Tuesday
Jul312007
John Gray on liberal interventionism
Issandr El Amrani
The death of this crackpot creed is nothing to mourn:
The liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war was never much more than a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with crackpot geopolitics. It was an absurd and repugnant mixture, and one whose passing there is no reason to regret. What the world needs from western governments is not another nonsensical crusade. It is a dose of realism and a little humility.Amen.
Reader Comments (4)
Dead? How can you say that? With Sarkozy/Kouchner in France, Brown in the UK, and very likely Clinton/Obama in the USA after 2008, liberal interventionalism may just be entering its glory days.
Good points - you may be right, but I think it's going to be very hard to pass through the UN at this stage or make it not look like old fashioned imperialism, even if the discourse of liberal interventionism remains.
A well-intentioned and worthy rhetorical effort, but Abu Muqawama is right, the liberal interventionist project has just begun.
Sudan anyone?
Since the intervention in Sudan hasn't come despite the massive ethnic cleansing campaign taking place there over the last few years, I don't think it will happen either under the current US administration or the next one. The solutions being brandied about now are pretty pragmatic one, based mostly on diplomatic initiatives and various degrees of pressure that fall way short of real, Iraq-style interventionism.
In a sense Sudan may have been worth an intervention of some sort, at least barring the Janjaweed/Sudanese government access to Darfur as was done with Kurdistan and Saddam by the Clinton administration in 1995-96. But we're not even seeing that. Regime change like in Iraq or Serbia, even less so.
Liberal interventionists may be in power (I would not consider Brown one, and am not sure about Sarkozy despite all his bluster, even if Kouchner is sold) but they are being forced to be pragmatic.