One of the interesting things about Walt & Mearsheimer’s book is their reliance on the left. Their citations overflow with lib-lefters, from Counterpunch to the Nation to J.J. Goldberg to Michael Massing. Leftwing rabbi Michael Lerner has embraced W&M. But Walt & Mearsheimer are realists. That means they’re not particularly idealistic about international behavior. The world is an anarchic place, in their view, and states will do anything to protect themselves. Israel got the bomb, now Iran wants it, that’s how international relations work…
Trita Parsi’s book on Iran marries the same two crowds. Former neocon Francis Fukuyama (who describes himself as an idealistic realist) was Parsi’s scholarly mentor. And Parsi was helped by Roane Carey, a longtime editor at the Nation. At Parsi’s event the other day, the panel included progressive M.J. Rosenberg, and Michael Hirsh, who certainly sounded liberal. In the audience was American Conservative editor Scott McConnell.
This is the new alliance in American intellectual life, and it is potentially transformative. Zbig Brzezinski, meet Barak Obama.
We have the neocons to thank for this entente. The neoconservatives are true radicals, revolutionaries (when it comes to other societies!). They made an alliance with neoliberals like Thomas Friedman and Kenneth Pollack and Hillary Clinton, partly because they come from the same meritocratic culture, and share a regard for Israel. The neocon columnist David Brooks said it best a few months back, when he said that there was going to be a political shuffling between the two parties, with globalist idealists going to one side and isolationist realists to the other.
The globalist revolutionaries got us into Iraq, of course; and Iraq is the glue for the realist/leftist coalition. All of us who opposed the war feel vindicated by the tremendous unending suffering it has caused. Even now, I know some globalists who will say, "Well Iraq might still turn out well…." They seem to me morally obtuse, indifferent to Arab lives. The left has lent its moral focus to the realists. Walt and Mearsheimer’s book is animated by a deep concern for Palestinian human rights. And maybe we leftists will learn hardheadedness from the realists.
