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America the exceptional

Lunch today was another double header, but a somewhat disappointing one.  The Center for American Progress event on American exceptionalism and the Brookings event on preventing political violence were solid reminders that American analysts do not always get it right.

At CAP, the issue was not so much whether America is exceptional–Bruce Jentleson, Robert Kagan and Nina Hachigian agreed it is–but what that should mean in today’s world.  Jentleson was at pains to emphasize that American exceptionalism should not be an anesthetic, as he implied the Republicans use it, but a stimulant.  We need less boasting (an “end to arrogance”) and more “besting,” that is less glorification of the past and more effort to compete in a more multipolar context.

Kagan, in the strangest statement of the event, said America is the only country whose nationalism is based only on ideology–in particular the ideology of the Declaration of Independence.  That may be true in the Foreign Service I served in, but not in a country where birthers question where the president was born and patriots fly the Confederate flag.  The question, he suggested, was not so much whether America is exceptional but whether it wants to continue to play the central role in the world order that we took on after World War II.

Hachigian, whose unflagging optimism is on good display in the book she wrote with Mona Sutphen, also asserted that America is exceptional geographically, economically and in the realm of ideas, but it is not infallible.  It has to find new ways to lead, getting others to take on more responsibility and divising ways in which rivalry can lead to positive sum outcomes.

The panel gave the Obama administration a B in its efforts to find a new form of American exceptionalism, under the slogan “winning the future.”  Jentleson thought the aspirations to get cooperation from others have been often disappointed, and that Washington is still not listening to others enough.  Kagan thought it a big challenge to get cooperation in a period in which we are returning to greater nationalism and interstate conflict.  Hachigian gave the Adminiistration credit for learning as they go.

Why was I disappointed in all this?  I confess I left early and maybe it got better.  I personally am strongly attached to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, but I don’t really think America is in any absolute sense exceptional.  We need to remember that the document was written by a slave owner who didn’t even free his mistress on his death.  We are imperfect practitioners of our fabulous ideals.

And sometimes other people are practitioners of them.  Kagan was comfortable asserting that nothing in the world really happens without us.  I think he must be living in a universe different from mine.  The only Arab  rebellion going really badly at the moment is the one we are engaged in.

The fact is that much of the world is adopting our ideals and even practicing them.  And other parts of the world are doing well without adopting American ideals.  We are in relative economic, political and likely military decline.  Our geographic advantages mean less than they did 200 years ago, and our cultural and educational supremacy is long gone, if it ever existed.  No presidential candidate can talk that way, but any president will have to deal with the consequences, which have broad policy and budgetary implications.  More on that when I get to the Defense Department budget, hopefully tomorrow.

Read the next piece up for my second lunchtime event on preventing political violence.