The Uses of American Power

...World War II indicated to me that the liberal model and the ideal of proletarian internationalism were equally antiquated, that they were theoretical Siamese twins of 19th century origin...

...the problem here comes down to a ruthlessly simple question: Should American power be employed in behalf of democratic ideals...

...It is this issue which underlies liberal criticism of the foreignaid program, though unfortunately perfectly legitimate and cogent critics often find themselves carrying spears in Otto Passman's version of Götterdammerung...

...We are simultaneously the heirs of 19th century liberalism and of the democratic internationalism of social democracy...

...Should we have lowered the boom on the Diem Administration...

...We are going to be confronted by a series of Vietnams, Panamas, Malaysia-Indonesias, Congos, Cypruses, and the like...

...But between the end of the First World War and the outbreak of the Second, the two traditions parted, leaving ideological schizophrenia in their wake: The British Labor party in the late '30s found itself simultaneously endorsing collective security against Hitler (in the liberal tradition) and opposing rearmament (in the name of proletarian internationalism...

...we "non-intervened" in favor of a wretched junta and against a democratic government...

...Should we support the hard British position against Indonesia's Sukarno...

...Thus, whether we like it or not, the fact is that since 1947 the cause of freedom has rested on American power, on "good" state power...

...If we accept this view, we would not simply relax in the luxury of a 1964 détente with Khrushchev (one obviously founded, on his part, on Soviet self-interest) but would take advantage of Soviet difficulties to mount a campaign of "competitive peaceful coexistence" throughout the world...

...In particular, we must assert man's supremacy over his instruments, i.e., his right to retain the power of choice...

...Some were greater evils, some lesser, but they were all capitalist...

...others seem to have assumed that the abolition of the state per se would lead to some millennium...

...Moreover, I am not sure that we want them to become independent power centers...

...The leaders of the Second International were first of all democrats...

...Without in any way depreciating the dedication of contemporary civil rights militants, I would suggest that having the national government in the struggle does provide some big battalions for the forces of righteousness...

...The Spanish Civil War supplied a laboratory for the case analysis of these three models of international relations...

...Indeed, Bernstein argued that the only source of violence in the transformation of a capitalist society to socialism would be found in the efforts of a moribund ruling class to eliminate the democratic institutions which were bringing its downfall...

...Liberals are no more sinful in this rudderless drifting than other Americans, but I submit that we have a special obligation to coherent intellectual leadership which precludes our endorsement of that "pragmatism" which is simply an excuse for not having a policy...

...Given the obsolescence of this criticism, I am surprised that no one has trotted out the antique epithet "social patriot...

...In September 1939 when Eamon de Valera announced Eire's neutrality to the parliament, an opposition member arose and inquired who the Irish were neutral against]) We cannot escape from a confrontation with reality by a fetishistic deference to the UN or the OAS— both of which could be useful forums for mediation, but they are not independent power centers...

...Our sense of reality has been strong enough to lead us to support such openly military proposals as NATO, but only with uneasy consciences and a hope that we could quickly get back to issues less close to the bone, e.g., technical assistance, the Marshall Plan, support for the UN, etc...

...In the postwar period, those anti-Stalinists who opposed state action were merely indulging in the luxury of signing their own death warrants—if they were unfortunate enough to be outside the reach of Western power...

...Liberalism thus anathematized all crusades...

...The Fascist states imitated this model in their own fashions...

...It was just damned hard to get admitted...

...I recall advocating a general strike, though the logic of this position escapes me...

...Here was a concept which, needless to say, was utterly absurd from the liberal viewpoint, and was a logical monstrosity from the vantage point of Socialist internationalism...

...What we deny is the existence of a double moral standard: Some years ago when I was lecturing in France, for example, I had the American authorities in acute distress because of my strictures on the subject of racial discrimination, and the French in an uproar because of my observations on torture in Algiers...

...It was clear in cold retrospect that from 1935 on, nothing short of antiNazi state action could have deterred German aggression, that the classical liberal "boys will be boys" approach to the barbarities of Nazism and the Socialist internationalist view that state action, i.e., war, would be as immoral and self-defeating as Nazism itself, were both in practical terms absurd...

