Forget the Middle East. Mitchell Plitnick, in Friday's Souciant.
Love the device of pivoting off Pat Buchanan's discourse. He's a perfectly fearless voice of early 20th C Euro-American ethnic imperialism. And, as an American, I admire Plitnick's effort to lead the reader to stand outside of his or her identification with a nation-state. Power is derived from the people, but what are we to do about the cruel and absurd design of its present forms. Do we just reach for the popcorn and watch the crash in HD? Or what? We need to see our agency. Faith is the source of a belief that the work of building more equitable institutions for the human community is joyful.
I think Buchanan is well aware of the US' agency, and he's a very well educated man on these issues, so I don't think that what he says can ever be attributed to ignorance. I remember several years ago hearing an interview with Condoleeza Rice during the time she was Sec'y of State. In the interview she was asked about some seemilgy apparent American hypocrisy, and her reply was something to the effect of "Diplomacy isn't about making people happy; it's about getting the best deal for the US." I think that's the issue here. Some people see humanitarianism as the goal of international politicking, and others see self preservation as the goal. Buchanan falls squarely into the latter camp. It's an absolutely fundamental difference in philosophy that can't be reconciled by any amount of argument.
Couple of things about your use of the term humanitarianism. First, while it is true that 'some people' might try to use a concept of humanitarianism to evaluate diplomatic objectives, I don't recall Plitnick using the term this way. He does speak of democracy and ethics and morals. While these might arguably fall into a common category of humanitarian concerns, they are of a very different character than, for example, distributing food or medicine, ie run of the mill humanitarianism. Second, I reject the legitimacy of analyses that would pit so-called humanitarianism (or, more precisely: morality, ethics and democracy) against self-preservation. The phenomenon of blowback, or radicalization in response to drone strikes and collateral damage, is a clear example of how the preservation of US institutions and its alleged republican values are put at increased risk by actions of dubious morality and ethics. Or to illustrate the problem a different way, why should self-preservation be inherently anti-humanitarian, immoral, unethical and opposed to democracy? Isn't it plausible that self-preservation in the face of global crises actually requires greater ethical facility and a more democratic distribution of resources and local agency than the short term financialization, resource extraction, and militarization policies we have now? There may be differences of philosophy that cannot be reconciled in regard to these matters, but I'm afraid you obscured them with the particular opposition you offered.
I was amused by it as well, but probably for different reasons. He accuses Pat being simplistic by jumping from Sykes to modern day while he ignores the very different American policy positions from pre and post cold war, basically lumping them together. He basically does exactly what he criticizes Pat for.