The quoted paragraph sounds very nice and portrays us as the very good individuals we all are. It overlooks the mayhem and corruption of our government and corporations in times past which, for good reason, give the rest of the world's people second thoughts.

Steve,

I think the "mayhem and corruption of our government and corporations in times past" and present isn't what gives most people around the world second thoughts. They're quite used to that. It's the relative incorruptibility (or naivité) that makes people even more nervous.

Hi.

This was a good talk, but it contained one big flaw, which I hope Richard Cheney does not share. In this respect, the talk was part of the problem, not part of a solution.

The problem is, I don't think the Americans have conducted bilateral alliance diplomacy very well since ... ever.

The Americans are likeable enough as a people, and amazingly generous, which helps. They want friends. They understand that to have a friend you should be a friend. They are qualified and willing. But the government has often let them down in basic ways, like appointing poor diplomats. (_The Ugly American_ was right.)

Charles Krauthammer says: Americans want a worthy cause, not just power. That part is fine, and the conclusions are correct. But they also want friends, they don't like to act alone. Here again, the people are noble and correct, but this time the theorist seems deaf.

I hate this meme, which is again repeated here:

"Constructing ad hoc "coalitions of the willing" hardly qualifies as unilateralism just because they do not have a secretariat in Brussels or on the East River."

There is nothing ad hoc about where America's real support comes from. It comes from long-established alliances, or people like the Poles, who want a serious alliance. Overwhelmingly, it comes from the United Kingdom. Put all the ad hoc willing together against tens of thousands of the hardest warriors on the planet, from the UK, and it's a bad joke. In non-combat terms, Japan is huge - and reliable. There is nothing ad hoc about that, this is a relationship that has built for half a century, and the Japanese firmly expect that the Americans will continue to see it as solid, not just ad hoc.

I'm not putting down countries like Kuwait, that support America on a particular war because that particular war suits them, and wouldn't think of voting with America in many other contexts. That's good diplomacy. Ad hoc support is valuable and valid.

But there is this other stuff called hard-core support, which you need, if only so that the desire of the Great American Public to act in concert with other who they respect can be gratified.

I'll give another example of an American who doesn't get it: Zbigniew K. Brzezinski - as shown in The Grand Chessboard: American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives (1998). Read this and laugh. Among other things, he has the United Kingdom as an example of strategic irrelevance. Zbigniew Brzezinski wants America to have suitably placed vassals to dominate a global chessboard. The UK isn't like that, so he's blind to its real importance.

The continued disinclination of American elites to properly accept the traditional alliance-building game, a game in which they have more and better cards than anybody else, seems to be to be cultural and traditional. I don't care if that tradition dates to George Washington himself, and it well may. It's a bad one. I recommend you get rid of it.

I think Paul Huntington's five boxes idea is good. Basically:
1. Solid ally
2. Friendly negotiating partner
3. Cool, purely self-interested neutral
4. Hostile negotiating partner
5. Enemy, means to do you all the harm they can.

That's really all you need to be on a vastly healthier basis, diplomatically, than you are with a chronic reluctance to come to terms with "entangling" alliances, which are the kind that also commit your partners and thus do you good.

"Nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests."

Krauthammer was arguing that the American permanent interest is, and ought to be, the expansion of democratic norms. Personally, I'd shift that to liberal norms, but I'm not Krauthammer - he is.

The sort of traditional bilateral alliance-making you seem to be endorsing always - always! - represents a community of interest. Furthermore, the resultant alliances last only as long as the shared interests exist to drive the relationship. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, (West) Germany's community of interest with the United States was abolished in fact if not in law. The same can be said for the Canadian-American alliance.

The Japanese-American relationship endures, not because the Japanese are permanent allies, and not because the alliance is "solid" rather than "ad-hoc", but because enough of the pre-existing community of interest remains to drive the alliance. The Japanese are hated by enough of their neighbors that their "permanent" alliance with the US remains solid and a matter of fact, rather than law. The prospect of a continued regional hostility to the possibility of an independant and militarized Japan is the guarantee of continued alliance with Japan - and not some psuedo-realist conception of honorable allies.

The Democratic Globalist conception relies on a revised Peace of Dives - the notion that the aggregate of stable democracies represents a permanent community of interest, regardless of other short-term or regional conflicts of interest. It relies on the belief that democratic sovereignties are intrinsically more capable of perceiving their own best interests, which will not catastrophically conflict with the general interests of the community or their immediate neighbors.

