Peter Beinart: The Other Wilsonianism
John McCain has made this much clear: The 2008 election will be about national security. Barack Obama will discuss the economy, where he has an edge. He will even discuss Iraq, where his position enjoys public support. But McCain will broaden the discussion to the larger question of how the two candidates see the world. That was how George W. Bush won reelection in 2004. According to exit polls, voters who identified “Iraq” as their primary issue opposed Bush en masse. But he made up for that by handily winning over voters who cited “terrorism.” Today, even as majorities oppose the war in Iraq, polls show that Republicans still maintain the lead on the broader issue of “national security.” McCain’s candidacy depends on that advantage.
To counter McCain, Obama must do what Kerry could not: define what a liberal foreign policy is. His answer cannot be a laundry list; it must be an overarching theory of how America should relate to the world. For close to a century, American liberals have had such a theory, even if at times it has been submerged by events. That theory has not been rendered moot by the passage of decades; to the contrary, it has never been more relevant. It is called collective security.
The phrase “collective security” will forever be linked to Woodrow Wilson, the leader who presided over America’s emergence as a great power. Wilson was a progressive, which meant, among other things, that he was an optimist about human cooperation. Against Social Darwinists who celebrated competition because it hardened the strong and culled the weak, Wilson insisted that selfishness was neither natural nor good. In a nation bitterly divided between rich and poor, urban and rural, immigrant and native born, he saw unregulated self-interest as leading not to progress, but to civil war, as America’s fractious tribes trampled one another in their drive for power.
When Europe collapsed into war in 1914, Wilson applied this view to the international scene. He blamed the carnage of the First World War on the balance of power system that for centuries had defined European statecraft. Echoing the Social Darwinists at home, balance of power advocates celebrated unregulated self-interest on a global scale. If nations focused narrowly on their own defense and security, they argued, banding together against whoever amassed too much power, they would create a rough equilibrium among rivals, almost like an evenly balanced scale. And with no one power, or group of powers, capable of overwhelming its rivals, the balance of power would keep the peace. For Wilson, however, the theory was decisively repudiated at the Marne. Even before America entered the fray, he began to imagine a new postwar order, one that replaced anarchy with rules, competition with cooperation. When the bloodshed finally ended, he hoped, the balance of power would give way to collective security.
Whereas in the past nations had banded together in competing alliances, Wilson envisioned them joining in a single global alliance: not against one another but against war itself. Every member would swear an oath against aggression, and if any nation violated the pledge, it would find itself in a war of one against all. The global alliance would be called The League to Enforce Peace or, later, the League of Nations. And through it, Wilson declared in May 1916, “Coercion shall be summoned not to the service of political ambition or selfish hostility but to the service of a common order, a common justice and a common peace.”...
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To counter McCain, Obama must do what Kerry could not: define what a liberal foreign policy is. His answer cannot be a laundry list; it must be an overarching theory of how America should relate to the world. For close to a century, American liberals have had such a theory, even if at times it has been submerged by events. That theory has not been rendered moot by the passage of decades; to the contrary, it has never been more relevant. It is called collective security.
The phrase “collective security” will forever be linked to Woodrow Wilson, the leader who presided over America’s emergence as a great power. Wilson was a progressive, which meant, among other things, that he was an optimist about human cooperation. Against Social Darwinists who celebrated competition because it hardened the strong and culled the weak, Wilson insisted that selfishness was neither natural nor good. In a nation bitterly divided between rich and poor, urban and rural, immigrant and native born, he saw unregulated self-interest as leading not to progress, but to civil war, as America’s fractious tribes trampled one another in their drive for power.
When Europe collapsed into war in 1914, Wilson applied this view to the international scene. He blamed the carnage of the First World War on the balance of power system that for centuries had defined European statecraft. Echoing the Social Darwinists at home, balance of power advocates celebrated unregulated self-interest on a global scale. If nations focused narrowly on their own defense and security, they argued, banding together against whoever amassed too much power, they would create a rough equilibrium among rivals, almost like an evenly balanced scale. And with no one power, or group of powers, capable of overwhelming its rivals, the balance of power would keep the peace. For Wilson, however, the theory was decisively repudiated at the Marne. Even before America entered the fray, he began to imagine a new postwar order, one that replaced anarchy with rules, competition with cooperation. When the bloodshed finally ended, he hoped, the balance of power would give way to collective security.
Whereas in the past nations had banded together in competing alliances, Wilson envisioned them joining in a single global alliance: not against one another but against war itself. Every member would swear an oath against aggression, and if any nation violated the pledge, it would find itself in a war of one against all. The global alliance would be called The League to Enforce Peace or, later, the League of Nations. And through it, Wilson declared in May 1916, “Coercion shall be summoned not to the service of political ambition or selfish hostility but to the service of a common order, a common justice and a common peace.”...