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Wednesday, May 25, 2005What is Realpolitik? If I'm not mistaken, it involves nations putting traditional moralities away and directly addressing the situation on the ground with a realistic understanding of what is at stake and what must be done.Realpolitik traditionally meant that we dealt with SOBs because, hey, who else was there to deal with? Post-9/11, and with the U.S. staking its foreign policy on the notion that freedom is the ultimate guarantor of our security, though, we have to take a new look at what's realistically in our interests. Part of our problem in the run-up to Iraq was a State Department that believed fervently in the old assumptions of Realpolitik and didn't wish to put our SOBs on edge. Our new problem is that realistically we have no choice. The power of America today rests in the threat that the thugocracy you're leading today will be a democracy tomorrow if you aren't at least transitioning it to be benign dictatorship by next Tuesday, with democracy to eventually come. If we don't hold to our new stick, the threat of peoples liberated, we're being unrealistic about where our best future alliances lie. Do we want Uzbekistan to be "liberated" by fervent Islamists while the people remember our backing of Karimov? Traditional morality in foreign policy requires loyalty to the thugs with whom we have standing arrangements. But for all the Reagan administrations noble efforts in the Cold War, it's hard to top what was accomplished when Marcos was handed a plane ticket to Hawaii and informed that he would be using it, whether he wished to our not. That represented standing for democracy in a very real way. It turned Realpolitik on its ear, or should have. But the result was that for the short term at least our role in supporting Marcos was forgiven thanks to our role in helping democracy come. The Cunning Realist poked at some of this way back on the 18th. It's worth piggybacking on the theme: Can anyone still argue that the old model of realpolitik has not broken down? How much more proof do we need that what was once geopolitical pragmatism is now in many cases self-sabotage as well as dangerous cognitive dissonance?It's time to send Karimov some plane tickets and make very public our desire that he use them. I wouldn't mind sending King Fahd and Hosni Mubarak some plane tickets either. Yes, what would follow is uncertain. But we've got a pretty clear idea what happens when we support or ignore quasi-Islamist thugocracies. Having a foreign policy geared to kicking that can down the road, rather than sending things in a new direction is the wrong way to go. 
posted by gbarto at 11:26 AM |
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