Deja Vu, all over again

If Libya is giving you Iraq flashbacks, Stephen Walt has your back:

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power — and especially its military power — can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

So if you're baffled by how Mr. "Change You Can Believe In" morphed into Mr. "More of the Same," you shouldn't really be surprised. George Bush left in disgrace and Barack Obama took his place, but he brought with him a group of foreign policy advisors whose basic world views were not that different from the people they were replacing. I'm not saying their attitudes were identical, but the similarities are probably more important than the areas of disagreement. Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who realized how many issues were basically off the table at the last election. The Iraq invasion? Both major parties were in all the way. It's darkly hilarious when Cameron and Osborne accuse Labour of being asleep at the switch when it came to regulation (they were) when the Tories kept saying they weren't de-regulating enough. That was how the financial crisis, the biggest failure of neo-liberal ideas since the great depression, brought in a government even more committed to those ideas than the last one.

It is this consensus that threatens democracy in America (and to a lesser extent, here) far more than any of the petty tyrants we're told to be afraid of. The added dimension in America is the gigantic national security state that now answers effectively to no one. It makes politicians company men/women no matter what letter is in front of their names. That's why torture may have been outlawed, but will not be punished, guantanamo remains open, and men are still being held indefinitely without trial. There is a consensus in American elite that the country must run the world; the points of disagreement are all around when/where to throw their weight around.

Well, at least no one is talking about weapons of mass destruction:

There is no perfect formula for military intervention. It must be used sparingly — not in Bahrain or Yemen, even though we condemn the violence against protesters in both countries. Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism. If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world.

Oh crap.