an appealingly simplistic narrative, with heroes in white hats and villains who twirl their black mustaches, which I think does far more to exacerbate tensions than anything else.  To belligerently announce your intention to take a hostile stance toward another country–and to be driven by a semi-moral fervor in doing so–is a great way of fulfilling your own prophecy.  Remember, Kagan’s book came out before August 8, 2008, and neoconservatives have been taking a hostile stance toward Russia for many years.  The Caucus region is probably the second most strategic region in the world after the Middle East and so the US has a vital national interest in securing the region’s energy reserves, through such policy instruments as NATO expansion, multilateral deals to build energy pipelines, among others.

This is, it should go without saying, not to justify Russia’s turn toward autocracy or to in any way support its horrific attacks against Georgia.  But Kagan works hard to minimize the importance of NATO expansion and US missile defense systems in Eastern Europe in his version of the story, which is the reason he has to categorically dismiss the importance of such “details” in the first line of his op-ed.  Charles King, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, paints what strikes me as a much less simplistic picture of the conflict over South Ossetia, one in which Georgia bears a good deal of responsibility for setting off a regional powder keg.

Experts can argue about “the details” of Geogia’s attack on South Ossetia and Russia’s illegal invasion of Georgia, details Kagan claims not to care about, but my point is more straightforward.  It is in the context of the “self-fulfilling prophecy” that we should understand what the foreign policy of a McCain administration would look like.  It would be a presidential administration for which “details” are “not very important,” because they would already know how historians will in the future write about the present.  Evidence that contradicts their preferred storyline, whatever they decide it is, can be dismissed out of hand because we all already know what the story line is supposed to be.  What is that preferred storyline?  War!