DRAFT: 11.5.97

A REQUIEM FOR REALISM?

Peace & Policy, 3:1, Spring 1998

Foreign Affairs, Journal of Council on Foreign Relations, 75th Anniversary 1922-1997, September/October 1997. 238 pp. $7.95

Ambivalence between idealism and realism has been a perennial feature of U. S. foreign policy and its semi-official journal, Foreign Affairs. In this 75th anniversary issue, that ambivalence is demonstrated with gusto in several articles. The editors have included well-selected voices of orthodoxy as well as a few token voices of dissent. At the tail end of the issue, the editors have also provided a list of the most significant books of the last 75 years, including not only the orthodoxy but also criticisms of American foreign policy such as William Appleton Williamss The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. One could quibble with the choices of the articles or the books, but all in all, the issue provides an extremely important and provocative read.

Judging from this volume, the dominant school of thought is still realism and pragmatism covered up with a dash of idealism. Although the dichotomy between realism and idealism, like all dichotomies, is false, it still continues to be the dominant framework for debate. Real life is not a zero-sum game. Choices are often made on the basis of a complex of motivations. In foreign policy formation, the dominant self-identity of a nation in the form of its national cultures and ideals are a paramount force. No matter how cynically a foreign policy is pursued to privilege certain interest groups, it cannot be sustained over long term unless it is ultimately in consonance with a sense of national pride and integrity. U. S. foreign policy is no exception. The best approach to the understanding of foreign policy is therefore not to consider it in purely realistic or idealistic terms but in terms of how perceived national interests are pursued to maintain a persistent identity in time.

Two leading articles in this issue, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Samuel Huntington, approach the problem precisely in this fashion. Adorning Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.s lead article, Has Democracy a Future? a picture of an earnest Woodrow Wilson speaks a thousand words. Dressed in an impeccable white suit, Wilson stands uprightly against a rich background of a waving U. S. flag with his hands stretched out to the world. Perhaps more than any other U. S. president, Wilson represents American foreign policys central dilemma. Since Wilson, the rhetoric of world democracy has been the attractive packaging of often pragmatic U. S. foreign policies pursued in the Western and Eastern hemispheres. If like Britain, an American statesman could have said that the United States has no permanent enemies or friends but only permanent interests, the rest of the world would not have been too surprised. But the United States has historically posed as a champion of democracy while sometimes pursuing pragmatic policies in pursuit of the leaderships narrow perceptions of its national interest. At home and abroad, this has often opened the U. S. government to charges of hypocrisy. U. S. officials are not, of course, any more hypocritical than other government officials around the world. But when words and actions fall widely apart, the charge gains greater credibility in the public eye.

Woodrow Wilson provides a dramatic example of this chasm between idealism and realism. While preaching democracy around the world, he refused to meet with the emperor of Japan on the grounds of Japans inequality with the United States, a charge that could not have failed to be interpreted by the Japanese as racist. More seriously, during the Cold War and after, the United States time and again has pursued counter-democratic policies in the Third World in defense of its short-term economic and strategic interests. It is well-known how the Central Intelligence Agency collaborated in the overthrow of democratically-elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, respectively in 1953, 1954, and 1973, in order to bring about governments friendly to the U. S. corporate interests. In their scholarship, William Appleton Williams, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Ramsey Clark, Ali Mazrui, and other critics of U. S. foreign policies have provided an abundance of evidence to support the charges on the counter-democratic role of the United States in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Many of these policies have been pursued in the name of realism. However, what gives realism a bad name is that its champions, from the best and the brightest during the Vietnam War era to its current intellectual leaders such as Professors Schlesinger and Huntington, have been arguing against a seeming tide of world history. In their articles, both authors acknowledge the rise of populism and multiculturalism as byproducts of globalization but lament the failure of the world to conform to their theories. Schlesinger deplores the rise of multiculturalism as a sign of weakness instead of strength of American democracy. Huntington brings the argument into the foreign policy arena by suggesting that in the post-Cold War Era, the United States has no powerful enemy and therefore no visible reason for national unity. He also deplores the rise of multiculturalism and the ebbing of assimilation while advocating a retrenchment from world affairs until a visible threat reinvigorates the U. S. national identity and purpose.

