What does an antiwar movement do with a war likely to be over in a matter of weeks? Plenty, it turns out.
The antiwar movement is actually two rather different movements that partly overlap. One movement is in the streets and on the internet --often led by radicals, sometimes joined uneasily by liberals. The other is pragmatic and mainstream. Both were nonplussed but only temporarily by the outbreak of war, and neither has gone away.
The radical antiwar movement opposes war in general and particularly resists the projection of American military and corporate power globally. A minority of this minority, like the group International A.N.S.W.E.R., can fairly be described as Marxist. Many others, with varying degrees of pacifism, simply reject Bush administration plans for global dominion. It was this wing of the antiwar movement that organized the stunning demonstrations three weekends ago, the largest in the history of the world. A great many ordinary non-radicals also joined in, however, out of plain revulsion against Bush's Iraq policy.
This movement continues to mount large-scale protests, most of them peaceful. Relatively small numbers of non-violent demonstrators have gotten themselves arrested in scattered sit-ins around the country. These protests could swell.
One of the largest peaceful antiwar groups, Moveon.org, is organizing a massive email drive to enlist signatures for a citizens' declaration. It reads in its entirety: "As a US-led invasion of Iraq begins, we, the undersigned citizens of many countries, reaffirm our commitment to addressing international conflicts through the rule of law and the United Nations. By joining together across countries and continents, we have emerged as a new force for peace. As we grieve for the victims of this war, we pledge to redouble our efforts to put an end to the Bush Administration's doctrine of pre-emptive attack and the reckless use of military power."
And here is where the two antiwar movements overlap. The sentiments in that statement could be signed by much of the American foreign policy establishment. The second face of the antiwar movement is entirely non-radical, pragmatically opposed to the administration's doctrine of pre-emptive war, and alarmed at its contempt for diplomacy. We might call this the "realist" antiwar movement, after the realist school of foreign policy.
Interestingly, though it had echoes in street demonstrations, the prolonged debate about whether to go to war was conducted entirely within the American mainstream. The realist foreign-policy school is not opposed to the use of military power. But it values international institutions and international law, not for reasons of idealism but out of plain self-interest. James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic Monthly last November, used extensive interviews to show that many foreign-policy hawks are alarmed by the administration's views on pre-emption and unilateralism. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al, are the radicals. They just happen to be running the U.S. government.
Realist critics join the Bush administration (and most street protesters) in believing that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator and a menace to world peace. But they differ profoundly on the question of how to deal with such menaces. One first principle is multilateralism. A second is containment.
As eminent realists critics John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt wrote in the journal Foreign Policy, prior to the invasion, "Both logic and historical evidence suggest a policy of vigilant containment would work, both now and in the event Iraq acquires a nuclear arsenal. Why? Because the United States and its regional allies are far stronger than Iraq. And because it does not take a genius to figure out what would happen if Iraq tried to use weapons of mass destruction to blackmail its neighbors, expand its territory, or attack another state directly."
"The war includes its aftermath," says Jessica Matthews, president ofthe Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, another leading antiwar realist. According to Matthews, the challenge now is to "repair the damage that has been done to Atlantic, bilateral and international institutions and relationships. The key question for the American people to debate is: Do we want to run an empire and behave like an imperial power?"
How convincing the realist critique turns out to be, of course, will depend both on the war and its aftermath. Most realist critics emphasize:
-- The damage to international institutions and alliances that the U.S. particularly needs in an era of global terrorism and nuclear proliferation
-- The plain unreality of the assumption that unleashing a war of "shock and awe," will either build stable democracies or tilt the regional balance of power in the Middle East in America's favor and increase the odds of an Israel-Palestine settlement
-- The engendering of anti-American feeling both among America's friends and adversaries
-- The diversion of attention from homeland security and other important domestic issues
Robert Borosage, of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, observed, "It's astonishing that Republicans in Congress supported a budget resolution with massive tax cuts, the very week that America went to war, and they let the administration refuse to even estimate the costs of war or occupation. With domestic programs being slashed, this will be a huge issue."
Both antiwar movements do face big hurdles, on two fronts. First, during a shooting war most Americans support their president and their troops. If the war is won quickly, and if any weapons of mass destruction are found, it will be taken as vindication for the policy. And if other foreign-policy or terrorist crises worsen, it will be difficult to sort out whether this is proof of the need for Bush-style toughness -- or the result of needlessly stirring up a hornets' nest.
Second, once the shooting stops, the administration is likely to invite the United Nations back in, to help clean up the mess. This will be defined as a new multilateralism and a new test of the organization's relevance. Antiwar critics will be torn between welcoming a chance for the United Nations to play a renewed role and resisting a vindication of Bush's policies. At the same time, realist critics believe that rebuilding, humanitarian aid and patient "nation-building" are likely to get short shrift from the Bush administration, and want the United Nations to play much larger role -- and not as a fig leaf for the United States.
Even if the war is over quickly, the Bush administration will be under tremendous pressure from forces at home and abroad to repudiate unilateralism and pre-emptive war. It's also worth recalling that every American president in this century who has led a war -- even successful ones with clean aftermaths -- has seen his party rejected at the polls not long afterward, most recently Bush I. And this war's aftermath is very likely to be messier than most.
Comparisons with Vietnam protests are tricky. With few exceptions, it was only after the Vietnam War became a protracted quagmire that radical critics were joined by realist ones. This time, the process has been telescoped; the war itself may go smoothly, but there will be a continuing broad-based challenge to the administration's conception of America's role in the world.
The American Prospect supported the invasion of Afghanistan and opposed the administration's Iraq policy and its wider doctrine. As a forum for foreign-policy realists, I suspect we speak for a lot of Americans. As the battlefield smoke clears and the collateral damage becomes apparent, a mainstream movement opposed to future Iraq wars and supportive of multilateralism is only likely to grow.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of the Prospect.
A version of this article appeared in yesterday's Washington Post.
