Summer 2008

The strange thing is that nobody talks about George H.W. Bushes's 'New World Order' anymore. I would call this moment (1990) the most 'Wilsonian' in US foreign politics since 1919. But everyone seems to have forgotten it, although it explains very well all the disappointment in the US about the UN (and Germany, which refrained from becoming 'a partner in leadership'.

Posted by Dirk-Jan van Baar | July 2, 2008 6:55:28 AM EDT

Mr. Beinart Thanks for your thoughtful article. I've always considered Woodrow Wilson a "man before his time" if you will, somewhat unfairly (somewhat) pigeon holed as a naive idealist by all the big bad "realist" thinkers who have tended to dominate IR conversations. But Wilson's vision was amazingly realistic at the time in its own way, given the world that realism had delivered: Bolshevik revolution and horrific World War. to Wilson, he was being quite realistic and pragmatic given those alternatives. He offered a third way; American leadership must and should do no less at this critical, opportune moment.

Posted by Peter Ronayne | July 2, 2008 7:31:58 AM EDT

Wilson naively involved us in WWI thinking he could establish peace. The dismal failure of that effort played out in Gulags of the Soviet Union and the carnage of WWII. Not that "conservatives" have covered themselves in glory, but comparing Obama to Wilson points out one of the main reasons I would never vote for the man. We will not avoid the future, but if we have enough fortitude we might get through it.

Posted by Fred | July 2, 2008 8:34:14 AM EDT

Wilson's vision was utopian because it relied on something that is not human nature: continued and ongoing goodwill. The reality is that, for all that there may be common problems and common goal, people -- individually or in societies -- still have many more opposing interests. Economic oligopoly illustrates this very well. A group may form to protect its common interests, but any individual within the group will benefit from going outside the group agreement while the rest in the group tie their own hands with it. This is why airlines have price wars; this is why OPEC can't really embargo oil successfully for long. In other words, there will always be cheaters, and it is again utopian to believe that cheaters would face the group's united opposition. Not only are there opposing interests within groups, but also there are varying degrees of commonality. Some within the group won't believe the cheating is that bad; others might believe it is but will disagree with the solution; still others won't see themselves as affected by the cheating, and thus will have less incentive to go along with the group; and moreover, some will have a separate relationship with the cheater, relationship that makes opposition costly or impractical.

Posted by Robert | July 2, 2008 12:29:32 PM EDT

Peter Beinart’s portrayal of the Democrat’s perennial foreign policy problem and current opportunity is not only politically sound, it makes sense from several other disciplinary perspectives. We now know that there are dispositional differences in intolerance of ambiguity and fear- and scarcity-related thinking (among other processes) that correspond to liberal and conservative orientations, but also more about how situations can be manipulated and issues framed to activate these tendencies and swing many people’s thinking.. This game appears to have been a part of political history around the world and is the one that will be played out this election even more explicitly than it often has been. Over the past eight years we have all watched a conservative culture of fear (often masquerading as “realism”!) as it served “not wisely, but too well” it’s own needs, severely compromising our individual and collective security and future. But hope, as an alternative mindset, can also be realistic. Applied with a balanced understanding of human nature, the sense of unity and mutual respect it fosters can prevail over the usual partisan power-grabbing ploys. Given the world’s evolving state of affairs, it’s time for Republicans to become more hopeful and for Democrats to become more hawkish in selling our collective good as something that is increasingly the best means of serving even some of our own more narrow interests. Familiar to the religious people of this nation and, at this globalizing moment in history, capable of being shared by the rationalists among us as well, this is the sort of paradoxical vision that must now be articulated. Mr. Beinart does much of this for us here from the most informed of political and historical points of view. Those of us that have known him since school days are pleased that he, as an intellect and as a person, will be on the scene to help further in this regard.

