Cool weekend, I definitely did not talk to MES and I definitely did get creamed in the head with a nearly-full beer can that some asshole whipped into the crowd during the Coachwhips set. Big scar!
Keep this potential brain damage in mind as you question my sanity while I proceed to try and explain what I imagine to be the theoretical underpinnings of the 'reality-based community' quote from the silly Suskind NYT hit piece from this weekend, for the benefit of Suskind, foreign policy poser Matt Yglesias (who at least recognizes that the piece in general was 'terribly weak'), and everyone else with humanities BAs who were frightened/confused/incensed by it. This isn't meant to be an Iraq War Good/Iraq War Bad or Bush Good/Kerry Bad argument, just a long-bubbling rant I've been working up to regarding some underlying theoretical issues that are getting understandably superficial (and, of course, highly partisan) treatment in the press. Via Dan Morris, my #1 election news source these days - the quote from the Suskind piece:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Of course, 'that' was never how the world really worked, though it doesn't work that way now more than ever. Right off the bat it's worth noting that Anonymous Aide was obviously winding Suskind (and sympathetic liberals that think they're pretty smart) up, so it's kind of deceptively aggressive and crazy-sounding, especially given Suskind's admittedly clueless (and, less admittedly, intensely partisan) contextualization. To me, this seems like a thinly-veiled but spot-on criticism of the Realism (as in the distinct school of international relations championed by nice guys like Henry Kissinger, not as in 'believing in reality') that has defined the potential Kerry administration's foreign policy perspective, as well as a critique of Newtonian political science and nonrelativistic social science in general! No, really!
Realist foreign policy is based on the premise that all states, regardless of the character of their governments, are all forced to operate Rationally according to logic of pursuing a National Interest, defined as the security (first) and well-being (second, and only for 'neo'realists - classical realists don't even really believe in 'well-being' as a relevant variable) of the state. Obviously, there are pretty good arguments to be made right off the bat that this isn't a particularly 'realistic' presumption, especially after September 11th - more on that below. But first -
Epistemologically, it's worth noting - to me, at least, and only because it's interesting - that the Anonymous Aide is also talking about the Observer's Paradox in the context of political science. I couldn't really find a good primer on this subject after a quick search (let me know if you have one!) but here's my best amateur version of the Basic Idea, rooted in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which tells us that there is a certain irreducible uncertainty in observations of quantum phenomena b/c the act of observation itself affects the data. Now, it's apparently quite a bit more complex than that when you're talking about quantum physics, but I don't really know shit about that smart-guy stuff, and who cares anyway? The relevant bit is when anthropologists and other social scientists later began to incorporate this idea into their own work, where it's much more obviously (to this non-theoretical physicist) important.
Let's use the example of the cultural anthroplogist performing an ethnography of some indigenous dudes from some totally Othered civilization. He goes and lives amongst the Others and takes a lot of notes, conducts a lot of interviews, and generally does a meticulous, quasi-scientific job of Observing Reality. But has he really Observed the Other? No, not exactly - he's Observed the Other Being Observed. His extremely obvious presence in Othertown affects the behavior of the Other, and his interviews are heavily biased by the Others' conceptions of the ethnographer, his expectations of them, and their expectations of his expectations of them (as well as language barriers and invisible cultural conventions the ethnographer may not be aware of). So, although he may gather some useful information, he is not in fact learning the Truth of the Other or anything like that. Believe it or not (and if you've taken any undergraduate humanities courses in the past few years, you will definitely believe it), there is a huge volume of post-structuralist/postmodernist/critical/whatever anthropology literature on this.
