Critics of liberal internationalism - "interventionism" - generally hold the position that there is something disingenuous - even imperialistic - about our seemingly innocent impulse to export democracy, or order, or food or medicine to places we think need it. Doing these things, they say, is really a front for age-old wants: resources, manpower, and whatever else is involved in Capital's adventures abroad. Tell'em we're coming with Democracy®, then we'll leave just as they're about to ask us if we're going to be building any schools or hospitals along with our Hellfire missiles and armored personnel carriers.
That's an extremely rough summation of a position I'm moderately inclined to disagree with, but there's something about the support people in the developed world are lending to the green-clad, peacefully protesting millions from Tehran to Shiraz to Esfahan that strikes me as a new voice in the debate over how Liberal Democracy describes and behaves itself.
What's new is that it's restrained, calm, and even-keeled. Which is to say, a very Oakeshottian support. There's a famine of voices yelling for INTERVENTION NOW OVERTHROW THE MULLAHS. Instead, there's an American president, his government, an American press, and an American audience who - jesus - seem to agree that the best course of action is to - double jesus - remain calm, ensure that Iran knows we're here, and...wait.
Am I the only one struck by how new this is? My cynicism will likely prevail, and there's a good chance that by the end of the week someone in power will have done something horribly idiotic and typical of the last, er, one hundred years of American foreign misadventures, but...
...but hey, no harm in hoping is there? Maybe Western foreign policy, as it regards popular upheavals in strategically critical nations, could sail on this even keel for some time.
I'm not suggesting that there'll always be unity of tactical opinions, or even larger strategic questions. That's tactics and strategy. We can sing about those till we're blue in the face. I'm talking instead about Temperament, capital T. What if presidents began talking about the temperaments, or characters, of the policies they intend to carry out? What if - and this is a big counterfactual - certain virtues, long dusty and forgotten, see a return? Not the exciting ones, like courage, but the boring ho-hum ones everybody overlooks: humility, restraint, grace, and sympathy.
A Foreign Policy of Sympathy.
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