Partisan Polarization and Foreign Policy

Transcript

PETER BEINART:  So, what is the right way to describe the fundamental cleavage between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy today? The way I would describe it would be this way. I think Democrats believe in collective security and Republicans believe in the balance of power.

What do I mean by that? I think liberal Democrats are the children of Woodrow Wilson.  Woodrow Wilson was not simply about promoting democracy around the world. Woodrow Wilson’s fundamental idea was collective security, the idea that after the destruction of World War I, you would create a global international institution, the league of nations in which all nations would band together and if any one nation violated the peace, they would all join together against them. The model of collective security is all for one and one for all. We’re all in it together. That vision has been re-ignited very powerfully amongst Democrats since the end of the Cold War in a globalized age in which Democrats believe that there are a whole series of threats that threaten all nations and make us all in it together, be they global warming, public health, the spread of nuclear technology, the non-state terrorist. 

Republicans, I think are the children of Henry Cabot Lodge. Henry Cabot Lodge has been defamed by history. He was not an isolationist. He simply didn’t want a universal institution like the league of nations. He wanted an alliance with France against Germany. His motto was us versus them. He didn’t believe that you could have universal cooperation between all nations.  He wanted a balance of power between America and its allies against the countries that threaten us, a balance of power, I think we tend to think of wrongly in terms of an equilibrium, scales, you know, that people who want a balance of power want an equality of power between us and our foes. That’s usually not the case.  What you want is a dis-equilibrium. That’s what Henry Cabot Lodge wanted. That’s what Dick Cheney wants. The right metaphor is not scales but a bank balance. You want a favorable balance of power. That’s what Henry Cabot Lodge wanted against Germany. That’s, I think, the natural way that conservatives tend to think about foreign policy, creating positive favorable balance of power against the nations that threaten us.

View Full Transcript »