This is brilliant essay from @dmarusic on how the arc of history doesn't necessarily bend toward justice, and to assume that it does creates major blindspots in foreign policy. It's a tour de force of argument. But I disagree on some key points. wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr… 1/x
This is exactly right. There was a naiveté in Obama and Kerry's notion that historic's arc was bending. *Someone* needs to do the bending, and Obama wasn't willing to back his own premise with hard power. And without power, the moralism was both empty and presumptuous. 2/x
In pointing to this false premise of the "liberal world order," @dmarusic argues that questions of order must be separated from questions of morality, but it's not clear to me that this is the right conclusion to draw. And I think this is where we diverge. 3/x
The conclusion I draw is that if we care about promoting our values abroad, we must back them up with something beyond rhetoric. This doesn't necessitate stupid wars of aggression, but it does require power. Our values are not freestanding facts; they depend on a guarantor. 4/x
Contra Machiavelli, power and morality are inextricably intertwined. The legitimacy of the US-led order depends on the notion that it is better than the alternative, and it is better because morality plays some role in our foreign policy, in a way that it doesn't for China. 5/x
Here's how to intertwine them: One can say (as I will right now) that it is in our national interest to be moral. I offer a fuller exposition of this view in my recent @WCrowdsLive debate with @dmarusic during the Gaza conflict. 6/x wisdomofcrowds.live/israel-palesti…
It is also true that the US has had a remarkably immoral foreign policy in the Middle East in particular, whether it's our unquestioning support for Israel or our deliberate and destructive support for some of the world's most repressive regimes, i.e. Egypt & Saudi Arabia. 7/x
So, yes, US policy has been flagrantly hypocritical in the Middle East. There are two options, then: to do what Trump did and do away with hypocrisy by explicitly disavowing morality. Or to stick with our lofty rhetoric and work to better align our policy with that rhetoric. 8/x
In a previous Friday Essay for @WCrowdsLive, I made the case for hypocrisy in foreign policy, not because hypocrisy is good but because it is better than the alternative. 9/x
Liberal democracies, despite—or due to—being more moral, are especially prone to hypocrisy. Because they legitimate themselves on normative grounds, liberal societies "present themselves as better than they are." 10/x
With Trump, we had something of a natural experiment. For the first time in my life, the gap between words and deeds was basically eliminated. We didn't even have a president who *pretended.* Trump was our first anti-hypocrite on foreign policy but was anti-hypocrisy better? 11/x
In this ongoing debate between @dmarusic & I, we've also had other perspectives falling somewhere in between. Here's a fascinating essay from the political theorist @polanskydj on how democracies conceptualize justice through a secularized piety. wisdomofcrowds.live/democracy-and-… 12/x
Hypocrisy is tied to morality, and morality is tied to (a certain kind of) legitimacy. 13/x
Some of these essays are paywalled, including my and @dmarusic's Friday Essays. We think you'll find it's a pretty rich conversation. So if any of this catches your interest, please do consider subscribing. Lots more in the works! wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe /fin.
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Last week, my Friday Essay provided a counterpoint to @dmarusic's pessimism. In betraying our own ideals, we remind ourselves that we have them in the first place.
The tragic reality is that the minority of Islamist groups that use violence can often claim more success than nonviolent ones, whether the Taliban, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, Libyan militants, or even Hamas
In areas where chaos and conflict are the norm, militants like the Taliban can come in and dispense rough often brutal justice, particularly when it comes to legal disputes and corruption. This gains them support, however grudging, as @SuneEngel reports.
In this week's @WCrowdsLive essay, I make the case for hypocrisy in foreign policy, not because hypocrisy is good but because it is better than the alternative. I wish it were otherwise but apparently it's not. 1/x
As I finish a book about rethinking democracy promotion for the post-Trump era, I've been struggling with the question of hypocrisy. It's unavoidable now that the gap between words and deeds has returned with Biden, which is both bad and good. 2/x
The hypocrite has always been a subject of fascination, not merely because he is bad. Mere badness is pedestrian. The hypocrite is different (and worse) because of his ostentatious morality. But should a hatred of hypocrisy be applied to countries and not just individuals? 3/x
But it's a brilliant, tour-de-force of argument. A reminder, if one was needed, of why @dmarusic is one of the most challenging and original American essayists around
This is what I hope we can do more of at @WCrowdsLive—to find new and interesting ways of disagreeing. And use our disagreements to get to the bottom of *why* we disagree. How do we come to believe the things we believe?
When @dmarusic & I get in debates, we often find ourselves ending up at the most foundational question of all: the existence of God, because it is difficult to disentangle morality from the divine. Ostensibly, God shouldn't figure too much into our policy assessments of Gaza...
By popular demand, we've decided to un-paywall my piece "I'm Angry About Palestine. Should You Be?" for a day. I didn't really write it for the public, but what the heck.
This is a more personal essay on what I was thinking and feeling last week as I was trying to making sense of the news in Gaza. It's as honest a piece as I could have written. I look forward to sharing it with more of you.
My piece was inspired in part by two old, estranged friends: Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said. Here, Hitchens' moral clarity cuts through. It's a beautiful passage.
If you missed it, my new @BrookingsFP piece on how Arab regimes mastered the art of not caring about the Palestinians while pretending to care about them. But this isn't new. Decades ago, Anwar el-Sadat was the pioneer of a separate peace
The Trump administration was right that Arab nations could be peeled off the Palestinians one by one, but it was building on an old idea with a storied history. Camp David is almost unanimously seen as Carter's great achievement, but there was a dark side.
For the best account on how Camp David was the first, original step in sidelining the Palestinians, see @SethAnziska's brilliant book based on original archival research—'Preventing Palestine': amazon.com/Preventing-Pal…