What’s Wrong with the World

These people seem to have real trouble with the difference of defense and offense as well as the difference of a civilized nation and a group of retrograde terrorist nut-cases that hate us. Finally, they don't understand what it means to live in a community where your friends and enemies are picked for you, and are not up to your idiosyncratic individuality.

We need to know what to expect from them in terms of behavior. Our expectations about their behavior reflect on what we should and should not do morally and practically

How does this differ from appeasement?

How does this differ from appeasement?

"Appeasement" seems to me to mean conceding something to an enemy when it is imprudent to do so. If our understanding of appeasement is such that (1) thinking about how we expect the enemy to behave and (2) incorporating those expectations into our practical and moral evaluations constitutes appeasement, well, then "appeasement" is a synonym for "sanity".

Appeasement properly understood is a legitimate concept that we should incorporate into our thinking. As an incantation the purpose of which is to shut down thought I can do without it.

As I understand Zippy, he's saying we sometimes should say, "The bad guys may well do such-and-such to us if we do X. But we should go ahead and do it anyway." In other words, he's not saying that the expectation that the bad guys will do X always means we should shy away from stirring them up. Maybe sometimes we shouldn't do the thing and sometimes we should, but we should know the probable consequences of our actions. That's how I understand his point.

My main problems with this are indirect. a) I think often people who say that we have "stirred them up" are mistaken and are biased in this evaluation by an ideological ax to grind of one sort or another. It can be at least as dangerous a mistake to overestimate the extent to which we can redirect our enemies' wrath away from us as to underestimate it. b) Most of the time people who make such causal statements are not drawing the strict distinction Zippy is drawing here and are, in fact, implying _fault_ on our part for the earlier actions taken and _some degree_ of mitigation in this for the "responses" of the terrorists. There is usually to at least some degree a notion that the terrorists "have a point" or "have a grievance." I can give many examples of this, and I imagine y'all can as well.

"The bad guys may well do such-and-such to us if we do X. But we should go ahead and do it anyway."

Exactly right. That is, this will definitely sometimes be the conclusion. I'm advocating an "eyes open" approach in general, as opposed to "eyes shut".

It can be at least as dangerous a mistake to overestimate the extent to which we can redirect our enemies' wrath away from us as to underestimate it.

And I agree with this too. Ever popular at parties, I have problems with how just about everyone talks about these things.

Ironically, given the manner in which some insist upon framing this discussion, I actually agree, both that it can be more perilous to overestimate the extent of one's influence over the reactions of adversaries, and that it is sometimes morally imperative that the hornet's nest be swatted. For example, when, several years ago, it was disclosed that an SUV carrying some local Al Qaeda heavies was rendered noncombatant by a predator drone, I thought this warranted; and I've no objection, in principle, to Paul's proposal of targeted incitements, provided circumstances are propitious.

What I find objectionable is the notion that America can undertake, lend its support to, or encourage certain policies which are immoral and then escape all culpability for the consequences. The current Iraq war is, in my estimation, inarguably unjust; this observation, of course, does nothing to justify a single action performed by a terrorist, but we should understand that, by undertaking this unjust war, America has created circumstances favourable to the sort of internecine strife and terrorist convergence that we have observed. If American policymakers are in no sense responsible for the creation of those circumstances, then I am afraid language has been evacuated of meaning, as those circumstances would not obtain absent American action.

Similarly, I'm not aware of a dispositive just-war argument in favour of the first Gulf War, nor even one that associated that war with legitimate American defense interests; and, moreover, the subsequent regime of sanctions was, in my judgment, immoral, insofar as, being ineffectual in achieving all of the stated objectives - as sanctions regimes always happen to be (with the possible exception of South Africa, though your mileage may vary on that one) - it functioned only to impose deprivation upon the civilian population of Iraq. Again, if America is not in some sense culpable for the failures of that policy - a mismatch of ends and means (where there may have been no licit means, since I'll leave that open), essentially a case in which the evils inflicted by the policy outweighed the benefits - as well as for handing a propaganda tool to her adversaries, then I fear language has been evacuated of meaning.

And then there is the American encouragement of the disproportionate response of the IDF to the Hizbollah rocket attacks last summer. It is not only ineffectual and counterproductive to wage a counterinsurgency by blowing up civilian infrastructure, it is, in my judgment, unjust. And of course Israel is entitled, and even morally obligated, to respond to attacks of this nature - just not in that particular manner. The identification of American interests with that campaign - counterproductive though it was, even from the Israeli perspective, as the consensus among Israeli policymakers is that their manifest failure in that conflict created a perception of weakness and incapacity on their part - in the callous remarks of Secretary of State Rice, to the effect that we were witnessing the birth pains of a new Middle East, and in the near-universal understanding that Washington had green-lighted the response, has had consequences, in particular a strengthening of the hands of Hizbollah. Again: culpability, language, etc.