This is something of a leap of faith in the rationality of democratic sovereignties, but it isn't a blind one. The litany of wars between democracies is brief and dubious, and since the advent of liberal democracy, have been limited to brief border clashes and minor squabbles.

The interesting aspect of Krauthammer's definition of Democratic Globalism against Liberal Internationalism is his endorsement of American unipolar power as an aggressive policing power. This is related to the notion that weak democracies operate best when nominally, and indirectly, governed by alliance with an outside strongman or power. The relationship of the Prince of Orange to the United Provinces during that republic's period of influence and power seems a useful parallel. Of course, the history of the Italian city-states is not a happy one for this notion of external powers as guarantors of civic liberties, but traditionally, the guarantors were not themselves liberal democracies.

Dear Joe:

Mr. Krauthammer's speech is excellent and is certainly food for thought. While I certainly think that Democratic Globalism is necessary, my question is is it sufficient? I do believe that it is the the strategy that the Bush administration has adopted but my concern is that there does not appear to be a Plan B.

The revelations of the utter breakdown of the anti-nuclear-proliferation regime (or the revelation of it having been an illusion depending on your viewpoint) of the past few months strongly suggest that the timeframe in which Democratic Globalism has to work is measured in months or years rather than decades or centuries.

My own opinion is that while encouraging the growth of liberal democracy in the region we need to simultaneously utilize every diplomatic, economic, and military resource at our disposal to encourage the current governments of the region to do their own damned anti-terrorist law enforcement. Are such activities difficult to reconcile with Democratic Globalism? Definitely. Is it possible to reconcile these activities with Democratic Globalism? I don't know. I am convinced that without such activities I'm going to wake up some morning and, rather than seeing the towers of the WTC fall, I'll see New York or Los Angeles going up in a mushroom cloud.

Well, how do I know we aren't already doing this behind the scenes? As long as Syria and Saudi Arabia play brinkmanship games, as long as Syria is the United Nations of terrorism, as long as government-financed mullahs in SA preach death to America and Israel every Friday, and as long as Iran harbors Al Qaeda leadership, we haven't done enough.

"Nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests."

I've had so many Americans throw exactly that misquote at me, as though it was divine law, that I'm forced to wonder sometimes whether it has a deep appeal to Americans.

If it does, of course I'm dead wrong about the source of America's inability to get all the benefit you would expect from its strong diplomatic cards. If Americans in general like this, and many seem do, then the issue is not an elite analytical tradition that might be altered for the better, but an emotional, popular one, which is beyond reach.

"The interesting aspect of Krauthammer's definition of Democratic Globalism against Liberal Internationalism is his endorsement of American unipolar power as an aggressive policing power."

I agree. Combined with a willful inability to recognize allies as anything but easy-come, easy-go tools of policy.

"This is related to the notion that weak democracies operate best when nominally, and indirectly, governed by alliance with an outside strongman or power."

It certainly is. And I've met Americans who thought exactly like that, not just on the Internet.

"The relationship of the Prince of Orange to the United Provinces during that republic's period of influence and power seems a useful parallel. Of course, the history of the Italian city-states is not a happy one for this notion of external powers as guarantors of civic liberties, but traditionally, the guarantors were not themselves liberal democracies."

Interesting precedents for a ... strongman unipolar power, as an aggressive policing power, operating in a world where weak democracies function best when governed by alliance with an outside strongman or power.

I'll have to do some reading on your examples before saying much more to you. I have many books to read, I hope you will understand if it takes me a while.

Have a real nice day.

What you all seem to leave out is that actual policy is implimented from the bottom up. Not the top down.

We have 100,000 ambasadors in Iraq and from most reports they are well recieved. Like the soldiers of WW2 the children like them. They are courteous and helpful.

Whatever the policy is handed down from on high Americans will invent their own implimentation.

Our ambassadors may be ugly but our soldiers are beautiful.

After 60 years of empire we are starting to get the hang of it. Like the British we are growing into our role of administrators to the countries of the world who want our help.

When peace keepers are called for the prefered service providers are Americans.

The ugly American as a general rule (I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions) is long gone from the scene.

Well said, M. Simon.

David Blue - if that's a misquote, what's the actual quote?

And yes, the sentiment of the 'misquote' does appeal to many of us who do not wish to be forced to treat France as our best buddy forevermore - and more, forced to treat their opinion as equal to OR BETTER THAN ours - simply because we were on the same side 50 years ago.

