American policymakers were free not only to pursue their direct national interests, but also to pursue grand visions of remaking the world in the U.S.’s own image
“The objective of U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades has been to gradually transform as much of the world as possible through the promotion of electoral democracy, the rule of law, free markets, and by bringing other countries into institutions and alliances that are U.S.-led,” Walt told The Intercept. “This effort has been nearly a total failure. It hasn’t failed entirely, but in terms of stated objectives, democracy is in retreat around the world and is looking increasingly dysfunctional even in the United States itself.”
Mearsheimer undertakes a more radical critique of the liberal foreign policy paradigm as a whole. While he accepts that liberal democracy is the best system to govern the U.S., Mearsheimer disputes the contention that American values are universal. Whereas, for example, Americans tend to prize individual rights above all, others may well have different ideas about what constitutes the highest good worth defending. These may include notions of communal well-being and social stability, alternative ideals that often run in contrast to the American focus on individual liberty.
Mearsheimer also argues that the belief in American exceptionalism, however well-intentioned, can easily lead to aggression. As a power that believes its values are universal, the U.S. seems to be unable to view illiberal states as completely legitimate, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pursue good-faith diplomacy with them. Instead of working out a sustainable balance of power, the U.S. thus finds itself reflexively seeking to undermine the governments of illiberal countries like Iran and Russia, whose values it finds distasteful, even when the strategic benefit of doing so is unclear. This “liberal intolerance” of political difference has helped fuel bloody proxy conflicts that may have been avoided had the U.S. been more willing, at least on principle, to accept the sovereignty of its rivals.
The liberal impulse to define conflicts as moral crusades, rather than as clashes over interests or national security, also feeds an ugly annihilationist tendency in policymaking. A major example of this is the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Rather than define victory in these reasonable terms, the war against the Taliban was instead characterized as a moral crusade on behalf of human rights, feminism, and an array of other causes about which there can be no negotiation. Rejecting any compromise with an enemy it had defined as evil, the U.S. helped its local allies pursue a campaign of total annihilation against the Taliban and its supporters. Years later, Afghanistan is no closer to being a liberal democracy and the war is still raging there, at horrific human cost. The U.S., for its part, has given up on even defeating the Taliban and is instead simply trying to negotiate a face-saving exit.
It’s not clear, however, whether liberal values are as contingent as Mearsheimer makes them out to be. During the Arab Spring, considerable numbers of people showed themselves willing to risk their lives to achieve basic freedoms of individual expression and conscience, in scenes which at the time resonated strongly with the American public. While the U.S. ultimately sided with the forces of authoritarian “stability” in Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria, the popular movements that arose in those countries showed strong support for at least some of the liberal values that Americans cherish.
Both Walt and Mearsheimer are viewed as deans of the realist school, to varying degrees. Pursuing such a realist foreign policy would likely mean an end to reflexive U.S. support of movements aimed at undermining dictatorial governments, though Walt’s book does leave the door open to strictly humanitarian interventions in certain cases.
国際社会の力の均衡を見定めつつ、自国の国益を最大化していけばいいのか、個人の自由、民主主義、自由市場を尊重し、アメリカの同盟国=子分になってくれるような国際社会をつくればいいのか、というのが常にアメリカが直面する選択肢である。
冷戦後、後者を選択したがすべてほぼ失敗、これからは、 大量の民族虐殺の場合を除いて、他国には介入せず、国際社会の力の均衡を見定めつつ、アメリカを脅かす国の出現を阻止しながら、自国の国益を最大化していけばいい、という観点にたつのがリアリストたちである。
他方、後者を選択したようにみえて、地域の秩序の安定のために、リベラル価値を捨てて、ちょくちょく独裁者を容認しているやないけ、という観点もある。
実際には前者と後者が複雑に混ざったというか、あるいは、両者の間を動揺しているような政策が取られている、といった感じなのかも知れない。
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