[A-List] US ideological state apparatus: foreign policy

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Incomplete victory

The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in
the Twenty-first Century by Michael Mandelbaum
PublicAffairs 496pp $30
Reviewed by William Easterly

Michael Mandelbaum's new book displays that cute arrogance that so endears
American foreign policy to the rest of the world. "The ideas that conquered
the world"? Turns out the "world" is defined by the "foreign policy elite"
to exclude the "unimportant" places and to include only the "core" regions,
i.e., North America, Western Europe and Japan. According to Mandelbaum, the
"gradient" of culture "slopes downward from the core to the periphery."
Among these culturally superior core nations, we have now known 10 years of
the conquering triad of "peace, democracy, and free markets" since the end
of the Cold War.

Ten years seems a little early to be celebrating the Pax Americana,
especially since we would have to ignore a few little pesky wars like the
ones involving Iraq, the Balkans, and Afghanistan. And to whom exactly are
the "core" nations so important? To the billions out there on the
"periphery," who Mandelbaum says are imitators rather than innovators,
despite their having their own millennia-old fecund civilizations, such as
those of China, India and the Islamic world? To those in crisis-ridden
Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America? Frankly, I wonder whether they
wake up every morning asking what the American foreign policy elite is up
to.

Many of the 5 billion people outside the core would also be surprised to
learn that, when Mandelbaum does glance in their direction, he sees
"consensus on the political, economic, and international conditions best
suited for them to be happy." This consensus is of course the liberal
triad - peace, democracy and free markets - to which he alleges there is no
surviving competitor. With India and Pakistan on the brink of war, with
giants China and Russia still moving in self-contradictory directions, and
with the liberal triad not even registering a pulse in the Middle East, just
what planet is Mandelbaum discussing?

But let's say we overlook that childish tendency of us Americans to take our
homeland to be the whole world. Mandelbaum does have some useful things to
say. The liberal theory of history under which nations are progressing
toward the magical triad does seem to work for North America, Western Europe
and Japan. It is a noticeable moment in history that these nations do have
peace, democracy and free markets, after centuries of bloodshed. Mandelbaum
tells that story well.

The central thesis of the book seems to be that peace, democracy and markets
will continue to conquer the world. The evidence for this thesis
unfortunately excludes the "ghastliest regions of the planet," which the
author deems unimportant except to the unfortunate multitudes who happen to
live there. To be fair, the book was no doubt largely written before
September 11, when we discovered that unimportant people can do horrifically
important things. Perhaps Mandelbaum could add some other virtues to the
triad, like humility.

The Guardian Weekly 10-10-2002, page 30