John Bolton’s Baby

I don’t really have much to add to Kevin Drum, Laura Rozen, Jesse Taylor, Digby, or Matt Yglesias on this. I tend to agree with Digby that this is likely the work of John Bolton, my favorite neocon, and the man whose personal touch helped move the North Korean nuclear program forward. The jist is that the administration has come out against verification procedures and capabilities in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

What are they thinking? Unclear. The verification procedures don’t touch the United States at all, so we’re beyond good realism. A realist loves international regimes when they restrict the behavior of other countries; said realist doesn’t put much trust in the institutions, but will take what she can get. This move seems more evocative of a profoundly confused form of “realism as ideology” that my students often cite. This involves believing that realism is an ideological program more than a descriptive theory. It completely misunderstands Kenneth Waltz, and even Hans Morgenthau; Morgenthau recognizes hard realities of the system, and wishes that liberal statesmen would as well, but isn’t interested in making the system more realist. The only serious theorist I can think of who esteems realism as a value is Carl Schmitt; given Schmitt’s influence on Strauss, and Strauss’ influence on this particular thread of American thought, this is perhaps not surprising.

The logic of this “confused realism” involves a specific misunderstanding of how realists think about international regimes. Realists don’t hate international organizations, they simply think that they’re ineffective. A true realist, in the Bismarckian or Kissingerian sense of the word, exploits an international regime to the best of her ability. This administration seems to believe that international institutions, particularly those touching on security concerns, are evil, even if they don’t specifically constrain the U.S.

To say that this is bizarre is a profound understatement.