After Neoconservatism( Fukuyama- Nytimes)

[luckydevil]

A really good read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

highlights

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.

"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

[luckydevil]

bump this back up

[HailYeah]

Yeah I read one of this guy's books in college. He seems to have shifted his ideas a bit. He makes a good point, you can't force unnatural democratization in a foreign country. Your intentions, your ideas, your very presence will always be questioned. What kind of legitimacy do we have in the middle east now? On or about zero. Its a tough lesson to learn.

[DjTj]

One of the more provocative quotes from this editorial:

We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and — yes, unfortunately — terrorism.

...which was quoted in an editorial I posted earlier today, but I'm not one to bump my own threads

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145389

[Cdowwe]

Only problem with the article..."outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it". Is he saying the Iraqi people did not want democracy?

[Winslowalrob]

Great read.

[RabidFan]

Interesting long take.

[RedskinDan0557]

Only problem with the article..."outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it". Is he saying the Iraqi people did not want democracy?

I think that about sums it up. Maybe they want it, just not bad enough. Thankfully, our founding fathers wanted it bad enough.

[Midnight Judges]

That guy is a fantastic writer but these are not new concepts. You can't force democracy at gunpoint. Anti-Iraq war folks have been saying this since before the invasion.

[The Animal Trainer]

Great read. I'll be sure to bring this article to my International Relations class tomorrow. That pretty much sums up why I didn't vote for Bush in 04. I wish this could have came out before the election...or maybe the Democrats could have run a better campaign...but I digress. Pretty much the whole reason I voted anybody but Bush in 04. The neocons have really f'ed up this country.