Tom Farer Interview (2007): Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Tom, welcome to Berkeley.
Thank you, Harry, nice to be here.
In your new book you outline two visions of America's role in the world as they are generated by two different groups: those who have a liberal vision of the world, and another group within the foreign policy establishment who are the conservatives, [now] the neocons. Talk a little about those two different world views.
Well, let's look at the conservatives first. There are different elements in the conservative coalition. The libertarians don't fit, although they're part of the conservative coalition. They basically don't want us to have a large role in foreign affairs, fearing that it will impact adversely on democracy and freedom in the national society. So, leave out that part of the coalition of groups that make up the right in America. (Indeed, some libertarians are ending up with the Democrats as a consequence of the tendency of the right to be authoritarian in varying degrees.) Then I would say the two main groups I would distinguish between are the neoconservatives, who have what sounds like a liberal vision of the world backed by bayonets, so it's liberalism with bayonets --
This is the idea that they have a democratization behind a bayonet.
Yes, that democratization -- that A) it's a good thing in itself, and B) it is a good thing for the United States to have a world composed of democratic states, and you'd use whatever means are necessary to achieve your end. So of course, it's a very consequentialist view, to put it in philosophical terms.
And then you have the traditional conservatives, and they have, in fact, split over the war in Iraq, so you have the Kissingerian conservatives who say that it really isn't in the national interest, it wasn't closely enough tied to core national interests; and then you have the people like Rumsfeld and Cheney who linked up with the neoconservatives but wanted a short, sharp war, destruction of Iraqi power and the Iraqi state, and then the withdrawal of force.
The most interesting group is the neocon, at least from a liberal perspective, because to some extent they seem to be talking the language of liberalism. Now, what distinguishes them from liberals? Well, liberalism is focused on the individual, and this is a kind of banality, but it has consequences. If the premise is that all human beings have a comparable moral standing and that they have certain rights -- a right to life, right not to be tortured, right not to be mutilated, right not to be convicted without fair process -- that can't be trumped for consequentialist reasons, for the good of the wider community. If you have that view, then means do matter. The impact of policy on individuals does matter. And the one thing that one of the so-called liberal hawks (which is really an oxymoron), Paul Berman, said -- in fact, the only thing Paul Berman said in his book on liberalism and terrorism that I thought was probably right was that in our era, human rights, liberalism, and even international law have become different ways of expressing the same set of values.
So, I would say the liberal that's focused on the individual is not a total consequentialist, is very concerned with the impact of policy on individuals and is not prepared to sacrifice large numbers of individuals for the sake of advancing toward a hazy, probably utopian vision.
At one point in your book you identify these characteristics of conservatism: "An emphasis on chauvinism, a suspicion of the foreign, the rigid conception of sovereignty, the masculinization of honor, and the valorization of force." These point to the emphasis of the state in national security policy. With such a focus on the state and warfare, one can see how the emphasis on the individual, which is liberalism's hallmark, really stands out.
The emphasis on the individual as a creator of meaning, as a Promethean figure, but [only] as long as he or she exercises their creative Promethean qualities without impinging on the Promethean qualities of other people. That's where the line is drawn.
What distinguishes liberalism from libertarianism, which is its hypertrophied cousin, you might say, is that the liberal recognizes that in a world where there's a tremendous amount of inequality and [where] power is going to go someplace, you need a democratically controlled community to create the environment in which individuals who are very differently circumstanced in terms of access to power, in terms of wealth, in terms of privilege, are going to have an opportunity to exercise their humanity. So, the liberal recognizes that there needs to be a state. Yes, the state itself can become over-weaning, but there needs to be a community, and the community has to be democratically controlled. That's an important part of liberalism.
A libertarian says that natural forces will produce the opportunity for people to be free; [but] there's no evidence at all to support that assumption.
What would be the conservative perspective on the individual in comparison to that of liberalism? It gives lip service to some of liberalism's tenets in the domestic arena but it doesn't want to draw out the international implications.
Instead of talking about liberal and conservative we might talk about liberal and the right, because there's always been a right. What defines the right? Well, one of the defining characteristics of the right, whether we call it conservative, fascist, or just make up a name, call it red, is a strong communalism, "our community over other communities." This is a classic element of right-wing thought, not just the United States but in any country. If you don't accept that view, then you're not on the right.
Liberalism, which I see in the present idiom of human rights, is focused on the rights of individuals and, as I said, the moral equality of individuals. Human rights says everyone everywhere, by virtue of being born, has certain rights. There's something non-chauvinistic about that. It assumes that the life and death of a Palestinian is as important as the life or death of an Israeli or an American. That's the corollary of the view that all people are morally equal.
If you take a classic conservative view -- take a conservative I feel quite close to in some ways, Edmund Burke. Burke said, at the time of the French Revolution, "I know nothing of the rights of man. I know of the rights of English man." You see? That's the difference. There's a sense that community is a kind of organic growth, they're natural growths, you belong to that community, naturally your preference is for your community.
The liberal recognizes, as I was suggesting a moment ago, that communities are necessary, that very few people are capable of this universal empathy and sympathy, so communities are necessary so that rich will feel some obligation to poor, and so on. So, the challenge for liberals is to figure out how much you can prefer your community without violating your values as a liberal. That's a very critical question, and Richard Miller, a philosopher at Cornell, has suggested that with respect to basic rights you cannot prefer your community, but with respect to everything but basic rights you can, and he gives a very simple example. You're coming home one day and you see your neighbor's child drowning and you don't even like your neighbor, in fact, you despise your neighbor, but you still rescue your neighbor's child because of respect for the right to life. But you don't have to buy your neighbor's child a birthday present every time you buy your child a birthday present. So, that's where liberalism draws the line: some community preference but still respect for the right to life, the basic rights, of other people in other communities. The person on the right says, "My community, right or wrong, and whatever is necessary to do to other communities to safeguard my community, we'll do it."
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