...This is wandering a bit far afield, but it is vital to an understanding of our contemporary dilemmas to appreciate the sources of our ambivalence...

...Is there any logical reason why we should not utilize the same approach in the international arena...

...In concrete terms, should we consciously use pressure, at whatever level may be necessary, to encourage and maintain democratic regimes and to undermine the authority of the undemocratic...

...And the pathetic remnant of Socialist internationalism denounced all the states involved and called on the working class everywhere to save the Spanish Republic in some unspecified fashion...

...As Orwell noted, if one wants to be a martyr, he has to choose his enemies pretty carefully...

...For as long as I can remember, we have been arguing about the proper content of a "liberal" foreign policy or, to put it another way, to what extent American power should be employed in world politics to advance "good" objectives and frustrate "bad" ones...

...While we believe that the power of the state should be employed to achieve racial justice, economic abundance, adequate education, and decent facilities for the sick and aged, in the United States we somehow wince at the thought of utilizing the same state to improve the international environment...

...One can even become a civil rights martyr today, though the first time Bayard Rustin got sent down to the chain gang he vanished without a trace and we could hardly get a newspaper to handle the story...

...Some felt, with Eduard Bernstein and the British Fabians, that the immediate need was to achieve a Socialist state...

...But whatever their vision of the future, they converged in a revolutionary tactic of "intervention...

...However much we may trust the state in domestic affairs—and our program is built on that proposition—we somehow feel that American power in the international arena is corrupt, a manifestation of "imperialism" or "colonialism...

...The Fascists and the Communists intervened (paying no attention to the non-intervention agreement) to support their own agents...

...The other side of this coin was, of course, colonialism and imperialism, which were justified by distinguished liberals (and by Karl Marx, for his own reasons) because they brought "enlightenment" to the benighted, non-Western pagans...

...In point of fact, what this viewpoint involves is a set of evaluative principles which are applied across the board—to the United States (where we have been battling for justice, equality and decency to the best of our ability) as much as to any other society...

...Similarly, if the Korean invasion occurred today I am certain there would be no UN support for resisting aggression...

...The liberal's problem is in part historical...

...The Socialists thought of themselves as representatives of a class with no fatherland...

...And this is totally different from John Foster Dulles' Byzantine combination of appeals for "Liberation" and, when the Hungarians rose in defiance, assurances to Khrushchev that the United States would, of course, not intervene in the internal affairs of the Soviet bloc...

...it was probably the impact of Rosa Luxemburg on a 15-year-old...

...In domestic affairs, then, liberals want to see the national government exercise its power to expand freedom, nourish equality, eliminate unemployment, and succor the sick and aged...

...the only standards of behavior were formalized at the international level as non-aggression and non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states...

...At base it countered a nationto-nation with a people-to-people model which completely denied the presuppositions of liberalism—except as a phenomenon in the sociology of knowledge, i.e., as a necessary stage of historical development...

...Similarly, the appalling butchery of Soviet Communism and the expansionist drives of Stalinism would never be inhibited by "spontaneous" working-class action...

...American liberals and Socialists went through similar, and even more complex, convolutions trying to figure out how to help the Spanish Republic without providing "objective support" to militarism...

...Thus, when we oppose the suppression of opposition in any society it is not in the name of the "American Way of Life" or even of jus naturale, but rather because such action forecloses the very possibilities of further decisions— except by violence...

...The reason was simple: We did not have state power on our side...

...The liberals treated states as atoms motivated by self-interest in an international system where "order" was the prime virtue...

...The internal structure of a nation was irrelevant to its status in the international forum...

...In short, there has to be a pragmatic flexibility but one founded on a coherent policy of democratic internationalism...

...Q.E.D...

...These two value systems were at one time compatible...

...What should we plan to do in British Guiana when the British liquidate, as they certainly will within the year...

...The wonderful thing about childhood is that one can outgrow it, but all of us have regrets—at various levels of consciousness—that we have left that marvelous Manichean universe where black is black, white is white, and grey is outlawed...

...just as Marx praised the objective role of British imperialism in India, some Socialists supported imperialism as the impregnation of "feudal" or "primitive" societies with the fetus of capitalism, which would in turn give birth to socialism...

