Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of The New Republic magazine, discussed the outlook of his new book, “The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again” on Wednesday.
Beinart began his talk by asserting what he sees as the unfortunate tendency of modern liberals to condescend, though conservatives at the current moment actually have stronger ideas. In the 1940s and 1950s, Beinart said, liberals were coherent and clear about matters of foreign policy, but it has been around that long since the Democratic Party has won an election contested on national security. Beinart focused on what, to him, is this lost liberal legacy and throughout his discussion compared the modern political situation to the political realities during the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
Beinart argued that the conservative anxiety represents Americans’ insecurity with themselves, as if we are inclined to self-doubt.
“There is nothing more threatening than not being as good as we say we are,” he said.
Thus, Beinart said, in America’s effort to proactively assert its confidence, the challenge is not to become an empire, for empires are only strong in semblance. Americans must make sure that countries under the U.S. sphere of influence have not lost their sovereignty, he said. Beinart maintained that America needs to convince others that what is good for it is good for them.
“We’re not just trying to change the world, but making sure that the world doesn’t change us,” he said.
This is a tendency manifested in the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, according to Beinart.
“George W. Bush discusses democracy as a finish line,” Beinart said. “But liberals of war in the past thought of American democracy as a constant struggle.”
Beinart went on to posit that it was for this reason that civil rights and anti-Communism were linked during the Cold War. President Bush, claimed Beinart, is stringent about democracy in the rest of the world, but not in his own country.
In this era of globalization, Beinart said, no region is isolated. He stressed that the United States needs to return to the liberal idea of international institutions. Moral progress, Beinart emphasized, equals moral reciprocity.
“Sermonizing about injustice is easy,” he warned. “Dealing with your own injustices is hard.”
In response to students’ questions, Beinart consistently maintained his more controversial beliefs. When asked about the war in Iraq, Beinart was upfront about his support of the war during the fall of 2002, when he thought Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. According to Beinart, once the evidentiary basis for this rationale had collapsed, he recognized he had erred.
“When you get something so big so wrong,” he said, “you’re forced to wrestle with the implications.”
Beinart said that in the wake of what he called the disillusioning war against Iraq, Americans have learned that their definition of freedom is not universally applicable.
In line with this thought, Beinart also addressed the proper uses of military power in the post-9/11 world. Beinart finds unilateral military intervention justified under some conditions, but stated that the balance between American military power and American soft power is out of sync.
“We have to reorganize our government so that we have new non-military ways to combat seriously this new wave of jihadist terrorism,” Beinart said.
Beinart ended his talk by discussing civic responsibilities in an increasingly globalized world. He stated that the problem with the concept of global citizenship is that there is no global civic duty, and that human beings respond more directly to tangible communities.
“We do have global responsibilities,” Beinart said. “But we live in concentric circles.”
Nicholaus Norvell ’07 noted Beinart’s assertiveness and frank style.
“He was pretty brave to come to Wesleyan and say just what he means,” Norvell said.
Jeff Wong ’08 took issue with the political content of the talk.
“I thought that he was a very good public speaker, but I disagreed with a lot of what he had to say,” Wong said. “I especially took issue with the fact that he said Lieberman was ‘right’ in his support of the first Gulf War, which is anything but widely accepted as a just war. I found it interesting that he believes that only ‘liberals’ can win the war on terror, but his idea of a ‘liberal’ seems to be quite hawkish.”
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