The New New American Century?
One vision of the rebirth of America from the dung of cowboy politics is detailed in this morning’s NY Times in a manifesto entitled “An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With” written by Robert Wright. Over the last few minutes, I have discovered that Mr. Wright is a well-known Big Thinker and that he is respected by many, some of whom, in turn, I respect.
Although I believe there is a pressing need for a meeting of realists and idealists, I am one idealist who did not quite fall in love this morning.
Certains ideas were totally appealing. Citing Hans Morganthau, a founding father of ‘political realism’ in the 1950’s:
“Morgenthau emphasized that sound strategy requires a “respectful understanding” of all players in the game. “The political actor,” he wrote, “must put himself into the other man’s shoes, look at the world and judge it as he does.” This immersion in the perspective of the other is sometimes called “moral imagination,” and it is hard. Understanding why some people hate America, and why terrorists kill, is challenging not just intellectually but emotionally.”
I have met very few Americans able to stand ‘in the other man’s shoes’ and look around, smell the coffee, the roses, the garbage or whatever, doing it simply, serenely, with neither scorn nor guilt. This is the problem. That lovely category of made-in-USA Otherness, relied upon so heavily to mask pervasive cultural autism, called ROW (Rest Of World), defines how deep the incomprehension goes.
In this light, I find troubling Wright’s basic premise that America’s mission should continue to be the spread of prime-grade Righteousness, using more civil methods than smug arrogance backed by military superiority wherever it sees fit.
One Big Idea that he proposes is that America’s new foreign policy should be channeled through rebirthed international agencies and support groups. The thusly created New American Agenda, the one that God will be blessing each time he blesses the US of A, would be renamed the World Agenda. The world will throw up its arms with joy, relishing that America finally understands the world in all its diversity, and is prepared to show the way.
This is a little too much “How America Can Remain Imperious and Ingenuous Even After Discrediting Itself and Its Noble Values Before an Incredulous World” for my taste.
But Big Ideas deserve deep thought.