In other words, my argument is simple: I freely concede all of the distinctions that are being drawn, as they are valid. I only wish that, when America must pursue policies which will have as their inevitable consequences a stirring up of the hornets' nests of Islam, that those policies themselves will be morally licit. If they are not, then America is assuredly responsible for the adverse circumstances they engender, if not for the particular actions of discrete adversaries.

What any of this has to do with an ideological noninterventionism, I fail to perceive; I wasn't the one who broached the subject of WWII, after all.

I'm not aware of a dispositive just-war argument in favour of the first Gulf War, ...

I find that hard to credit, though I confess to not having thought deeply on it for the very reason that it doesn't seem to require deep thought. It is at least prima facie just to go to an ally's aid to eject an aggressive invader.

True enough, and an argument I have considered, though I don't find it finally persuasive, inasmuch as it does not seem prudent to me to maintain alliances of that type with nations such as Kuwait - for the very reason that such alliances tend to be productive of the sort of intractable, irresolvable problems that we now have in the Near East. I incline to the opinion that interjecting oneself into the fundamentally irresolvable is, at a minimum, an potential occasion - a temptation to - of injustice. In other words, what was the specifiable, justified claim of national interest that America had in that alliance? We are, after all, talking about Kuwait, and not the U.K., or France, or Israel.

In other words, what was the specifiable, justified claim of national interest that America had in that alliance?

Well, that is a perfectly valid question, but it also seems to me to be a different question. That is, the question of why we had an alliance with Kuwait seems to me to be distinct from the question of the justice of ejecting an invader from Kuwait. Why we take up the cause of defending someone from unjust aggression is distinct from the question of whether what we are in fact doing is taking up the cause of defending someone from unjust aggression. In the case of Iraq II is just isn't true that we invaded to protect his people: his abuse of his people didn't cause us to invade. But there is no question but that his invasion of Kuwait is what caused our armed response in Iraq I.

Mind you, Iraq I might still be judged imprudent on some other grounds (and if imprudent to a significant enough degree then immoral as a matter of recklessness, though again that seems more than a little counterintuitive to me). But if I don't assume all kinds of prescience about consequences (and that is just the sort of thing I tend to reject especially in moral evaluation: we are responsible primarily for our acts and their obvious immediate consequences, and also our intentions, and I specifically reject the notion that the same moral weight applies to speculations about outcomes in some more general sense) it remains the case that Iraq I was a just defensive reponse to an invasion and Iraq the Sequel was an unjust preemptive invasion.

Don't even get me started on the stupid things Secretary Rice has said. Why we hear so much about the remark about "birth pains" (to the point that we are told people should be "swarming the air waves apologizing in Arabic" for it) and never seem to hear about her *stupid, stupid, stupid* remarks likening the Palestinians' situation with that of American blacks and saying she understands their struggle and all sorts of deep-dyed garbage like that, I don't know. Well, maybe I do know.

We had our Hezbollah #2 War argument last summer on the old EM. I won't rehash it. I wish they'd gone in on a larger scale and done something more effective, but that would probably have gotten them _more_ blame. And on the subject of Israel's not continuing to provide electricity to Gaza, which may tie in with the supposed injustice of civilian hardship when missiles are coming from a given area, see my personal blog, a couple of entries down.

Why did I bring up WWII? Because questioning U.S. entry into WWII is a big paleocon trope. You can see it even in Woods's otherwise very good Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. You can see it on paleocon blogs. It's very common, and it really is tied in to many of the objections to present policies: Basically, it's not our business, we shouldn't be over there at all, and it's understandable that "they" should target us when we are "over there." Ron Paul more or less says this.

Certainly that distinction is valid, but you can also understand my reasons for conflating the questions: otherwise, any number of exceedingly imprudent alliances can be formed, for reasons that would never pass prudential muster, yielding the obligation in each instance to defend the ally against unjust aggression; and that imprudence can cover a vast swathe of motivational territory. We have an alliance of sorts with the Republic of Georgia, and some of the nuttier folks in the foreign policy establishment, and in the Presidential campaign, wish to incorporate that nation into the NATO architecture. The reasons the alliance has been established are dubious, but I cannot believe that should it once be formalized, that we should thereby commit ourselves to going to war to defend Georgia against unjust Russian aggression - and I should note that both parties are more than capable and willing to create pretexts. This is a legitimate prudential problem, is it not? In other words, why these alliances in the first place?

