Bedfellows?

Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan came together to write an op-ed and the results are... pretty much exactly what you'd expect from two men whose foreign policy views are so deeply at odds.

A policy of seeking consensus among the world's great democratic nations can form the basis for a new domestic consensus on the use of force. It would not exclude efforts to win Security Council authorization. Nor would it preclude using force even when some of our democratic friends disagree. But the United States will be on stronger ground to launch and sustain interventions when it makes every effort to seek and win the approval of the democratic world.

I can't honestly conceive of an odder marriage of convenience than the one between these two. It seems likely to me that what Ivo wants to say is "we need to seek consensus among the world's great democratic nations" whereas what Kagan wants to say is "the United States should do what it takes to be on strong grounds to launch and sustain interventions." But it also seems likely to me that if America's engagement with the world's democracies is premised entirely on the hope of continuing broadly interventionist military policies, then both our military and our diplomatic efforts will fail terribly.

Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

I read recently, but don't have at hand, a rather detailed description of the armed-force disparities between the US and other western democracies, which show that the other countries (UK, France, Germany, et.al.) really don't have forces in place to be much of a factor militarily. The inability of NATO to adequately provide troops in Afghanistan is a good starting place.

Given this, the discussion of broadly interventionist policies is really moot. Post cold war the US was the only country capable of intervention on a large scale, and now even that is impossible - we are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bottom Line: collective military action of the conventional variety is a nice discussion topic, but a paper tiger in practice when it comes to boots-on-the-ground military activities. The 'western democracies' has becomes a intellectual fabrication that no longer reflects the real situation. What is left is air power (and its naval variant), and economic power.

Rhetoric and reality are seriously discongruent.