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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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In this framework I'd say Iraq was hawkish internationalists using 9/11 to pull one over on Hawkish nationalists and get them to do a democracy/market access war that didn't really have much to do with national security. Ukraine is an alliance of dovish and hawkish internationalists that defends an international principle (no annexation of territory in Europe) without U.S. troops. My dovish nationalist Mennonite uncle is opposed because nothing is worth the risk of nuclear war and the young conservatives hawkish nationalists I know are opposed because it's money spent on something that has no obvious benefit to America.

But I don't think it's really that simple. The polarization over Russia post Trump and the legacy of the Cold War probably has a lot to do with why there's an age divide among conservative people I know. Older ones fantasize about America wiping the floor with the corrupt Russian army and the younger ones complain about the cost of foreign aid.

Broadly speaking, I agree (though I might characterize a few of the details differently). One thing to note, though, is that Hamiltonians are not simply "dovish internationalists." They are an American tradition of free-market, business-oriented dovish internationalists; a hypothetical French tradition of dovish internationalism might not have the same trade/economic focus.

IMO, GWB campaigned as more of a Hamiltonian--he made public comments about returning to a "humble foreign policy" in reaction to the Wilsonian bombast of the Clinton presidency. 9/11 changed rather a lot very dramatically, and the immediate Jacksonian demand by the public to do something about Osama bin Laden led to Afghanistan, and the second generation of neoconservative Wilsonians in his administration were a significant factor in getting involved with Iraq. I'd caution against painting Iraq as monocausal, though; there were several goals and motivations involved, some of them at odds with others.

Obama is an odd case; I think he's a relatively rare example of a Jeffersonian President. The problem with that combination is that foreign policy is one of the strongest points of Presidential power, and Jeffersonians are disinclined to wield foreign policy influence, so you have to refuse the temptation to pick up the hammer that is right there and go in search of nails. This is not to say that Jeffersonians are rare--they just show up more often in Congress or think tanks. Also, Obama's administration was not Jeffersonian; a major example that points out these tensions was Libya, where the combined force of Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice lobbied internally to support the French in the face of Obama's initial indifference.