I don't know. Well, maybe I do know.

There is no need to be so arch, especially with me. The only reason I've not said anything about those remarks is that I've never had the occasion, either in this forum or on the old EM. Her analogizing of the Palestinians to the situation of enslaved blacks was repugnant, and I'd associate myself with everything Auster has written about it.

As regards Hizbollah, Gaza, et al., there is a difference between cutting off electricity and actually blowing up infrastructure; but I've no interest in rehashing that. If you'd care to inform some people I know personally that it is licit for Israel to impose hardship upon them merely because they happen to have roots in a nation infected by Hizbollah, well, I suspect we're simply never going to agree.

I'm familiar with the paleoconservative arguments regarding WWII; I learned them, more or less, at my father's knee. But what I'd really like to know is what interest the US had in the Japanese aggressions in Asia at the time; to be certain, while one can articulate just-war arguments concerning the liceity of an American response, I've not actually encountered one that defines the scope of that potential response, and addresses the massive prudential considerations against any involvement. That being the case, I don't really perceive the point of the objection to the paleo case. Demonstrate that something is America's business, then worry about the details.

Again, the point of my bringing up WWII in the other thread was this: There is a very strong strain of (in my opinion) exaggerated isolationism in paleoconservative thought. This strain is not merely a reactionary response to the present-day sins or imprudent counsels and actions of neoconservatives, since it includes evaluations of historical events that took place before neoconservatives existed. Hence it is unlikely that merely getting paleoconservatives not to react strongly to neoconservatives is sufficient to change their minds on such judgements.

Second, these evaluations are, to my mind, strongly biased by a determination to construe America as being in the wrong for joining almost any foreign war, including WWII which even some with otherwise isolationist tendencies (like me, for example) consider to have been necessary and justified. This fact casts into question the judgement of those committed to such an overall reading of history and way of looking at things when it comes to foreign policy, whether something is "our business" or not, and whether we are to be faulted for various foreign policy interventions. Thomas Woods (a paleolibertarian) goes so far as to imply that it was an aggressive act for us to impose an oil embargo on Japan, since Japan "needed" oil for its Asian imperial expansion! This seems crazy to me. Now "Japan's imperial expansion is none of our business" means "we were obligated to go on supplying oil to Japan for its imperial expansions, and the refusal to do so was an act of aggression on our part which forced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor." Such a way of looking at things is, to my mind, ideological isolationism of a particularly bizarre and acute kind. I like much of what Woods has to say on many subjects but wouldn't have him for a foreign policy advisor! And I would say the same of those inclined to agree with him on the WWII subject.

...otherwise, any number of exceedingly imprudent alliances can be formed, for reasons that would never pass prudential muster, yielding the obligation in each instance to defend the ally against unjust aggression...

Well, again I certainly understand that as a matter of spin in the context of how our dysfunctional public discourse presently works, if you will, but I'm not sure it lines up with what is true in principle: that is, with the way we in fact ought to act with respect to allies. (I can't comment on Russian or Georgian matters. My personal incompetence on the particular subject knows no bounds, I'm afraid).

I'm frankly not sure that formal alliances have much to say about just wars, and I expect that paleoconservatives would not be happy about my view of the necessity of particular US interests in order to morally justify going to war. That is, I don't think there is any. It is quite possible in principle to go to war justly in defense of another party, without any self-interest of our own and without any formal alliance. It is quite possible to be an innocent bystander onesself and to enter a conflict in defense of another innocent; indeed that can be one of the noblest of acts, taking only risk upon onesself on behalf of another without any clear benefit or self interest. (That what comes around goes around under Providence is not, I believe, a benefit which can always be ruled out however). This is every bit as true for nations as it is for individuals. (Note that if an individual went out looking for this kind of thing and did it repeatedly, as opposed to perhaps one time when the clear need/opportunity/ability/etc presented itself by happenstance, we would rightly view him with a more jaundiced eye).

Of course in reality pessimism about motivations is usually warranted. But as a matter of principle - with few exceptions the only aspect of the discussion in which I consider myself in any way qualified to comment - the best war is an altruistic war. True altruism, however, is always modest in its ambitions and in its self-assessment: that neoconservatism has attempted to coopt and distort this idea in the service of its hubristic empire-building projects doesn't refute the principle.

When it comes to the matter of alliances, in my mind it is usually good to have friends, even if there aren't any obvious and immediate benefits to us accruing from the friendship. Indeed that tends to be the best sort of friendship, that is, the kind based on mutual admiration rather than mutual need. So I don't take alliances as requiring some sort of material reciprocity in order to be morally justifiable.

