Does might make right?

I haven't followed the Chas Freeman debate very closely, but maybe I should have. It gives an idea of where liberal foreign policy thinking is headed in America, and I'm not sure I like it.

Basically, those who object to Freeman's nomination for head of the NIC have two problems with him: 1) He is a lot more pro-Palestinian than is common in U.S. policy circles, and 2) he made some remarks downplaying Chinese human rights abuses. My favorite bloggers, who have taken up Freeman's cause, like both these positions and call them "realism."

The pro-Palestinian thing doesn't give me too much pause; as I often say, I'm pretty agnostic/apathetic on the Israel issue. And I recognize that the bloggers who are being most vocal in Freeman's defense (Yglesias, Ezra Klein, etc.) are often Jews who (quite understandably) don't like to be ethnically associated with as grim and violent a nation as Israel. But the larger anti-Israel movement, especially "realist" scholars like the infamous Mearsheimer and Walt, seems to spring from a very different source - not anti-Semitism, but rather the idea that by removing Western support for Israel we can largely put an end to Islamic terrorism.

This is what I call the "throw Israel under the bus" theory. I think it's both wrong (Islamic terrorists will keep coming as long as the oil money, high birthrates, and Wahhabist clerics are there to support them) and of questionable moral validity (what kind of precedent does it set when we throw our allies under the bus?).

The China thing I am more worried about. From Brad DeLong's assertion that our top imperative is to get on China's good side to Klein and Yglesias' warnings about a "new cold war," the blogosphere's main position on China seems to be that we must avoid angering the future hyperpower at all costs. China's awful labor standards and environmental record are far worse than those of the small countries with which many liberals would restrict trade (Nicaragua, for example), and yet somehow all those issues seem to disappear when the trade partner has 1.4 billion people and a stash of nukes. Human rights, likewise, are important unless the rights abuser carries a big enough stick.

In both these cases, the new liberal foreign policy is shaping up to be one that is focused on non-confrontationalism. This is understandable, given the Bush record. But what it adds up to is a tacit acknowledgment that "might makes right." If might makes right, then countries that claim the backing of millions of terrorists or have the actual backing of hundreds of nukes are welcome to start wars, oppress minorities, and pollute, imprison, and exploit to their hearts' content, while the international community focuses on chiding the small and weak.

Bush claimed this exception only for the United States; this "realist" new foreign policy apparently wants to extend it to our rivals as well.

This is a far cry from the liberal internationalism of the post-WW2 Democratic foreign policy. It sends the message that all you have to do to avoid our criticism is to be strong enough to deter our missiles. Meaning that any nation that wants to avoid the pesky harrassment of Western rhetoric just has to make sure it has a few nukes in the closet or the nominal backing of key terrorist groups. In the long run, that seems likely to improve neither American security nor human rights.

Update: Chas Freeman has withdrawn from candidacy for NIC head. Matt Yglesias somewhat bitterly comments that "Chinese human rights activists everywhere are now high-fiving." He says that like it's a bad thing...WTF??