Power failure?

Washington Monthly, June, 2005 by Jeff Hagan, Jose del Solar, Anatol Lieven

Michael Hirsh opens his critique of Anatol Lieven's argument ("Bloody Necessary," April) with a favorable description of American power as providing "control rods" in global affairs. The metaphor is apt, mostly because you don't really need control rods unless you're also in the business of creating nuclear reactions.

Hirsh seems to ignore the fact that American power has also been a destabilizing force, whether arming both sides of the Iran/Iraq conflict, sitting idly by while Saddam gassed the Kurds or planned his Kuwaiti invasion, or showing up on the wrong side of any number of Central and South American conflicts. Hirsh's hopeful prose regarding the future of Iraq also makes it seem like only Americans have borne the burden of bringing "democracy" to that country, never mentioning that the killing of innocent civilians doesn't endear a people to the kind of deliverance America is delivering and doesn't ensure long-range stability.

Jeff Hagan

Cleveland, Ohio

The big flaw in Hirsh's article is that it only takes into account the views of Europeans and Americans. As you say, "Europeans won't admit it," but the problem is that Hirsh is ignoring the terrible effects of American messianism in places like Latin America. A great percentage of Latin Americans actually believe that American foreign policy (with its echoes of the Monroe Doctrine across the continent) has been an extremely negative force for the establishment of their own democracies. Hirsh's article only highlights the ethnocentric view of many Americans, who seem to believe that only their opinions or those of their predominantly white counterparts in Europe matter. If he really wants to make a case for American messianism, he should include its effects also in places like Chile, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. I'm pretty sure an honest view of those events will render U.S. foreign policy in a much less benign light.

Jose del Solar

New York, N.Y.

I am most grateful for Michael Hirsh's long, intelligent, and thoughtful review of my book, America Right or Wrong. However, on a number of points Mr. Hirsh's presentation of my views is not entirely accurate.

In the first place, far from denying the value of America in the world and in history, I refer repeatedly to America's past achievements and stress that it is respect for American values and the American system that allows the possibility of American hegemony by consent. I also agree with Hirsh that the extreme tendencies that we have seen in the United States since 9/11 may prove quite short-lived. However, given the dreadful threat of more terrorist attacks, it would surely be irresponsible not to point out that there may also be elements in the future pushing the U.S. population in the opposite direction.

It is true that I criticize the messianic streak in the American tradition; but far from being a European argument directed against America as a whole, my book explicitly reflects an old American debate on the question of how and how far America should seek to spread its values in the world by action, rather than by the force of its example. The classical sources which I quote at length in support of my criticisms of the "messianic" position are not Europeans, but Americans like Reinhold Niebuhr, William Fulbright, and George Kennan. A central reason for writing my book was to remind Americans of this American critical tradition in the new context of the war on terror and the occupation of Iraq.

In this context, it is simply wrong to argue, as Hirsh writes, that I am quibbling over words when I write that America did not "build nations" in Germany and Japan. There is a vitally important difference between establishing (or rather reestablishing) democracy in highly-developed, self-aware, and united nations, as in these cases, and having to build democracy and the nation at one and the same time, as in Iraq.

Anatol Lieven

Washington, D.C.