Power and anti-politics

THEORY
One of the exciting things for me about writing this blog is how the "official" posts are coming together naturally to form a single, extended argument. Each post adds its piece to an overall picture that has more coherence than I expected, to be honest.

One thing that I'm especially pleased to see is how the discussion naturally comes back to the first principle of war: military action must create a desired political outcome, or else the whole enterprise of war is meaningless.

I'm not altogether happy to keep returning this point, though. On my cynical days, I'll say to myself, "Having to make such an obvious point is a sure sign how far civic education has fallen in this country." On my optimistic days, I'll tell myself, "To be fair, Clausewitz had to labor to make the same obvious point in his age. War involves a lot of confusing details, so it's always hard to get to the heart of the matter."

These recent postings on power and leverage meshes nicely with the earlier points about war aims. Another reason that power isn't a good guide to understanding international relations, or making decisions about what to do as a nation, is that power often steers people in the wrong direction. Power exists to be used, and the more urgent the situation, and the greater the power at your disposal, the more temptation to use it. Power also plays to an equally bad temptation to judge leaders (a requirement of a democratic society) based on their intentions, not their actions.

Many US citizens felt baffled and outraged that Truman didn't use the atomic bomb in Korea. It seemed inconceivable that, while Americans were being killed in bloody fighting with the North Koreans and Chinese, we didn't use the ultimate weapon--especially since our enemies couldn't retaliate in kind. Power was available to be used; if Truman didn't use it, there was something wrong with Truman.

Johnson had the same problem in reverse. "Doing something" in Indochina seemed to be sufficient for many people. Escalating the air war in Operation ROLLING THUNDER, or introducing US combat troops in ever-increasing numbers, made sense to people who wanted to keep the Vietnamese domino from falling. Johnson was doing something against the North Vietnamese; therefore, he was doing the right thing.

Clearly, this argument is nonsense. The United States tried many military measures in the Vietnam War. Some worked; some didn't. Success could only be judged by outcomes, whether you looked at gross and perhaps misleading statistics like relative body counts, or more important but less measurable results like the effort to win "hearts and minds." Military power sometimes does help win a population's allegiance or acquiescence: as Johnson himself famously said, "If you have someone by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." However, we have to return yet again to that obvious point that, sadly, can't be stated enough: you have some idea how force will create the result you want. Perhaps you think that attrition warfare will break the enemy's spirit. Perhaps you believe that a careful program of securing the villages from NLF infiltrators will impress and reassure peasants who don't really support the Viet Cong, but have good reason to fear them. Both are testable propositions; both rest on some theory of what kinds of military operations will create the right political outcomes, and the steps needed to get from A (now) to B (the future after the war).

I'm using the Vietnam example, obviously, because it's a classic case of how a country believing too much in its own power can come to terrible grief.

PRACTICE
I dedicate some time each week on the discussion boards for other blogs. It's a great way to meet people, including those who support Bush's policies. I use the opportunity to speak directly with the pro-Bush crowd to see if we can find some common ground, a place where the screaming will stop and a true meeting of minds will begin. It's my democratic duty to both practice open-mindedness and encourage it in others.

Happily, it's usually a lot easier to have a discussion with someone on the other side of the aisle than you might expect. It all depends on how you engage with them. The first question I always ask is some version of, "What would have to happen for you to decide that Bush wasn't worthy of re-election?" Phrasing the question that way--pointing to the political outcomes they want, and how we get there--not only gets the real conversation started, but also keeps it on track. (And it's damn hard for all of us, myself included, to stay on track. The issues raised by 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq are complex, and they stir some very primal feelings.)

I've noticed a pattern when this approach has failed. A significant segment of the pro-Bush correspondents on the message boards fall back on the statement, "Bush is taking a tough stance on terrorism. He's serious about doing something, so that's why I support him."

