Would Alternative Policies Work?

Last week I remarked on Michael Brandon McClellan's essay "Why Neoconservatism Best Defends America," the first of a three-part series on the Bush administration's foreign policy. His second essay, "The Alternatives are Dangerously Insufficient," is now up at Tech Central Station.

McClellan analyzes three possible alternatives (isolationism, liberal multilateralism, and realism) and finds them all ill-suited to current dangers. The plan advanced by paleoconservatives and some libertarians, isolationism, is characterized by McClellan as the "strategic withdrawal paradigm." Premised as it is on the belief that American withdrawal from the Middle East would relieve us of the burdens and dangers emanating from that area, this plan dangerously misjudges the militants' reasons for hating us. Even if we abandoned Israel to its own defenses, an idea Buchanan toys with, McClellan agrees with Harvard scholar Joseph Nye, whom he quotes: "Even if the United States had a weaker foreign policy, such groups [like al Qaeda] would resent the far-reaching power of the American economy. American corporations and citizens represent global capitalism, which some see as anathema. Moreover, American popular culture has a global reach regardless of what the government does. There is no escaping Hollywood, CNN, and the Internet."

Our withdrawal would leave the area even more vulnerable to Taliban-style regimes, which could come to power in areas far richer in resources and more strategically placed than Afghanistan. Given the availability of lethal weapons and delivery systems, broad oceans would not protect us in the future, any more than they did on September 11.

McClellan's critiques of liberal internationalism and realism are equally on target. As he shows, whatever their merits in decades past, neither approach can adequately safeguard America in a post-Cold War world. The former binds American sovereignty to the whims of the UN Security Council, where Russia, China, and France seek to limit US influence worldwide. The latter serves to support precisely the Middle Eastern dictators whose corrupt and brutal regimes have spawned terrorist organizations. Islamic terrorists have no political refuge but the mosque, which they have turned into Bolshevik-style cells spreading death at home and abroad.

McClellan's third essay, which will examine the democratic realist framework for winning the war on terror, will appear next week.