"Indeed, important elements within our leadership remain committed to the fantasy of popular upheaval leading to more democracy in the Middle East. This is the theme of an article in the current New York Review of Books (which unfortunately is available to subscribers only) by our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, who wants us to do more to show that we are on the side of oppressed peoples and against their governments. She specifically calls on our diplomats not to spend so much time dealing with their host governments--always their primary function--but instead to engage with the people. "This should include building relationships not only with well-known civil society organizations," she writes, "but also with groups like teachers’ associations, workers’ unions, and leaders in the business community—and not only with the vocal majorities, but with the minorities who are harder to find and hear. This kind of engagement demands a greater investment in our diplomatic efforts at a time when many governments—including the United States—are facing significant pressure to scale back the resources they dedicate to investments overseas, and to cloister diplomats in fortress-like embassies in the parts of the world where such local connections are actually needed most. So leaders must make the case to the public not only for why we cannot isolate ourselves from these problems, but also why we must widen the scope of our diplomatic engagement as a national security imperative." With large portions of the world sliding towards anarchy and suspicion of American motives higher than ever, this is a recipe for disaster, not least among the people whom Power wants to help.
"Power, essentially, is clinging to the Hegelian vision that has seduced the US foreign policy elite since the fall of Communism, the idea that western values are now destined to triumph everywhere and that we can easily hasten the process." DK
This passage suggests, for comparison, going back in time to a period even before Hegel, who also can be seen as an Enlightenment figure, a time when the early Enlightenment was having an effect on the Old European Order, and resulting in challenging established authority everywhere, really, in the West. Despots themselves were also trying to reform this old order, and challenging the liberties of the aristocracy and the church.
Very few people seem to have dealt with and surveyed the turmoil of this period as a civilization wide phenomenon.
Back then, there were various shades of what we shall call reform, fitfully under way or attempted. These initiatives were met by reaction, which in most cases was successful in preserving the status quo, at least for the time being, in the late 18th Century.
The radical end of this reform continuum was that begun by the American colonists, and was one of the few successful rebellions against the established order. The French Sans Culotte Revolution, after the initial shall we say liberal French Revolution, was the other.
At the other end of the reform continuum, what one might call the conservative one, King George was himself trying to institute reforms in Great Britain and the colonies.
The American colonists were not content to throw off British rule, but insisted that no government there, or anywhere, was valid unless contracted, at least initially, by all the people, all.
(This would of course have lead to an infinite, or at least practical, regress, were one to try to get all English speaking people to agree, simultaneously, on what the American colonists were asserting, say, as an empire wide measure; but no matter.)
The Philadelphia Convention, in the event, even acting against its own colonial instructions to delegates, adopted that principle, requiring assent of all the people.
The eventual American Constitution essentially demands the same rights, on the same principles of universal agreement, for all people, everywhere.
It is in this sense that Power's exhortations, cited above, although Professor Kaiser and I both might object to them strenuously on practical, moral, military, economic, diplomatic, or ideological grounds, are in the absolute mainstream of what was originally meant, and continues to be meant, by Americanism.
The radical end of this reform continuum was that begun by the American colonists, and was one of the few successful rebellions against the established order. The French Sans Culotte Revolution, after the initial shall we say liberal French Revolution, was the other.
At the other end of the reform continuum, what one might call the conservative one, King George was himself trying to institute reforms in Great Britain and the colonies.
The American colonists were not content to throw off British rule, but insisted that no government there, or anywhere, was valid unless contracted, at least initially, by all the people, all.
(This would of course have lead to an infinite, or at least practical, regress, were one to try to get all English speaking people to agree, simultaneously, on what the American colonists were asserting, say, as an empire wide measure; but no matter.)
The Philadelphia Convention, in the event, even acting against its own colonial instructions to delegates, adopted that principle, requiring assent of all the people.
The eventual American Constitution essentially demands the same rights, on the same principles of universal agreement, for all people, everywhere.
It is in this sense that Power's exhortations, cited above, although Professor Kaiser and I both might object to them strenuously on practical, moral, military, economic, diplomatic, or ideological grounds, are in the absolute mainstream of what was originally meant, and continues to be meant, by Americanism.
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