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In Defense of Democratic Realism Charles Krauthammer

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In Defense of Democratic Realism Charles Krauthammer In Defense of Democratic Realism Charles Krauthammer- N FEBRUARY 10, 2004, I The speech and the subsequent AEI delivered the Irving Kristol monograph' have occasioned some com- O Lecture to the American ment. None, however, as loquacious as Enterprise Institute outlining a theory of Frank Fukuyama's twelve-page rebuttal in foreign policy that I called democratic the previous issue of The National realism. It was premised on the notion that Interest? His essay is doubly useful. It is a the 1990s were a holiday from history, an probing critique of democratic realism, illusory period during which we imagined yet demonstrates inadvertently how little that the existential struggles of the past six the critics have to offer as an alternative. decades against the various totalitarianisms had ended for good. September 11 Democratic Realism reminded us rudely that history had not ended, and we found ourselves in a new N MY SPEECH I describe the existential struggle, this time with an four major schools of American enemy even more fanatical, fatalistic and Iforeign policy. Isolationism defines indeed undeterable than in the past. the American national interest extremely Nonetheless, we had one factor in our narrowly and essentially wishes to pull up favor. With the passing of the Soviet the drawbridge to Fortress America. Union, we had entered a unique period in Unfortunately, in the age of the superson- human history, a unipolar era in which ic jet, the submarine and the ballistic mis- America enjoys a predominance of power sile, to say nothing of the suitcase bomb, greater than any that has existed in the the fortress has no moat, and the draw- half-millennium of the modern state sys- bridge, as was demonstrated on 9/11, can- tem. The challenge of the new age is not be drawn up. Isolationism has a long whether we can harness that unipolar pedigree, but today it is a theory of nostal- power to confront the new challenge, or gia and reaction. It is as defrinct post-9/11 whether we rely, as we did for the first as it was on December 11, 1941, the day decade of the post-Cold War era, on the the America First Committee disbanded. vague internationalism that characterizes More important is liberal internation- the foreign policy thinking of European alism, the dominant school of American elites and American liberalism. 'Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist for Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, the Washington Post, an essayist for Ti?ne maga- DC: AEI Press, 2004). zine and a member of the editorial board of ^Fukuyama, "The Neoconservative Moment", The The National Interest. National Interest (Summer 2004). The National Interest—Fall 2004- .15 liberalism and of the foreign policy estab- understanding the new unipolarity and its lishment. Its pillars are (a) legalism, the uses, including the unilateral and pre- construction of a web of treaties and emptive use of power if necessary. But in agreements that will bind the internation- the end, pure realism in any American al community in a normative web; (b) context fails because it offers no vision multilateralism, acting in concert with beyond power. It is all means and no ends. other countries in pursuit of "internation- It will not play in a country that was built al legitimacy"; and (c) humanitarianism, a on a proposition and that sees itself as the deep suspicion of national interest as a carrier of the democratic idea. justification for projecting power—hence Hence, the fourth school, democratic the congressional Democrats' over- globalism, often incorrectly called neocon- whelming 1991 vote against the Gulf servatism. It sees the spread of democracy, War, followed by a Democratic adminis- "the success of liberty", as John F. tration that launched humanitarian mili- Kennedy put it in his inaugural address, as tary interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and both the ends and the means of foreign Kosovo. Liberal internationalists see policy. Its most public spokesmen, George national interest as a form of communal W. Bush and Tony Blair, have sought to selfishness and thus as inimical to their rally America and the world to a struggle true objective: the construction of a new over values. Its response to 9/11 is to international system that mimics domestic engage in a War on Terror whose essential society, being based on law, treaties, element is the global spread of democracy. covenants, understandings and norms that Democratic globalism is an improve- will ultimately abolish power politics. To ment on realism because it understands do so, liberal internationalism is prepared the utility of democracy as a means for to yield America's unique unipolar power achieving global safety and security. piece by piece by subsuming it into the Realists undervalue internal democratic new global architecture in