...Alas, one more variable has to be thrown into the equation: the character of "state" action...

...World War I destroyed the dream of internationalism and left fearful guilts— both contributed to the status of the USSR: One could expiate his guilt for chauvinism (or if he was not guilty, his often greater guilt because the masses had deserted him) by adopting the USSR as a step-fatherland...

...This, however, is a topic for another article...

...Until World War I and the formation of the Soviet Union, they had no favorite states...

...like the rain, the approval of liberals fell equally on the just and the unjust, provided they left their neighbors alone...

...While reserving the right to argue tactics on the prudential level, it seems to me that we must wholeheartedly endorse a strategy of democratic intervention and cast off once and for all the ideological encrustations of 19th century Liberalism and 19th century Socialism...

...And we labor under a burden of guilts: Because Theodore Roosevelt stole Panama from Colombia, we are supposed to stand by abashedly while a tin-horn military gangster butchers our comrades in Honduras...

...If one believes that freedom, justice, equality, are not subordinate to national boundaries, it seems to me to follow that we should consciously shape our policy in terms of revolutionary, democratic internationalism...

...I am convinced, therefore, that we are in for a long period of marginal turbulence in international relations...

...essentially, as Mill also noted, the proof of one's readiness for nationhood was the capacity to throw out the occupying power...

...A number of us put in three or more years of our lives fighting against this inane solipsism in its concrete form: that killing Jews and other deviants was an "old German custom" which "they think is right...

...International law" was elaborated as the moral etiquette of international relations...

...Similarly, enormous sanctity was accorded to treaties and other rituals of international "order": A nation which violated a treaty was far more despicable than one which murdered half its population...

...leaving the UN out of the discussion, it is quite conceivable to me that the United States might be censured by a solid majority of the OAS on a secret ballot because it has an inherently unstable democratic government...

...This need not be advertised in Amerika or shouted from the housetops in Washington...

...To the charge of moral authoritarianism from the ethical relativists, little reply need be made...

...Liberalism, in short, emphasized the integrity of the national unit and the maintenance of international order on a pluralistic basis...

...Freedom and justice were the goals, socialism the vehicle, and they were prepared to undermine and overthrow any regime which denied its population the right to choose its own course, i.e., any regime which suppressed freedom of choice...

...two years ago the Indians, who had recognized Peking and even agreed on Panch Shila, the five principles of coexistence, found the UN otherwise occupied when the Chinese came over the border...

...it could conceivably even take the form of expressions of sympathy to the Chinese Communists that they are having such troubles with their imperialist neighbor, the USSR...

...When Truman intervened in Korea, for example, we were rescued from our reflexes by the fiction of UN Forces: We are wholly committed to the UN...

...We live in a world which is beyond control in any simple sense, and we have to recognize not only that there may be no solutions to many problems (only outcomes), and that our capacity for action must be limited by recognition of risks...

...Socialist internationalism operated from radically different premises...

...And it might be added that we have opposed precisely such tendencies in the United States, e.g., the Smith Act, the McCarran Act, etc...

...Because we are instinctively anti-power while intellectually quite sophisticated, we usually emerge with a position that is sound, though for the wrong reasons...

...In other words, one can oppose the "liberation" of Eastern Europe, or Cuba, on prudential grounds (as I do), but retain the policy as the long-range objective with whatever tactics may be appropriate...

...Classical liberalism provided a policy of "non-intervention" in which decent people and totalitarians agreed under the aegis of the League of Nations not to intervene in the "internal affairs" of a sovereign state...

...Thus there entered into the lexicon of the Left a new concept, that of the "good state...

...thus certain great powers had the right to intervene in Turkey to protect Christian minorities...

...After all, if they had listened to us, they would have appreciated the exploitative, colonialist character of the Soviet regime...

...But once a nation was admitted to the Uberai club, the fiction of equality took over...

...Year in and year out we have faced these issues on an ad hoc basis, but we have never seized the nettle...

...The organization of the Comintern formalized the structure and symbolized the new theory: The working class now had a general headquarters, the "world revolution" a homeland...

