 An interview with J. Peter Scoblic on U.S. vs. Them and the Sources of Conservatism.
Valentina Pasquali – Washington Prism J. Peter Scoblic is the executive editor of The New Republic and the former editor of Arms Control Today. While a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, Scoblic wrote U.S. vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism has Undermined America’s Security. Scoblic traces back to the 1950s and to the Cold War the sources of the conservative worldview embraced today by President George W. Bush. A philosophy rooted in a Manichean understanding of the world based on the opposition of good vs. evil and us vs. them that does not allow for any compromised solution, conservatism explains the driving forces behind Bush’s foreign policy and the many controversial decisions that have been made in the last seven years, from the war in Iraq to the approach towards Iran, North Korea and non-proliferation. In this interview with Washington Prism, J. Peter Scoblic talks about his book, conservatism and America’s future. Washington Prism: A lot has been said and written about George W. Bush’s foreign policy, the war in Iraq and his two-term presidency. What inspired you to research and write U.S. vs. Them? What gaps did you set out to fill? J. Peter Scoblic: I wrote U.S. vs. Them because I felt there had not been an adequate explanation of the phenomenon that we have seen in the last seven years. It seemed to me that there had not been any comprehensive analysis of the Bush administration that went beyond its policies in Iraq but that also tried to account for how we dealt with North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and India, the way we did. It was confusion on my part on the sources of the Bush administration’s nuclear policy in particular, but also of the choices made in other realms. What had been written appeared more descriptive than explanatory. We can accuse the administration of being unilateralist, but my question was: “Why were they being unilateralist?” Conventional wisdom is that neo-conservatism is the ideology behind the administration. I believe that there is truth to it, but I was convinced that there had to be a deeper explanation going further back into the history of this country. This is why I decided to start digging into the 1950s, which is when the modern American conservative movement was created. Looking back to the writings of the time, and how they affected U.S. nuclear policy and approach to negotiations during the Cold War, I saw a remarkable set of similarities between then and now and I found it very enlightening. WP: In your book you talk about the conservative movement as centered on a worldview characterized by concepts such as good vs. evil. You also describe it as having a moralist foundation, but not necessarily moral or religious. Do you see any specific role of religion in conservative foreign policy making? J.P.S.: When foreign policy makers divide the world into good and evil, they choose to use terms that normally refer to moral and immoral actions. However in the course of U.S. foreign policy, and as it was practiced by conservatives, good and evil often simply stood for the United States and our enemies. It did not always mean that the U.S. was conscious of acting in a moral way, or that for example it would be defending human rights above all other things. We saw ourselves as a righteous force facing an enemy that was dedicated to our destruction, or that of our friends and allies. In general, not many countries wage a moral foreign policy in the sense that they seek to maximize global good. They tend to be out for their own self-interest. Religion comes into the picture in an interesting way. I think it can make it easier to frame the foreign policy discourse in terms of good vs. evil. A very religious president like George Bush may have an easier time thinking of the world as divided into good vs. evil because his own religious belief system sees it in a similar way. For someone like him, it may be a more natural tendency to see things in black and white and to have such an approach to foreign policy as well. At the same time, there are very religious people who don’t see the world in terms of good vs. evil. So there may be a correlation but there’s certainly not a completely clear causal connection. WP: In U.S. vs. Them you refer to the Great Depression of 1929 and explain that the economic crisis of those years became a catalyst for a switch in American domestic politics. It created a needed opening for the policies of the New Deal to emerge and allowed the Democrats to regain the predominant political position. What impact, if any, do you think the current economic crisis could have on the two parties and their alignment? J.P.S.: I don’t think we are looking at any major realignment such as that of the 20s and 30s. I think we are probably going to see increasing regulation. The major question that was being dealt with back then was, “Should the government really be involved in the economy?” And I think we have the answer, the answer is “Yes, the government should be involved to some extent.” Then we argue about the degree, but we are not arguing about the base question. Today we’re having a new version of that argument in terms of the degree of oversight of these exotic financial instruments and institutions that haven’t yet necessarily fallen