Liberals and only liberals can win the new cold war

Many pundits resist the idea. Many politicians caution against a rush back to the past. Bernard Kouchner, who, as the French say, “does not keep his tongue in his pocket”, tried yesterday in an interview with France 2 to put some nuances into his condemnation of Moscow’s rash behaviour..But a fact is a fact. The succession of moves and countermoves around the Georgia crisis can be termed as a new Cold War.

Doomsday scenarios sketched in the atomic 50s may seem extreme in the current context. Compared with the promise of Mutual Assured Destruction that characterized the Old Cold War the tensions between Moscow and the West seem indeed less apocalyptic. And the increased trade relationships between Russia and Europe, in particular in the strategic field of energy, provides a very different frame that might blunt the space for bare-knuckled confrontations.
However the ideological clash is as strong as it was during the Cold War. Two visions of politics are facing each other: authoritarianism and democracy. And two visions of how to practice geopolitics are colliding : swashbuckling unilateralism or reasonable multilateralism.

Soft power, real power
This is why Barack Obama will be better placed than John McCain, a “third term Bush”, to win over this new battle. As it was the case during the fist Cold War the political field is crucial and the Democrats, with their claim to base their internal and foreign policies on human rights and international law and standards, can draw more allies in their camp than a Republican candidate that fundamentally adheres to the tenets of the current U.S. administration.
Rebuilding the soft power of the U.S. after 8 years of heightened anti-Americanism can only be secured by a new Administration, with no links to the Bush years. John McCain likes to call himself a maverick and to disclaim any responsibility in the messy heritage of Bush’s flawed and disastrous policies. He rightfully refers to his opposition to the use of torture as a symbol of independence, but his world vision is too closely identified with the most conservative circles of the U.S. to be adaptable to the current needs of the world. John McCain even sounds more hawkish and less reasonable than the new team of “Bush father cautious realists”, like Defence secretary Robert Gates, that were invited to join the White House after the Rumsfeld’s fiasco became too obvious.
Barack Obama has promised to base his concept of U.S. leadership on persuasion, consultation and cooperation. This commitment might be denounced as a cover for weakness in U.S. right wing circles, but a mere look at Obama’s foreign policy advisers show that he has no intention of flip-flopping on the defense of U.S. interests. If his foreign policy team is more internationalist than Bush’s entourage it is not at all a “bunch of appeasers”.
In the late 40s, the response of the Truman administration to the fall of “the Iron curtain” on Europe might serve as an inspiration. It was based on "self-interested generosity" (the Marshall Plan), the constitution of strong military alliances (Nato), the creation of intergovernmental organizations that blended the interests of the US with those of the rest of the world, and the concern to act with restraint and judgment. If it did not always perform the way it was supposed to and led to unholy alliances with right wing dictatorships it provided a logic for a form of “ethical realism” as defined by personalities like Reinhold Niebuhr, John Kenneth Galbraith or George Kennan.
That means also that Barack Obama should go further up the road toward an more truly liberal foreign policy than what was the case under president Clinton. A new flavour, more progressive, less attached to the interests of the corporate mammoths, more concerned with the fight against poverty and social injustice, less accomodating towards "friendly dictators",will have to be added to the U.S. foreign policy agenda if if America really wants to win the hearts and minds and counter the "charm offensive" of the Chinese and the bullying tactics of the Kremlin.

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The Democrats, less liberals than "libéraux"

The events hosted by the National Democratic Institute, the “foreign policy” arm of the Democratic Party, during the Democratic Party convention in Denver over the next few days tells a lot about the ideological affinities of the U.S. democrats.
Although some European progressives would like to think that the Democrats belong to the left, the reality shows that their point of gravity lies more realistically between the Liberal and the Socialist Internationals.

As it was already the case at the 2004 Convention most of the foreign leaders that have been invited to talk on the various panels belong to the center-left or even to the center-right.
The list of guests suggests that the Democrats feel more at ease with the liberal democratic wing of the Liberal International (an organization that includes “liberals” like the British Lib/Dems as well as conservatives like the Belgian Mouvement réformateur ou the Dutch VVD) than with the mass-based social democratic parties that form the core membership of the Socialist International.
The NDI has chosen to link up with the Club de Madrid, a association of former moderate heads of state and of government, that tend to focus more on multilateralism and conflict resolution than on a social and progressive agenda. The debate on poverty, for instance, will give the floor to such personalities as the neoliberal Peruvian economist and theoretician of the informal economy Hernando de Soto and the former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn.
Former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, who can be described as a center left political leader, is the most “leftist” personality among the guests of the NDI.
Are the Democrats less liberal à l'américaine than "libéraux" the European way. U.S. liberalism and European progressivism imply indeed a stronger commitment to social justice and real belief in the power and the responsibility of the state to intervene in favour of equal rights.
This is a point that U.S. and European progressives will have to ponder and act upon if they really want to believe in Barack Obama’s promise of change.

