A “happy holidays” email from The Atlantic’s ubiquitous self-promoter Steve Clemons last week suggests that any unified right-left movement to end America’s wars of choice might be unattainable. Normally I do not read Clemons, but on this occasion I persevered and was rewarded with a bit of political folderol that was too deliciously bizarre not to share. Steve is a progressive who sees himself as a realist and who likes to suggest to his readers that he is a true Washington insider unafraid to challenge the status quo. He does so gingerly, however, never wanting to offend anyone who is really important. He is a fan of the late Richard Holbrooke, whom he describes as an “outstanding global policy practitioner,” presumably a tribute to his success at turning the Balkans into a festering sore before pissing the Pakistanis off. He also believes that Henry Kissinger is the greatest foreign policy genius to emerge since the Second World War.
Steve’s track record in predicting foreign policy developments is not good. Over a year ago at his website, The Washington Note, he recounted cornering an ostentatiously self-important though unidentified administration source and quizzing him regarding the Israel-Palestine peace process. Quoting himself in his article, he asked portentously, “My question then was, what next? And the response was incomplete but probably sound. ‘We are studying options.’” Relying on such brilliant though admittedly laconic insights, Steve then opined “that the door is open for new frames that could capture the day and change the current paralyzed standoff.” “Frames” is one of Steve’s favorite expressions. The frames have apparently not materialized in 2011 unless one considers a dressing-down of the U.S. president by the Israeli prime minister to be progress, but no matter. That was last year, which is now over, so it is possible to move on to new frames for 2012.
Steve’s happy holidays message cited a recent article by Charles Kupchan, a former Clinton administration National Security Council staffer, and quoted from it: “Progressive leadership at home is essential to the nation’s political and economic renewal, which in turn is the foundation for progressive leadership abroad. Since World War II, the United States has been dramatically successful in making the globe more stable, prosperous, and liberal. The recipe for ongoing success in this mission is no different than in the past: a solvent and centrist America reliant on a progressive combination of power and partnership to safeguard the national interest while improving the world.”
Steve approves. He “rides closely to Charles Kupchan’s thinking,” as he puts it, but he adds: “The dominant personality of the Republican and Democratic parties runs under two monikers — but is essentially tied to the notion that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to re-order the internal workings of other nations that constrain the freedoms and rights of their citizens. The liberal (or humanitarian) interventionist school dominates the progressive foreign policy establishment and more significantly populates the power positions of the Democratic Party today than its rivals; and in the Republican Party, various strains of neoconservatism (there is now competition among the heirs of Irving Kristol, Albert Wohlstetter, and other founding fathers) dominate.”
