I never got very far with my First Principles of Foreign Policy, but Matt Yglesias offers another:
The great irony of this all is that if there’s one thing the Republican Party does understand really well it’s the psychology and politics of nationalism. They understand it, that is, in terms of U.S. domestic politics. It doesn’t […]
Mark Schmitt gets shrill:
Can someone explain what Senator Lieberman could possibly mean when he says the following:
“I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and […]
I’m sure that the Lieberman turn-of-events has excited the dKos branch of the liberal blogosphere, what has become synonymous with the “netroots” label, but what’s interested me (naturally) is the way the Lamont victory - and the boneheaded commentary and rhetoric that’s tut-tutted at it - has reenergized the far less rootsy center-leftish blogosphere and […]
Perhaps it’s really merely symbolic and anti-climax, but this seems like a big deal to me. At the very least, it suggests we may want to be a little more circumspect about the party line of the Democratic foreign policy establishment - that it’s our charge to “rebuild” weak and failed states - and to […]
Daniel Davies echoes my sentiments on Darfur,
Demanding “action” without ever saying what that “action” might be is the height of irresponsibility, and is almost always a marker of someone who has not troubled themselves to spend five minutes reading Sudan Watch to find out what is actually going on.
…only makes the more specific point (above […]
Chuck announces a rally to Stop Genocide in Darfur. Put me on record as thinking genocide is very awful and worth stopping, even at the expense of national self-determination, which I normally think is worth respecting. But take a look at Save Darfur’s action list and you get merely a call to “contact President Bush and […]
Mark Jurkowitz asks, as he asked on Greater Boston,
But I found reading “The Iran Plans” to be more frustrating than enlightening. As he portrays an administration — already militarily and politically bogged down in Iraq — using the same philosophy driven by the same people to think about repeating the same policy, two huge questions […]
In the comments, Lynne writes,
Polls don’t reflect that "by and large the country leans rightward on the political spectrum" if you poll on the issues.
Maybe. I still need to be convinced - does anyone have pointers to someone presenting this thesis, or a good resource for polling data? - but her comment does bring […]
I haven’t gotten far into my Walter Lippmann but one of the themes he strikes is the problem of an educated citizenry. Whereas liberal theory of democracy (particularly of the Progressive Era, but continues to date) holds that the citizenry needs to be educated in areas of public importance, Lippman points out that being knowledgeable, […]
Blue Mass Group and .08 Acres have both harrumphed the Wall St. Journal editorial blasting Rep. Delahunt for the Hugo Chavez heating oil deal. "I’m not sure how people who think it’s A-Okay to get cheap labor from China think it’s somehow a terrible crime to get cheap oil from Venezuela," sco writes, " but […]
Matt Yglesias has been developing his critique of the liberal hawk "incompetence dodge" in his blogging, but he and Sam Rosenfeld have honed a trenchant critique up at American Prospect.
Liberalism has always been an idealistic doctrine, and should continue to be. But if high ideals become detached from basic questions of feasibility, they serve nothing […]
It’s Foreign Policy Week at LeftCenterLeft, during which I’ll attempt to articulate some first principles for a left-liberal-meets-center-left foreign policy. See this post for an explanation.
Back on the eve of the Iraq War, I wondered where, in all the Wilsonianism being bandied about, the ideal of self-determination had gone:
[W]asn’t one of Wilson’s key principals […]
It’s Foreign Policy Week at LeftCenterLeft, during which I’ll try to articulate some principles for a left-liberal-meets-center-left U.S. foreign policy. See this post for an explanation.
Pelican sees my call yesterday for first principles of foreign policy and puts to me an excellent question:
I think the debate though should be about context or frameworks for [foreign […]
Sage words from Kenneth Baer:
[T]here are deep divisions within the Democratic Party on Iraq, the War on Terror, and international economics. Instead of trying to make nice all the time, we Democrats owe it to ourselves to use this time in the wilderness to have a robust debate about what our vision is of America’s […]
Nedezhda pretty much articulates my views (only much better than I could) about intervening in the genocide in Darfur.
Putting a halt to the killing is only the beginning, not the end, of any intervention. Whether a conflict involves genocide or just terrible violence does not change the fact that those who intervene should […]