Paul Berman, in Tablet, offers part two of his three-part series on the American Left. In the first part, he looked at the growth of left antisemitism in the UK and France, and wondered if the same fate awaits the left in America. This time he takes a more general look at the foreign policy of the left, taking as his cue Michael Walzer's latest book A Foreign Policy for the Left.
Walzer pictures the cluster of assumptions and beliefs as a default setting on a computer, which goes automatically into operation as soon as the machine is booted up. The question of world affairs arises, and the left-wing public responds by thinking: “Everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.” No elaboration seems required. From that one assumption follow all the others. The assumption about everything being America’s fault carries the implication that American power, in addition to being sinister, is limitless; and the further implication that everyone else’s power adds up to naught. Alternatively, the assumption carries the implication that, even if American power does have limits, America’s arrogance does not. And, by failing to recognize the limits of its capabilities, arrogant America wreaks its damage by clumsily staggering from blunder to blunder. Less power for the superpower should be the left-wing goal, and more power for powerless international institutions. Whenever a terrible emergency becomes visible somewhere around the world, the responsibility for dealing with it should fall to the international institutions, and not to the unilateral, uncontrolled, piratical, and imperialistic United States.
It may be that, as Walzer observes, no one on the American left actually puts any faith in the abilities of the United Nations or the International Criminal Court or any other international institution. Yet the American left, in its default mode, looks to the U.N. and the ICC anyway, and this is odd. Walzer detects a touch of make-believe in the left-wing enthusiasm for those particular institutions, which he describes as a “politics of pretending.” A politics of pretending implies a dishonesty. In Walzer’s analysis, a streak of dishonesty, too, figures in the left-wing default.
Sometimes a broad public on the American left gazes upon authoritarian political movements and dreadful dictators in distant corners of the universe and likes to imagine that, far from being authoritarian or dictatorial, the movements and the dictators are boldly progressive, superior perhaps even to the U.N. and the ICC—though Walzer suggests that, in their inner thoughts, a great many people do know better. But they go on proclaiming their political fantasy, anyway, which amounts to an additional twist on the “politics of pretending.”
There is the spectacular instance of left-wing delusion about the Islamist political movement—the left-wing supposition that something has got to be progressive about the Islamists, even if the Islamists appear to be medieval reactionaries; and the further supposition that Islamism’s enemies among Muslims and non-Muslims alike must surely be the actual reactionaries, even when the enemies appear to be liberals and progressives. Here is a “politics of pretending” in a double-twist pretzel version. Walzer’s chapter on this theme, “Islamism and the Left,” brings him to the edge of his patience, though not beyond (given that inexhaustible patience appears to be a philosophical principle, for him).
Only, why would large numbers of idealistic-minded people on the American left want to engage in this sort of foreign-affairs make-believe? What is the appeal in it? The appeal is to avoid thinking about the world beyond the United States. The same American left that puts serious thought into social and economic conditions at home cannot be bothered to put any thought at all into problems and conditions abroad. “Leftist inwardness” is the spirit. It is a provincialism that calls itself idealism.
Berman goes on to consider Bernie Sanders, the obvious candidate to take the American left on the same journey that Corbyn and his Momentum pals have been taking the left in the UK - in particular, in this context, towards the anti-Zionism that now characterises the new radical left. And yet...despite his standard left rhetoric about the wicked US and the Iraq War disaster, and despite the best efforts of some of his comrades in the struggle like Linda Sarsour, Bernie hasn't quite committed himself yet to the full-on "From-the-river-to-the-sea-Palestine-will-be-free" BDS package.
Read on to find out how Churchill, and America First, and the struggle against oligarchic authoritarianism fit into the argument. As always with Paul Berman, it's a stimulating ride.