6 thoughts on “Hanabusa and Schatz react to call for Syria attack”

1. Wailau September 5, 2013 at 3:32 pm

   So if Schatz supports the President and Hanabusa doesn’t, you’ll support Hanabusa? You’ll certainly deserve what follows if she wins, just as you’ll deserve what the Republicans do if the President’s resolution is defeated. Sorry to be so partisan, but the times don’t permit the luxury of nuance. I admire you for maintaining your delicacy in these raucous times; I wish that I had your moral calibration.

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   1. Ian Lind Post authorSeptember 5, 2013 at 6:43 pm

      Don’t read more into my comment. It did not involve how I may vote next year. It was a comment on this immediate situation, nothing more.

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2. Bill September 5, 2013 at 6:53 pm

   Staking a position on how a party will benefit is absurd. Who cares what they will do with this. Do what is right for a change.

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   1. jayz43 September 6, 2013 at 7:24 am

      Interesting…What if:
      1) it’s established rebel forces committed the atrocity to frame the Assad government?
      2) The U.S. is complicit with Israel in pushing a false narrative to justify an attack.
      Is this another example of history repeating itself through “misinformation” e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin/Vietnam War and the Iraq War with the “rock solid evidence”. Too many BAD things could happen if this “limited” campaign spirals out of control. IMHO Obama lacks credibility AND integrity and has surrounded himself with a “Keystone Cops” cabinet and advisors. Scary…

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3. Blue Sky September 5, 2013 at 7:57 pm

   “the times don’t permit the luxury of nuance.”

   Nuance is exactly what we need.

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4. compare and decide September 7, 2013 at 1:37 am

   In another comment, I wrote:

   So what about Hawaii’s Congressional delegation, past and future, in terms of foreign policy?

   Charles Djou seems like a mainstream conservative. Ed Case seems more like a neo-conservative (he said that he would have voted for the Iraq invasion, and he is fiscally conservative). Daniel Akaka and Dan Inouye seem like conservatives (voted against going into Iraq). Mazie Hirono, Tulsi Gabbard and Colleen Hanabusa likewise seem conservative (saying that they would vote against going into Iraq).

   But Brian Schatz is more obscure. He claimed that “Bush had false pretenses & inadequate planning for Iraq war. (Oct 2007)”

   That sounds a lot like what John Kerry would say. And Kerry is a liberal with a congressional voting record 98% in agreement with Ted Kennedy. Brian Schatz is a liberal, I’d guess.

   I should take back what I said about Hirono being a conservative. She is taking a long time to decide how to vote, and that shows that she has leanings toward Liberal Internationalism, whereas Schatz has turned against involvement in Syria. But I wonder, does she know that although Obama the politician is pushing for intervention in Syria, Obama the man is actually against intervention (that’s why he went to Congress, so they could kill the initiative)?

   Now, I could be inaccurate in my description of Hawaii’s congressional delegation as conservative based on their negative sentiments toward intervention in Iraq.

   As for foreign policy doctrines, my knowledge is admittedly basically at the level of high-school American history.

   1. In the 19th century, the US had a conservative policy of isolationism.

   2. In the 20th century, beginning with WWI, the US embraced Liberal Internationalism.

   3. Beginning in 1968 with Nixon and Kissinger, foreign policy realism was re-introduced, not in the form of isolationism, but as European-style balance-of-power politics (real politik), although this did not become the dominant model.

   4. Beginning in the 2000s, but with strong hints of this under the Reagan administration in the 1980s, neo-conservative views became dominant.

   Here’s a Wikipedia entry I found on foreign policy doctrines in the US under the heading “Grand Strategy”:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_strategy#In_the_U.S.

   In a 1997 piece for International Security entitled “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross outlined four major grand strategies applicable to U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War world: neo-isolationism, selective engagement, cooperative security and primacy.

   Neo-Isolationism

   Stemming from a defensive realist understanding of international politics, what the authors call “neo-isolationism” advocates the United States remove itself from active participation in international politics in order to maintain its national security. It holds that because there are no threats to the American homeland, the United States does not need to intervene abroad.

   Even further, its proponents argue that “the United States is not responsible for, and cannot afford the costs of, maintaining world order.” They also believe that “the pursuit of economic well-being is best left to the private sector,” and that the United States should not attempt to spread its values because doing so increases resentment towards the U.S. and in turn, decreases its security. In short, neo-isolationism advises the United States to preserve its freedom of action and strategic independence.

   Posen and Ross identify such prominent scholars and political figures as Earl Ravenal, Patrick Buchanan and Doug Bandow.

   That can be identified easily with the isolationist tradition of the 19th century.

   Selective Engagement

   With similar roots in the realist tradition of international relations, selective engagement advocates that the United States should intervene in regions of the world only if they directly affect its security and prosperity. The focus, therefore, lies on those powers with significant industrial and military potential and the prevention of war amongst those states. Most proponents of this strategy believe Europe, Asia and the Middle East matter most to the United States. Europe and Asia contain the great powers, which have the greatest military and economic impact on international politics, and the Middle East is a primary source of oil for much of the developed world. In addition to these more particular concerns, selective engagement also focuses on preventing nuclear proliferation and any conflict that could lead to a great power war, but provides no clear guidelines for humanitarian interventions.

   That sort of corresponds with the realist balance-of-power tradition rooted in European history that Henry Kissinger expounded and practiced in the 1970s, that focused on the interaction between the great powers.

