Matthew Yglesias’ undeserved moral and intellectual smugness-Updated

Matt Yglesias, one of the progressive lefts sharper knives, just can’t help himself in throwing every problem in the world at the Bush administrations feet, as if the world run right would be some vastly different place. The fact is, it wouldn’t be. More tellingly, Matt and many on the left are busy advocating policies that might be better or worse, but certainly would have consequences of their own which could easily be “blamed” on them. Which is politics, but what is surprising is how roundly they would have condemned them had they come from the “right.” There are many such examples, but for today Exhibit A is a post I wrote back in November:

I am not one who demonizes the realist school of foreign policy, or neo-cons or all the shades in between. One aspect of Realpolitik which is disturbing (though because something is disturbing is no reason to dismiss it out of hand) is its willingness to not only cut deals, but cut deals for which third parties pay the price. I don’t just mean suggestions such as returning Saddam Hussein to power (how exactly should one describe Jonathan Chait anyway?) but for something more chillingly plausible I give you this from Matthew Yglesias:

We’re then faced with a question of priorities: Do we care more about Iran, or do we care more about Ukraine? Do we care more about nuclear proliferation, or do we care more about anti-Putin Russians? There’s an obvious deal to be cut here — NATO membership for the Baltics is a done deal, but we can return Russia’s “near abroad” to Russia in exchange for Russian cooperation on Iran and North Korea, or else we can have a series of standoffs across a wide Eurasian arc. Some would call this appeasement and, frankly, the shoe fits decently. It strikes me, however, as preferable to either going to war with Iran or to having Iran build a nuclear bomb.

I suggest reading the whole thing to appreciate the rationale for why this makes sense for us to pursue, and as I said, it is not without merit. I do not feel such an approach would be in our interests, help all that much with Iran, or even be stable, but I could be wrong.

Regardless of the appeal I think we, and Matt in his post, should at least acknowledge what such a deal means. It is not our interests that are being traded away, but Georgia’s and the Ukraine’s. It is their people whose lives are being traded, not ours. That was essentially the same type of deal made in the case of Lebanon to get Syria’s support for the first Gulf War. We and others have made these kinds of deals many times over the years. Possibly that is the realistic way to approach the world, the best of an imperfect set of choices. As for myself, I couldn’t write such a thing without cringing at its callousness, and at bare minimum acknowledging the crime I am committing myself to taking part in, and the lack of input the people of Georgia, the Ukraine and other parts of Russia’s “near abroad” are being given as to their fate.

Hat tip: Tyler Cowen

If that left me wondering at Matthew’s unwillingness to frankly address the humanitarian downside to his recommendations, in this post (Exhibit B) I was pretty much steamed:

I’ll have to call Matthew on this. This same issue is creeping up in a lot of places, but I expect that from Fire Dog Lake or Kos, I would like to think that I wouldn’t from Matt. Matthew has spent a lot of time commenting on foreign policy, and he is quite good at poking holes in others arguments, which is an important thing. I suspect however he has little clue about how it should actually be pursued, he just wants his party to win. I don’t mind that he has no real guidance to give, but acting as if you do just to advance your party leads to bad policy. Matt is a great critic, and I enjoy reading him for that reason. His actual suggestions are poor (though in his defense, so are most, because foreign policy has few good answers) and this is an example of why:

In case things were unclear, Joe Lieberman seizes advantage of her passing to re-iterate that he is a conservative Republican on foreign policy issues. Kirkpatrick, as Lieberman observed, lived a life of a tribune of democracy if by democracy we mean right-wing military juntas.

So, a man who recently suggested we should sell out the countries near Russia in order to secure Russia’s cooperation with Iran, a man who has endorsed the “reality based” approach of negotiating with fascist dictatorships such as Syria and Iran, along with many other rather calculating moves to serve our interests, this man pulls up in horror that Kirkpatrick was willing to work with dictators who were resisting communist insurgencies bankrolled by the Soviet Union?

As I said, Matt is a moral scold when it serves the ends of criticizing the “right” and a hard boiled Kissengeresque pragmatist when it means he can criticize the “right.” Both criticisms may have merit, but they provide no guide for his policy, they just attempt to de-legitimize others. Needless to say that leads to poor policy as well as charges of hypocrisy. This is mine.

So, can I safely conclude then that Matt and much of the “reality based” left are now “conservative Republican’s” as well now?

I guess so in Matt’s case at minimum, when one considers exhibit C, which is Noah Pollak’s discussion of Matt and Marty Peretz’s dust up over who is to blame for the fighting in Gaza. Predictably Matt blames the Bush administration for something that frankly was inevitable, elections in Gaza or no elections. Violent groups with “no controlling legal authority” with conflicting goals and power bases generally resort to violence. Noah’s entire discussion is worth reading, but for our purposes, I suggest this quote gets to the heart of my theme:

Readers might be surprised to hear — Mr. Yglesias probably among them — that less than a year ago, Yglesias wrote the following: “I happen to think the White House made the right call on the question of Palestinian elections — even in retrospect, even knowing that Hamas won.” A couple of days ago, he called these administration officials “morons” for having supported the very same elections that he now condemns. I know it’s best to just hurry past the contradictions, especially when they involve the reshuffling of positions in order to condemn the Bush administration. But it is too enjoyable to avoid the conclusion that here, Yglesias is calling himself names.

That that is true has no bearing on whether the policy, or other policies discussed above, were good or bad. Specific issues might make one approach better in one instance that one might decry in another. He also gets to change his mind. There are few guiding principles or “systems” which can be shown to benefit us consistently in foreign affairs, and all have major downsides. What it does show is the moral and intellectual smugness of many, including Matt, is unwarranted.

Update: In a similar vein, Bob Kerrey wonders:

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn’t you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

Hat Tip: Pajamas

[tags] Matthew Yglesias, Noah Pollak, Gaza, Russia, Ukraine, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Maty Peretz, realist foreign policy, foreign policy, Iraq, Middle East, Fatah, Hamas [/tags]