Posted by Branden Thornhill-Miller | July 2, 2008 3:39:05 PM EDT

Mr. Beinart has completely ignored diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural imperialism. One wonders why he seeks a common order, a common justice and a common peace? Why not a diversity of ordres, a diversity if justices and a diversity of peaces? Why does he seek to impose a new Wilsonian Order on the rest of the world? Is Mr. Beinart a PK with a world-civilizing mission as was Mr. Wilson? I prefer to live and let live, rather than re-engineering the world and world borders following the star of some new Wilsonian idealism. Why force Israel to have open borders as America does in search of some fleeting "commonality" (or better: "homogeneity")? Why force Muslims to give up polygamy or force Americans to allow it? We are different peoples with different aspirations and different dreams and different cultures and different gods. Better we accept, tolerate and celebrate our differences rather than force the rest of the world to conform to some neo-Wilsonian homogeneous "common" vision.

Posted by Big Bill | July 2, 2008 4:00:06 PM EDT

Mr. Beinart wrote, "The Wilsonian response would have been to label jihadist terrorism a threat to the community of nations, thereby compelling its members to establish more effective rules and mechanisms to provide for the common defense." But the US tried that in Kosovo and had to watch while all the Governments which should have been uniting as the voices of the international community shirked the responsibility. A re-reading of the opening chapters of Churchill's "The Gathering Storm" would remind the author of how dismally the Wilsonian approach failed to deal with the rise of Hitler for essentially the same reasons. America's experience with the Wilsonian strategy reveals it to be vacuous for practical purposes. But the larger and more basic problem for Americans is the inherent logical, and therefore practical, conflict between the ideology of Individualism which lies at the core of the American Constitution, and the ideology of Collectivism which lies at the core of the Wilsonian strategy. The Cabot-Lodge strategy is consistent with the individualist principles of the Constitution, the Wilsonian is not. A people whose government rests on the consent of the governed cannot consent to being governed by a coalition or committee of other governments by which they have not consented to be governed; and especially not when the decisions of that committee may send them to war, or curtail their trade, or subject them to taxation, or any of the other foreseeable consequences which may flow from any serious attempt to supply the world with a "collective security".

Posted by J Temple | July 2, 2008 4:11:07 PM EDT

The example of Woodrow Wilson, perhaps our most inept president in matters of foreign affairs, is not one I should think worth following in any event. But it may be worth noting the absence of human rights from Mr. Beinart's optimistic view of our future "cooperation." We are already being sniped at for having a Second Amendment. Even the Canadians are starting to object to the First Amendment which is, it must be admited, contrary to all the most advanced "progressive" and European principles on regulated speech. (Does anyone else remember the New Information Order?) Kyoto, be it remembered, required no nation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions below current levels except the United States, and the "carbon trading" regimen the United States had asked for was not added to Kyoto until after the United States gave up on the treaty. As for the International Criminal Court, perhaps Mr. Beinart will recall the words of another Democrat: "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:" There are several valid critiques of current US foreign policy, and Senator Obama will be well advised to adopt one. But Wilson's dream could easily become America's nightmare.

Posted by Robert Piepenbrink | July 2, 2008 5:52:41 PM EDT

This is well written and probably inspires those who no nothing of these world organizations. The UN has failed during several recent key world events; Bosnia, and Rwanda just to name a few. How can America sacrifice our sovereignty to organizations that routinely fail to act resulting in thousands dead and raped? We need to quit this dreamy group think that desperately tries to trust the world to do the right thing. History has shown us plainly that most of the world will routinely do what is politically convenient not what is right.

