Fashion Statements

So I was flipping through my copy of GQ the other day and I spotted the new Kenneth Cole ads; have you guys seen these things? Well, for all the non-fashion magazine readers out there, the ads feature hip-looking guys in smooth threads walking around New York City with newspapers under their arms. Each ad has some sort of political slogan written at the bottom. The two that I saw were "Not voting is so last year" and "Peace in the Middle East is a must have for this fall." At first I wanted to laugh-out-loud, but then I realized that the ads were not only probably serious, but that many people today think about politics in terms of these "fashion statements."

Most people are willing to trust something that sounds good, irrelevant, pointless, or just plain wrong, as it may be. The result is a collection of snappy sayings that amount to nothing. Here is one factoid you hear bounced around a lot - "the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia."

Now that is certainly true, and may serve to educate someone who has a conception of all Muslims as Arabs. But it does not constitute analysis. It makes no recommendation on US policy. But what you hear so often is "the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia...so let us not attack Iraq." That, in and of itself, does not make sense.

What too few people realize is that foreign policy and its creation is a deeply complicated subject. In any given decision, there are many costs and risks that must be considered. And, to a certain extent, it is all guesswork, because decisions must be made after first predicting the reactions of other actors in the system. When those predictions are wrong, you end up with an undesired result.

The point of all this is, that peace in the Middle East may be a must have for this fall, but getting it is a lot harder than convincing your friend to buy that really cute sweater. "Why can't we all get along"-type slogans are great ad copy, but they're essentially useless, because they obscure the real issues underlying conflicts.

Conflicts like the one between Israelis and Palestinians are deep and torturous. Any resolution has to come up with a way to defend Israel's border, curb and roll back Israeli settlements, divide Jerusalem, divide water supplies evenly, deal with Palestinian refugees, and umpteen million other grievances that each side has. That is why we can't all get along _ because we have conflicting interests. Until those interests are reconciled, repeating the same tired question is pointless.

Not that the right is innocent of its own fashion statements. The right-wing fashion statement goes like this, "we know the world's problems are essentially unsolvable, so let's just stay at home and ignore them." The problem with this statement is that even though we cannot all get along, we still have to live in the same world. Ignoring problems can be even worse than trying in vain to solve them.

The United States, as the most powerful nation in the world today, is in a unique position to help states reconcile their interests. Ignoring that position and the responsibility that comes with it would be shortsighted.

But our power is still limited. An entire administration's worth of diplomacy in the Middle East under President Clinton ended in the chaos we see today.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. America certainly has some tough going ahead. Getting through it will require a long and full debate. It would be a shame if political discussion, like so much else in modern media, degenerated into sound bytes and fashion statements.