Clive Davis

SELF-CONTAINED

John Lukacs's biography of George Kennan receives a generally positive review from James Traub. Not that Lukacs's portrait of the arch-realist is all that attractive:

He is honest about Kennan’s defects of thought; and yet he seems unwilling fully to accept what they imply about the man’s nature. Kennan made no secret of his low regard for the wisdom of the common man, and thus for the practice of a so-called democratic, as opposed to a professional, foreign policy. But Lukacs also notes that in the late ’30s — as Hitler’s Germany rose to power — Kennan began writing a book proposing that America adopt a more authoritarian model of government in which both immigration and suffrage would be curtailed. Kennan could not bring himself to despise Germany before, during or after the war. He was, on the other hand, "enraged" by Washington’s clumsy attempt to acquire bases in the Azores.

The predicament of ordinary people seems not to have moved him much. Lukacs quotes Kennan’s own memoirs to the effect that when the Wehrmacht marched into Prague, Kennan, then serving as a high-ranking diplomat, turned away the desperate Americans, "including a Jewish acquaintance," who came to the American legation. Lukacs characterizes this nonchalance as "cold," not "callous". Is there a difference?

While the Washington Post's notice runs along similar lines, the National Interest is much more sympathetic, even if it does reinforce the impression that Kennan was a man born into the wrong era:

For the landmark CNN documentary series on the Cold War in the 1990s, convincing Kennan to sit for a television interview was no easy task—he never owned a television and reviled the medium and its impact on American society.

SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG MICROPHONE

Alex Massie has some useful advice for American politicians:

Voters and interested parties around the globe hear everything the President or the leading contenders to succeed Bush say. You can no longer say one thing for domestic consumption and another for a foreign audience... Now for a spot of special pleading! Candidates for the Presidency might want to rethink how they deal with the foreign press. No-one expects McCain or Clinton or whoever to grant the same level of access to the foreign press they reserve for the NYT or WaPo, but a little more consideration and tact would go a long way.

IN DEFENCE OF WOLFOWITZ, MOSTLY

Christopher Hitchens assails "the ravenous pseudo-moralists" who want the World Bank president to step down. Bronwen Maddox, of the Times, also thinks the scandal is much ado about nothing.  The Foreign Policy blog, however, begs to differ.

FROTHING

The Times's Robbie Millen doesn't mince his words about certain American commentators:

It's a crass trait of the American Right... to lump all of Europe - from France to Poland - together as one single cheese-eating, surrender monkey entity. You'd have thought that Iraq might have taught US conservatives that "Abroad" is a little bit more complicated than that.

Well said. Want another example of unhinged transatlantic punditry? Here's transplanted Brit, John Derbyshire wondering why Tony Blair didn't send gunboats into the streets of Teheran in order to teach Johnny Foreigner a lesson:

What on earth has happened to the British? What has happened is multiculturalism.  The British no longer feel that contempt for other nations that sustained them for so many centuries.  Or, if they feel it, they guiltily suppress that feeling, as being flagitiously "racist."

He also thinks the sailors who allowed themselves to be paraded on TV should be court-martialled, "with shooting definitely an option." Yes, really. Now, you can have all sorts of debates about the rights and wrongs of multiculturalism (I'm not at all convinced that the American version is really superior to ours, to be honest.) But doesn't it at least occur to Derbyshire that there were more complicated forces at work in this particular crisis? As for the decline of the fine sense of contempt for other nations, well, I suppose education, package holidays, David Attenborough and LiveAid, among many other things, put paid to all that. A fine thing too. Instapundit linked approvingly to Derbyshire's piece. Enuff said. When it comes to matters European, most right-wing American blogs are far interested in scare-mongering than trying to work out what's really happening.

THE OTHER WORLD CITY

As New York and London wage their battle for the title of number one city on the planet (my hedge funds are bigger than your hedge funds, etc, etc) the FT's Gideon Rachman re-charges his batteries on a trip to humble DC:

As I come to the end of a week in Washington, my overwhelming impression is how incredibly outward-looking intellectual life is in this city compared with London – despite the fact that London flatters itself that it is now the world’s most international city.

On Monday I went to a speaker-meeting at the New American Foundation – one of the plethora of DC-based think tanks, dealing with world affairs. The subject was the future of Pakistan and the speaker was a prominent Pakistani journalist. The room was packed. By contrast, I remember going to a speaker-meeting in London about a year ago with a much more obviously star-studded cast – Bill Kristol, a key neoconservative thinker; Tariq Ramadan, a central figure in the debate about Europe and Islam; and Phil Gordon, one of the leading experts on US foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. The meeting attracted maybe 30 people. You could get more people than that to turn up and listen to the deputy head of the OSCE, in Washington.

Or take book sales: Edward Luce, the FT’s Washington bureau chief, recently published a much-acclaimed book on India. You might expect it to do best in Britain - given that Luce is a Brit and given the historical connections between India and the UK. Not at all – "In Spite of the Gods" has sold about 5,000 copies in Britain and almost 30,000 in the US. Britain is interested in India all right – but the interest is essentially backward-looking and nostalgic. I’m sure if Ed had written a book about how his granny shot tigers while riding an elephant through Jaipur, it would have been a huge hit in Britain.

THE ALLIES & THE INQUEST

Harsh words from The Spectator on the consequences of the friendly-fire incident:

It is demeaning for a nation such as Britain to commit its "hard power" — a euphemism for military force — to help another, mightier country when its reward for doing so is, in the eyes of the public, indifference and disdain. If America expects Britain to remain its principal ally, it cannot take its support for granted. It must deploy its own "soft power" — diplomacy, tact, the readiness to be flexible — much more generously.

