Spurred by recent posts by Anne-Marie Slaughter and comments by denizens, I went back and reviewed the Princeton Project on National Security's report, "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law," co-authored by Anne-Marie and John Ikenberry.

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns/report/FinalReport.pdf

I will stipulate at the outset that I don't assume or maintain Anne-Marie agrees with each and every recommendation in the report. I have to assume that she agrees with its overall thrust and is at least not terribly uncomfortable with most of its specifics, though.

I think there are some good ideas in the report, some of which I would have liked to have seen elaborated on more. But overall what I see in that report troubles me in several respects. I'll mention some of the major ones here, and ask Anne-Marie to comment.

1. The major theme of the report is to recommend the United States promote ordered liberty, both within and between the countries of the world. One might think that to many a reader it is not at all a given that this is a doable project, and what the authors think might constitute success. Yet nowhere is there even a cursory discussion of the historical experience with efforts to do precisely this sort of thing, and what has or should have been learned from this experience. It is almost as though the people who came up with this recommendation believe this would represent pretty much an entirely novel sort of effort. Whatever success might be achieved in building capacity within other countries to bring about ordered liberty would depend heavily on the contents and execution of the reconstruction and development agenda. Yet this section (pp. 71-72) is superficial and weak.

2. Page 46 of the report notes that "the United States must also engage in a range of counter-proliferation measures. These should include:...Pressing ahead with the development of a working missile defense system..."

Yes, the United States must engage in a range of counter-proliferation measures. But pressing ahead with the development of a working missile-defense system is undermining what is left of the arms control regime.

Missile defense, as I understand it, is thought to be unworkable by most of the scientific community. And it has been exceptionally expensive already for the taxpayers footing the bill. It does provide a good livelihood for the contractors engaged in the R&D. However, given how controversial an issue missile defense is, I would at least expect to have seen a sentence or two explaining why the group believes missile defense enhances rather than reduces security.

3. As a response to the poor image of the United States in many quarters these days, the report recommends on page 74 that "the United States should shift its public diplomacy efforts from a public relations approach to a sales approach. While public relations involves one-way communication strategies, a sales-based approach requires understanding what motivates the recipient of a message to 'buy' or inhibits the recipient from accepting and embracing the ideas being proferred."

This seems arrogant to me. There is no suggestion that, in some contexts, the ideas being proferred might not be good ones for the recipients to 'accept and embrace', for entirely justifiable reasons. Or that would-be proferrors might benefit from doing a good deal of respectful listening and living with people whose lives they seek to improve, in order better to understand, before deciding whether and if so, how, to proceed with the proferring.

4. on page 19, the report states that "Labeling countries as democracies or non-democracies, much less as good or evil, also needlessly complicates our relations with many nations, and often undermines the very goals we seek to achieve." No matter. On page 7, we read that "...the United States should work with its friends and allies to develop a global 'Concert of Democracies'. These two statements beg for reconciliation.