Continuing thoughts on my post from yesterday about engaging adversaries. The liberal blogosphere has of course become enraged at Chait’s suggestion. In some sense, I’d almost say that the visceral backlash (the deliberate misreading of his point, the yelling and screaming in comment threads about how Chait is an idiot, the preface for virtually every post that the author can’t understand why people are taking this seriously or the declaration that it’s “nonsense“) kind of proves the point.
The primary reaction seems to be that “well, duh, foreign policy is different because people use guns and try to kill each other.” Which is true to a point, but is also facile. Sure, there are stark differences in some sense between domestic political debates and international conflict. Obviously. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be some fundamental unity, too.
The people going after Chait seem totally convinced by the idea that the only relevant question an actor needs to ask about political interaction is how to best manipulate other agents. It’s all tactics: if the violence has a chance of escalating into material conflict, you don’t employ aggressive techniques. In that context it’s worth remembering Focuault’s point that politics is, after all, “a continuation of war by other means.” Focusing exclusively on the possibility of escalatory violence obscures the more hidden (but no less real) violence embedded in political machinery.
For this point, it’s worth paying particular attention to Dylan Matthews’ response:
Positions on negotiation aren’t first-principles convictions rooted in political philosophy, they’re strategic arguments rooted in empirical observation. I don’t support negotiating with Iran out of a belief in the inherent goodness of man; I support negotiating with Iran because the US has pursued the opposing strategy for the past 30 years, with fairly disastrous results. Similarly, I don’t think liberals should avoid negotiating with, say, anti-abortion activists because I believe humans are nefarious creatures that can’t be trusted, but because the right-to-life movement has demonstrated that piecemeal concessions like partial-birth bans and parental notification laws won’t stop them from agitating for more far-reaching restrictions.
But that’s precisely what Chait is criticizing: the notion that choices about interactions with the outside world are wholly pragmatic, containing no general principles of purpose.
At least for me, there’s something intrinsically valuable about the general principle of openness to the world outside. Obviously, pragmatic considerations can influence the actual choices and political techniques, but all else being equal, I think it’s important to operate on principle that the world is characterized by the possibility for positive-sum negotiations rather than zero-sum power politics. In fact, I think it’s a measure of principles that you remain committed to them in difficult situations, not just when it’s convenient to do so (echoing, of course, something most of the folks in question loved from Obama’s inaugural speech).
I made this argument about Obama, discussing his insistence on not just the content of bipartisanship but its form as well. It suggests a commitment to the process of engagement as a guiding principle, not purely a technique designed to pry the maximum leverage out of those with whom you disagree. I also think it is profoundly (and inextricably) a progressive attitude toward the world:
It’s all about openness to new ideas, to new possibilities. It is the almost literal embodiment of “change” insofar as it treats all things as susceptible to improvement. And that’s where the (faint, but perhaps real) kernel of true transformation may lie. Because if it works (and that’s certainly a big if) it has the potential to be a Trojan Horse for a huge progressive change to politics. But it won’t be a change that happens because of an election, or even in a few elections. It will just be a change in how we think and talk about politics.
Chait’s point was never that liberals who argue for engagement with Iran are morally obligated to also want to compromise on abortion. Rather, it was a pithy comment to highlight that many progressive folks are operating in the purely tactical world on these questions.
Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that per se – which I think Chait made pretty clear by saying that it’s not incompatible to believe these things. But it is worth noting that there is a clear difference between someone who supports operating from a general principle of valuing openness and engagement and someone who supports those things only where it’s politically advantageous.
Neither person is “right” or “wrong” but in order to understand what is going on, you have to be able to recognize the different frameworks.
That’s what makes all the reactions so puzzling – they all speak with the voice of “Chait is an idiot – the situations are different.” When Chait’s point was that it may be significant to note that some folks treat engagement as intrinsically valuable while others treat it as purely tactical. In that context, responding with indignation that you think it’s purely tactical doesn’t seem all that revelatory.