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June 25, 2006
Does a cold war liberalism still apply in Australia? Or is it a relic of 20th century history? I supect that it lives under the name of liberal hawk and is firmly entrenched in the Australian Labor Party under the umbrella of little Americans.
Historically cold war liberals were anti-communist.They had a vision of Australian based on self-confidence, containment, restraint, and legitimacy, and they made anti-communism and the containment of communism into a central element of liberalism. They stand for a muscular national liberalism and they understood that the cold war was an ideological struggle waged across much of the world against a range of totalitarian "Communist" opponents.
Have they--liberal hawks? swapped 'containment of Islam '--- a defanging of aggressive Islamism--- for containing communism? Have they swapped the cold war for a hot war? If so, can we speak of a hawkish liberalism (as distinct from conservatism)? A liberal hawk would support the intervention and war in Iraq, as opposed to UN containment in the form of sanctions, would they not? They would not be liberal internationalists would they? Nor in favour of"multilateralism". They would view the war on terrorism as a struggle against totalitarianism just like the war against communism.
I presume the liberal hawks in the ALP share not only the Bush Administration/Howard Government's case for war but most of the neoconservative philosophy and agenda in international relations. Some of these "liberal hawk" intellectuals--would have contributed to building the public case for war. The liberal hawks firmly believed that the Iraq war was both a humanitarian intervention and an important front in the "war on terrorism." In their view, the war with radical Islam is an analogue (an extension?) of the struggle against totalitarian Communism and, before that, Fascism. Just as the United States and its allies prevailed in the cold war by promoting liberal ideas--and not just by direct military intervention and proxy wars--so, they argue, the US government must fight for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world through culture, and not just on the battleground.
Liberal hawks refuse to make a basic distinction between Arab nationalists and Islamists and they reckon that their gospel of muscular liberal democracy represents a radical alternative to the publicly expressed strategy of the neoconservatives, the Bush Administration and the Howard Government. The liberal hawks combine professed belief in democracy with an openly macho nationalist contempt for the opinions of other Arab country and their inhabitants. Australia, say the liberal hawks,support America's efforts to "eliminate" the enemies of liberty.
Maybe they distinquish themselves from imperialists of the neoconservative type in the Howard Coalition and Bush Administration?
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Cold War liberalism IS connected to the U.S state of war today. How exactly may be unknown even to those involved, and certainly unknown to me. The nature of the conflict between Christian politicians and the Islamic world includes Cold War Liberalism in Australia, to be sure!