Abstract
[Tony Smith]'s evidence for the Left's long love affair with mUitary interventionism in the name of humanitarian causes serves as a reminder that President [Obama] endeavors to remove troops from Iraq not to bring them home but to deploy them elsewhere. "Winning the war" in Afghanistan may well be followed by deployments in Darfur. Obama himself, writing in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 2007, spoke grandly of America's "mission" and "historic purpose" and promised to build a system of "common security" and to "export opportunity" in the form of "access to education and health care, trade and investment" and "steady support for pohtical reformers" and democracy in other nations. If his campaign promises will be matched by deeds, he leaves no doubt as to his global agenda. Obama's call to increase the size of the Army and Marines, strengthen NATO, reform the UN, and build a new cooperative community of democracies echoes every point made here by [Anne-Marie Slaughter]. Given her move to the State Department, her policy proposals demand careful attention. She seems to write with her fellow true believers in mind, those who already know that [Woodrow Wilson]'s domestic and foreign policies are right for America and the world. She might protest that exporting democracy has never been at the heart of true Wilsonianism, but she says flatly that the "United States can and should stand for democracy around the world" by encouraging the growth of the "political, economic, and social institutions necessary to support liberal democracy on a country by country basis..." During World War I, Wilson sought to replace balance-of-power diplomacy with a "concert of power." Slaughter, restating the Princeton Project's recommendations, calls for a "common counsel" and for the creation of a new "Concert of Democracies" to take action when the UN fails. Most strikingly, Slaughter seeks to replace the traditional notion of sovereignty as a nation's control over its own security and destiny with a new "sovereignty of responsibility." That responsibility includes a duty to ensure the rule of law and end humanitarian crises within erring nations. President Obama spoke in his Inaugural Address of a "new era of responsibility" and warned leaders "who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" that they "are on the wrong side of history." Obama may not have drawn these ideas directly from the Princeton Project and Slaughter, but he used the same language and logic. The new president and his director of policy planning at the State Department believe that this standard of responsibility will bring greater security to the world. By striving to reorder the "political and economic microfoundations of individual societies," Slaughter writes, America can "make the world safe for democracy," even if that project requires the U.S. to compel another nation "to protect its own citizens." Slaughter's formulation of liberal internationalism goes so far that it can properly be called "deep Wilsonianism." The United States has never seen a foreign-policy agenda of this magnitude and potential cost in American lives and wealth.