   Cooperative Security

   The authors write “the most important distinguishing of cooperative security is the proposition that peace is effectively indivisible.” Unlike the other three alternatives, cooperative security draws upon liberalism rather than realism in its approach to international relations. Stressing the importance of world peace and international cooperation, the view supposes the growth in democratic governance and the use of international institutions will hope overcome the security dilemma and deter interstate conflict. They propose that collective action is the most effective means of preventing potential state and non-state aggressors from threatening other states. Cooperative security considers nuclear proliferation, regional conflicts and humanitarian crises to be major interests of the United States.

   The authors imagine that such a grand strategy would involve stronger support for international institutions and agreements and the frequent use of force for humanitarian purposes. Were international institutions to ultimately entail the deployment of a multinational force, the authors suppose the United States’ contribution would emphasize command, control, communications and intelligence, defense suppression, and precision-guided munitions-what they considered at the time to be the United States’ comparative advantage in aerospace power.

   That sounds like Liberal Internationalism.

   Primacy

   ‘Primacy holds that only a preponderance of U.S. power ensures peace.’ As a result, it advocates that the United States pursue ultimate hegemony and dominate the international system economically, politically and militarily, rejecting any return to bipolarity or multipolarity and preventing the emergence of any peer competitor. Therefore, its proponents argue that U.S. foreign policy should focus on maintaining U.S. power and preventing any other power from becoming a serious challenger to the United States. With this in mind, some supporters of this strategy argue that the U.S. should work to contain China and other competitors rather than engage them. In regards to humanitarian crises and regional conflicts, primacy holds that the U.S. should only intervene when they directly impact national security, more along the lines of selective engagement than collective security. It does, however, advocate for the active prevention of nuclear proliferation at a level similar to collective security.

   Implementation of such a strategy would entail military forces at similar levels to those during the Cold War, with emphasis on military modernization and research and development. They note, however, that “the quest for primacy is likely to prove futile for five reasons”: the diffusion of economic and technological capabilities, interstate balancing against the United States, the danger that hegemonic leadership will fatally undermine valuable multilateral institutions, the feasibility of preventive war and the dangers of imperial overstretch.

   Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, outlines three arguments offered by primacy enthusiasts contending that military preeminence generates positive economic externalities. “One argument, which I label ‘geoeconomic favoritism,’ hypothesizes that the military hegemon will attract private capital because it provides the greatest security and safety to investors. A second argument posits that the benefits from military primacy flow from geopolitical favoritism: that sovereign states, in return for living under the security umbrella of the military superpower, voluntarily transfer resources to help subsidize the cost of the economy. The third argument postulates that states are most likely to enjoy global public goods under a unipolar distribution of military power, accelerating global economic growth and reducing security tensions. These public goods benefit the hegemon as much, if not more, than they do other actors.” Drezner maintains the empirical evidence supporting the third argument is the strongest, though with some qualifiers. “Although the precise causal mechanism remain disputed, hegemonic eras are nevertheless strongly correlated with lower trade barriers and greater levels of globalization.” However, Drezner highlights a caveat: The cost of maintaining global public goods catches up to the superpower providing them. “Other countries free-ride off of the hegemon, allowing them to grow faster. Technologies diffuse from the hegemonic power to the rest of the world, facilitating catch-up. Chinese analysts have posited that these phenomena, occurring right now, are allowing China to outgrow the United States.”

   That sounds like the neo-conservative perspective.

   However, during the Cold War, under the doctrine of Liberal Internationalism, American supremacy was seen as central to maintaining what Posner refers to as ‘cooperative security’. That there was a kind of ‘global policeman’ ensured the cohesion of the international order and made it possible for countries like Japan to focus on economic growth rather than self-defense. But divorced from cooperative security (Liberal Internationalism), one would expect American supremacy to be very alienating for America’s allies and the world generally – and that’s how the world felt under Bush.

   Now, since Hawaii’s congressional delegation, past and present, were generally negative in their attitudes toward the Iraq invasion, they are not Liberal Internationalists (who generally supported the war in Iraq) nor are they neo-conservatives (who also pushed for the Iraq invasion). Perhaps they might generally lean toward a mix of balance-of-power foreign policy, or even isolationism – which are both conservative in nature.

   But there are a couple of issues here.

   First is context. Political scientists might think in terms of abstract, globally applied, mutually exclusive doctrines. But ordinary people – and this includes politicians – think in vaguer terms. They use their feelings, and have a generalized sense of things. They hold a hodgepodge of ideas. When it comes to Europe and East Asia, they think in terms of cooperative security or Liberal Internationalism. But they don’t think/feel this way toward Africa and the Middle East. So a vote against intervention in the Middle East might not mean vote against intervention in Eastern Europe or East Asia, where security pacts exist. Different values and attitudes are unconsciously applied by decision makers to different geographic contexts.

   Second is the ‘death’ of liberalism in the 1970s. Moderate leftists in the US now call themselves ‘progressives’. And this is not just terminology. It has been said that the dream of young liberals in the 1960s and 1970s was to graduate from college and join the Peace Corp, but the dream of young progressives today is to move to Portland, Oregon and open a vegetarian restaurant. There is now a greater distrust of the government on the left, but at a deeper level that distrust reflects a broader change in attitude, in that young people don’t like the idea of imposing their own values on others or pushing through grand reform schemes. On the international stage, this might mean that Liberal Internationalism has subtly morphed into what might be called ‘Progressive Internationalism’. So the members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation may not be classic liberals like John Kerry in foreign policy, but they are nonetheless ‘progressive’ in sentiment in foreign relations. (I see them as generally progressive in intent but instinctively cautious and conservative in temperament.)

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