which America structures. They see the state system as becomes not the arbiter of international an arena of colliding billiard balls. events but a good and tame international Realists have little interest in what is citizen. inside. Democratic globalists understand The third school, realism, emphasizes that as a rule, fellow democracies provide the primacy of power in international rela- the most secure alliances and most stable tions. It recognizes that the international relationships. Therefore the spread of system is a Hobbesian state of nature, not democracy—understood not just as elec- to be confused with the settled order of tions, but as limited government, protec- domestic society that enjoys a community tion of minorities, individual rights, the of values, a monopoly of power, and most rule of law and open economies—has important, an enforcer of norms—all of ultimately not just moral but geopolitical which are lacking in the international sys- value. tem. Realism has no use for a liberal inter- The problem with democratic global- nationalism that serves only to divert the ism, as I argued in my address, is that it is United States from its real tasks. The too ambitious and too idealistic. The United States spent the 1990s, for exam- notion, expressed by Tony Blair, that "the ple, endlessly negotiating treaties on the spread of freedom is ... our last line of spread of WMD, which would have had defense and our first line of attack" is a absolutely no effect on the very terrorists bridge too far. "The danger of democratic and rogue states that are trying to get their globalism", I wrote, "is its universalism, hands on these weapons. its open-ended commitment to human Realism has the virtue of most clearly freedom, its temptation to plant the flag 16- -The National Interest—Fall 2004- of democracy everywhere." Such a world- believed, delusionally, that he did not pre- wide crusade would overstretch our sent an existential threat. By Fukuyama's resources, exhaust our morale and distract logic, they were right. us from our central challenge. I therefore What defines an existential threat is suggested an alternative, democratic intent, objective and potential capability. realism, that is "targeted, focused and lim- Existential struggle is a struggle over exis- ited", that intervenes not everywhere that tence and identity. Until it lost heart late freedom is threatened but only where it in life, Soviet communism was utterly counts—in those regions where the committed to the eradication of what it defense or advancement of freedom is called capitalism, in other words, the critical to success in the larger war against entire way of life of the West. Its mission the existential enemy. That is how we was to do to the world what it had done fought the Cold War. The existential to, say, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia— enemy then was Soviet communism. remake it in its image. Existential struggle Today, it is Arab/Islamic radicalism. is a fight to the end—extermination or, Therefore "where it really counts today is even better, conversion. That is what dis- in that Islamic crescent stretching from tinguishes it from non-existential strug- North Africa to Afghanistan." gles, in which the contending parties in principle can find compromise (over terri- tory or resources or power). An Existential Threat Fukuyama is unimpressed with radical T ITS MOST fundamental, Islam because, in his view, it lacks the Fukuyama's critique is that I global appeal of such true existential Aam misreading the new world threats as communism and Nazism. But because there is no existential struggle. By Nazism had little global appeal. A master- calling our war with Arab/Islamic radical- race theory hardly plays well among the ism existential, I exaggerate the threat and other races. Did it really have more sym- thus distort the whole fabric of American pathizers and fifith columnists in the West foreign policy. "Krauthammer", he writes, than does Islamism today? Islamist cells "speaks of the United States as being in are being discovered regularly in just the midst of a bitter and remorseless war about every European capital, and some with an implacable enemy that is out to even in the United States. And these, of destroy Western civilization." "Speaks course, are just the fifth columnists we of"—as one might speak of flying saucers. know about. The thought is sobering, In reality, asserts Fukuyama, "Al-Qaeda given how oblivious we were to the pres- and other radical Islamist groups aspire to ence among us of the 9/11 plotters. Just be existential threats to American civiliza- because Islamism in the West may not, tion but do not currently have anything like its Nazi or communist counterparts, like the capacity to actualize their vision." take the form of a political party or cap- Fukuyama apparently believes that ture Western celebrity intellectuals, does the phrase "not currently" saves him from not minimize the threat or the power of existential peril.
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