...Our "nonintervention" in the Dominican Republic reflected the same absurd premise...

...In the liberal view, nothing is more absurd than the assumption that a dotted line on a map muffles moral principles...

...Marxist and non-Marxist internationalists were in substantial agreement that the 19th-century nationstate was a reactionary enterprise which stood in the way of genuine internationalism...

...We are not absolutists in the metaphysical sense, but we believe that one has to make an absolute, total commitment on behalf of the truth but dimly seen...

...As I observed at the outset, Uberai difficulties in these matters have arisen from the fact that we wander back and forth, as issues arise, between two antithetical polar positions...

...In extreme situations, should we be prepared to use military means to aid democratic governments threatened from without (e.g., Israel, India) or from within (e.g., the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Venezuela...

...Out of kindness to a great many people (myself included), I shall omit examples...

...a "good" state was one that played the game according to the rules and the liberal ban would fall equally on a democratic state attempting to subvert its totalitarian neighbors and a totalitarian state engaged in similar activity...

...The 19th century alternatives of intervention versus non-intervention are dead: To refuse to intervene is itself a form of intervention...

...We are always looking for good, 19th century liberal "cover," which in our time means the involvement of some international organization...

...Today in Latin America we piously support OAS or "multilateral" action, though we are all aware that the OAS is merely a morgue where policies are stacked until they can be given quiet burial—i.e., an institutionalized channel for inaction...

...We have in us a deep streak of moral isolationism: American power in the world arena is unclean and, worse, must be unclean...

...the liberals, clinging to their 19th century state system, and the Socialist internationalists, with their dreams of spontaneous popular resistance, were wrong...

...In this connection I might note that my wife and I both learned to sing "We Will Overcome" in 1939 (along with Jim Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and a number of others), but we were clobbered in our struggle for equal rights...

...In the same fashion that Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence could affirm the equality of all men with the unarticulated corollary that Negro slaves were not "men," John Stuart Mill could proclaim the virtues of "liberty" and exclude from its coverage "barbarians" or races in their "nonage" (e.g., the Indians...

...Happily, certain primitive nations were restrained by treaty from murdering the Christian part of their populations...

...When we hear the clarion call of the "young radicals," denouncing the U.S...

...This latter aspect of Marx's historicism often led to curious alignments...

...Louis convention condemned the entrance of the United States into World War I, it was asserting both the liberal imperative of national integrity and Socialist internationalism...

...The immediate objection to this view is to label it American chauvinism or liberal "imperialism...

...And we of the American liberal-Left, with our differing backgrounds, have never been willing to face up to this fact and to its consequences...

...Acceptance of this position does not involve a commitment to constant "liberation" in practical terms...

...They simply took for granted the proposition that socialism would triumph in any democratic society, and the establishment and maintenance of democratic rights would thus lead automatically to a popular mandate for socialism...

...In effect, we thus endorse the proposition that the Honduranians would prefer a dictatorship to a free government backed by the United States...

...When in April 1917, for example, the American Socialist party at its St...

...it never entered their minds to impose socialism...

...Why should we not urge that American power be employed to protect and strengthen democratic regimes and harass and undermine the undemocratic...

...and the USSR in equally strident terms for the menace of nuclear annihilation, we may suffer from acute guilt feelings and (forgetting our own experience) glorify the zeal of the young...

...Ironically, the Nazis and the Stalinists in the 1930s, and those like Churchill who demanded a commitment of national power against the totalitarians, were right in their assessment of the situation...

...My own reading, at least, suggests that in Britain and the United States Socialist internationalism was far more a secularization of Christian ideals of brotherhood than an exercise in dialectics...

...Every so often even I, hardened bureaucrat and Establishment man that I am advertised to be, long to proclaim the General Strike...

...It would, however, be a mistake to overemphasize the Marxisthistoricist component in Socialist internationalism, particularly in its Anglo-Saxon version...

...No red-blooded American can object to playing by ear, but perhaps one may timidly ask what is being played...

...The essence of the liberal tradition in this context was stated (on its death-bed) by Woodrow Wilson in his principle of national self-determination...

...And whether liberals like the prospect or not, American power is going to be involved directly or indirectly at every point...