Liberalci so liberalci zgolj v besedah, pa še to ex ante. Njihov moralizem so zgolj verbalne floskule. Polni so jih, ko gre za druge. Ko gre zanje, pozabijo na visoke ideale, ki so jih prej tako vehementno pridigali drugim. Koliko liberalcev, denimo iz Sveta Evrope, ste slišali protestirati, ko je Bidenova administracija (ki je še lani obsojala uporabo kasetnih bomb kot vojni zločin) pred dvema tednoma odobrila pošiljke kasetnih bom ukrajinski vojski? Znate našteti nekaj svetovno znanih filozofov, ki je javno izrazilo protest proti temu? Znate našteti imena nekaj svetovno znanih filozofov in siceršnjih dežurnih liberalcev, ki so javno izrazili protest nad konstantnim genocidom, ki ga izraelske oblasti izvajajo nad Palestinci? Koliko izmed njih javno izraža protest, ker Izrael skoraj vsako noč z raketami obstreljuje Damask?

Ni jih, mar ne? Univerzalna moralna pravila veljajo za druge, nam se jih ni treba univerzalno držati. Stephen M. Walt, profesor s Harvarda ima zelo dober komentar na to temo v Foreign Policy. Zaključuje s tem, s čimer se sicer kot realist glede mednarodnih odnosov povsem strinjam – če razumemo in priznamo interese tudi drugih držav, vodi to k bistveno bolj mirnemu in stabilnemu svetu, kot če poskušamo naše, zahodne vrednote vsiliti drugim (seveda, kadar nam to ustreza):

“a broadly realist approach to world politics would produce a saner and more peaceful world, precisely because it rejects universal crusading and recognizes that other societies have values that they will want to preserve as much as we might want to spread our own. For this reason, realism emphasizes the need to take the interests of other states into account and to make prudent diplomatic adjustments as balances of power shift.”

The Biden administration’s controversial decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions is a telling illustration of liberalism’s limitations as a guide to foreign policy. The administration’s rhetoric extols the superiority of democracies over autocracies, highlights its commitment to a “rules-based order,” and steadfastly maintains that it takes human rights seriously. If this were true, however, it would not be sending weapons that pose serious risks to civilians and whose use in Ukraine it has criticized harshly in the past. But as it has on other prominent issues (e.g., relations with Saudi Arabia, the expanding Israeli oppression of its Palestinian subjects, or the commitment to an open world economy), those liberal convictions get jettisoned as soon as they become inconvenient. This behavior shouldn’t surprise us: When states are in trouble and worried that they might suffer a setback, they toss their principles aside and do what they think it takes to win.

Liberalism begins with the claim that all human beings possess certain natural rights, which should not be infringed upon under any circumstances. To preserve these rights while protecting us from each other, liberals believe governments should be accountable to their citizens (typically through free, fair, and regular elections); constrained by the rule of law; and that citizens should be free to speak, worship, and think as they wish, provided that exercising these rights does not harm others. For the record: I like these principles as much as anyone, and I’m glad I live in a country where they are (mostly) intact.

For liberals, the only legitimate governments are those that subscribe to these principles, even though no government does so perfectly. When they turn to foreign policy, therefore, liberals tend to divide the world into good states (those with legitimate orders based on liberal principles) and bad states (just about everything else) and blame most if not all the world’s problems on the latter. They believe that if every country were a well-established liberal democracy, conflicts of interest would fade into insignificance and the scourge of war would disappear. Liberals also place considerable weight on the importance of norms and institutions—which underpin the vaunted rules-based order—and frequently accuse non-liberal states of violating them with callous disregard.

This view of international affairs is undeniably appealing. Instead of seeing relations between states as a relentless struggle for power and position, liberalism offers a seductive vision of forward progress, moral clarity, and a positive program for action. It allows Americans (and their closest allies) to tell themselves that what’s good for them will be good for everyone else as well. Just keep enlarging the liberal order and eventually perpetual peace will emerge in an increasingly prosperous and just world. Moreover, what’s the alternative? Does anyone really want to defend the arbitrary exercise of power, the suppression of freedom, or the claim that powerful actors can do whatever they want?

Unfortunately, the liberal perspective suffers from at least two serious flaws.

The first problem is liberalism’s universalist pretensions. Because they are founded on the claim that every human being everywhere has certain inalienable rights, liberal states tend to be crusaders who see foreign policy as an all-or-nothing struggle between good and evil. George W. Bush trumpeted this view in his second inaugural address, when he proclaimed that the ultimate goal of American foreign policy was “ending tyranny in our world.” Why was this necessary? Because “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” If put into practice, however, this policy would guarantee unending conflict with countries that have different traditions, values, and political systems. These convictions can also encourage a dangerous overconfidence: If one is fighting on the side of the angels and swimming with the tides of history, it is easy to assume that victory is inevitable and won’t be that hard to achieve.

Moreover, if world politics is a Manichean clash between good and evil with humanity’s future in the balance, there are no limits on where you must be willing to fight and little reason to act with restraint. As Sen. Barry Goldwater put it in his unsuccessful campaign for president in 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. … Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” This same mindset is present today in the overheated rhetoric of Ukraine’s loudest liberal and neo-conservative defenders, who are quick to attack anyone with a different view of the conflict as an appeaser, a defender of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or worse.

The second problem is the fragility of these liberal convictions when they are put to the test, as President Joe Biden’s decision to give cluster munitions to Ukraine demonstrates. If the (evil) enemy proves more resilient than expected and victory does not come quickly, then self-proclaimed liberals will begin to embrace policies or partners that they might shun in better times. George W. Bush may have extolled the virtues of liberty, but his administration also tortured prisoners. As the Forward has reported, a more recent case in point is the June 2023 visit to Stanford University by representatives from the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian militia with a well-documented Nazi and white supremacist past. Putin’s claims that Ukraine needs to be de-Nazified are exaggerated, but the willingness of outspoken liberals such as Michael McFaul or Francis Fukuyama to welcome Azov representatives to Stanford shows a remarkable ethical flexibility.

Politics is the art of the possible, of course, and sometimes moral convictions must be compromised to achieve larger aims. The United States allied with Stalinist Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, for example, and this sort of ethical expediency is widespread. As Alexander Downes shows in his exhaustive study of civilian targeting, democracies are often just as willing to kill civilians as their authoritarian counterparts, and to do so deliberately. The British waged a brutal counterinsurgency campaign during the Second Boer War, the Allied blockade in World War I starved Germany’s civilian population, and the United States and Great Britain purposely bombed civilian targets during World War II (including the use of two atomic bombs on Japan). The United States later dropped nearly 6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam during the war there (roughly three times what it had dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II), including deliberate attacks on Vietnamese cities, and its “sanctions-happy” foreign policy has harmed civilians in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. And when liberal states (or their allies) commit war crimes or atrocities, often their first instinct is to cover them up and deny responsibility.

Such behavior is no surprise to realists, of course, who emphasize that the absence of a central authority in world politics forces states to worry about their security and sometimes leads them to act aggressively toward other states because they have convinced themselves that doing so will make them safer. This familiar tendency doesn’t make it right or excuse the excesses that both democracies and autocracies sometimes commit, but it does help us understand why the distinction between “good” liberal states and “bad” autocracies is not as clear-cut as liberals maintain.

Indeed, a good case can be made that well-meaning liberal crusaders are responsible for a lot more trouble than those allegedly cold-hearted, amoral realists.

Vir: Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy