One of America's increasingly prominent scholars in the fields of international relations and national security is none other than MC MasterChef's own professor at BU, Andrew Bacevich (specialty American military affairs). His op-ed today in the LATimes, "Unsafe for Democracy," is a timely reminder of a dimension of the recent election that has not received enough attention. With most post-mortems focusing on why Kerry came up short -- why Bush voters didn't pull the lever for Kerry, rather than an assessment of why Kerry voters rejected Bush -- no serious appraisal of the foreign policy voting patterns has received any prominence so far.

The President and his supporters have claimed bluntly that because he won, the Democrats should be expected to "stop campaigning" and support his foreign policies to promote "healing" and "national unity." All well and good from a "rally 'round the troops" standpoint, especially as serious fighting has just been launched in Fallujah. But in terms of how America should position itself in the world going forward, a substantial portion of Democrats and independents who voted for Kerry believe continuing down the road that the Bush Doctrine has placed us on would be a profoundly dangerous mistake.

Although a large portion of the electorate has begun to feel that the US got off was unwise to invade Iraq, a fundamental debate about the role of the US in a unipolar world has not yet been joined. During the election campaign, most of the pointed critique of Bush Admin policies and actions -- from either Democrats or the press -- involved relatively narrow issues, such as the feebleness of the grounds for the invasion of Iraq or the lack of competence in planning and execution of the post-invasion phase. Even those claims didn't receive a great deal of public attention until late in the campaign because of the slow process by which concrete evidence emerged that countered the Admin's fantastically rosy pictures of reality. (See discussions in "Media Tipping-Point " and "What will those dumb Americans do next?"

Bacevich argues, along the same lines as John Ikenberry's "Liberal Leviathan" analysis, that the witches brew of traditional conservative US foreign policy principles with Wilsonian idealism is neither sustainable at home nor acceptable abroad. Bacevich does not outline his preferred approach -- whether to shift from conservative to liberal traditional principles and/or to jettison Wilsonianism in favor of some version of realism or a new idealism . But that political elites must recast the discussion in terms other than the "false coinage" of "freedom" and "democracy" cannot be disputed.

For the Democrats as a party, the primary risk is that such a recasting will be turned into Vietnam redux. On one side will be the traditional "anti-war" forces, emboldened by further violence in Iraq. In addition, there will be a strong temptation for some to cling to the idealism and emotive vocabulary of the Bush Admin that seems so attractive to the electorate while trimming the Bush excesses. This is unlikely, however, to do the trick in the long-run. The critique offered by both Bacevich and Ikenberry is aimed as much at the "liberal hawks" as at the Bush Administration.

A vocal opposition to the Bush Admin must write a new "narrative" that assembles the mosaic of American interests, strengths and threats with a picture of an international system within which America resides. That narrative has to be coherent, not just a wishlist. It should draw on familiar principles supported by Democrats and moderate Republicans for decades. It should emphasize how we can and must restore America's leadership in a complex world. This is not an "anti-war" narrative of withdrawal, of "bringing the troops home" or mourning the "evils" being perpetrated by US military power.

Taking up these issues in an intellectually honest fashion is full of risks. Certainly this election season demonstrated that for a portion of the electorate, the fissuers opened by the Vietnam debates are far from closed. Yet, building an effective opposition will present opportunities for alliances aross party lines.

Substantial portions of foreign policy professionals and the national security/intelligence/military establishment (to say nothing of the academic communities) are far more attuned to the principles enunciated by Bacevich and Ikenberry than the Bush Doctrine. Even before the election it was clear that respected Republican leaders on the Hill don't "buy" the Bush Doctrine.

The process of building an effective opposition will require sketching a clear outline of an alternative vision in terms that resonate with the American public and that avoid the vocabulary traps of "UN", "approval", "multilateral" and the like. The vision must be grounded in US interests, but based on a new understanding of how this world is different from what came before and what that means for American options. It must also put threats to America and Americans in a realistic perspective. We have handed over policymaking to those groups which overinflate risks, start at shadows, define threats in existential (and therefore unlimited) terms. We must stop drawing lines in the sand without thinking of the consequences of enforcing those lines. Our focus must instead be on real threats, both current and emerging.

The process of building an effective opposition will require taking advantage of every tactical opening such as debating defense budgets or foreign aid, even though the Republican control of the legislative branch ensures that the Bush policies will, at least for the next year or so, be enacted without substantial resistance from Republicans. The most likely outcome, unfortunately, is that forces from both the Right and Left will push the debate down the old, deep grooves that were carved first during the Red Scare and then during Vietnam.

To avoid a remake of the Vietnam movie will require true leadership, hopefully both Democrats and Republicans; more than a bit of political courage; and a great deal of intraparty discipline. It will not be in the Bush Admin's interest to have a serious debate. It will be in the Admin's interest to jack up the volume on the extreme voices of Left and Right coming through the loud speakers. So we will also be dependent on how well mainstream news and opinion media resist manipulation and facilitate a real debate.


This is a very preliminary draft (in the scribbles category) of a series I'm contributing to Trickster's exercise of rebranding the Democratic party through the development of a "mission statement." At this point, I need to put down my thoughts on specific issue areas before I can tackle the broad integrating principles a mission statement presents. But I've always figured that working both top-down and bottom-up is more likely to produce a better result.

Other previous musings of mine for Trickster's effort are on making political reform the centerpiece of a party identity for the next election cycle, and tactics vs strategy, or what we think we might have learned within the first few days after the election.