Ahh, The 1960's, The Good Ol' Days of U.S. Foreign Policy

Andrew Sullivan's on vacation and has some decent writers guest-blogging for him (that's what being famous gets you... when I vacation, my action figures refuse to blog for me).

One of them, the New Republic's Jamie Kirchik, has written a post-- entitled 'Whither the anti-totalitarian left?'-- that reads as if it were written by a more sane, intelligent version of Joe Lieberman. Asking of Democrats and liberals, he writes, "What has happened to this spirit [of taking on totalitarianism in the world]?" He laments that the party that lead the world in the fight against WWII-era fascism, and post-WWII communism, abandoned this "muscular, progressive internationalism" after the Vietnam war. She warns of the "impending realist takeover of the Democratic Party." Realism is a bad thing?

I think this criticism is misplaced for a number of reasons.

For starters, the Cold War was won by diplomatic, non-hostile means (it certainly helped that the Soviet Union was, by nature, a government doomed to failure long-term)... not through muscular military confrontation. A lot of the U.S.'s actions-- vis-à-vis the Cold War-- were overreactions. Children hiding under their desks? McCarthyism?

The Vietnam War, in particular, was the height of Democratic 'muscular, progressive internationalism' and it was a huge mistake. The domino theory never came true and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives for nothing. Nixon's infamous trip to China accomplished far more than the Korean and Vietnam wars ever did. Democrats/liberals didn't pussy out after Vietnam by moving away from this foreign policy worldview... they were simply learning from their mistakes. Support for the invasion of Iraq was a failure to remember those lessons.

Secondly, Kirchik's lamentations make it sound as if the left is retreating into isolation, as many on the right like Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul would like. This is not supported by reality. If you listen to all the leading Democratic candidates, there remains a strong sense of international purpose and mission. They just don't-- to varying extents-- believe that this is accomplished by blowing up the world and telling everyone to 'suck on this'.

It is on this note that one of Sullivan's other guest-bloggers, Steve Clemons, responds to the Kirchik post by pointing out the Bush-era neocons, who embraced some of the old left's military views but on crack, have nearly destroyed our credibility and power in their zeal.

Clemons states that "the Bush/Cheney neocon gamble of showing all the world our limits [has] punctured the mystique of American power... The global equilibrium has been thrown off, and to fill the voids left by the collapse of confidence in America's ability to achieve its objectives, other nations are rushing in to maximize their security or to try and restore balance." This has made the world far more dangerous than it was when they came into office. He adds that the Democratic realists Kirchik laments are actually "those with a conscience, those who understand what checks and balances are about," and that what is beginning to happen (hopefully) is America "bouncing back to the norms this country has traditionally embraced."

A third guest-blogger-- 'hilzoy'-- piles on as well. He makes that the point that a policy of "anti-totalitarianism" makes little sense in the age of al Qaeda, which is not the conquering army that George W. Bush portrays it as. Moreover, Bush's spreading-democracy policy has been revealed to be a sham as well. The world is a more complicated place than our leaders describe it and needs to be treated as such.

Hard to disagree with these last points. And it's much harder to imagine why anyone would want to return to the foreign policy of the '50s and '60s. Bring on realism, it's overdue.