"A crusader impulse is deeply wired into liberal democracies, especially their elites," writes Mearsheimer.
The result is that America has waged seven wars since the Cold War ended and has been at war continuously since the month after 9/11. As Mearsheimer writes, "Once unleashed on the world stage, a liberal unipole soon becomes addicted to war." It also becomes addicted to the concept of regime change because that often is perceived as the only way to save peoples from widespread rights violations.
Can America pull its foreign policy away from liberalism and reclaim a realism-based approach? An end to today's unipolar world would quickly upend liberal hegemony.
Mearsheimer does believe Donald Trump's 2016 election demonstrated that liberal hegemony is "Vulnerable." After all, the New York billionaire challenged almost every aspect of liberal interventionism, particularly the goal of spreading democracy around the world.
Many of the same liberal impulses that contributed to the hegemonic foreign policy that Mearsheimer decries have also undermined many of the foundations of America.
"[I]t is important to note," he writes, "That liberal hegemony is largely an elite-driven policy." In another passage he notes that America's foreign policy elites tend to be "Cosmopolitan," which isn't to say, he adds, that most of them are like Samuel Huntington's caricature of those Davos people "Who have little need for national loyalty" and see "National boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing." But, adds Mearsheimer, "Some are not far off."
Yes, it's the progressive liberal elites who are driving America's push for humanitarian hegemony, and Mearsheimer's book calls them out brilliantly.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-perils-of-our-liberal-hegemony/
The result is that America has waged seven wars since the Cold War ended and has been at war continuously since the month after 9/11. As Mearsheimer writes, "Once unleashed on the world stage, a liberal unipole soon becomes addicted to war." It also becomes addicted to the concept of regime change because that often is perceived as the only way to save peoples from widespread rights violations.
Can America pull its foreign policy away from liberalism and reclaim a realism-based approach? An end to today's unipolar world would quickly upend liberal hegemony.
Mearsheimer does believe Donald Trump's 2016 election demonstrated that liberal hegemony is "Vulnerable." After all, the New York billionaire challenged almost every aspect of liberal interventionism, particularly the goal of spreading democracy around the world.
Many of the same liberal impulses that contributed to the hegemonic foreign policy that Mearsheimer decries have also undermined many of the foundations of America.
"[I]t is important to note," he writes, "That liberal hegemony is largely an elite-driven policy." In another passage he notes that America's foreign policy elites tend to be "Cosmopolitan," which isn't to say, he adds, that most of them are like Samuel Huntington's caricature of those Davos people "Who have little need for national loyalty" and see "National boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing." But, adds Mearsheimer, "Some are not far off."
Yes, it's the progressive liberal elites who are driving America's push for humanitarian hegemony, and Mearsheimer's book calls them out brilliantly.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-perils-of-our-liberal-hegemony/
No comments:
Post a Comment