Liberals’ Blairite Shift?

Pieter Dorsman over at Peaktalk argues that Michael Ignatieff’s presence at the Liberal Party convention - and he’s being touted as a possible leadership candidate - marks a shift toward a liberal realist position in foreign policy that compares with the outlook of Tony Blair.

This is an interesting suggestion. There are certainly similarities between Ignatieff’s liberal Kantianism and Blair’s personalist approach to his internationalism (though Blair’s is religiously inspired). Blair gave a speech back in 1999, “Doctrine of the International Community,” where he outlined his vision of Britain’s place in the world and how power ought to be wielded. Its internationalist vision, led by the UN, certainly fits with Ignatieff’s view and that of the Liberal Party in general. However, Blair seems more attuned to protecting national self-interest than Ignatieff and his desire to spread liberty (not “Charter values” as Lloyd Axworthy recently stated) resonates more with the Lincolnian foreign policy outlined in Bush’s Second Inaugural:

Now our actions are guided by a more subtle blend of mutual self interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish. In the end values and interests merge. If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our national interests too. The spread of our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy put it ‘Freedom is indivisible and when one man is enslaved who is free?’

If Ignatieff pushes the Liberals into a Blairite (Blairian??) foreign policy position, along with its realism that would force them, like Blair, to recognize that joining coalitions of the willing is more prudential than expecting much from a moribund United Nations, then does that commit them to accepting the Bush Doctrine of foreign policy? And having to admit like other liberals worldwide that the Bush Doctrine may have been proven correct (here, here, and here)?

For those interested, the Washington Post article linked above mentions that Blair’s primary philosophical influence was the Scottish theologian John MacMurray (1891-1976), author of such books as Persons in Relation and Freedom in the Modern World (bibliography here). I have not read any of MacMurray’s work, but I get the impression that he’s what one could call a communitarian, which derives from his “personalist” account of human action in which people’s goals, aspirations, and identities can only be fulfilled in community with others.