Realism and Policy
There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer.
Michael F. Duggan holds a doctorate from Georgetown University in American History, a minor in Modern Europe, and a collateral concentration in Western Philosophy. He has taught in the Department of Graduate Liberal Studies at Georgetown, and in New York University’s Washington, D.C. Program. He has guest lectured at American University and at Howard University Law School. He was the Supreme Court Fellow for 2011-2012, and co-founded the Liberal Studies Philosophy Roundtable (2007-2013), an open discussion group focusing on ethical questions.
About this Site
This blog is a one-stop source for articles and essays I have written on a variety of topics. Its purpose is to provide a modest outlet to promulgate a perspective of moderate realism. As the domain name states, the single thread running through these pieces is a perspective of realism, whether it be in foreign affairs, the rule of law abroad, the philosophy of adjudication, or legal history as well as epistemology, journalism, and historiographical methodology (I chose the name “Realism and Policy,” because it was the most efficient boolean search formulation relative to the blog’s purpose). Above all, it is an informal online journal and most of the entries are minimally edited.
Some of the essays deal with foreign affairs, and my foreign policy outlook is straightforward and based on two premises. The first is that moderate realism toward an end of perceived national interests—enlightened self-interest—produces better practical and “moral” results than policy specifically tailored around moral, ideological, or other theoretical considerations. The rebuilding of Japan, the Marshall Plan, and Containment as a grand strategy during the Cold War were first and foremost realistic policy measures; the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the rise of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, U.S. military hegemony as the bulldog of globalization, and our catastrophic efforts at nation building in the Middle East are or were manifestations of ideological considerations and/or theory.
My second premise, a corollary to the first, is that a critical reading of history provides a better basis for policy judgments and decisions than do morality, ideology, or social theory. We must learn from our mistakes and successes—come to understand what worked and what did not work and why—and meaningfully apply this knowledge toward practical ends of policy. As a friend of mine once observed, an intimate knowledge of a region, culture, or country is preferable to a remote and formal academic understanding. The historical record backs up these premises as well as the observation that the most successful American administrations were realistic and non-ideological in their dealings with the world while being generous and liberal-minded at home.
The reason for this ongoing collection is equally forthright: we live in a time when policy is largely dominated by unselfcritical ideologies—clichés and bubbles like neoliberalism, neoconservatism, one-size-fits-all trade multilateralism, and other forms of globalist eschatology—that have to date reaped the whirlwind and which promise more of the same. We live in a time of careerists, credentialists, and conventionalists spellbound by such conventional wisdom even in the face of repeated failure and looming economic and environmental collapse. It is the outlook of the Washington Consensus and the US foreign policy “Blob.”
Above all, we live in a time that despises the intuitive maverick, the Cassandra who sees beyond the obvious with aims beyond the immediate future and goals beyond career and personal advancement—the sort of men and women who defy the groupthink of the moment.
Purpose
Given the problems facing the United States and the world, it is imperative to reintroduce the kind of farsighted foreign policy realism that served the nation so well in the years immediately following the Second World War. Although I have no illusions about the power of a few articles and papers to affect a shift in American foreign policy, I hope that they might inspire scholars and budding policy thinkers to consider a route different from the fashions of the moment.
Even though there is a kind of panache in being out-of-step with one’s time, and a genuine moral comfort in being true to what one believes in spite of its being out-of-season, there is at least an equal measure of frustration when one is a realist. The whole purpose of realism in policy is to match practical means to ends, the embracing of achievable particularist results over theoretical, holistic, or utopian ideals, the “is” over the “ought to be.” For those of us who think that the dominant currents in policy embody a formula or roadmap to catastrophe, the frustration is especially pronounced.
In the policy circles of our time, there exists a kind of locked-brain, “inside the box” orthodoxy that blinds itself to, or otherwise rationalizes, its own excesses, failures, and the subsequent American national decline of recent years. It also blinds itself to more realistic policy avenues. People with polish, drive, focus, and personal skills may therefore advance themselves to the top echelons of the U.S. establishment without penalty by accepting these questionable outlooks. This, unfortunately, is the lay of the land of much of the American policy landscape of our time. As Andrew Bacevich observes:
“To understand the persistence of such illusions requires appreciating several assumptions that promote in Washington a deeply pernicious collective naiveté. Seldom explicitly articulated, these assumptions pervade the U.S. national security establishment… The worldview to which individuals rotating through the upper reaches of the national security apparatus derives from a shared historical narrative. Indeed, their fealty to that narrative, which they routinely affirm by reciting various clichés and platitudes, forms a precondition of their employment.” (America’s War for the Greater Middle East, 363).
Bacevich’s reference to a “collective naïveté” may, if anything, be too kind in describing a policy milieu comprised of cynics and amoral careerists on the one hand and ideologically-deluded true believers and intelligent people who ought to know better on the other. Some of the smartest people believe the dumbest things. These days if you do not go along with the program, you won’t get the job, and if hired, you won’t get the promotion.
The purpose of this blog then is to provide a history-based alternative to the failed but still entrenched orthodoxy of our time. Who would have imagined that a perspective embracing history-based realism abroad and progressive social democracy at home be regarded as radical, marginal, or thinking “outside of the box”?
On a number of occasions I have been told by neoliberal apologists or globalists of various stripes to save my breath, that I am confronting forces beyond what I can imagine—elemental, perhaps deterministic currents of historical necessity that would make a Marxist blush—and which are in place and cannot be altered, much less reversed. Like the Ned Beatty character in the 1976 film, Network, some believe economic globalization to be a force of Nature.
This is a curious perspective and I am never sure how serious advocates are in uttering such rote assertions; the first task when dealing with globalists is to distinguish the cynics and opportunists from the true believers. I would usually try to explain to them that such eschatological boilerplate and historicist hyperbole is fundamentally misconceived, unexamined, and unhistorical. As Tony Judt observed shortly before his death, the globalist presumes that his or her program “is here to stay, a natural process rather than a human choice” (Ill Fares the Land, 193). Echoing Karl Popper, Judt adds that “nothing is inevitable,” presumably meaning that no system put in place by human agency cannot be undone with similar effort. The answer to the question “can we do anything to reverse present trends?” therefore is clearly yes. The answer to the follow-up question of “will we?” is less clear in a policy climate that is reminiscent of The Emperor’s New Clothes.
The solution, in my opinion, of moderate, liberal-minded realism as a foreign policy perspective, like so many once vigorous species, is endangered but not quite extinct and there are a number of outstanding policy scholars and historians of a realist orientation including Andrew Bacevich, John J. Mearsheimer, and Stephen M. Walt. The most recent cohort of realist policymakers (James Baker, George H. W. Bush, and Brent Scowcroft), are now mostly gone, as is Russia expert, Stephen F. Cohen. Where such realism was once at the robust forefront of policy and included legendary public servants like George Kennan, George Marshall, and others of the first generation of Cold War policymakers, the Wise Men, it is now scattered thinly throughout the halls of the Academy, far from the halls of power. As such it is now a small chorus of highly articulate voices in the wilderness.
Michael F. Duggan
January 2018