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July 18, 2008
Which World War Is It?
By Robert RobbNearly seven years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and more than five years since the invasion of Iraq, there may be an interesting breach developing in the neoconservative view of the world.
The prevailing view was most starkly and thoroughly expressed in Norman Podhoretz's book, World War IV, published last year.
World War III, in Podhoretz's view, was the Cold War, and the U.S. won it.
World War IV is against Islamic jihadism. Podhoretz prefers, as does much of the conservative commentariat, the term "Islamofascism." That, however, is misleading. In fascism, the state is supreme and religion serves the interests of the state. In radical Islam, it's the opposite - religion is supreme and the state serves religion. Regardless, according to Podhoretz and others who see the world this way, the fight against Islamic jihadism more resembles the Cold War than either World War I or II.
It is a clash of irreconcilable ideologies. It's likely to go on a long time, often in ways that are not entirely visible. And it is a fight for survival - one side will win and the other will lose.
Podhoretz wholeheartedly supports the Bush doctrine that, ultimately, only the spread of democratic capitalism will make the United States safe.
Therefore, the United States must be an active agent of democratic change throughout the world and particularly in the Middle East. As Podhoretz puts it, the mission must be "to make the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy."
According to Podhoretz, and to a lesser extent Bush, the breeding ground of terrorism is oppression, not poverty. In reality, it is neither. As the upscale background of many al-Qaida leaders and homegrown terrorism in Britain demonstrates, jihadist impulses transcend income, opportunity and governance. The breeding ground for terrorism, to the extent it exists, is in hearts and minds.
In any event, Podhoretz is how neoconservatives have consistently described the world - a life or death struggle with Islamic jihadism. Any different point of view was dismissed as 9/10 thinking.
Now, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative thinker of the first rank, has published a new book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, with a startlingly different orientation. It's not World War IV, according to Kagan. In fact, it's pre-World War I.
Kagan's thesis is that, after the Cold War, the world has returned to the national-interest power politics of the 19th Century.
The new, defining conflict is between democratic nations and rising autocracies, particularly Russia and China. In contrast to Samuel Huntington, Kagan sees governance as more salient than ethnicity, religion or culture.
Thus the rise of China is causing the democratic Asian countries to move closer to the United States, rather than farther away.
Similarly, a freshly authoritarian Russia causes aspiring Eastern European democracies to seek to become even more thoroughly embedded in Western institutions.
Meanwhile, Russia and China seek to make the world safer for autocracy, as witness their veto of U.N. sanctions against Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
In Kagan's world view, Islamic terrorism doesn't get dismissed. The potential devastation of terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction requires substantial attention from policy makers. But coping with Islamic jihadism is secondary to managing the new national-interest power struggles between established and rising nation-states.
Both points of view, Podhoretz's and Kagan's, conclude with the need for a muscular U.S. involvement in the world, seeking to shape it to our preferences and interests. The notion that the United States might be better off staying out of some fights, particularly in the Middle East, is alien to both of them. Nor is there much appreciation for the practical limits on the U.S. ability and wisdom to intervene sensibly in the affairs of other peoples.
Nevertheless, Kagan's book is important. There is no reasoning with people who believe that they are involved in an apocalyptic struggle for survival.
A conversation is possible with those who believe they are engaged in a traditional power struggle regarding national interests.