Both scholars are thoughtful and provocative intellects. It is therefore a pity that their energies should be spent on arguing against what constitutes the fundamental meaning of the American experience and its contribution to the rest of the world. For over two centuries, American democracy has been be an important ideological force in world affairs. Before the American Declaration of Independence, what other government in the world would have stated its fundamental purpose to be to guarantee its citizens life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Governments were unabashedly about domination and extortion, not the pursuit of happiness. Realism would do well to consider the reality of democratic forces in the United States and the rest of the world struggling not only for liberty and equality but also for community, identity, and cultural survival.

Many of the authors in this issue of Foreign Affairs are cognizant of that fact. Reality no longer consists simply of military hardware and economic prowess but also of those delicate and subtle ties of meaning that form communities from the local to the global. Joseph Nye has aptly named the phenomenon soft power. Schlesinger and Huntington also have been pioneers in their scholarly contributions to this understanding. But in their current enthusiasm to fend against a perceived disintegration of the United States, they are arguing against multiculturalism. American society has been a multicultural society from its beginnings; it has become more so in recent decades by accommodating entry of Asian and Hispanic immigrants. Partly because of it, American society in the 1990s is a culturally and politically more dynamic society than it was in the 1950s. As the world moves toward an American model of multiculturalism, this fact alone can be a source of strength for the United States. To lament it is tantamount to crying over spilled milk. Both articles, however, have their saving grace. Schlesinger wisely warns against a recurrence of totalitarianism in the guise of populism. Huntington seems to be moving away from his earlier clash of civilizations thesis calling for unity against new phantom enemies (an Islamic-Confucian alliance) to a new kind of isolationism.

Both scholars have helped in problematizing culture, civilization, values, morality, and norms in international relations. They also have contributed to the weakening of the state-centric views of foreign affairs. However, both writers belong to a generation of American scholars who identify themselves as realists, generally arguing that values and morality should have only a marginal place in the conduct of international relations. Whereas domestic life is based upon moral consensus, classic realists have argued, international life is devoid of such a consensus. In the words of the godfather of the realist school Hans Morgenthau, the conduct of foreign policy should therefore follow one and only one guiding star, i. e. the national interest defined in terms of national power. It was belief in such theories that led the United States into the tragic wars in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and the Persian Gulf.

Thus, both scholars may be considered revisionists. As neo-realists, they now acknowledge the central importance of identity in international relations. However, this recognition has taken a traditional geopolitical and realist turn. Ignoring the great cultural diversities of the world, Professor Huntington has identified certain territories with certain civilizations and has argued that the West is a distinctly different civilization from the Rest. There are also subtle and sometimes not so subtle hints in Professor Huntingtons analysis that somehow the West is superior and therefore more justified in pursuing its civilizing mission in the rest of the world. In particular, according to Professor Huntington, a Chinese-Islamic alliance presents a particular threat to Western values and views and must be therefore confronted. By ignoring inter-civilizational dialogue in the age of globalization, Huntington virtually discounts the possibilities for syntheses, moderation, and reconciliation. By essentializing each civilization in terms of certain unchanging norms, he tends to neglect the intra-civilizational dialogues often leading to change and accommodation.

This is cultural imperialism in the guise of cultural narcissism. It can be critiqued on three distinctly different groundsphilosophical, empirical, and practical. Philosophically, cultural narcissism of any kind gives rise to a cultural narrow-mindedness that is contrary to the needs of our age of globalization necessitating cultural dialogue. It may be argued that certain values demand universal application, such as those of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and two Agreements that guarantee it. But ever since the introduction of Lotus Sutra, Hammurabis Code, the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, the U. S. Declaration of Independence, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the discourse of human rights has been part of the world cultural negotiation and consensus formation. No single country or civilization can claim monopoly ownership.

Professor Huntingtons analysis is seriously flawed on empirical grounds as well. Although national cultures and regional civilizations are still useful categories of analysis, the processes of rapid globalization through the global marketplace, migration, and communication are creating prevalent conditions of cultural hybridity. Professor Huntington is trying to resurrect the 19th century purist notions of nationalism under the guise of civilizational purity. Such purity exists only in the minds of nationalists and religious fundamentalists. In reality, with few exceptions (possibly Iceland?), no society can claim any purity of ethnicity, language, religion, or culture. Nearly all societies are multicultural and becoming more so under the impact of globalization. It would be empirically more accurate to speak of how traditional cultures and civilizations are renewing themselves through intercultural dialogue, negotiation, borrowings, and adaptation rather than to focus on civilizational purity. The boundaries that Professor Huntington draws around eight civilizations are blurred and quite arbitrary.

