Faith-based Adventurism

In a post earlier today, conservative Greg Djerejian responded to a Hugh Hewitt taunt that he had become a "weak-kneed" appeaser:

Hugh, all rapture-like, appears keen for the coming of the
apocalypse, replete with the US marching heroically into
Damascus and Teheran next (it's WWIII!). But there's a little
problem with all this Hugh. We're bogged down in Iraq, where
a low-grade civil war could get much worse in a hurry, and
where we've lost almost 3,000 men, and, more generally,
Bush's ill-fated messianic, neo-Wilsonian naiveties (presto,
elections!) have not worked in Palestine, have not worked in
Iraq--nor are moderating impulses afoot in Egypt, or Lebanon,
or Iran, or Syria. All Hugh is offering, really, is faith-based
adventurism, really just a bogus, non-strategy.

Hard to quibble with that. I mention it because Greg's use of the term "faith-based adventurism" really leapt out at me. I can't think of a better way to describe the prevailing conservative foreign policy paradigm. Though Greg used the term to describe the largely inconsequential Hugh Hewitt, it just as accurately describes all of today's most influential conservative pundits, people like Bill Kristol, Mark Steyn, Charles Krauthammer, and virtually everyone at the National Review (except John Derbyshire).

For some time now, conservative foreign policy rhetoric has consisted of little more than knee-jerk hawkishness coupled with an almost pathological inability to internalize certain basic realities of our world, like the fact that we have limited military resources and that history, like the weather, is very difficult to predict or control.

The Bill Kristols of the world are convinced that any foreign policy goal can be accomplished through the proper application of force and will. Consequently, they have little patience for diplomacy and little interest in serious strategic thinking. After all, why bother thinking ten moves ahead in a chess game if you believe the pieces can move wherever you will them to?

That this type of faith-based lunacy has infected conservative foreign policy thinking should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the evolution of conservative thought in other areas, particularly fiscal policy.

For years now, GOP fiscal policy has consisted of little more than a faith-based belief in the magical power of tax cuts. According to nearly every GOP politician (and no respectable economist), tax cuts pay for themselves. They are intrinsically good. Cutting taxes is the proper policy in times of prosperity and recession, in times of surplus and deficit, in times of peace and war. And of course, tax cuts benefit the least among us, even when they are targeted to the uber-rich.

It reminds me of a character Steve Martin used to play on SNL, the medieval barber, who believed that any illness or injury could be cured with a good blood-letting. These beliefs are unshakable, impervious to logic and countervailing empirical evidence.

Just this week, conservatives trumpeted evidence that tax revenues had exceeded artificially low government projections as evidence of the benefits of Bush's tax cuts. Of course, no one mentioned the fact that tax revenues are still much lower than they would have been absent the tax cuts and that we're still running a near record deficit. And now the Wall Street Journal has a story (h/t Ezra Klein) detailing how the increase in revenue over projections was not caused by economic growth, but rather is a byproduct of increased economic inequality (the rich are getting richer and they pay higher rates). But alas, these inconvenient facts will not be allowed to spoil a perfectly good faith-based doctrine.

Unfortunately, you can only run the country like Enron for so long. Eventually reality catches up with you, and the results usually aren't pretty. We're already seeing that happen with respect to the GOP's faith-based foreign policy, and the result is an intractable mess. Of course, if you tell that to a member of the faith-based foreign policy community, they've already got an explanation ready: they'll look you in the eye and tell you that the policy would have worked if only people had had more faith.*

*Postscript: I remember reading an article or post recently that made a very similar point regarding Kristol, but for the life of me, I can't remember where I read it. If anyone knows what article I'm talking about, please let me know by comment or email. I'd like to provide proper attribution.

UPDATE: Okay, now I remember who made this point. It was Matthew Yglesias, and he's now fleshed it out even more in an article for the The American Prospect. Here's the key passage:

Hawks seem to have convinced themselves that American
military might is like a power ring -- capable of achieving
anything if only we have sufficient will. There are no objective
limits to our capacities, no sticky situations that need to be
handled cautiously, no awkward compromises to be brokered,
and no stuff we’re just going to have to live with in the hopes
that things will change for the better down the road. There
are only goals, force, and will, and the only relevant question
in any situation is whether we have the will to achieve our
goals with force.

The tragedy of this theory is that, like all the really bad
theories, it’s never refuted by events. Sane people are a bit
chastened by Iraq. Having watched the country make a
very high-stakes gamble in Mesopotamia only to have it
blow up in our faces, we’re disinclined to do it all over again
on the hopes that this time we’ve correctly identified which
leader is the “real problem” and whose population will
welcome us with flowers and sweets. To the hawks, though,
the answer to every problem is more will, more force.