RECKLESS IDEALISM
by Daniel Larison

American Conservative Magazine
8/reckless-idealism/
June 18 2009

It was only a matter of time before Michael Gerson would begin
weeping green tears and telling us how immoral Obama’s restrained
response was. As one might expect, we are supposed to believe that
it is a problem that Obama’s foreign policy is similar to that of
the elder Bush, who was, for all of his many flaws and mistakes,
probably one of the most successful foreign policy Presidents of
the last half-century. We cannot really blame Gerson for persisting
in his obsessions, since he has to find some way to make the record
of the President he served and enabled for years look like something
other than the catastrophic failure that it was. In this case, mocking
Bush’s more accomplished father is what he feels compelled to do.

It has become conventional to deride the elder Bush’s 1991 speech in
Kiev warning against Ukrainian independence, but looking back over
the last twenty years, especially in the Balkans and the Caucasus,
there is something to be said for having warned against "suicidal
nationalism." Given the ethnic heterogeneity in Ukraine and the
fiercely anti-Russian nature of Ukrainian nationalism, the region has
been fortunate that the potential for continued political fracturing
that the principle of self-determination possesses has not been
realized there. The pity is that Bush did not do more to warn the
peoples of Yugoslavia against the same thing a year earlier.

Self-determination is one of those things that sounds lovely in
principle, but which has caused a great deal of human suffering
around the world. It is, of course, the corrupt idol of Wilsonian
idealism, before which Gerson prostrates himself daily. It was this
principle that shattered the Austrian empire and broke it up into
easily digestible bits, creating a power vacuum in central Europe
that major powers were only too happy to fill soon thereafter,
and it was this principle that plunged the Balkans into a decade
of hell. Not that it gets much attention, but it was also the
principle that sparked the Eritrean-Ethiopian war that has cost
both countries thousands upon thousands of lives and wrecked their
political cultures ever since. When great multinational states break
up, it has rarely been a peaceful process. If Bush erred in 1991,
which is very debatable, he wisely erred on the side of caution to
prevent conflagrations from consuming the ex-Soviet republics. At
the time Bush was speaking, Azeris and Armenians were still fighting
over Karabakh, and Yugoslavia was beginning to come apart. It would
have been dangerous and, of course, harmful to relations with Moscow
to cheer on separatist movements.

Having said all that, the relevant comparison with Iran from the
administration of the first Bush is not the speech in Kiev, but Bush’s
utterly irresponsible call for Iraqi Shi’ites to rise up against
Hussein when he had no intention of aiding them. Not getting more
deeply involved in Iraq was wise, but urging people to risk their lives
when you have no intention of providing anything but empty rhetorical
support is a gross error. Let’s be clear: Gerson wants Obama to incite
the protesters and urge them to seek "freedom," which in practice
will mean provoking them to greater and greater confrontation with
the government and ensuring that the crackdown against them will be
even more bloody and cruel than it has been so far. Their blood will
flow so that Gerson’s bleeding heart can rest easy.