George Washington And Passionate Attachment

March 29, 2013 § 15 Comments

This post is a week late in coming, since I had planned on writing it last Friday until the O&Z equivalent of the moon landing happened when Israel and Turkey patched things up and relegated today’s thoughts to the sidelines. On President Obama’s arrival in Israel last week, Andrew Sullivan wrote a post titled Barack Obama vs. George Washington in which he juxtaposed Washington’s famous “passionate attachment” farewell speech in which he warned about making entangling alliances with Obama’s speech at Ben Gurion airport after landing in Israel. The relevant Washington passages that Andrew quoted are as follows:

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest…

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

Andrew then quoted Obama, who said, “So as I begin this visit, let me say as clearly as I can –the United States of America stands with the State of Israel because it is in our fundamental national security interest to stand with Israel. It makes us both stronger. It makes us both more prosperous. And it makes the world a better place. That’s why the United States was the very first nation to recognize the State of Israel 65 years ago. That’s why the Star of David and the Stars and Stripes fly together today. And that is why I’m confident in declaring that our alliance is eternal, it is forever – lanetzach.”

Andrew’s commentary on this was that Washington would have regarded Obama’s statements as “deeply corrosive of foreign policy and domestic governance” and that this is the primary reason we may be headed to war again in the Middle East. In other words, the relationship with Israel is harmful because the U.S. should be avoiding eternal alliances or unbreakable relationships per Washington’s exhortation, and his words are just as relevant today as they were when he delivered them in 1796.

To my mind, there are two big problems with this line of reasoning. First, the notion that anything uttered about foreign affairs in 1796, when both the world and the U.S. position in it have changed so much, is to be taken as absolute gospel to be followed in 2013 is preposterous. The U.S. has gone from being a relative backwater to being the world’s preeminent hegemonic power, communications and transportation technology have revolutionized the way states interact, the dangers that states face have been transformed in ways that would have been unrecognizable in the 18th century – much as the dangers states will face 100 years from now are probably not being accurately predicted today – and diplomacy looks nothing like it did in Washington’s day. That is not to say that Washington’s warning is useless by any means, but not updating it or putting it into context based on the 21st century world seems foolhardy.

Furthermore, Andrew himself recognizes this fact when it comes to nearly every other aspect of politics, culture, social transformation, legal theory, and philosophy. To begin with, he describes himself as a Burkean conservative, a philosophy which expressly takes into account the fact that the world is constantly changing and that principles are therefore not immutable but need to be updated. In Andrew’s own words:

Burke’s fundamental point is that everything in society is contingent and that change must always begin with what came before and is most successful when it works inferentially from that tradition rather than being imposed from outside according to abstract theories or texts. Tradition is also a very expansive term. An American can reach back deeply into the American past and resurrect an ancient tradition and make it fresh again – thus appearing to be quite radical, while still fitting into the definition of a Burkean conservative. It is always up to the statesman at any period of time to make a prudential judgment about what change is good and what isn’t.

Hence, to a liberal who wants a clear and timeless theory about what makes something just or unjust, right or wrong, Burke looks unprincipled.

This does not mean that a Burkean conservative cannot look to Washington’s statement and determine that it is still relevant, but Andrew has not gone through that process in his writing. Instead, he takes it as an article of faith that Washington’s words are timeless and that any policy that contradicts those words must be inherently bad. What is so striking about this is that in his advocacy for marriage equality, Andrew appeals directly to Burkean conservatism – and rightly so, in my view – to make the case that traditional morals in this area should have no bearing on government policy today. I have little doubt that George Washington would have been opposed to gay marriage had someone suggested the possibility to him; if he had given a speech warning about the evils of marriage equality and warning about its potential to corrode traditional notions of family, Andrew would correctly dismiss it as being a product of a far different era. Yet when it comes to foreign affairs, no such discernment is evident in Andrew’s discussion of whether 200 year old advice on how the U.S. should interact with other states needs some updating.