Alliances MUST adjust with the times. Thus, they can not be permanent, and attempts to treat them as permenant are deeply offensive to those in the same locus-grouping of political opinion as myself.

My quibble with Krauthammer comes in his fourth paragraph under the Realism heading:

"Domestic society may look like a place of self-regulating norms, but if somebody breaks into your house, you call 911, and the police arrive with guns drawn. That’s not exactly self-enforcement. That’s law enforcement."

See, in a large part of America, you call the cops AFTER you shoot the intruder, because you and your guns are there right now, and the cops aren't. What I describe could accurately be called "self-enforcement," at least to an extent, but I'm not sure how much this point undercuts Krauthammer's thesis as it applies to Realism.

Other than that, it was an excellent essay, and provided much food for thought.

To David Blue and others,

"The Ugly American" is the title of a book written by two journalists in the 60's. The title doesn't refer to what you think it does. In fact, the book compares and contrasts the diplomats and others that are representing the U.S. with those that should be. "The Ugly American" is the archtype of middle America from a so-called red or flyover state. "Ugly american" referred to the fact that the character in ***one chapter***, Homer, is not pleasant to look at - he is literally ugly. But his less than fair looks are in contrast with his head, his heart, and his actions.

Read the book, please! It's an excellent primer on how the U.S. should really be fighting this war on terror via ideology.

If the powers that be had taken this book seriously in the 60's, Vietnam wouldn't have turned out like it did.

We need more "ugly americans" like Homer.

Hi.

First I should clear up the "ugly American" confusion.

It's from a book so old that most people won't have read it, but it's a favorite of mine, so I used it without remembering that the title lends itself to misunderstanding. The book is The Ugly American, by Eugene Burdick, and William J. Lederer (1958). It was considered a classic in its day, and in my opinion it still is.

It's theme is how Americans do all the good things, and the Communists grab all the credit, worldwide but especially in Southeast Asia.

The ugly American of the title is the hero. He's the classic bottom-up ambassador of goodwill, because he changes people's lives for the better. Though a civilian, he's the clear ancestor of the soldiers M. Simon talks about.

Yet the Americans don't get as much credit as they deserve for their ugly Americans, now why is this? There follows a withering comparison, based on cases, between the slick efforts that the Communists were making to gather support, earned or not, and the inept efforts that people higher up in the food chain were making to build on the success of what the ugly American was doing on the ground.

So when I referred to "The Ugly American," that's not a slur on Americans. OK? It's a reference to a documented moment in American diplomatic history where American diplomacy, especially "public diplomacy", was in poor shape.

My point is to support the idea that America has a wonky diplomatic tradition that seems often to gather less diplomatic support than its performance on the ground deserves.

I'll have to look up the "no permanent friends" quote to be sure of the name and date, but I think it was British prime minister Lord Palmerston saying: "His Majesty's Government has no permanent friends, only permanent interests."

The key point is that it referred to Britain alone, in the context of a longstanding policy to prevent the unification or domination of Europe by any one strong continental power. Whoever was challenging a candidate European dominant power would be supported. Yesterday's ally was quite likely to be tomorrow's foe, if only because Britain's allies tend to win, and the winner was thereby more likely to be the next would-be dominant European power. The ulimate point was to divide Europe in order not to be ruled by it.

The quote sensibly describes an actual policy that made a lot of sense in its context.

The misquote or altered and universalized gives a law for all nations in all places and times. That is completely different.

True, absolutely permanent allies do not exist. All human affairs flow like rivers. But the same is true of interests. Nations have interests that often last a long time, though not perhaps for their whole lives, and how long their allies last is an open question. The ad hoc status of all allies simply does not follow.

Sorry I don't have the quote details at hand, I'll get back to you.

Dave Belisaurius, I didn't mean to offend you, at all let alone deeply, nor those "in the same locus-grouping of political opinion" as yourself. (Which would be?)

What I'm advocating is an acceptance of the utility and importance of strong and enduring (not ahistorically eternal) bilateral alliances, and a doctrinal priority on acting accordingly, so that, among many other things, you can support sound American policy with the sorts of poll numbers that you get if you ask Americans "what if we do it with allies?" (and the public knows who those allies would be and regards them as reliable, not as weasels or "a gaggle of poodles and lackeys"), as opposed to supporting sound policy with the sorts of poll numbers that you get if you ask them "what if we go it alone"?