Practically, the events of the post-Cold War era demonstrate how ill suited Professor Huntingtons thesis is for understanding international conflict and cooperation. No grand generalization about civilizations can explain the rise of ethnonationalism as a force in the fragmentation processes of the post-Cold War era. None of the conflicts in Bosnia, Caucasus, Persian Gulf, Israel-Palestine, Korea, and Africa can be adequately understood if we view them as civilizational conflicts. The conflict in Bosnia is among three ethnic-political factions, including the Roman Catholic Croatians, the Orthodox Christian Serbs, and the Muslim Bosnians. However, ethnically and culturally, all three groups are Slavs. The conflict is among ethnic cousins who have been historically divided by reason of imperialist rivalries in the Balkans among the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Italian empires. The conflict in the Caucasus is between Azarbaijan and Armenia, Georgia and Abkhazia, and Russia and Chechnya. In all three cases, the conflicts have little to do with civilizational conflicts and much to do with the rise of ethnic nationalism and conflicting territorial claims. Islamic Iran and capitalist Russia side with Christian Armenia, while secular U. S. and Turkey side with Azarbaijan. The main bone of contention is the Caspian Seas oil resources. But civilizational claims sometimes adorn such crass interests. In the Persian Gulf, the conflict is between the competing nationalisms of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, and Kurdestan (all Muslims), and among international oil interests and nationalist aspirations of the region. Thus, in the Persian Gulf War, we witnessed a cross-civilizational alliance of the Christian West with the fundamentalist Islamic Saudi Arabia and Kuwait against the (Islamic?) Saddam Hussein. Western media have often interpreted the Arab-Israeli conflict as a religious or cultural conflict. Nothing can be further from the truth. The conflict is between two competing nationalisms claiming the same land on the basis of dubious religious justifications. In Korea, the conflict is a relic of the Cold War era between two socio-economic systems in an ethnically homogeneous Korea, South and North. In Africa, the conflict between various tribes has a lot to do with continuing African tribalism manipulated during the Cold War by the two superpowers to advance their own ends.

Fortunately for the readers of Foreign Affairs, Ali Mazrui provides an antidote to the new ideological obfuscation. He takes up the case of Islamic civilization to argue that its level of religious tolerance perhaps exceeded that of Christian societies in the Middle Ages. He also suggests that Islamic values are not necessarily anti-democratic or anti-modern. Modern West owes much of its modernization drive to the transmission of Greek knowledge and values that were absorbed by the medieval Islamic society and then passed on to Europe through Spain and the Jewish itinerant scholars. Today, one could argue that the Islamic Republic of Iran under Khatamis presidency promises a more democratic society than all of U. S. allies in West Asia. Much of the same things could be said about Chinese civilization and its Confucian ethics. Professor Huntingtons new ideological battle cry against militant Islam and Confucianism is therefore rather misplaced.

To focus on the new international politics of cultural identity, this review has sidestepped the many other thoughtful articles in this issue of Foreign Affairs. Clearly, however, a more realistic view of international politics cannot ignore the fundamental issues of economic globalization (Paul Krugman, Tony Judt), information revolution (Walter Wriston), the changing role of the national states (Peter Drucker, Anne-Marie Slaughter), the rise of Eurasia and Asia-Pacific (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kishore Mahbubani), the decline of Russia (Richard Pipes), the Arabs predicament (Fouad Ajami), and diplomacy without diplomats (George Kennan). The issue is a feast of ideas and facts and must be read with care from cover to cover.

The author is professor of international communication at the University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. His latest books are Technologies of Power: Information Machines and Democratic Prospects (1990), Restructuring for World Peace: At the Threshold of the 21st Century (1992), and Globalism and Its Discontents: International Communication and Modernization in a Fragmented World (1998). Thanks are due to Richard Falk and George Kent for their comments on an earlier draft.