The Conservative Revolutionary | Via Meadia - 0 views
blogs.the-american-interest.com/...the-conservative-revolutionary
revolution conservatism realism idealism foreign policy US Arab Spring
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Modern history teaches two great lessons about revolution: that revolutions are inevitable, and that a large majority of revolutions either fail or go bad. Americans almost instinctively look at revolutions in terms of our own past: the 1688 Glorious Revolution that made Parliament more powerful than the King in England, and the American Revolution that led in relatively short order to the establishment of a stable and constitutional government.
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Most revolutions don’t work like this at all. Many of them fail, with the old despots crushing dissent or making only cosmetic changes to the old system. (This happened in Austria in 1848 and something very like it may be happening in Egypt today.) Others move into radicalism, terror and mob rule before a new despot comes along to bring order — at least until the next futile and bloody revolutionary spasm. That was France’s history for almost 100 years after the storming of the Bastille. China, Russia and Iran all saw revolutions like this in the 20th century.
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the countries that had ‘velvet’ revolutions shared a number of important characteristics. They had or longed to have close political and cultural ties to the West. They wanted to join NATO and the EU, and had a reasonable confidence of doing so sooner rather than later. They could expect enormous amounts of aid and foreign direct investment if they continued along the path of democratic reform. They lay on the ‘western’ side of the ancient division of Europe between the Orthodox east and the Catholic/Protestant homeland of the modern liberal tradition.
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If realists ignore the inevitability of revolution, idealists close their eyes to the problems of revolutionary upheavals in societies that have difficult histories, deep social divisions, and poor short term economic prospects. Unfortunately the countries most likely to experience revolutions are usually the countries that lack the preconditions for Anglo-American style relatively peaceful revolutions that end with the establishment of stable constitutional order. If things were going well in those countries, they would not be having revolutions.
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The difficulty American policymakers have in coming to grips with the recurring phenomenon of foreign revolutions is rooted in America’s paradoxical world role. We are not just the world’s leading revolutionary nation; we are also the chief custodian of the international status quo. We are upholding the existing balance of power and the international system of finance and trade with one hand, but the American agenda in the world ultimately aims to transform rather than to defend.
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Revolutionary powers have a tougher job; building the future is harder work than holding on to the past. This is particularly true in the American case; the global transformation we seek is unparalleled for depth, complexity and scale.
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We are not sure how this revolutionary transformation works. We know that it involves liberal political change: governments of law rather than of men and legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed as measured in regular and free elections. We also know that involves intellectual and social change: traditional religious ideas must make room for the equality of the sexes and the rights of religious minorities. Property rights must be rooted in law and protected by an independent judicial system. While governments have a role in the economy, the mechanisms of the market must ultimately be allowed to work their way.
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We are trying to carry out a vast reordering of global society even as we preserve the stability of the international political order: we are trying to walk blindfolded on a tightrope across Niagara Falls — while changing our clothes.
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the United States has been doing two things for more than 200 years: getting foreign revolutions wrong, but somehow still pushing its global revolution forward. America’s success as a conservative revolutionary power on a global scale depends less on the clever policies of our presidents and our secretaries of state, and more on the creativity and dynamism of American society as a whole.