Book Reviews: Fareed Zakaria and David Horowitz Part 2/2

October 25, 2008

Both these books present themselves as requiems for a lost world. Zakaria laments the loss of willingness to cooperate (such as we had during the FDR and Truman administrations) that allegedly ensued with George Bush fils, and Horowitz laments the loss of willingness to pull as a team that allegedly ensued with “A House Divided,” back in 1972 with the candidacy of another George, namely Senator McGovern.

Now, Zakaria seems clearly to be an advocate of a putative moral equivalence between America and “the rest” (China, India, Brazil, and Russia, most prominently). This is one of the main pillars of his argument that America, to survive the “rise of the rest,” must relinquish some of its power to a decentralization process in internatonal relations and in the correlative institutions thereof.

If America does not do this, Zakaria warns, it will be left behind by the coming-to-maturity of more powerful economies. America will have missed its chance to remain important on the global stage. America will have missed its chance to play the part of the “good broker,” the “global broker” between inevitably feuding nations competing for regional hegemony.

But the moral equivalence theory implied by  Zakaria is only a theory, a preference. America is not objectively obligated to give up power (which of course no country would ever do). America is not required to be King Lear and hope for the best. America’s best chance at remaining relevant, in my estimation, is to maintain a strong military, and to take on the challenge of rogue regimes and their allied non-state actors. The U.N. has shown an unwillingness and incapacity for this.

Without America fulfilling this role, the world will look somewhat as it did after four years of the Carter Administration: hopelessly given over to the machinations of the Soviet Union, only this time it will be totalitarianism in the form of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizbollah, inter alia, deciding how things are to be. America cannot remain relevant or survive the rise of the rest without a hyperpower military, and this is precisely because the economic juggernauts are indeed coming, as Zakaria shows so clearly. Horowitz, fortunately, doesn’t ask America to give up any power, but only to support a dynamic, non-passive foreign policy that rises to the level of relevance concerning present exigencies.

Zakaria believes strongly in coalition-building. He agrees Saddam had to be deposed, but Zakaria would have preferred a coaltion-based effort for the job, an international force. But Zakaria fails to mention that, in the first Gulf War, a true masterpiece of coalition-building, the building took five months. As Jeane Kirkpatrick has pointed out, that gave Saddam precisely five months more to further devastate Kuwait. This is an example of how superannuated theory can be left behind by the reality of the rough world. 

There is a downside to coalition-based efforts, and this downside includes the following: confused command structure; conflicting loyalties; insufficient troop strength; rules of engagement overly restrictive; and incessant negotiations that provide time and space for the enemy to become stronger. A foreign policy such as Fareed Zakaria posits does not succeed in sparking one’s confidence.

Moreover, Zakaria makes the distressing claim that “the crucial enabling factor for the Bush policies was 9/11.” He implies that the Bush foreign policy in general, and particularly in Iraq, was a priori, and only needed the empirical event of 9/11 to be freed to enter the world. Wow—-that’s almost the sort of thing we used to say about the Soviet Union in rolling into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan. (Zakaria is somewhat sympathetic to Putin, but not to Bush.) I find Zakaria’s assertion indefensible. Bush went before the U.N., prewar, to ask the U.N. to support the enforcement of its own resolutions. But alas, predictably, the French, within the Perm Five, refused to agree to use force, for which they were rightly scolded by Tony Blair: Resolution 1441 mandates the use of force.

Horowitz is hard power, Zakaria is soft power. Horowitz is the American century redux, Zakaria is decentralization. Zakaria is somewhat vague, larger-than-life, and possesses a sweeping scope, whereas Horowitz is devastatingly clear, empirically verifiable, and detailed. Zakaria little mentions the disasters of American foreign policy of the past, or makes the connection between them and passivity. Zakaria posits that the closing of the economic gap indicates that a change is called for from the Euro-American tradition, like overcoming “the customs of an old segregated country club.” But Horowitz counters by showing relentlessly what happens when America acquiesces to a decentralized order in the international system: American servicemen dragged dead from the back of a truck through the streets of Mogadishu.

T.D.