(Rejecting) The Human Community

Brooks in the 5/11 NYT : "In April 1999, Blair delivered a speech in Chicago in which he ran down all the features of the globalized world that cross borders and unite humanity: trade, communications, disease, financial markets, human rights and immigration. “Today the impulse towards interdependence is immeasurably greater,” he argued. “We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community.”

This meant moving away from the Westphalian system, in which the world and its problems were divided into nation-states. “The rule book of international politics has been torn up,” he argued in a speech last year. What’s needed instead are multilateral institutions that act “in pursuit of global values: liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice.” The economics of globalization are mature, he concluded, but the politics are not.

In his 1999 speech, Blair maintained that the world sometimes has a duty to intervene in nations where global values are under threat. He argued forcefully for putting ground troops in Kosovo and highlighted the menace posed by Saddam Hussein.

He saw the terrorists of Sept. 11 as extremists who sought to divide humanity between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-harb — the House of Islam and the House of War. “This is not a clash between civilizations,” he said last year in the greatest speech of his premiership. “It is a clash about civilization. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace and see opportunity in the modern world and those who reject its existence.” He concluded that Britain had to combat those who would divide the human community, even without the support of the multilateral institutions that he cherished.

The crucial issue now is: Is this human community real? Is Iraq merely an intervention that was botched? Or are interventions inherently doomed because people in other cultures don’t want what we want, and will never see the world as we do?

Over the past three years, people on the left and right have moved away from Blair and toward Huntington. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people who think it’s insane to try to export our values into alien cultures. Instead of emphasizing our common community, people are more likely to emphasize the distances and conflicts between cultures. Whether the subject is immigration, trade or foreign affairs, there is a greater desire to build separation fences because differences in values seem deeply rooted and impossible to erase.

If Huntington turns out to be right, then Blair will be seen as one of the most naïve communitarians of all time. But I wouldn’t count him out just yet. It could be that over the long term, and despite the disaster in Iraq that he co-authored, his vision of a human community will be vindicated. Or it could be that Blair’s vision of that community was right — except in the Middle East, the region where he most aggressively sought to apply it."

I suppose getting your readers riled up, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with you, is an art in an of itself... so maybe David Brooks keeps doing this to me by design. But descrediting Blair's vision of "The Human Community" with the outcome of the Iraq war is an astounding piece of revisionism. Brooks says that Blair's vision of the human community may be vindicated "despite the disaster in Iraq that he co-authored." To call Blair the co-author of Iraq is a huge stretch. He was presented with a choice: back the US in its war, or stand apart from or against it. It is obvious to understand the geopolitical currents that pushed Blair to decide to stand with the UK's closest cultural and economic ally.

The real authors of this war (the Neo Cons Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, et al) have long rejected any idea along the lines of a "human community" as articulated by Blair and Clinton and outlined at a high level by Brooks. They aggressively undermine international institutions at every turn, and they fall back upon pure power calculations as the guide for their decisions. To say that the failure in Iraq offers proof that "there [will always be] a greater desire to build separation fences because differences in values [are] deeply rooted and impossible to erase" is, as I've said in prior posts, a projection of Brooks' own insecurities on a broader reality.

The Iraq adventure was hardly an exercise in international community and benevolence -- it was a pre-emptive war conducted by the US over almost unanimous global resistance and antipathy. The resistence of the Iraqis to this invasion is hardly evidence that "the human community" and international institutions will not be accepted... it is evidence that the use of unilateral military force from one state against another will generate powerful counter-currents of nationalism, and that societies without strong social foundations can easily dissolve into anarchy, violence, and civil war if an oppressing force (such as Saddam) is suddenly removed.

I'm sure Brooks' thoughts parallel some of the more private ruminations of those who acted as cheerleaders for this war in 2002-2003. It is very easy for dashed idealism to turn into abject cynicism about the human condition, and it appears that's what's happening to Brooks. But for those of us who opposed the war from the start the tragedy of Iraq offers no such crisis of confidence. I would argue that our only path out of this morass, long as it may be, is to try to rebuild the global community, even though it has been incalculably damaged by the actions of this administration.

I would appreciate Brooks not invalidating every worldview because his turned out to be so flawed.