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Le Global Marshall Plan

Lancée à l’initiative du rabbin Michael Lerner, directeur de la revue juive progressiste Tikkun, cette association de « spiritual progressives » se veut résolument œcuménique et comprend, outre M. Lerner, la sœur bénédictine Joan Chittister et Cornell West, professeur de religion à l’Université de Princeton et intellectuel renommé de la communauté africaine-américaine.
Fortement impliquée dans la défense des droits humains et dans la lutte pour la justice sociale, elle a parmi ses principaux objectifs la mise sur pied d’un Plan Marshall Global. Celui-ci impliquerait de consacrer de 1 à 2% du Produit intérieur brut américain et de celui des autres nations industrialisées à la lutte « une fois pour toutes » contre la pauvreté, la faim, les insuffisances des systèmes d’éducation et de santé.
Pour en savoir plus, vous pouvez consulter le site http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/ ou transiter par le site, très intéressant, de la revue Tikkun, http://www.tikkun.org/

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Obama and Le Monde diplomatique

Although Barack Obama has drawn huge crowds in Europe (Editor’s note: you can link to his Berlin speech on this site) and has raised high expectations among “second generation immigrants” dreaming of a more multicultural Europe the French “left of the left” is not completely convinced of the Democratic candidate’s promise of change.
Serge Halimi, the editor in chief of Le Monde diplomatique, the leading voice of the “left of the left” in France (and in many countries since the monthly has developed its editions in other countries, reaching up to 2 million copies), has published a scathing critique of Obama’s policies.

The author, who has published books on the rise of global conservatism, recognizes the talent of the candidate and concedes that there is “still some chance that the true friends of the American people can retain the audacity of hope” but he devotes most of his article to debunk “myths” like Obama’s commitment to multilateralism or alleged liberalism. “Imperialism will be softer, subtler, more inclusive and perhaps not quite so murderous”, he writes. “Yes we can” has become “yes we can give a speech to the pro-Israel lobby, supporting the most inflexible positions taken by Ehud Olmert’s government”.
Serge Halimi also takes Obama to task for his refusal to back the abolition of the death penalty and for his acceptance of the role of money in politics.
Interestingly this article has been distributed by Agence Global, a syndication service linked to the New York weekly The Nation. Now, the editors of The Nation seem to have more hope in Obama’s promises than the editor of Le Monde diplomatique. In a detailed article The Nation’s editor in chief Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage choose to minimize Obama’s compromises, “some of them deplorable”, and to focus instead on the possibilities that would be opened by an Obama victory. “Obama clearly offers a change of course”, the authors write. “He carries a reform agenda into the election”.
Fundamentally while Le Monde diplomatique in France has decided that the best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place a leading section of the U.S. left has decided to bet on Obama and to use that historical moment to mobilize on issues that would make meaningful reform possible. (Read this article on The Nation website http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080901/borosage_kvh)

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U.S. Former Diplomats Back Obama

Some 200 former foreign policy professionals have joined to express their support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as the best placed to reestablish U.S. leadership based on respect, credibility and international cooperation. The text follows.

We are a diverse group of over 200 former Foreign Service officers. Each of us has had extensive experience in implementing the international affairs and national security policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations. We have first hand knowledge of the grave multiple challenges of the Cold War, a period of peril but one in which the United States wore with honor the mantle of leadership. In cooperation with other democracies, and dialog with countries that were not, our nation found solutions to problems which seemed intractable. Senator Obama can place our nation again in that position of trust, credibility and respect.

With him, we call for a return to the successful reliance on bipartisan cooperation at home and close coordination on the use of active diplomacy with our friends and allies abroad, to face the challenges posed by those who are neither. We have watched with profound regret the frequent, costly failures of the current administration to apply these fundamental principles.

We, the undersigned, are firmly convinced that new American leadership is critical at this juncture in world history. We urge Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to select as our next president Senator Barack Obama, a leader with courage, intelligence, energy, a fresh perspective and a focus on the future. We believe based on our long foreign policy experience that he has the qualities needed to restore American leadership, credibility and respect in the world, the persona to make bipartisanship a possibility once again, and the judgment and vision to set our nation on the path to a better future.