Obviously, this statement has its echoes in what people once said about Johnson in Vietnam: He's doing something, making a stand, etc. It's a dangerous philosophy, since it lets the noisy exercise of power drown out any discussion of its consequences. The statement, He's doing something, has a talismanic quality for many people, to the point where further discussion is actually impossible.

I've heard the very same people say something like, We like Bush because of his values. Now, I like people, too, because of their values. My wife and daughter are both noble people, as are many of my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. What often makes our lives decent fulfilling is the faith in one another that we're struggling to do the right things, even when we misstep.

However, I don't know the human heart all that well to begin with, and far less in people I don't know personally. I don't know Bush, just as I didn't know Clinton. I can't say what values dear to these two men really are--despite how much I've read about both Bush and Clinton, or as often as I've seen them speak. I can say, with certainty, that I don't care what their values are. I do care about what they do as presidents.

That's politics, as Weber said. You judge policies by their outcomes, politicians by the results of their actions. That's an excruciating truth for a politician to face, since you might sincerely intend to build a bright future for everyone, but end up being the architect of a complete disaster. (Insert your favorite calamity here.)

I always cringe whenever I hear someone likes a politician primarily or completely because of that person's values. This sentiment isn't just irrelevant to politics; it easily mutates into anti-politics. If you think that sentiment trumps ability, intentions eclipse actions, then the exercise of power is just a kind of statement of values. The more you exercise power, the more sincere you are. Anti-politics, thereforce, has its own terrible consequences--but its practitioners just don't want to look at them. Anti-politics is a flight from responsibility, disguised as virtue.

Postscript: Niccolo Machiavelli's list of helpful hints to Lorenzo de Medici fits into this discussion. The Prince has a dark reputation, but it's actually just a book on how to govern well, whatever your motives. (Machiavelli made his own values clear in his other famous work, The Discourses, an argument for republicanism with an early version of a separation of powers.) The Prince is filled with good advice about politics, applicable to any age. For example, to be an effective ruler, he argues, it doesn't matter how virtuous you are; it's how virtuous you appear to be. Centuries of readers have mistaken that statement for cynicism, but Machiavelli wasn't a nihilist. He wanted a good society, based on just principles. He also knew that good intentions weren't enough to get there.

Comments

[Oscar]

I find the argument about Vietnam interesting if not compelling. Vietnam was a sideshow in a conflict that required limited means be used to keep the other big boys away. It can and has been reasonably argued that Vietnam was a success in Cold War terms because we held off communist expansion long enough for many countries in South East Asia to take a more western track.

The failure in Vietnam was at home, and it may have been the first war to show the difficulies that modern communications causes democratic governments during wartime. The leaders have to explain what they are doing to the folks at home without the enemy figuring out what they are trying to do. Liddel-Hart's beloved indirect approach is difficult if not impossible with a hostile ( or at least APPARENTLY HOSTILE)press beathing down the government's back.

[Oscar]

By the way, I feel your point about "doing something" is a good one with wide applicability. Economics is another area where this sort of this happens.

[Kingdaddy]

Hey,thanks for the thoughtful comments. I, too, think that there were ways to "win" the Vietnam War. On the counterinsurgency side, I think there've been some pretty compelling accounts that approaches like the Marines' CAP program, CORDS, or even (in its more benign incarnations) Phoenix actually did work a lot better than the big conventional sweeps, and could have continued eating into the NLF's base of support (particularly after Tet). Of course, it was conventional NVA troops in tanks, not Viet Cong in pajamas, who took Saigon...And that was the sort of conventional conflict that we were disproprotionately better trained and equipped to fight.

However, it's tough to see what could have been done, once the US public decided it wasn't worth it any longer. (Much like when the British were still fielding troops in the colonies, which could have continued if public support back home hadn't collapsed. Ironically, Americans owe their own independence to just such a "loss of will.")

