Hoboken Group: Signs of the Apocalypse?

29 April 2008

Aldous said...: 1. Zakaria's wrong to cast the two main strands in the American foreign policy establishment as neoconservatism and realism (later, he calls them the main strands in the Republican FP establishment, which is probably more accurate). I think of neoconservatism as a relatively minor player, given unfortunate prominence by the current administration's behavior. But at best it has been maybe a third wheel between the dueling realists and liberal internationalists (who have, admittedly, been on the retreat since the Iraq quagmire began).

Indeed, I would side with certain Schmitt scholars in arguing that "neoconservative" foreign policy is simply taking liberal internationalism to (one of its) logical extreme.

2. "The single most important security problem that the United States faces is securing loose nuclear materials." Zakaria's view here is that cooperation with Russia is necessary to meet this highest security end - securing loose nuclear material.

Perhaps it's John Mueller's influence here but while I agree on the need to engage with Russia there must be a better reason than securing loose nuclear materials, which pose a severe but massively unlikely threat.; April 30, 2008 at 10:03 AM

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