- 06 Feb 2023 17:23
#15264073
"There is an important new book that puts this challenge in a larger historical context. In “The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941,” the Brookings Institution historian Robert Kagan argues that whatever isolationist twitches Americans may have, the fact is that, for the last century-plus, a majority of them have supported using U.S. power to shape a liberal world order that kept the world tilted toward open political systems and open markets in more places in more ways on more days — enough to keep the world from becoming a Hobbesian jungle.
I called Kagan and asked him why he sees the Ukraine war not as something that we’ve stumbled into but rather the natural extension of this century-long arc of U.S. foreign policy that he’s been writing about. Kagan’s answers will comfort some and discomfort others, but it is important to have this discussion as we enter year two of this war.
“In my book,” Kagan said, “I quote from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1939 State of the Union address. At a time when American security was in no way threatened — Hitler had not yet invaded Poland and the fall of France was almost impossible to imagine — Roosevelt insisted there were nevertheless times ‘in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.’ In both world wars and throughout the Cold War, Americans acted not in immediate self-defense but to defend the liberal world against challenges from militaristic authoritarian governments, just as they are doing today in Ukraine.”
“Americans continually struggle to reconcile contradictory interpretations of their interests — one focused on security of the homeland and one focused on defense of the liberal world beyond America’s shores. The first conforms to Americans’ preference to be left alone and avoid the costs, responsibilities and moral burdens of exercising power abroad. The second reflects their anxieties as a liberal people about becoming what F.D.R. called a ‘lone island’ in a sea of militarist dictatorships. The oscillation between these two perspectives has produced the recurring whiplash in U.S. foreign policy over the past century.”
“Any negotiation that leaves Russian forces in place on Ukrainian soil will only be a temporary truce before Putin’s next attempt,” he said. “Putin is in the process of completely militarizing Russian society, much as Stalin did during World War II. He is in it for the long haul, and he is counting on the United States and the West to grow weary at the prospect of a long conflict — as both the left and right isolationists at the Quincy Institute and in Congress have already indicated they are."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html
That sums up my thinking nicely.
I called Kagan and asked him why he sees the Ukraine war not as something that we’ve stumbled into but rather the natural extension of this century-long arc of U.S. foreign policy that he’s been writing about. Kagan’s answers will comfort some and discomfort others, but it is important to have this discussion as we enter year two of this war.
“In my book,” Kagan said, “I quote from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1939 State of the Union address. At a time when American security was in no way threatened — Hitler had not yet invaded Poland and the fall of France was almost impossible to imagine — Roosevelt insisted there were nevertheless times ‘in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.’ In both world wars and throughout the Cold War, Americans acted not in immediate self-defense but to defend the liberal world against challenges from militaristic authoritarian governments, just as they are doing today in Ukraine.”
“Americans continually struggle to reconcile contradictory interpretations of their interests — one focused on security of the homeland and one focused on defense of the liberal world beyond America’s shores. The first conforms to Americans’ preference to be left alone and avoid the costs, responsibilities and moral burdens of exercising power abroad. The second reflects their anxieties as a liberal people about becoming what F.D.R. called a ‘lone island’ in a sea of militarist dictatorships. The oscillation between these two perspectives has produced the recurring whiplash in U.S. foreign policy over the past century.”
“Any negotiation that leaves Russian forces in place on Ukrainian soil will only be a temporary truce before Putin’s next attempt,” he said. “Putin is in the process of completely militarizing Russian society, much as Stalin did during World War II. He is in it for the long haul, and he is counting on the United States and the West to grow weary at the prospect of a long conflict — as both the left and right isolationists at the Quincy Institute and in Congress have already indicated they are."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html
That sums up my thinking nicely.
Facts have a well known liberal bias
- By Rich