Nice post. Indicatively, neither of the two US discourses - universalism and civilization - implies anything like deliberation beyond the water's edge. All debate begins and ends at home, probably within the beltway. To the extent that other US allies - the putative west - have similar debates, this is decidedly not a product of some international or intracommunal dialogue. In fact, I cant think of a single f/p adviser to either mcain or barack who advocates international deliberation as a way to reposition the post-election US f/p.
I'm not too sure about this line of thought for the following reason: I don't think that "universalist" claims and "particularist" claims fundamentally alter the outcome on this or most other specific incidents. I merely see them as potentially different strategic or conceptual approaches.
It seems to me that you are implying that under a "particularist" administration maybe a different course of action would have been taken with respect to Georgia. In my opinion the only thing that may have been different with another administration is that the US Secretary of State would have "strongly complained" after consulting with more people.
It is possible that different mindsets and modes of operation of different administrations would have paved a different path than the one that took us here, but on the particular incident in question, unless there was some real ideologue at the wheel, Georgia is on its own: Because its just not that important and its too risky and materially difficult to aid.
Which suggests that NATO's eastward expansion may not have been such a good idea after all. It might have made sense when Russia was weak but now NATO and the US have their hands full in Afghanistan. Are the Europeans willing to rearm & build up their forces to the same level they were during the Cold War? And what about Russian co-operation on Iran which the US is still concerned about? Given the current state of relations between the West and Russia, how likely is it the Russians will now go along with anything on Iran?
Interesting post. On a related note, I would argue that this conflict and NATO's 'failure' to even come up with a significant position amounts to the end of the discourse on "Security as Identity" (Neumann & Williams a while ago, Behnke 2007). Belonging to the West no longer means 'security' in the sense that NATO will become engaged. Arguably, a more traditional geopolitical 'reality' is asserting itself again. And with that, different NATO members have very different interests. So perhaps Huntington is wrong, this isn't the age of civilisations, this is Geopolitics re-dux, if in a more complex and complicated fashion. Hence the ineffectiveness of the American discourses so far.
"Note that we're operating in the realm of political claims about identity here, and not in the realm of social-scientific propositions that can be evaluated empirically."
Hmm. Who says you can't empirically evaluate political claims about identity?
I would argue Samuel Huntington's civilizational balancing in the modern era would be more like Thomas Barnett's core and gap than the 1950s disconnect between east and west.
But with that comment aside, I really enjoyed this read.
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