Despite the silliness about Kerry's medals, I think most people are much, much better prepared now to have a reasonable discussion about the Vietnam War and "lessons learned" than 10 or 20 years ago. One of the reasons for this blog is to encourage people to engage seriously with unappreciated books like Sorley's A Better War, Krepinevich's The Army and Vietnam, and more recently, Max Boot's Savage Wars of Peace. Whether you agree with their arguments or not, it's time to open up the discussion again. "Little wars" are the types of conflicts we're fighting now...And, as it turns out, we've been fighting them for a long, long time.

P.S. The three books I cite above don't agree with each other, and I don't necessarily agree with any of them. I give credit where it's due, though, whether I agree with the author or not.

[Oscar]

I think you missed my point about Vietnam. I just today found a short quote from Jerry Pournelle which explains what I meant exactly:

"We won the war in Viet Nam although few realize that: the Russians frittered away their energy and treasure in a place far away from any rational objective, and at great expense sent the output of their truck factories not to develop the USSR infrastructure but to be targets for USAF and Spectre. It was a campaign of attrition for no vital objective."

I think it may be a flaw in our current culture that we cannot tell the difference between a campaign and a war. This distinction was clear to all in WWII, but by the time of Korea, many had forgotten it, although (thank God) Truman did not, which is why he sacked MacArthur.

The biggest loss we had in Vietnam was that it gave power to a pernicious evil which is still with us: the internationalist-progressive/cultural-diversity mafia.

[Antiquated Tory]

Nothing like commenting on a 19-month-old discussion. I've heard the argument that Vietnam was a successful war of attrition before, and I think it has some legs. I live now in the Czech Republic, and I know that a lot of Czechoslovak industrial output went to support that war. The Czechoslovaks were repaid in Vietnamese labor--Vietnamese were sent here to work in factories. Labor theory of value and all that. Really quite daft; they didn't need more labor here, they needed more goods.

("internationalist-progressive/cultural-diversity mafia"? I beg your pardon? Not that either a) Oscar will ever read this at this late date or b) this comment section is an appropriate place to discuss the bogeymen hiding under various beds.)

[Craig Hubley]

"Anti-politics is a flight from responsibility, disguised as virtue." Bernard Crick rejected what he called the "absolute-sounding ethic" so commonly heard now to justify military interventions. Instead he made a point of listing "political virtues" that he claimed were independent of ideology. Machiavelli, too, wrote The Discourses, not just The Prince, which was about governing well, and what political outcomes might be worth a war.

Neither Crick nor Machiavelli, nor Sun Tzu, advised trying to ignore politics just because swords are swinging. Quite the opposite. You might be done talking to the commander or the head of state, but you have probably barely begun to talk to the sub-commander, the opposition leader, their allies... look at Iraq. To stop talking to Saddam was one thing, but to fail to have open connections with the Shia beyond one guy telling you what you want to hear... Achmed Chalabi, namely... was unforgiveable.

A final point: Vietnam and Afghanistan were both proxies during the Cold war. Citizens of both suffered very terribly for being caught in the midst of an extended (30 years in each case) war funded and armed from superpower coffers for superpower purposes. Iraq likewise shifted from Russian to American sphere as the US poised itself against Iran, and that may have extended the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war (in the middle of which, Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam), and Iran also had its elected leader removed by the CIA in the 1950s, so again there you could claim there was half a century of various kinds of suffering and suppression caused by the Cold War. It's hard to believe that further active intervention in any of these places can actually lead to goodwill, for that reason alone. Though something is clearly owed these people for being trapped in the middle of superpower confrontations (and don't even get started on Latin America), it probably isn't military "help".

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[Ben]

By the way, I feel your point about "doing something" is a good one with wide applicability. Economics is another area where this sort of this happens. http://www.hotfileseek.com

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I dedicate some time each week on the discussion boards for other blogs. It's a great way to meet people, including those who support Bush's policies. I use the opportunity to speak directly with the pro-Bush crowd to see if we can find some common ground, a place where the screaming will stop and a true meeting of minds will begin. It's my democratic duty to both practice open-mindedness and encourage it in others.