Second, Andrew’s quotes from Washington’s speech are truncated. Here is the paragraph that follows the one with which Andrew ends, and the concluding line:

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter…

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

It is clear from this passage that Washington had a very specific fear in mind, which was the attachment of the U.S. as a small and weak nation to a larger more powerful nation, as that would make the U.S. little more than a satellite or client state of its stronger ally. Washington also saw no reason to have relations with other states for purposes other than commercial ones, which made sense in an era in which the U.S. was protected by two oceans and had little need for security alliances or to take defense considerations into account. All that mattered was trade, since the rest was irrelevant. In this light, taking Washington’s warning as an iron rule makes even less sense, and applying it to Israel – which is the smaller and weaker state in this relationship and not the other way around – stretches the boundaries of absurdity. While there is certainly a conspiracy theory crowd that would argue that Israel is using its influence, in Washington’s words, “to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils,” I don’t think Andrew is quite there. Washington was concerned given the U.S. position in the international system at that time, but as the world’s strongest country, if anything his advice should now be flipped on its head. The U.S. simply cannot avoid making entangling alliances with countries; indeed, the entire post-WWII order created by the U.S. is predicated on the assumption that we will be doing exactly that. I understand why using Washington’s words as a way to bash the U.S.-Israel relationship seems attractive, but it rests on a number of extremely shaky fallacies.

There are plenty of arguments to be made about why the U.S. should distance itself somewhat from Israel. I do not agree with them, as I think the U.S. benefits from the relationship in many ways that its benefits outweigh its drawbacks, but there are cogent debates to be had. Referring back to a 200 year old speech that assumed a very different place in the world for the U.S. is not a serious argument though, and that goes doubly for someone who is so eloquent in his advocacy of throwing out traditions and practices that no longer apply to changed circumstances.

Netanyahu’s Outburst Is Not About The Presidential Campaign

September 13, 2012 § 5 Comments

We Americans have a tendency to look at situations and think that they revolve around us. The best recent example of this has been the debate over America’s role in the Arab Spring (or Arab Awakening, Islamist Winter, or whatever other term people are using these days) and the view that the U.S. was somehow the decisive actor in determining whether or not regimes fell. We can debate all day whether President Obama was right to withdraw support for Hosni Mubarak – and I for one firmly think that he was – but there is simply no question that Mubarak would have fallen anyway even if the U.S. had backed him to the hilt. The revolution in Egypt was not about us, nor did we have the ability or wherewithal to control it. Yet this idea persists that “we needed to back our allies” and that Mubarak would still be the modern day pharaoh of Cairo had we wanted him to stay put, all stemming from this mistaken paradigm that insists on seeing all world events as revolving around the U.S. In many, if not most, instances, political events overseas have little to do with the U.S. in more than a tangential manner, and even when they do involve the U.S., it is in an indirect way.

This brings me to the latest dustup between Obama and Bibi Netanyahu, which began when Netanyahu responded to Hillary Clinton’s statement that the U.S. did not see a need to issue any red lines over Iran by saying, “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” This was of course a direct reference to the U.S. and set off all sorts of reverberations, beginning with Israel letting it be known that the White House had rejected a request for a meeting between the two leaders, Obama and Netanyahu speaking on the phone for an hour late Tuesday night, and Senator Barbara Boxer releasing an astonishing letter that she sent to Netanyahu in which she wrote, “Your remarks are utterly contrary to the extraordinary United States-Israel alliance, evidenced by President Obama’s record and the record of Congress,” and “I am stunned by the remarks that you made this week regarding U.S. support for Israel. Are you suggesting that the United States is not Israel’s closest ally and does not stand by Israel?”

The fireworks between the two countries were immediately interpreted as Netanyahu’s attempt to leverage the U.S. presidential campaign season against Obama. The very first sentence of the New York Times story on the affair is “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear ‘red lines’ on Iran’s nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike.” New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote, “Now Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election—one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC.” The conventional wisdom is that Netanyahu’s statement lashing out at the administration over the lack of red lines on Iran is an attempt to force Obama’s hand before the election or to create enough problems for Obama with pro-Israel voters and groups that it will swing the election to Romney. In short, Andrew Sullivan’s most dire prediction come to life.

The focus on the presidential campaign is a misreading of what is actually going on here that stems from the American pathology I laid out at the top of this post. Netanyahu’s harsh words are not aimed at the presidential race but are a result of what I imagine to be his deep and maddening frustration that he cannot force an Israeli strike on Iran. The point of Netanyahu’s verbal barrage is not to sabotage Obama or influence the 2012 vote for president, and in fact is only directed at the U.S. because he has already emptied his chamber on Israeli leaders opposed to a strike and cannot publicly criticize the person – Ehud Barak – with whom he is actually frustrated. Barak has reportedly changed his mind about the wisdom of an Israeli strike because he has come to realize what it will mean for U.S.-Israel relations, and without Barak on board any hopes Netanyahu has of taking out Iranian nuclear facilities are completely dashed. Netanyahu cannot go after Barak, however, since he cannot afford to alienate him or to let everyone know that the two men are no longer of one mind on this issue, and so he is reduced to directing his intemperate words at the U.S. and the Obama administration as the indirect causes of his current anger. Netanyahu’s outburst is not about the presidential campaign or presidential politics, but about what he views as an Israeli national security imperative that is being stymied by an array of forces. The fact that this is campaign season in the U.S. is only incidental, since Netanyahu would have issued a similar statement at the beginning or middle of a presidential term. His prism is an Israeli one, not an American one, and his focus is on Iran rather than on U.S. politics. Believe it or not, Israel has other concerns aside from the Obama-Romney contest. Yes, what is going on in the U.S. obviously impacts this entire issue, but the notion that what Bibi said yesterday is about the presidential campaign here is just the latest data point for the case that knowledge of Israeli politics on this side of the ocean remains poor.