Bluntly, what I'm advocating involves (though it is not limited to) the disaggregation of diplomacy. Instead of saying: we support international law and the UN (global) and within that context we support regional multilateral relationships (such as NATO), and we relate to countries primarily as they fit into this over-arching structure, you work on building and securing your friendships/bilateral alliances, and you diminish the effectiveness of your foes as much as you can, in both cases with little regard to where your friends or foes stand in globalizing structures. In fact you change the structures instrumentally, as opportunity offers, to reflect who has proven to be your real friend, and who has proven to be your foe.

(If this sounds like something George W. Bush would be inclined to anyway, that's one of many reasons why I think George W. Bush is magic. I think Bush's instincts are sounder than Charles Krauthammer's theory.)

Doing this involves discriminating between countries. That is the point of having Huntington's five categories, and trying to decide where each country is, and whether it's moving.

I don't understand why you think that what I'm saying involves treating France, which is not a real friend, "as our best buddy forevermore - and more, forced to treat their opinion as equal to OR BETTER THAN ours - simply because we were on the same side 50 years ago."

Also, I'm not for ignoring the brute realities of who consistently sides with and against whom, in favor of international law. I'm for the opposite.

Ah.

You can tell Sam Barnes (first self-defense, then law) and Dale ("ugly American") posted while I was preparing to post, can't you? :)

BTW I did not read "the Ugly American" in it's day.

My refrence to it was in the context of how it was discussed in it's day.

i.e. Americans are know nothings who don't respect the locals and push any one "in the way" around and treat every one as second class citizens even in their own country. Add in a "we can buy you" mentality and you see how my expressions above were formed.

Glad to have the record set straight.

BTW this stereotype of Americans is still making the rounds.

Clearing up the quote, as promised ... Not even close, either of us. :)

Here's the actual quote:
"We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
Speech, Hansard, 1 March, 1848, col. 122.
Lord Palmerston (Henry John Temple, Lord Viscount Palmerston), British politician, Prime Minister 1855-8, 1859-65.
Partington, A. ed. 1992, _The Oxford dictionary opf quotations 4th edn., Oxford University Press, Oxford.

M. Simon, now we are both on the same page.

David Blue: It seems as if we are talking at cross-purposes, because you seem to be advocating the exact same thing I was, in completely different language.

I think the problem lies in your condemnation of "ad hoc" alliance-building. It scans like pro-European, pro-French rhetoric. If you consider "ad hoc" to refer to the sort of short-term or medium-term interests that inspired the original NATO, or the other anti-Communist alliances, then I can sort of see your point. The US's natural alliance with Australia had primacy over SEATO, and continues to have primacy over ASEAN and other transient diplomatic schemes.

On the other hand, calling treaty organizations like NATO "ad hoc" is an act of definition so long-sighted as to be totally misleading. I had presumed that you were referring to the "Coalition of the Willing", which is not so much an official treaty organization as it is an immediate expression of existing, essential communities of interest. The community of interest itself, so to speak, rather than the shell within which a community has resided.

David Blue, I have this nagging question that I think may have also disturbed some of the earlier responders -- hasn't it occurred to you that if America acted precisely as you prescribe, America and Americans would be viewed in much the same manner as we are right now?

I see that you've given the matter some thought and I very much appreciate that but . . . perhaps you should redirect your focus to the global community that (apparently) cannot see one inch beyond THEIR perception of America's responsibilities and burdens.

It's very easy to focus on the Big Dawg. But if it's true that with great power comes great responsibilities, it is also true that with great responsibility comes great power, latitude and opportunity.

Deal with it.

I still have to get to my reading, Mitch H, but since I'm being addressed by name ...

"David Blue: It seems as if we are talking at cross-purposes, because you seem to be advocating the exact same thing I was, in completely different language."

I don't think so.

"I think the problem lies in your condemnation of "ad hoc" alliance-building. It scans like pro-European, pro-French rhetoric."

Bwah-ha-ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! snort A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

That's a "No."

Hi, JBW.

"Deal with it."

Not a problem. American diplomacy is on your dime.

I was just saying I think Charles Krauthammer's talk was mostly fine, but I wouldn't give him a stellar review because I think there’s a big point he missed.

"... hasn't it occurred to you that if America acted precisely as you prescribe, America and Americans would be viewed in much the same manner as we are right now?"

It occurred. The only way to find out whether my ideas worked better, worse, or about the same would be to try them.

"... perhaps you should redirect your focus to the global community that (apparently) cannot see one inch beyond THEIR perception of America's responsibilities and burdens."

Perhaps I should ask you: what should the global community do to end problems such as anti-American prejudice?