Ali Eteraz throws down the gauntlet between “Truman Democrats” and the “Isolationist Left,” offering up most of the classic tropes of the genre. In particular, there’s the always odd “woe-is-me” tone in which the soi disant Trumanites are cast in the role of oppressed minority though they continue to control such institutions as the House and Senate foreign affairs committees and had much more influence several years ago before their worldview became unpopular because they advocated a ruinous war in Iraq. Let’s focus, though, on the characterization of the disagreement here and the nature of the alleged isolationist menace:

Here are the six foreign policy “principles” that define a Truman Democrat: American exceptionalism, the use of force, American hegemony, the world community, liberal-mindedness, and helping the least well off. Today’s Isolationist Left rejects the first three of those without a thought (because they are presumed to be solely belonging to the Neo-Cons) The other three are accepted as long as they do not require having to affirm any of the first three principles.

The implication that non-Trumanites are all blanket pacifists (name one: Al Gore? Carl Levin?) is unworthy of serious debate. I’m not sure what American exceptionalism is supposed to mean in this context. The contention then, amounts to the idea that US foreign policy faces a stark excluded-middle choice between the pursuit of American hegemony and a policy of isolationism. Obviously, it’s true that the pursuit of hegemony is not “solely belonging to the Neo-Cons,” as Eteraz makes clear this is the common platform of neoconservative Republicans and self-described Trumanites. But is it true that the only alternative policy is isolationism?

I would say “no.” The alternative to hegemonism and isolationism is, well, liberalism a policy of global engagement based on the attempt to create and sustain a liberal world order. To take a specific example, for the United States to join the International Criminal Court would be neither an isolationist policy nor a hegemonic one, but rather a liberal policy in which we submit to an egalitarian framework of rules and cooperate with others in the effort the enforce those rules. Generally speaking, the concept of cooperation is what’s missing from the “Trumanite” world-view. It requires a strange paucity of imagination to fail to see alternatives to either coercively dominating foreigners or ignoring their existence. The alternative, broadly construed, is to recognize that politics between nations is not a zero-sum enterprise and that we should generally attempt to locate potential positive-sum interactions and realize them in a cooperative manner.

I note that “Trumanite” hegemonism has relatively little relationship with the policies of Harry Truman. Faced with a Soviet Union aiming at world domination, Truman naturally chose to resist those efforts. Within the broad swathe of the world not already subjected to Soviet domination, however, Truman did not seek to simply implement American domination. Rather, he constructed an alternative vision of a liberal community of nations featuring complex forms of cooperation between states within the framework of liberal institutions like NATO and the EU. The collapse of the Soviet Union creates, in essence, a fork in the road. The United States can either seek to fill the void with unipolar hegemony, or else it can seek to expand the scope of the miniature liberal order created during the Cold War. The latter path would, I think, be more in the spirit of Truman’s policies and more suitable to the objective situation. Even if you disagree with that, however, the liberal alternative certainly isn’t isolationism, it’s liberalism and it would be nice if our co-partisans on the other side of the debate could at least do liberals the favor of not deliberately mischaracterizing our policies.

One point Kevin Drum has taken to making recently is that we shouldn’t complacently accept the idea that things are so terrible in Iraq right now that they currently really get worse and therefore we can afford to just keep drifting around, hoping things will miraculously improve and leaving the opportunity to cut our losses in the future. How could things get worse? Well, give Bing West a read. “When I spoked with Chiarelli, he was insistent that the armed Shiite militia must be dealt with,” he writes, “Prime Minister Maliki protests that he must take a political course to resolve the matter, especially with the radical Moktada Sadr and his Mahdi army. But the issue of Sadr is going to come to a head. Our military is not going to back off.”

But with more advisers to provide confidence and to approve key positions, the army—Shiite and Sunni—may hold the country together. General John P. Abizaid, who has commanded the Central Command throughout the insurgency, has assured the Congress that Prime Minister Maliki will move against the Shiite militias by February, and will emerge as a real leader, backing his army. Currently, the army has more allegiance to their advisers than to their government. The advisers are the ones who drive to Baghdad and wrest pay and food provisions from recalcitrant government ministries.

So where are we headed? Down two tracks: the one is the development under American advisers of the Iraqi security forces; the other is the emergence of a responsible Iraqi government. It may be that Abizaid is correct that Maliki is on the verge of a character-altering epiphany. But if Maliki is incapable of moving against the militias or offering reasonable terms for reconciliation, President Bush will face the choice of sticking with a failed democracy the U.S. created, or tolerating a behind-the-scenes power play by a fed-up Iraqi military.

West, demonstrating a rather blinkered perspective, thinks this is all to the good. The no-goodnik Maliki will be sidelined by a behind-the-scenes power play coup, and the awesome New Iraqi Army with its awesome American embeds and backed by the might of the American military will take care of business. I am, shall we say, less optimistic that that replacing Maliki is going to accomplish anything. But his point about divergent perspectives and the possibility of a coup is a sound one. After all, there’s something intrinsically odd about the idea of trying to bolster a fragile democracy by building incredibly effective domestic security forces. Historically, such forces are the main risk to democracy. Of course, in light of the insurgency a heavy emphasis on the domestic security service is understandable. But the combination of that focus with persistent policy disputes implies that a coup is likely.

And what of our general political position in Iraq then? Well, we’d have completely descended into playing a neo-colonial role with no fig leaf whatsoever. And we’d be fighting armed Shiite and Sunni groups simultaneously, along with a very thin layer of allies in the Iraqi Army. It would be, I think, a recipe for even more total disaster than what we have now. And this is what the elements of the US Army who haven’t given up are hoping will happen.

Augusto Pinochet, coup-leader and human rights abuser, is dead. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, also dead, was a big fan.

This week’s Two Minute Hate seems destined to be directed at ex-president Jimmy Carter who’s written a book called Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. I don’t like the title, either, and, frankly, don’t plan to read the book. Still, Leon Hadar (Via Jim Henley) seems to me to have the best overall take on this: “I’m not sure whether Carter doesn’t like Israelis or hates Jews but from my perspective, he would go down in history as someone who made a huge contribution to Israel’s security through his successful mediation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.”

Quite so. Compare this to the strategic “thinking” of Carter-hater Martin Peretz: “Baker has already informed us of what a successful negotiation between Israel and Syria would mean: a return of the Golan Heights to Damascus. Why would this satisfy the Syrians? They launched their war against Israel when they possessed the Heights. It was theirs.” By this “logic” of course, not only were Carter’s efforts on behalf of peace between Israel and Egypt misguided, but the Camp David Accords must have been impossible. After all, Egypt went to war with Israel when it already had the Sinai Peninsula, so how could Egypt possibly agree to peace in exchange for getting the Sinai back? Indeed, by Peretz’s line of reasoning it should be impossible, in general, for countries to stop fighting wars with each other — France and Germany would just be doomed to an endless series of armed conflicts.

Gordon Smith, staring electoral defeat in 2008 in the face, starts making sense on Iraq. It goes to show that you can’t really count on “sensible Republicans” to save the country. Instead, when progressive forces look strong enough to seriously threaten GOP politicians they’ll start acting more sensibly. Which is certainly a good thing, but simply shows the need to keep pressing the attack as hard as possible. Meanwhile, it’d be nice if more Democrats could bring themselves to at least meet the minimal Gordon Smith standard of political and substantive wisdom.