The legitimacy of liberalism

American foreign policy is built on double standards. One should have no problem in accepting this concept. The nature of international politics requires prioritizing difficult problems. If the Bush doctrine contradicts itself, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, it is only because it contains multitudes. "Double standards" are inescapable for so expansive a doctrine. Saying so doesn't undercut the dynamic force the Bush doctrine and, more generally, America exert in the world.\nRobert Cooper, a former adviser to Tony Blair, has written of the need for the postmodern world (i.e., the West) to come to grips with the hard truth that it cannot protect itself on the basis of law and order from what he calls the "modern and pre-modern zones" of the globe. "The challenge to the postmodern world," he contends, "is to get used to the idea of double standards."\nBy no means is this an argument to remain complacent at the inconsistencies inherent in U.S. foreign policy. On the contrary, we should have more tools at our disposal to pressure or coerce our numerous enemies. There are many regimes seeking to constrict liberalism's reach. To my point, then. These regimes need to be confronted, and doing so requires not the intrinsic democratic illegitimacy of the United Nations but rather America's own revolutionary principles.\nAnd lest critics of the Bush doctrine forget, they indulge in a fair amount of contradiction themselves. The nonpacifists among them argue America should end the genocide in Sudan. General Omar Bashir's stone-age dictatorship, I agree, needs to be deposed. But imposing sanctions on the regime or providing logistical support to the African Union will hardly halt the mass murder and slave trafficking. \nIt's hard to escape the paradox: The "antiwar" movement that wished America had continued to watch indifferently as genocide was enacted in Iraq now recognizes that radical surgery with a military scalpel, not merely continued quarantine, is necessary to end the Sudan genocide before it is ended by the actual "genocidaires," the "janjaweed." This abstention on the issue of Iraq makes so-called "humanitarians" unconvincing defenders of humanitarian action in Sudan, or, for that matter, anywhere else. \nCooper excoriates the ingratitude these critics nurture toward the sole (liberal) superpower. America, he says, should revert to "the rougher methods of an earlier era -- force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary." In truth, that is the standard America is already applying -- a fact lost on those who moan about "double standards." \nAnd herein lies the danger. If -- and it is a small if -- critics of an assertive American role in the world seek to diminish American power, the net result will be a diminution in the ability of the West to defend itself and all it holds dear. President Bush has, by any standard, made progress in defending the "free world." The staunchest opponents of the doctrine that bear his name are despotic regimes whose days are most certainly numbered. I heartily welcome such progress. Even if it comes, as detractors are right to note and wrong to disparage, as an upshot of double standards.