Charles Krauthammer had a very worthwhile article in The Telegraph which
is instructive about how different world views are organized.
How, he asks, do you see the world? Is there a direction in history, a progress from our more primitive selves to a higher moral and social plane? Obama's arrow of history: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Or is history just cycles of repeated behavior--"the same damn thing all over again"--where the names and battle cries change and the only improvement is in the weaponry? Those who see a direction are of two camps, the liberal and the neoconservative. Clinton, he says, is of the liberal stripe where "the creation of a dense web of treaties, agreements, transnational institutions and international organizations (like the U.N., NGOs, the World Trade Organization) can give substance to a cohesive community of nations that would, in time, ensure order and stability." Bush is of a similar--he calls neoconservative--view with a different methodology where "the better way to ensure order and stability is not through international institutions, which are flimsy and generally powerless, but through the spread of democracy. Because, in the end, democracies are inherently more inclined to live in peace."
(Note: Krauthammer, here, is speaking of the current, Western world. Other "arrows of history" would include Islam, Imperial Japan, the Nazis and the homicidal Communist movement all who see--or saw--themselves as part of an inevitable historical progression.)
Liberal internationalists count on globalization, neoconservatives on democratization to ascend the heights, to fulfill the arrow of history.
Those who do not believe in the arrow--he calls them realists (vs. the first group are "idealists")--believe that idealists give "high purpose to international exertions where none exists. Sovereign nations remain in incessant pursuit of power and self-interest. The pursuit can be carried out more or less wisely. But nothing fundamentally changes." This group wants only to limit the potential damage created by the baser instincts of ambitious leaders and political units.
He says much of Obama's international behavior has been to realize this "arc of justice." Thus his "'apology tour,' that burst of confessional soul-searching abroad about America and its sins, from slavery to the loss of our moral compass after 9/11 ....appeasing Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs, the butchers of Tiananmen Square and lately the Castros." But peace did not follow "justice." "The consequent withdrawal of American power, that agent of injustice or at least arrogant overreach, has yielded nothing but geopolitical chaos and immense human suffering."
One would think his recent trip to the Far East, highlighted by his Hiroshima display signals more of the same. But Krauthammer says no, that Obama has shown a real effort to be a realist with his trip to Vietnam, "accepted the reality of an abusive dictatorship while announcing a warming of relations and the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo, thereby enlisting Vietnam as a full partner in the containment of China."
This he called "raw, soulless realpolitik. No moral arc. No uplifting historical arrow. In fact, it is the same damn thing all over again."
How, he asks, do you see the world? Is there a direction in history, a progress from our more primitive selves to a higher moral and social plane? Obama's arrow of history: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Or is history just cycles of repeated behavior--"the same damn thing all over again"--where the names and battle cries change and the only improvement is in the weaponry? Those who see a direction are of two camps, the liberal and the neoconservative. Clinton, he says, is of the liberal stripe where "the creation of a dense web of treaties, agreements, transnational institutions and international organizations (like the U.N., NGOs, the World Trade Organization) can give substance to a cohesive community of nations that would, in time, ensure order and stability." Bush is of a similar--he calls neoconservative--view with a different methodology where "the better way to ensure order and stability is not through international institutions, which are flimsy and generally powerless, but through the spread of democracy. Because, in the end, democracies are inherently more inclined to live in peace."
(Note: Krauthammer, here, is speaking of the current, Western world. Other "arrows of history" would include Islam, Imperial Japan, the Nazis and the homicidal Communist movement all who see--or saw--themselves as part of an inevitable historical progression.)
Liberal internationalists count on globalization, neoconservatives on democratization to ascend the heights, to fulfill the arrow of history.
Those who do not believe in the arrow--he calls them realists (vs. the first group are "idealists")--believe that idealists give "high purpose to international exertions where none exists. Sovereign nations remain in incessant pursuit of power and self-interest. The pursuit can be carried out more or less wisely. But nothing fundamentally changes." This group wants only to limit the potential damage created by the baser instincts of ambitious leaders and political units.
He says much of Obama's international behavior has been to realize this "arc of justice." Thus his "'apology tour,' that burst of confessional soul-searching abroad about America and its sins, from slavery to the loss of our moral compass after 9/11 ....appeasing Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs, the butchers of Tiananmen Square and lately the Castros." But peace did not follow "justice." "The consequent withdrawal of American power, that agent of injustice or at least arrogant overreach, has yielded nothing but geopolitical chaos and immense human suffering."
One would think his recent trip to the Far East, highlighted by his Hiroshima display signals more of the same. But Krauthammer says no, that Obama has shown a real effort to be a realist with his trip to Vietnam, "accepted the reality of an abusive dictatorship while announcing a warming of relations and the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo, thereby enlisting Vietnam as a full partner in the containment of China."
This he called "raw, soulless realpolitik. No moral arc. No uplifting historical arrow. In fact, it is the same damn thing all over again."
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