Wretchard has written another typically fine and insightful post. I have to admit that I envy both his thinking and his writing.
The transnational liberal project and the dream of radical Islam are alike pursuits after a lost glories. In its eighth century heyday, Islam wielded a two-edged sword. Not only were their mobile tactics superior to those of the petty kingdoms around them, they brandished a creed and social structure which was in many ways superior to the barbarian modes which they encountered. Similarly, while Napoleon wielded the levees en masse; he rode on the greater wave of revolutionary France before whose ideas the dynastic houses of Europe trembled. But at the dawn of the 21st century, these two mighty blades had dwindled into single-edged fillets of rusted iron. Islam no longer the representative of a prosperous and tolerant society and the idea of France shrunken to a kind of petty socialism peopled with legions of pensioners.
I do have a few quibbles about the post. First, although I agree with him in his analysis of the transnational liberal project and that it is, indeed, as dead as the caliphate, can’t we come up with a better name than “transnational liberals”? There’s not much liberal about these Trotskyites and Maoists.
The truly terrifying thing about the American sword is that it is genuinely two-edged. The front edge consists of military power unparalleled in human history. Yet it is the weaker side; the back edge consists of a system with an an uncanny ability to absorb almost any sort of human, scientific and engineering potential and convert it into unimaginable wealth. The front edge is used but to ward; but it is the back edge that truly destroys rival societies. Osama Bin Laden struck New York first of all and the Pentagon only as a secondary target. The McDonald’s hamburger is hated by the French elite more ardently than any Nazi SS division. Both fear the back edge more than the front.
I think he sells our armament short. It’s not just a two-edged sword that we wield. The two edges he describes are military and economic—both are America’s hard power. But the real fear of both the tranzis and the radical Islamicists is American soft power: our ability to make people want what we want (freedom, democracy, and prosperity not to mention Britney Spears) and our ability to guide the discussion.
Osama bin Laden’s myrmidons should not have struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for these are not the source of our power.
It all depends on how you define “transnational liberal project.” If it means “Napoleonic revolutionary aspirations once endorsed by 20th century French nationalists,” I guess the Wretchard is right.
But who’s nostalgic about Napoleonic imperial ambitions? Not the French, not American liberals. I believe in the ideals of the”Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity.” I believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, but I’m not nostalgic for that historical era.
The transnational liberal project is no longer revolutionary. Nor is it backward looking. It’s about the rule of international law, the power of public health, and the equitable distribution of the world’s resources. Sometimes the project requires military force, through collaborative peacekeeping efforts. Perhaps most of all, it’s about marketing. That’s what people really mean when they talk about the diffusion of American ideals (which were shaped by the ideals of the French Revolution). It’s about convincing people of the possibilities and showing them that they’d rather be free, equal, and rational than subjugated, stratified and superstitious.