OxBlog

Monday, December 16, 2002

# Posted 9:29 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FAREED BETWEEN THE LINES. Just a few days back, OxBlog had the honor of receiving fan mail from Newsweek editor and foreign affairs superpundit Fareed Zakaria. While Dr. Z said that OxBlog is “a great read”, he took exception to the charge of moral relativism that I laid at his door sometime back, in reference to an essay he published in The New Yorker. In particular, Dr. Z pointed to the last paragraph of his article, which read as follows:
America remains the universal nation, the country people across the world believe should speak for universal values. Its image may not be as benign as Americans think, but it is, in the end, better than the alternatives. That is what has made America's awesome power tolerable to the world for so long. The belief that America is different is its ultimate source of strength. If we mobilize all our awesome powers and lose this one, we will have hegemony—but will it be worth having?
I have to admit, that’s damn good evidence. I owe Dr. Zakaria an apology. The charge of moral relativism is a serious one and should not be made without careful consideration of one’s subject. As such, I would like to extend my apology to the three other authors whom I labelled as relativists along with Dr. Zakaria.

That said, I do believe that there are significant flaws in the four essays I cited. Without question, each one deserved more than the cursory treatment I gave it. Since the issues that each of the authors raised are still relevant, I will take time now to comment on their work in depth. I will begin with Zakaria's essay, covering it over the next four days.

Rather than moral relativists, it might be better to describe these authors as 'analytical relativists', since they come close to seeing international politics as an arena in which nations are judged according to their power, not their ideals. While some would no doubt resist that characterization, I believe that I can show it to be a meaningful one, even for Zakaria.

Before responding to Zakaria's essay directly, I think it is important to place these four authors in their proper intellectual context, as scholars rooted in the political science tradition known 'realism'. Historically speaking, realists have often been explicit advocates of moral relativism, both as an analytical as well as a prescriptive paradigm for the conduct of international relations. Prominent realists such as Henry Kissinger have often dismissed ethical restrictions on the conduct of foreign affairs, e.g. the consideration of human rights, as nothing more than impediments to the pursuit of a favorable balance of power.

In contrast, other realists have argued that the United States must respect human rights even though doing so might complicate efforts to safeguard our national security. Some realists take this position because they believe that the ethical significance of human rights demands that sacrifices be made in order to respect them. Others argue that since no foreign policy can succeed in the absence of domestic support, statesmen must take into consideration the ethical norms of their constituents.

What unites these kinder, gentler realists with the old guard is that none of them believe that strict adherence to ethical norms benefits the United States by convincing others of its good intentions. Believing international politics to be a domain in which power alone determines the welfare of nations, these realists see good intentions as nothing more than paving stones on the road to hell.

Against this background, it becomes apparent that Zakaria has departed significantly from mainline realism with his assertion that American idealism “has made America's awesome power tolerable to the world for so long…[thus] the belief that America is different is its ultimate source of strength.” Still I believe that there are significant elements of the old way of thinking still present in Zakaria’s work, especially his definition of what it means for America to be “different.” Through a detailed analysis of Zakaria’s essay in The New Yorker, I think I can show that his definition of difference has firm roots in the realist tradition.

Our Way: The Trouble With Being the World’s Only Superpower
By Fareed Zakaria

…a world with just one major power is unprecedented. For several centuries before 1945, European states of roughly equivalent standing dominated global affairs in a multipolar system. Many powers jockeying for advantage meant shifting alliances and almost constant war. It fixed in people's minds the image of international politics as Realpolitik, a ruthless, ever-changing game of might…

Most nations—including the United States—are still unsure of the character and the consequences of the unipolar world. The confusion has increased dramatically since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which for many Americans revealed the country's vulnerability: America's overwhelming military power cannot keep it safe. The attacks underscored the point that Harvard's Joseph S. Nye, Jr., made in his recent book, The Paradox of American Power, which argues that while American power is unmatched, it has its limits in a modern, globalized age.

I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Nye when he visited Oxford in the spring of 2001. Nye is an all-around nice guy and still thoroghly modest despite his towering achievements as both a scholar and a policymaker. Within the academy, Nye is best known for his introduction (along with Robert Keohane) of the phrase “complex interdependence”. In doing so, Nye became a co-founder of the school of thought known as neo-liberalism, which distinguished itself from realism by virtue of its insistence that nations’ growing interdependence could provide them with a purely rational, self-interested motive for avoiding conflict. This was a striking departure from the realists’ insistence that self-interested behavior makes conflict inevitable in international relations.

Outside of the academy, Nye is best known for coining the phrase “soft power” to describe the attractive force that the United States’ economic and cultural success has on other nations. In pre-publication lectures on “The Paradox of American Power”, Nye restated his earlier insistence that soft power is a fragile resource, since even limited unilateralist behavior can erase the goodwill that cultural and economic attraction creates. During the Q&A after the lecture, I unsuccessfully tried to persuade Prof. Nye that soft power is actually rather durable, since it rests not on goodwill, but rather on other democratic nations’ recognition that the United States shares their fundamental ideals, regardless of whether it occasionally misbehaves.

As becomes apparent later in Zakaria’s essay, he agrees with Nye that soft power is a fragile resource. As I see it, this view has reflects the strong influence of realism on neo-liberals such as Nye, despite their conscious rejection of it. In arguing that nations’ interdependence provides them with a rational, self-interested motive for cooperation, neo-liberals effectively adopt realism’s belief that the primary determinants of a state’s behavior are its interests, rather than its ideals. An implicit corollary to this assertion is the idea that nations judge their rivals primarily according to their interests rather than their ideals. If one adopts such a position, a logical extension of it is the belief that soft power is fragile, since its rests on goodwill rather than self-interest. While I was wrong to describe such beliefs as an example of moral relativism, I think it is clear to what degree such beliefs approach analytical relativism.

Much of the Western world has lived for some decades with the knowledge that terrorism can plague an open society. But the September attacks were more nihilistic, more deadly than any that had come before. And they were, in a sense, a consequence of the new unipolar world. Americans like to think that this country was attacked because it is free. But so are Italy and Denmark, whose cities stand undisturbed. America was attacked because it is the master of the modern world, deploying its economic, political, and military powers across the globe. Because America is "No. 1," it is also target No. 1.

In this provocative passage, Zakaria makes it clear that September 11th was a response to America’s power, not to its ideals. Absent in this passage is any hint of the leftist relativism that declares America’s ideals to be no more legitimate than those of Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, Zakaria rules out the possibility that America was attacked because it has used its power in order to advance its ideals. Yes, Italy and Denmark are free. But it was the United States who defended the freedom of Kuwait and in doing so introduced degenerate infidel practices into the holy land of Islam.

Continued tomorrow...
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