Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy - One of Tony Blair's policy wonks, Robert Cooper, is calling for "Liberal Imperialism".

Granted, on one level Cooper is referring to a "small-l" liberalism - sort of. Cooper floats the theory that states are either pre-modern (can't sustain themselves), modern (sustain themselves through the will of the nation-state) or post-modern (sustained through mutual cooperation. But he returns to the Big-L Liberalism - because the apotheosis of the "post-modern" desirable state, according to Cooper, is the uber-bureaucracy, such as the EU).

Some of the hooters in this piece:

it follows that we should not think of the EU or even NATO as the root cause of the half century of peace we have enjoyed in Western Europe. The basic fact is that Western European countries no longer want to fight each other.

Right. And an aggressive Soviet dictatorship just fell into line singing Kum Ba Ya.
Then there's this one:

"The EU is the most developed example of a postmodern system. It represents security through transparency, and transparency through interdependence...The USA is the more doubtful case since it is not clear that the US government or Congress accepts either the necessity or desirability of interdependence, or its corollaries of openness, mutual surveillance and mutual interference"

Catch that? In other words, "The EU is secure because it stands for nothing, and its membership pulls it to the most mediocre common denominator."

How about dealing with states that don't play nice?

The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself

Er - wasn't that what the non-"postmodern" USA did? And the "post-modern" EU shimmied away from like a six-year-old away from a plate of spinach?

So the Clinton Legacy isn't dead, perhaps, but gone dormant, hiding out in Western Europe...


posted by Mitch Berg 4/8/2002 07:05:33 AM

The Clinton Legacy, Part II - Gallup released polls today that showed Clinton, today, has the third-worst post-presidency job-approval ratings of any president of the last forty years. Thirty points below the sainted John F. Kennedy - no big surprise. But twenty glorious points below Ronald Reagan - and sixteen points below George HW Bush and nine points below...Gerald Ford and Jimmyu Carter?

Clinton's legacy, measured by this poll, is that Americans think he's not as bad as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Our work here isn't done, but we can at least break for coffee.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/8/2002 06:45:44 AM