under the government purview. WP: There is a second historical parallel that could be drawn from the book. In the 1940s, as you write, “without a coherent creed or a patron, conservatives were defined principally by their discontent.” Is there any similarity with the Democrats since 2000? Finally, it was the opposition to communism that worked as a unifying force bringing the conservatives together in one political movement. What do you think could serve a similar function for the Democratic Party of today’s divisive primaries? J.P.S.: I think the Democrats have coalesced quite a bit in the last four, eight years, even though there’s a bitter primary going on right now. I think they’re more unified than the Republicans, who have seen a fragmentation of the conservative movement that has animated the party for the last 25-30 years, or since the beginning of the Reagan era. During the Bush presidency, the War on Terror substituted communism in bringing the party together and there is a possibility that John McCain will continue to hold that coalition together. The one conservative credential that he undoubtedly has is support for the Iraq War. I think he sees the world in terms of good vs. evil as well. But with the many other apostasies that he has demonstrated with regard to other tenets of conservatism, I think the Republican Party faces a far greater challenge than the Democrats today. WP: It can be argued, as you do in your book, that the Cold War ended partially thanks to the policies of containment and deterrence as they were pursued by the U.S., These policies contributed to bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union and were for the most part harshly opposed by American conservatives. Nevertheless, during his presidency, George W. Bush decided to ignore that lesson and when it came to the challenges of terrorism, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, he chose instead to cling to the much more aggressive approach that had been advocated by conservatives during the Cold War and that, during Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, brought the world on the brink of a nuclear war. What are the reasons behind such choices and how do conservatives view the end of the Cold War? J.P.S.: I think the reason is that conservatives interpret the causes of success in the Cold War differently from what you just lay out. They think that containment and deterrence were not working and what worked instead was Ronald Reagan’s vision of rollback and of an aggressive nuclear posture. The extent to which Reagan really pursued rollback is arguable. If you look back historically, there were very few instances in which the Reagan administration actually pursued rollback. And moreover, while Reagan chose an aggressive nuclear policy during the first three years in office, the administration clearly switched course in the last five. Nevertheless, when the Cold War ended, conservatives that said “We don’t want to co-exist with communists” realized the U.S. had indeed defeated communism, and came to believe that therefore what they had argued for must have worked. Retrospectively they came to the conclusion that it was right to see the Cold War in terms of good vs. evil, to support a nuclear war fighting strategy, to pursue rollback instead of containment. The eventual goal of containment, if you go back to what George Kennan among others wrote, was that the Soviet Union was going to collapse under its own weight if we prevented it from expanding. And we did that, and if you look at the data the Soviet Union did collapse under its own weight. It was an economically unviable state and it became unviable long before the Reagan administration came into office. But when we won the Cold War, the conservatives tried to establish that they had won the Cold War and not containment. WP: You describe the neo-conservative view of peace as equal to a flat-out American victory. How much do you think this belief resonates with the American public at large? What should foreign nations make of this? J.P.S.: I would want to look at public opinion polls to be certain of this, but my memory of the polling that I’ve seen is that if you ask Americans if they want to be more involved in the UN they say yes. Americans also think that we spend more on foreign aid than we do, and they support a negotiated settlement with Iran versus war with Iran. I think that the view of absolute American dominance is not one that is shared by the public at large. But it does depend on how you ask the question. Would it be nice if we could take care of our own security and not worry about what anybody else thought? It would be nice not to have to depend on anybody else. But Americans recognize that we’re a part of the world and we cannot completely divorce ourselves from it. They know that our security is in a sense intertwined with that of others and with the way others perceive their own security. I don’t think you should look at Americans and see a nation of imperialists. I think it is a minority view It’s been advanced by a group of hard-line policy-makers who received much of their support from the American public because the American public was very frightened in the wake of 9/11 and, frankly, it was not given correct information on the contours of the post-9/11 world and where the dangers lay.
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