Anti-Climacus

'THESE THINGS': There's a lot to find hopelessly un-serious in Matt Yglesias' post on Sudan, not least of which his concerns over the lack of a good plan for how to go about intervening (Matt seems to be, so far as I can tell, assuming from the current absence of such a plan that no reasonable plan could ever be created). But what's really offensive is this part, listed among his reasons to oppose intervening in Darfur:

"The record of past humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo suggests that these things always wind up requiring more time and money than their advocates first state."

Now it's hard to pick out exactly which part of that statement is more repugnant: it's perhaps the fact that it breezily assumes that calculations of time and cost should go into figuring out whether or not we should bother to stop an ongoing slaughter (presumably, Matt's never heard of a moral imperative before--I can't figure out why else he would say this, because he does seem to at least accept the notion that we could, in fact, do something if we so chose), rather than, say, concretely doing what we can to stop the very worst and then worrying about how long it'll take to get the Sudan back on its feet.

Or perhaps its the way his treatment of humanitarian interventions seems to condescend to and 'otherize' the people who were helped. He seems very unable to muster even a basic amount of affinity (to say nothing of solidarity) with the people who ended up, you know, not dying because of what little we were willing to do. One wonders exactly what one has to do to be worth dealing with in the international realm in Matt Yglesias' conception of US foreign policy (pose a threat to national security--ed. Ah yes, well, it does all eventually have to be about me, doesn't it?*).

Or hey, if the US is too busy doing other things, why not have the UN do it? Ah yes:

"It seems that other major powers would, at the very best, grudgingly acquiesce in such a policy. They certainly won't take the lead in implementing it."

Well, obviously, something not being popular is a great reason not to do it.

Is this not just a really obvious instantiation of realism in foreign policy?

*not that national security reasons aren't valid, but claiming that as your foreign policy guiding principle is like saying having the economy grow will be your guiding domestic principle--completely uncontroversial, but not actually saying much of anything substantively