Let's try and scale up the problem to the exponentially more complex level of international relations, in which the datum is History Itself. Now, for postmodernists and nuance junkies like myself, the idea that a state's National Interest is the only relevant variable in studying international relations is inherently a bit questionable (though appealingly parsimonious) in the Age of Globalization or Whatever, when the most immediate threats to our national security come from non-state actors that draw more or less covert support and sustenance from strongly ideological, non-rational actors within the governments of certain countries in the Middle East. Again, more on that below. But let's set that aside for now and assume that Realism is a valid approach - and as a good Hobbesian/Schmittian I certainly do understand and appreciate their basic insight into the anarchic nature of the international system. Still -
Realists face a huge Observer's Paradox problem, as alluded to by the Anonymous Aide: American realists that attempt to study the international system and calculate the National Interests of states are not Observing a Static Object as an Impartial Outsider, they are studying an interSubjective system in which all actors must act (and calculate their National Interest) according to their beliefs about how the other actors are likely to act. And the most important and influential actor in the world by far, the most relevant variable in their decision-making environment (and thus in their calculations of National Interest) is the good old USA.
Thus, our actions, as well as our stated policies and public rhetoric (the product of our Observations), have a huge, even Decisive impact on the National Interests of the states in question. The Anonymous Aide is taunting those Realist-types who believe that the solution to our problems is to 1) Sit Down, 2) Look at All the Facts (impossible, of course - that's another discussion), 3) Calculate the National Interests of relevant allies/enemies, and 4) Scientifically Determine how to work with their Interests to achieve our Goals. His insight - that our actions and rhetoric actively shape Reality (and states' understandings of their National Interests) even as analysts are attempting to Observe it - is of course applicable to good foreign policy thinking in any era, but it becomes absolutely central in the context of American hegemony, in which we really have become the single most influential actor on the international scene.
This is not to say that a good Realist grounding is important in any well-rounded international relations analysis - and of course the Bush administration certainly includes some Realist voices and incorporates Realist insights in their policy (most obviously in their focus on state actors in the War on Terror, which demonstrates a solid understanding that although the enemy is transnational, the battleground is the international system). Merely, it is a little weird and more than a little annoying when the ABB crowd, who I'm sure during the '90s was at least subconsciously anti-Realist, is suddenly and unproblematically fetishizing 'Reality' and Realist theory. The reason, I'm guessing, is simply that Suskind (and probably the philosophy-major Yglesias) is largely ignorant of these theoretical debates and, you know, hates Bush. Kerry's foreign policy team (and Bush's, of course) is going to have to work a lot harder than that if they are really interested in developing a nuanced and effective foreign policy.
Because, beyond theoretical disputes, a classical Realist position seems to me to be wholly inappropriate when applied to the War on Terror. First off, lest we forget, Realist doctrine is very much at the root of the socio-political nightmare in the Middle East that has subsequently become our security nightmare. It wasn't foreign policy idealism that has led us to consistently accomodate dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, et al in the name of preserving regional balances of power and the free flow of oil. It wasn't idealism that encouraged the cultivation of the Afghan mujaheddin. From Laurence Kaplan's still very-relevant article in TNR, "Springtime for Realism":
...Complaining that democratic idealists "incorporate Wilsonian ideas into their vision in urging the spread of democracy," prominent realist G. John Ikenberry of Georgetown University scoffs at the notion that this "is not merely idealism, according to them; it is good national security policy." Meanwhile, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued in The New York Times last week, "What we need now is pragmatism and not ideology. ... We must do everything we can to help the region's more moderate and friendly regimes--the Saudis and others--to defeat terrorism and improve the protection of foreign workers and oil facilities." Republican Senator Pat Roberts insists that Washington must restrain its tendency toward "social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy."
But the United States is entitled--on September 11, the aim of a democratic Middle East became a matter of our national well-being, even survival. And the United States is obligated--because either pressure for democracy in the Arab world will come from the United States or it will come from nowhere at all. For the source of America's entitlement, look no further than the region's "friendly regimes." Not only has repression fueled terrorist movements in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt; the very governments we prop up have sanctioned the worst elements as a way to deflect popular anger from their palace gates. The absence of civil society, the weakness of independent media outlets, the weakness of secular opposition parties--all these things underpin the truth that, as Bush said in a recent speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, "as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready to export."