Misreading Benny Gantz

April 25, 2012 § Leave a comment

Andrew Sullivan’s takeaway from the Benny Gantz interview is that the Israeli military does not view Iran as an existential threat, and he implies that much like many Israeli military leaders were opposed to the Iraq War, Gantz’s comments might mean that the same applies here too. Certainly Gantz is clear that he does not think Iran is developing nuclear weapons yet, but the quote that Andrew pulls out has to be read in its proper context, which is sorely missing. The full quote on Khamenei’s rationality is as follows:

“If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response. I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people. But I agree that such a capability, in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who at particular moments could make different calculations, is dangerous.”

Two important points to note in here. First, Gantz is open to the possibility that because the Iranian leader is unquestionably an Islamic fundamentalist, he might at any point make a different decision that would not fall under the category of being rational. This means that Gantz does not have the same cocksure certainty about what Iran is ultimately going to do as Andrew does. It is trite to imply that Gantz does not see Iran as threatening or favor military action under the right circumstances when he leaves his reading of Khamenei’s actions open to revision. This leads to the second important point, namely that Gantz thinks Khamenei will pursue a bomb if the supreme leader believes that he can get away with it because Iran’s nuclear facilities are impervious to attack. This is in line with something that Gantz says earlier in the interview:

“The military option is the last chronologically but the first in terms of its credibility. If it’s not credible it has no meaning. We are preparing for it in a credible manner. That’s my job, as a military man.”

And on the question of whether the threat is existential for Israel as compared to America:

“We aren’t two oceans away from the problem – we live here with our civilians, our women and our children, so we interpret the extent of the urgency differently. “

The problem here, and the point that Sullivan misses, is that only the threat of serious military action transforms the threat from Iran from an existential, life-altering one into the kind of ordinary adversarial threat with which Israel is used to dealing, but Sullivan generally thinks that Israeli threats are an unquestionably bad thing. Gantz is not downplaying the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon that might be used against Israel, but stressing that just because Iran does not appear in his view to be developing nuclear arms right now does not foreclose completely the possibility that it will happen down the road. And the best way of making Iran stick to this path is by keeping the sword of Damocles hanging over its head. Does this mean that the Israeli military does not view Iran as an existential threat? I don’t think it does. It means that Gantz has a hard-eyed view of what it takes to contain this threat and ensure that it does not become unmanageable. As always, context is king. Even Abdullah Gül concedes the tough spot the Israelis are in with Iran in an interview in the current issue of Foreign Policy in which he says, “I don’t mean to in any way disregard the threat perception on the part of Israel either,” while expressing his opinion that Israel should not attack Iran.

Given all this, I think the Gantz interview actually makes me a bit more charitable toward Netanyahu, as shocking as that may be. Bibi’s constant threats and warnings certainly fulfill Gantz’s desire to make Israeli military action appear to be as credible as possible. I have written a bunch of times that I think Israel is bluffing and does not intend to strike Iran, and to the extent that this is true, it plays directly into what Gantz says has to be done to prevent Iran from trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

Memo to Andrew Sullivan: It Isn’t Always About the U.S.

April 18, 2012 § Leave a comment

Like many of his readers, Andrew Sullivan and I have a long relationship, although he does not know it. I have been a daily Andrew Sullivan reader since my dad clued me into Andrew’s blog during my first semester of law school in September 2002. My browser bookmark has changed as he has moved from his eponymous self-hosted site to Time, then the Atlantic, and now the Daily Beast. One of my finest moments as a writer was when my response to Andrew’s request for submissions for his What Would Jesus Drive thread was filled with so many excruciating puns that he published it and then declared a unilateral ceasefire. I even donated money to his tip jar the first time he asked his readers for donations since I have always enjoyed his writing and his arguments always make me think. No, this is not the preface to a declaration that I am no longer going to read the Dish, since I don’t think there is anything that would force me to give it up. But as someone who must be part of a small group of his oldest and most loyal readers, his insistence that Israeli policy must always be viewed through the prism of the U.S. is starting to wear extremely thin.

