Are the 1990s’ polemics between realists and liberal interventionists about to be recycled as parties vie for the ear of (and jobs within) the Obama administration? Last week, Stanford’s Michael McFaul, an Obama advisor on Russia, made the rather modest suggestion that “the next administration should seek to achieve small, concrete outcomes that advance political freedoms in very tangible ways and do so, without talking about doing so.”
The remark prompted the Nixon Center’s Jacob Heilbrunn to warn of a “new spasm of liberal interventionism” and to suggest that the new Secretary of State’s advocacy of a “smart power” approach to foreign policy “might seem to be a smokescreen for expanding American democracy abroad, wherever and whenever possible.”
Isn’t this a little hyperbolic, even by Washington standards? Heilbrunn believes these liberal interventionists “place much credence in expanding democratic norms, by force if necessary.” It would be interesting to see if he can produce a credible quotation from any of the figures he identifies – Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Michael McFaul, Samantha Power – or any other ‘liberal hawk’, that advocates such a position.
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