One of the big stories of the week has been a “must-read” speech by Zbigniew Brzezinski critiquing the Bush administration’s foriegn policy in the Middle East and blasting unilateralism in general. It really is a marvelous speech, clearly and eloquently laying out one by one its faults. One part I especially liked:
Since the tragedy of 9-11 which understandably shook and outraged everyone in this country, we have increasingly embraced at the highest official level what I think fairly can be called a paranoiac view of the world. Summarized in a phrase repeatedly used at the highest level, “he who is not with us is against us.” I say repeatedly because actually some months ago I did a computer check to see how often it’s been used at the very highest level in public statements.
The count then quite literally was ninety-nine. So it’s a phrase which obviously reflects a deeply felt perception. I strongly suspect the person who uses that phrase doesn’t know its historical or intellectual origins. It is a phrase popularized by Lenin when he attacked the social democrats on the grounds that they were anti-Bolshevik and therefore he who is not with us is against us and can be handled accordingly.
As Fred Kaplan notes in Slate, the frisson of the speech comes not simply from its forcefulness, but also from the indication that the conservative foreign policy establishment is making the same criticism as the liberals. As Kaplan says of the principals expressed in the speech, “they are not so different from those of any classical theorist of balance-of-power politics. It’s just that current U.S. political rhetoric has been so corruptedÂ-especially when it comes to foreign policyÂ-that an eloquent presentation of ideas dating back to Metternich, if not Thucydides, comes off as refreshing and modern.” This is part of the strange flip-flop of the parties that I’ve mentioned before, where the Dems take up measured balance-of-power foreign policy tenets while the Republicans seem to be wedded to glassy-eyed idealism and speculative theorizing. (The notion that invading Iraq would usher in Middle East democracy was not a conclusion based on any honest historical study of the country or region).
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