For more info, read one of the signers' blog, Gerald Loftus, at http://www.avuncularamerican.typepad.com/blog

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Common values are more important than consultation

In a recent article (August 13, 2008) Le Monde foreign affairs columnist David Vernet is pouring buckets of cold water on these enthusiastic Europeans, Germans in particular, that seem to expect miracles from an Obama victory in the November 4 presidential elections.
While acknowledging that Obama’s discourse on transatlantic dialogue and community of values has a nicer sound than Bush’s unilateralist and autistic policies he warns that the Democratic candidate still thinks fundamentally in terms of U.S. leadership and not of equal partnership. Recalling Bill Clinton’s “friendly unilateralism” Daniel Vernet emphasizes in fact the continuity between the various U.S. administrations, a continuity characterized by the U.S. determination to act according to its own perceptions and interests.

Daniel Vernet's call to reality is of course necessary: no one can deny that the U.S. has permanent interests and that Barack Obama will have to adapt his campaign promises to the realities of power, inside and outside of the U.S.
However the real importance of a new presidential team in Washington does not lie primarily in the development of a better convergence per se between the two sides of the Atlantic. It resides in the contents of the policies that will be developed and applied. Who among liberals and progressives would applaud if the renewed transatlantic friendship would be based on common approaches that would weaken Western commitments to development, democracy and human rights? Transatlantism is only commendable if it reinforces the values that the West proclaims to defend. Although it has been degraded by President Bush, unilateralism is not always a sin. Who would object to unilateralism if it was meant to prevent genocide. The unilateralism of solidarity is better than the multilateralism of passivity.

The promise of a Barack Obama victory lies in the boost it might provide to these European politicians and activists that try to develop a more progressive and ethical foreign policy, against very more conservative or ruthlessly and short-sightedly “realist” Europeans.
The terrain of foreign policy offers few boulevards for radical departures from the hard-headed rules of geopolitics but gradual changes, if sustained by strong principles and values, can be found in the footpaths and the “blue highways”, as writer William Least Heat-Moon would say, of the world.
The decisive change that might result from an Obama’s triumph at the polls will not be tested in the U.S. relationship towards Europe. It will take place in the U.S.. The parting of waters between the two administrations should be the restoration of Washington’s respect of international human rights and humanitarian law.
That essential step will make more to improve a meaningful and respectable transatlantic relationship than a promise to consult the Europeans.

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Georgia on our mind

The Russia-Georgia war has immense implications for the transatlantic relationships and it challenges liberals and progressives on both sides of the ocean to shape their own response to this new arc of insecurity in a region that is strategic both for the European Union and the United States.
Although they have reaffirmed their unity within NATO the US and Europe seem again to have taken different tacks along the lines of Robert Kagan’s Mars and Venus theorem: “tough Washington” threatens, while “soft Brussels” coddles Moscow.
It is of course not as simple as that. In the U.S. the condemnation of Moscow has undoubtedly been stronger and it has come as the logical expression of increasing hostility towards the new Kremlin rulers. The smiles and jokes of the Clinton-Yeltsin times are bygones. However although some European leaders might be tempted to try to appease Putin, most are aware of - and concerned with- the dangerous tendencies that Russia’s actions in Georgia reflect. They are one more example of a ruthless foreign policy that strives to restore Moscow’s international raw power.

How will liberal progressives on both sides of the Atlantic react to this new Cold War? Reactions differ widely on the way Russia should be “handled”. Deep splits are appearing within the left as they did during the “old” Cold War.
On the one side The Nation magazine has reprinted an essay published in 2006 by New York University Stephen Cohen titled “The New American Cold War” that not only describes the replay of the American-Soviet discourse of the 1970s and early 1980s but also pins a large part of the blame on the Clinton and Bush administrations.
On the other side, in an op-ed published on August 11 in the Daily Telegraph British Labour MP Denis MacShane, former minister for Europe under Tony Blair, calls on Europeans and US allies to “unite to resist Russian aggression”. (http://www.denismacshane.com/)

A common transatlantic policy is indeed essential but it should be premised on ideas and principles that promote liberal views. Atlantic progressives have to elaborate their own policies and avoid the double trap of “negativism” and “me-tooism”. They cannot just list the positions of their conservative adversaries in Washington and say “no” against each one of them. They cannot either try to “look like conservatives” and pretend to be as tough but with “with more heart and more brain”.
It is time to go back to the times in the 30s and the 40s when liberals progressives had to battle on their right and on their left to fight at the same time for freedom, social justice and a secure and decent international order. It is time to read anew Arthur Schlesinger’s essay The Vital Center.
Russia is certainly a threat to European and US interests. The control exercised by the Kremlin on vital energy supplies revives the spectre of Finlandization and there are in Europe some sectors, among the left in particular, that are ready to embrace Russia at the expense of Atlantic links.
But Russia’s authoritarianism is also a threat to “liberalism” and progressivism. And it should be made clear that liberals and progressives are the best placed to counter this new threat. May I suggest that a more open US administration, committed to international cooperation and sober foreign policies, would be one of the best antidotes to this temptation of appeasement.

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