The latest example is a post yesterday quoting Fred Kaplan on why Israel might want to strike Iran before the 2012 U.S. presidential election because President Obama will then be forced to join in out of reelection concerns. Andrew then adds, “Note that this simply implies that a foreign government would be relying on US domestic pressure to force the US administration to join a war it did not seek. I’m not sure what that is, but ‘alliance’ is not the correct word.” This is but a brief foray into Andrew’s larger and continuous argument that Netanyahu is seeking to doom Obama’s reelection and sabotage his efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. Better examples of this overarching view are here and here and especially here. This last example provides a good crystallization of Andrew’s thinking: “A global war which polarizes America and the world is exactly what Netanyahu wants. And it is exactly what the GOP needs to cut through Obama’s foreign policy advantage in this election. Because it is only through war, crisis and polarization that extremists can mobilize the emotions that keep them in power. They need war to win. Here’s a prediction. Netanyahu, in league and concert with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes.”

Obama and Netanyahu undoubtedly have a terrible relationship, with the latest datapoint being Netanyahu criticizing the P5+1 talks two days ago as giving Iran a freebie and Obama immediately firing back, while the administration leaks the fact that Netanyahu was briefed extensively before and after the talks and that the U.S. coordinated its strategy with Israel. I am sure that neither is the other’s favorite world leader, and it is certainly not a stretch to think that Netanyahu would be happier to see Mitt Romney occupying the Oval Office come January. Nevertheless, Andrew constantly insists that any action Israel might take against Iran is designed to thwart Obama and that Israel has no right to hold the U.S. hostage or embroil it in a war. All of Israeli foreign policy is reduced to the narrow question of whether it is good for the U.S. or bad for the U.S. and how it impacts American interests.

The problem with this is obvious. As Andrew likes to point out, Israel’s interests do not always perfectly overlap with those of the U.S., and Andrew’s line of argument ignores the fact that when this occurs, Israel has every right and obligation to do what it thinks is best for itself. Nobody would argue that states do not have the responsibility to protect their own interests, particularly when a state determines that it is facing an acute security threat. Yet Andrew repeatedly makes the argument that Israel should subsume its own interests to that of the U.S. and subvert its own national security decision making process to further American policy in the region. This selective blindness is particularly galling given Andrew’s position that Israel has no right to interfere with American strategic goals and his accusations that American policy in the Middle East is controlled by Netanyahu, and yet he then in the same breath insists that Israel has no right to attack a state that directs rhetorical belligerence its way (and targets its diplomats and civilians abroad) because of what it might mean for the U.S. and that the White House should have the final say over what Israel does.

The Iran issue undoubtedly implicates the U.S., but it does not then follow that it is entirely about Obama and American domestic politics. It is callous to suggest that Israel does not have legitimate concerns about Iranian threats and that the only possible rationale for an Israeli strike is to “polarize America and the world.” If Israel decides to strike Iran – and let me reiterate yet again that I think it would be both terrible and unnecessary – it will not be in order to harm Obama or to draw the U.S. into a global war or to please evangelical Christianists. It will be because Netanyahu and Barak and the rest of the security cabinet genuinely believe that Israel faces an existential threat and that it has no other alternative. Israeli security policy is not concocted as a way of spitting in America’s eye, nor should Israel always be forced to do whatever the U.S. wants it to do, since that is not an alliance either. Israel absolutely should take U.S. views seriously and under grave consideration, and I would argue that if the Obama administration is hellbent against an Israeli attack, Israel should listen and comply because of the various implications involved in not doing so. Yet this is not what Andrew is arguing – he is arguing that Israel has no right to launch an attack on Iran because of the consequences that will accrue for the U.S. This is simply not the way states  should or do operate, and much as Andrew would never voice the idea that the U.S. should have an absolute veto over British foreign policy because of the special relationship or Lend-Lease, the same applies to Israel. The bottom line is that Israel is well within Iran’s striking distance, Iranian officials have repeatedly talked of their fervent wish to see the “Zionist regime” replaced, and Iran is currently operating a uranium enrichment program that the IAEA has flagged for suspicion of violating the NPT. The concerns that Israel has are far greater than those of the U.S. and for very good reason. Not everything is about America, and Andrew’s arguments would benefit from this realization.

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