The Unknown Candidate: Brooksie goes "Neo-Incremental"

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Brooksie goes "Neo-Incremental"

-- or Maybe Just "Mental"

When is Brooksie going to stop trying to impress everyone with his erudition and start saying something of substance that has some bearing on the reality of his subject du jours?

Today's op ed reads like the inside of an inmate's brain from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Hold on to your sanity and proceed at your own risk.

Onward Cautious Soldiers
By David Brooks
The New York Times

The conservative mansion has many rooms.

In one chamber there are the resurgent Burkeans. These conservatives, led by George F. Will, are suspicious of grand plans to transform regions. They know that societies are infinitely complex organisms, that our ability to understand reality is limited and that efforts to initiate change can produce unintended consequences.

In another chamber are the staunch Churchillians. They know that occasionally civilization is confronted by enemies so ideologically extreme and so greedy for domination that decent nations must use military power to confront and defeat them. So Bill Kristol argues the U.S. has no choice but to strike the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

And these days the conservative mansion is a fractious place. My friend George has decided to go after my friend Bill, and we all look forward to the day when his arguments catch up to his sarcasm.

But I wonder if amid all the din there might be a room, even just a utility closet, for those of us in yet another rightward sect, the neocon incrementalists. Those of us in this burgeoning movement — numbering so far in the low single digits — are squishy Solomons.

We believe that on one level the Burkeans are right. The troubles in Iraq have confirmed their warnings about the unpredictability of social engineering. But nonetheless they are also wrong. We can’t just let reckless tyrannies dominate the Middle East on the supposed grounds the region is not yet ready for freedom.

We also believe that on one level the Churchillians are right too. Iran really is an intractable menace to world peace. Can anybody imagine how terrified we would be if the Iranian fundamentalists already had the bomb, and the ability to incinerate Israel at this moment of high tension? But the Churchillians are also rash to want to send bombers over Tehran and try to solve our problems all at once.

We neoincrementalists have kept our democratic dreams, but we’ve slowed our gait to a cautious walk.

We look for guidance these days to two other notable squishes, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice. We neoincrementalists thought they were right to offer the Iranians an incentive package before the hard choices have to be faced. And we’re impressed with how they are handling the Hezbollah crisis.

They understand that the first goal must be to ensure that Hezbollah loses. Israel must be given time to dismantle the terrorist state within a state. But they also understand that the second goal must be to ensure that the democratically elected Lebanese government be seen to win.

That’s why administration officials spent so much time on the phone last week, organizing a Security Council resolution to sanction an international force in Lebanon. This force would police not only the south but also the Syrian border (to prevent Hezbollah resupply), and would help the Lebanese government reoccupy its land.

Senior administration officials know they have no hopes of really disarming Hezbollah (the terrorists can hide rockets under beds) or of really expelling it from Lebanon (it is integrated into society). But they do hope to change the environment, and slowly begin to crowd out Hezbollah influence, the way healthy grass crowds out weeds in a lawn.

They argue that the situation in south Lebanon cannot be resolved militarily and talk privately about some serious nation-building, with reconstruction packages and political assistance. They also talk about resolving some outstanding Israeli-Lebanese issues to give Fouad Siniora tangible victories to brag about.

Mostly, they emphasize the larger context. This isn’t just about getting a cease-fire and separation, like past peace efforts. It’s about building momentum for Arab democrats and cementing a coalition of moderate Arabs who will stand up to extremists.

In short, the administration approach embodies a few principles we neoincrementalists hold dear. First, you create policies in accord with your basic values while fully understanding the downside risks — the downside risk in this case being that terrorists may have developed methods that make it nearly impossible for superior military forces to uproot them given the global media environment.

Second, you go to war with the world you have. Right now unilateral actions are politically unsustainable, so everything has to be done through a coalition. And third, statecraft is soulcraft. If you can create circumstances in which democrats win, you can change perceptions and create the momentum for future victories — incrementally.

Photo credit: David Brooks. (The New York Times)