Posted by Brian Kavanagh | July 2, 2008 11:56:12 PM EDT

"Collective security" sounds like trying organizing a PTA where half the parents are child abusers; e.g. today's United Nations. The Oil-for-Food program was undermined by corruption and cheating by several of America's colleagues in "collective security." Not Kosovo, not Darfur, not Rwanda, not Zimbabwe, nor Miramar has been ameliorated by "collective security". Expedient tsunami relief was not borne by the agents of "collective security" but by the national naval and armed forces of Australia and the U.S. Wilson was a control-freak. As has been famously pointed out in another context, you can't impose democracy, at least not from the top down. Rather than draw from the same well that gave us the dead League of Nations and a crippled U.N., might we not look to Sharansky and "The Case for Democracy"? Say what you will about "neo-cons" Iraq is closer to an established order with more democratic institutions than it would have been with Saddam running things. (And the official rape-rooms are gone. That's a good thing.) The evidence is there, the more the Iraqis allow "just powers" to flow from the roots up, the better it gets. In "The Two World Orders" (Wilson Quarterly. Autumn 2003) Yale University Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld wrote: "The American and French revolutions tied democracy to the ideal of a self-determining nation. ... Two hundred years later, there remains no realistic prospect of world democracy, and if there were such a prospect, the United States would resist it, because world decision making would very likely be unfriendly to America. But though the United States would be no friend of world democracy, it ought to be a friend to a world of democracies, of self-governing nation-states, each a democracy in its own politics. For now, the hopes of democratic politics are tied to the fortunes of the nation-state. "Europeans tend to neglect or minimize the damage that universal constitutionalism does to the prospects for variation, experimentation, and radical change opened up by national democracy. So long as democracy is allied with national self-government rather than with world governance, it remains an experimental ideal, dedicated to the possibility of variation, perhaps radical variation, among peoples with different values and different objectives. Democratic national constitutionalism may be parochial within a given nation, but it’s cosmopolitan across nations. Democratic peoples are permitted, even expected, to take different paths. They’re permitted, even expected, to go to hell in their own way." I like Professor Rubenfeld's perspective better.

Posted by Uncle Ralph | July 3, 2008 1:45:17 AM EDT

The premise here is that a collective world cooperative would make the world a better, more peaceful place and that poverty, warming, disease and such would be conquered in the name of all that was bright and beautiful. So, where and when has this worked? The League was a disaster, see: Ethiopia, etc. The U.N., come on, without the U.S. and the Commonwealth the Communists of the Soviet Union and China would dominate the world. At every turn America has been asked to move to make peace or prevent takeover. When America steps up and does it, it usually gets done, when we backslide or rely on our U.N. cooperative then we are left with Cambodia or Ruwanda, both fine examples of the U.N. at work. Reagan is loved in Eastern Europe, not because of his willingness to work within the world community to help win the Cold War but because he seized upon an opportunity to use American power and strength to face down the Soviets. Collective action in the world community has promoted to Palestinian cause against Israel and will do nothing about Zimbabwe. The evidence against the Wilsonian model is astounding but as the left will always be, limited by idealism, undeterred by reality.

Posted by Steve Campbell | July 3, 2008 12:11:59 PM EDT

Wilson's legacy is multi-faceted, with each of the pieces bad. 1. Going to war without a vital interest at stake. 2. Elevating abstract ideals, over real world empiricism. 3. Double-think: expanding segregation while speaking of national self determination, democracy, and freedom. 4. Unconstitutional imprisonment and silencing of dissenters. 5. Refusing to acknowledge failure, as though reality can be influenced in such a manner. There is more, but time and space are limited. The current President comes right out of the Wilson vision, or as I call it, delusion: John McCain too. Barack Obama seems a practical man, a pragmatist and an optimist too. Time will tell.

Posted by Tom Perry | July 10, 2008 10:28:42 PM EDT

In this artcle, Peter Beinart offers his thoughtful, constructive, poised, resourceful and worthy deliberation which postively provide the maeningful solutions to the confronting challenges the United States, in particlular, and the world in general, seems to be hemmed in.He is absolutely right when he suggests a call back to the Wilsonianism- the only panacea to heal the political sufferings of the international community.

Posted by Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi | July 22, 2008 6:44:16 AM EDT

The encouraging aspect of pursuing an admittedly imperfect community of nations is that it offers a way out of the prisoner's dilemma that a cabal of competing realists is apt to fall into. A very good read , Mr Beinhart.

Posted by Stuart Munro | July 22, 2008 6:54:16 AM EDT