This is more than conjecture. A recent study by Princeton's Alan Krueger and Czech scholar Jitka Maleckova analyzed data on terrorist attacks and measured it against the characteristics of the terrorists' countries of origin. The study found that "the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists." Unfortunately, according to the U.N.'s Arab Human Development Report, not a single Arab state offers such freedoms. One could plausibly have argued before September 11 that this was none of America's business. But, on that day, the Arab world's predicament became our own--thrusting the United States into a war of ideas to which realism has no adequate response.
Kaplan notes of course that difficulties in Iraq have led to Realism's re-ascendance in the Bush administration as well - this is both an encouraging sign of ideological flexibility and a worrying potential weakness. Still, Kerry's stauncher, more ideological Realism is more worrying. Again, from Kaplan:
Today's premier realist, the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer, explains the worldview this way: "Realists tend not to draw sharp distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' states, because all great powers act according to the same logic, regardless of their culture, political system, or who runs the government." Put bluntly, the character of regimes does not matter...
Although typically associated with hard-headed Republicans like former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger, realism gained traction on the left in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when many liberals decided the United States was marred by involvement in too many suspect conflicts and unfit to pass judgment on other political systems. With the end of the cold war, President Clinton repudiated this sentiment, as did 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore, who insisted that, just as battling communism had been America's mission, today the nation's mission was to spread democracy around the world.
But, for John Kerry, pronouncements like these derive from a lethal mixture of naïveté, hubris, and chauvinism. Hence, when in 1997 Clinton repeated his administration's mantra that the United States had become the "indispensable nation," Kerry complained, "Why are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?"...
...In April, Kerry said the goal in the present war should be "a stable Iraq, not whether or not [Iraq] is a full democracy." When it comes to Egypt, Kerry said in a recent interview, democracy promotion would have to take a backseat to "general stability in the Middle East." In China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Pakistan, too, "Kerry indicated that as president he would play down the promotion of democracy," according to the Post. After all, Kerry said, in an echo of Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous argument that the United States shouldn't push too hard to democratize "friendly" dictatorships, "You have to put your priorities first." All this proved too much for Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, who says, "What is most disturbing about the Kerry statements is the suggestion that a sophisticated security strategy need not be complemented by human rights values."
Of course, neither Clinton (I think - correct me if I'm wrong) nor Bush campaigned on an explicitly pro-democracy-spreading, anti-Realist foreign policy, and both ended up embracing it in office, a perspective from which the reality of American Power is much more clearly visible. I would hope that a Kerry administration would come to the same conclusions, but if elected he'll have to come to them pretty fucking quickly as Iraq hopefully goes to their first democratic election in January and we're forced to either confront or accomodate Iran as they prepare to join the nuclear club sometime in 2005.
This all speaks to the reason why perfectly reasonable, self-identified Liberal-types like myself are worried by Kerry's foreign policy - while Bush's attempts to reconfigure American foreign policy for the 21st century have been stumbling at best, at least the current administration is making a decent attempt. So far, Kerry's position has been a more or less explicit return to pre-9/11, Realist foreign policy principles, treating terrorism as a 'nuisance' that shouldn't interfere with our great, Newtonian balancing act to preserve stability above all else in the Middle East. I think that's the wrong analysis, and if I end up pulling the lever for Kerry, it's only because I believe he and the Democrats will be forced to do a big, fast rethink. Well, that and peer pressure! Both seem like pretty weak justifications, but that's the kind of wishy-washy postmodernist I am, I guess. Ow my head!
UPDATE: Gary Jones makes another apt comparison, to the OODA loop concept:
This is also a casual explanation of Boyd's principles of OODA and the foundation of netwar or cyberwar. The objective of OODA - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act - is to "get inside" your opponent's loop, cycle more quickly than they cycle, so that they are always reacting to where you were and what you did rather than where you are and what you are doing.