"If the emergence of an American elite able to cement a strong national identity and coherent national interest is unlikely, what options remain for a country now irreversibly multicultural? Huntington saw the choice as either imperialism or liberal cosmopolitanism, both of which would erode what is unique about America. Imperialism seems an unlikely choice since the Iraq War, an experience few Americans in or out of the military will want to repeat anytime soon.These thoughts converge with my concerns re Obama's foreign policy inclinations - I had never really considered the impact of the modern phenomenon of multi-culturalism on foreign policy, although now, on reflection, the connections and dangers seem obvious. It brings to mind something I'd entirely forgotten - how, on the morning of 9/11 when I went in to work, it shocked me that all, and I mean all of my co-workers who were not of western European decent either openly or with thinly veiled secrecy cheered what had happened. I remember getting into a violent argument with one fella, from Chile I believe, who was practically giddy with excitement that someone had finally stuck it to those bastard Americans. Also curious, of my caucasian, western European cohorts, I believe I was the only one - maybe one other guy - who had the slightest idea of just how far reaching the implications of what had just happened were. Very strange.
What seems more likely is the entrenchment and expansion of a worldly, cosmopolitan elite, increasingly multicultural and transnational, that bears little connection to the WASP establishments of the twentieth century, the cold warriors, or even the Bush administration. American foreign policy will necessarily become less ambitious, more a product of horse-trading between ethnic groups. Messianism, in either its Protestant or neoconservative variants, will be part of America’s past, not its future. Americans will not conceive of themselves as orchestrators of a benevolent global hegemony, or as agents of an indispensable nation. Schlesinger, for one, exaggerated the extent of the fall when he averred that a foreign policy based on “careful balancing of ethnic constituencies” was suitable only for secondary powers, like the late Austrian-Hungarian Empire. But he exaggerated only slightly.
As I have noted, George F. Kennan, patron saint of both foreign policy realists and many paleoconservatives, spent the long second half of his career urging a greater sense of humility abroad. The rethinking of global commitments, the readiness to modify the go-go economy that seems to require them—these have become a refrain of some of Kennan’s heirs. So here is a second paradox, which parallels the irony that neoconservatives support an immigration policy that undermines their own political base. The realists and America-Firsters will find their foreign policy aspirations at least partially satisfied via the unlikely avenues of immigration and multiculturalism. The paleoconservatives, losers in the immigration wars, will end up winners of an important consolation prize: the foreign policy of what remains of their cherished republic." Scott McConnell, World Affairs Journal.
I guess, in thinking back on it, I realise it wasn't so much the events of 9/11 that turned me from a disinterested moderate into a something that was more sympathetic to a conservative view of things - it wasn't so much the actual attacks but rather the disturbing and somewhat bizarre reaction to those attacks by the people around me, people who suddenly seemed like unwelcome strangers.