There is little grasp in Washington of the resentment felt in this country by people who are instinctively pro-American but also rightly reluctant for Britain to be treated as the 51st State, a ploddingly dependable Delaware off the coast of mainland Europe... Each time America treats its most trusted ally in this way, the harder it becomes for Atlanticists to take a stand against those who, in increasing numbers, would like to see Britain put some distance between itself and the US. [My emphasis]

It is no accident that Gordon Brown and David Cameron are using cooler language than Mr Blair to describe the "special relationship". Neither is anti-American, but both are politicians. They see the way the wind is blowing. If America wants these gusts of resentment to subside, it must learn the lessons of this inquest, concede that it was wrong to treat L/Cpl Hull’s widow as it did, and recognise that a true relationship of partners is held together by respect and concession rather than by the expectation of unconditional obedience.

At which point I normally receive a comment from at least one reader along the lines of "Stop whining, you ungrateful Limeys..."

THE FRUITS OF GOP "DIPLOMACY"

After six years of your ineptitude and blustering, don't be surprised if your main allies in the Conservative Party decide the time has come to cultivate friends elsewhere:

William Hague has urged the government to do more to improve relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region and not focus so heavily on the US. In a keynote speech on foreign policy, the Conservative shadow foreign secretary will call on the government to "recover the art of managing the [US-UK] relationship well".

Mr Hague will refer to Britain under Tony Blair's government as the "junior partner" in the relationship with Washington and questioned the influence London has on its neighbour. He will suggest that the fact that it "has taken so long to secure American commitment" over technology sharing for the development of the Joint-Strike Fighter plane, coupled with Britain's apparent lack of influence on the US strategy in Iraq, bears such a position out.

ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY ON THE MARCH

When I first read Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom, he seemed overly pessimistic about the chances of promoting the D-word around the globe. Three years on, his arguments look more persuasive. Events, dear boy, events... More in his latest Newsweek column:

The basic problem confronting the developing world today is not an absence of democracy but an absence of governance. From Iraq to the Palestinian territories to Nigeria to Haiti, this is the cancer that is eating away at the lives of people across the globe, plunging countries into chaos, putting citizens' lives and livelihoods at risk. It is what American foreign policy should be focused on. But the president's freedom agenda sees the entire complex process of political and economic development through one simple lens, which produces bad analysis and bad outcomes...

The administration now rewards democracies with aid. But why not have a more meaningful measure? Why not reward countries when they protect human rights, reduce corruption and increase the quality of governance?

"Our aid should be conditional on absolute standards," says [Larry] Diamond. "The European Union has forced change on countries that want to join it by demanding real progress on tough issues."

An administration that thinks of itself as tough has been almost romantic in its views of the world. There is good and evil out there. But there is also competence and incompetence...

GLOBAL VISION

At a bleak moment like this, I really do wish Robert Kagan could be made some sort of roving ambassador for the US. He talks like a man who has spent time out in the real world. We don't hear enough from him. Here he is in the FT:

Americans do pursue their selfish interests and ambitions, sometimes brutally, as other nations have throughout history. Nor are they innocent of hypocrisy, masking selfishness behind claims of virtue. But Americans have always had this unique spur to global involvement, an ideological righteousness that inclines them to meddle in the affairs of others, to seek change, to insist on imposing their avowed "universal principles" usually through peaceful pressures but sometimes through war.

This enduring tradition has led Americans into some disasters where they have done more harm than good, and into triumphs where they have done more good than harm. These days, this conviction is strangely called "neo-conservatism", but there is nothing "neo" and certainly nothing conservative about it.

He'll be answering questions on Tuesday. You can post yours now.

PS: His brother, Fred, is exceedingly unenthusiastic about the Hamilton-Baker recommendations:

The report basically punts on the most important issue of the day--establishing security in Iraq. All of the pious exhortations to get Iraqis to sit down with one another, to engage Iran and Syria and to find political compromises are meaningless if we are unable to stem the tide of bloodshed that now engulfs much of Baghdad and Anbar province.

ANYTHING TO DECLARE?

Another e-mail on sour-faced officialdom at airports:

Surely a discussion between Americans and Europeans about the relative awfulness of the immigration experience is the definition of pointless - neither of you can possibly know what the other is talking about. As someone with neither an EU nor a US passport, my experience has been that Heathrow is worse than any of the US airports I've arrived at (although London City is almost pleasant, and 'London' Stanstead about average).

I used to joke about the UK's "Prevention of Tourism Act" when lined up with Japanese and US visitors just dying to inject money into the local economy but being detained by a hostile and suspicious line of questioning from the unsmiling and sloppily-dressed officials. (I don't use the joke so much now...)

I'm willing to believe that my experiences are conditioned by who I am (what I look like, what passport I carry etc.) - but then, so will everyone's. But to condemn the US experience as uniquely unpleasant just does not match those experiences.

MORE: A slightly different angle, as the Atlantic Review picks up a  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung piece about America's service culture:

This combination of the pioneer spirit of helping your neighbour and the business practice of taking customer service seriously has developed into a type of openness which I would not hesitate to characterize as the realization of Kant's categorical imperative.

Then again, did Kant ever have to get through JFK on a busy Friday afternoon....?

Before I forget,  the Review will be running another of its blog carnivals of German-American Relations on December 11. Start scribbling now.