Checking out the latest issue of "Foreign Affairs"

Even Foreign Affairs apparently can't resist a bit of both-sides-do-it-ism when it comes to Trump's foreign policy. The latest issue (97:133; 2018) has a piece by political scientist Randall Schweller, "Three Cheers for Trump's Foreign Policy: What the Establishment Misses." It's about as enthusiastic a praise for Trump's policies as you're likely to find this side of Rudy Giulani.

And totally superficial. He writes that Trump's "worldview is fundamentally realist in nature." This about a guy who is a serial fabulist.

Schweller also seems to be completely clueless as to even the basics of how the US trade deficit works.

I guess it's useful in that its probably a more coherent statement of praise for Trump's foreign policy than we're likely to see out of the White House. Certainly not from Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

At least he doesn't talk about the Deep State. Instead he talks about "the Blob".

I think their standards at Foreign Affairs may be slipping a bit. Fun fact: Foreign Affairs first published 1910-1919 as The Journal of Race Development.

This tweet by Michael Toomey also works for me:

As soon as I thought about who would write something like this and get it published in Foreign Affairs, I clicked on the article and had my suspicions confirmed. Randall Schweller never fails to disappoint.

— Michael Toomey (@michaelfjtoomey) August 16, 2018

The issue also contains a piece by one-time End of History theorist Francis Fukayama, "Against Identity Politics: The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy." It reads like it was phoned in. But it's a weighty piece compared to Schweller's Trumpist true-believer screed.

Fukayama's article is actually a highbrow piece of liberal concern trolling. With the requisite complaining about how Mean Libruls pushed all this here political correctness stuff and thereby created the Trump white nationalist movement. Also strangers-in-their-own-land sympathies for the white working-class voters who feel ignored by the Mean Libruls and it really hurts their feelings.

Until recently, activists on the left had little to say about the burgeoning opioid crisis or the fate of children growing up in impoverished single-parent families in the rural United States. And the Democrats have put forward no ambitious strategies to deal with the potentially immense job losses that will accompany advancing automation or the income disparities that technology may bring to all Americans.

Both of which can scarcely be addressed with Republican free-market extremism. But Fukayama spins it as a unique problem for the Democrats.

The Mean Libruls are to blame, you see.

Someone should really explain to poor Fukayama that white backlash against minorities, progress, and good manners has been going on since approximately the day of Marse Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

History may have resumed. But Fukayama doesn't seem to have lost his faith in the endless virtues of neoliberal economics.

Conservative Big Thinker looks for new challenge

Scene: Two men in comfortable arm-chairs facing each other across a wooden coffee table, in what appears to be an old-fashioned men's club with dark paneled wood walls and tall bookshelves full of books. The older man has his hands folded, gazing thoughtfully as though into the distance, though only the bookshelf opposite meets his gaze. The younger man holds an iPhone toward which he stares intently while listening via earplugs.

The older man signals to a passing waiter: Charles, a third brandy, please.

CHARLES the waiter: Yes, sir, professor.

THE PROFESSOR, looking thoughtfully toward the ceiling: You know, Biff, back in the old days, we conservatives had Great Opponents. Marxists were everywhere, and their hell-spawn the New Deal and the Great Society. We were fighting a lonely battle, out there on the edge of the End of History. Then Reagan went to Berlin and told Gorbachev to tear down that wall. And he did. And the Iron Curtain fell.

BIFF, glancing up briefly: Oh, yeah, I heard them talking about that on FOX.

THE PROFESSOR, taking a brandy from the waiter: Then, we had won. Liberal democracy had triumphed. Everyone wanted to be like the United States. Everyone bought off on the idea that globalization and high tech meant we could roll back regulations and let speculators run wild. Then came 9/11 and everyone agreed that the US should run the world.

BIFF, glancing up more briefly: Uh, yeah. But aren't there some Communists still in China or somewhere?

THE PROFESSOR: Oh, yes, but they're really capitalists, and who really cares about the Chinese anyway? And there are probably some peasants out in India or the Andes or somewhere who make cranky complaints. But everyone loves the system because pretty much everybody's middle class and nobody cares that it's only the filthy rich that are really making out with this thing.

BIFF grunts.

THE PROFESSOR, warming to his subject: But look, Biff. Great Thinkers need Great Challenges. And we don't have any today. Sure, it's fun to sit around and say stuff about Marxists and liberals. It gets hard to remember the old arguments exactly, but nobody much notices when we change them around.

What we need is some new leftists around. Not for real of course, just for entertainment. And there are enough uneducated plebes out there still that could take them seriously. Of course, they need to stop talking about all this stuff about minority rights, we're all soooo tired of that. And this nonsense about women's needs and their rights to their icky bodies and all, nobody who matters takes that stuff seriously.

[Draining his glass:] And they need to forget about promoting unions and social security and health care and all that because we can't afford it any more. But they could complain that maybe sometimes the results of globalization aren't fair [chuckles]. And they could say we need better schools or something. Then we would have somebody new to argue with and we could produce Great Thoughts again.

BIFF [aside to audience]: Here I'm watching the best porno flick I've seen in months, and this old fart is trying to talk to me about politics or something? Why can't he just go back to sleep and ... Oh! Look at that!!

This is my dramatized summary version of Francis Fukuyama's article "The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class?" in the Jan/Feb 2012 Foreign Affairs. And this guy is considered one of the conservative Big Thinkers around these days.

Tags: francis fukuyama