On the other hand just because an alliance exists that doesn't send prudence out the window. Sometimes friends get into scraps that we can't prudently help them out of, not even if they are pristinely innocent of getting into the scrap. It is all about the particulars. It is always all about the particulars. But it seems to me that driving foreign policy strictly in terms of self-interest is just the sort of thing that gets us where we are now. The basic disagreement between paleocons and neocons is itself reduced to a Machiavellian calculus of what serves our own selfish interests, as opposed to what is the right - and thus always necessarily modest, and constrained by prudence - thing to do.

Paleoconservatives incline to the conviction that minding one's own business is a category of moral thought, to state the matter frankly. In light of the manner in which war has been a critical instrumentality in the outgrowth of the Constitution by the government, I find it difficult to disagree. Moreover, and more substantively, I think that this more or less follows from the facts that moral obligations are inherent in concrete orders of relationships, that obligations diminish with each degree of remove from that circle of determinate relations, and that moral obligations are not free-standing, free-floating duties which obtain without respect to the identity and circumstances of particular persons. It is a terrible tragedy that children might be starving somewhere in Africa; but I am not obligated to sacrifice the well-being of my own family to ameliorate their circumstances. It may be that I become obligated by virtue of some knowledge I come to possess, or by some contact with the relevant circumstances, but the obligation does not obtain by reason of the suffering, considered in itself.

Hence, that paleoconservative argument against American policy prior to WWII. Yes, I'm quite familiar with the details and the lineaments, though I should hope that Woods expresses himself more felicitously that it would appear from your representation. More completely, I should state that it is unclear that there is anything the United States could have done at the time to redress the injustices the Japanese were perpetrating throughout Asia; in fact, it is doubtful that the United States could have done anything decisive with the assets it possessed at the time. The imposition of the embargo, however justified prima facie, as America was a principal supplier of resources the Japanese employed towards their own imperial ends, could only either increase the probability of the inclusion of America in Japanese planning, or accelerate the timetable for such an inclusion, or both. I'm agnostic on the intentions of the Japanese with respect to the United States as of the mid-30s; evidence cuts both ways. Suffice it to state that there existed no planning for a just resolution of that conflict, and there could not have existed such a plan, given the assets America had at that time; any policy, therefore, which enmeshed America in Japanese strategic planning could only have been highly imprudent, on this line of thought. One ought not commit, even tacitly or by remote implication, to a policy which lacks a defined rationale, let alone reasonable prospects for success - and embargoes and sanctions seldom do have such prospects.

But then there is the matter of public opinion, which was resolutely against any American involvement in such matters. I take it as axiomatic that any commitment, tacit or otherwise, of American forces to wars of sacrificial liberation - which is what we're talking about in this instance, ought to have the support of the people, inasmuch as it is unjust for any authority to decide upon and undertake a policy without due regard for the governed - with or without democratic procedures and institutions. As it happened, that public support did not exist until Pearl Harbor, at which time all that preceded became somewhat moot. Then again, no paleoconservative of whom I am aware questions the American response to that attack; the debate centers on the preceding years of policy.

The argument, so far as I am aware, is not that America was obligated to continue supplying oil, iron, and so forth to the Japanese imperial machine - this seems a caricature - but that American policymakers are obligated to Americans, first and foremost, and that policies that, contrary to those interests, render more likely the involvement of America in wars "over there" have a strong moral strike against them as deliberations begin. That is not a categorical principle, but it ought to carry more weight than we are inclined to give it; government, in fact, is not obligated to move simply because people somewhere are suffering.

That is, I don't think there is any. It is quite possible in principle to go to war justly in defense of another party, without any self-interest of our own and without any formal alliance. It is quite possible to be an innocent bystander oneself and to enter a conflict in defense of another innocent; indeed that can be one of the noblest of acts, taking only risk upon oneself on behalf of another without any clear benefit or self interest.

I don't really disagree with any of this; I merely think it an incomplete statement of the relevant moral factors. I do not believe that governments possess the moral authority to compel wars of altruism where such wars will be contrary to the interests of their own people, and where those people themselves oppose the very notion. As far as I am concerned, though I pray nothing of the sort ever transpires, Russia could trample Georgia beneath a bootheel, and this would generate nothing by way of an obligation on America's part, let alone render desirable or laudable a war of supererogation. To state the matter concretely, a government, as I perceive the matter, has no licit moral authority (as distinct from legal authority) to compel even a volunteer army to sacrifice for some object not in the interests of America - which war with Russia would not be - and can only arguably receive this authority if the people consent to it. Strict matters of national defense are another matter. I can be asked to risk my life in defense of the United States; I cannot be licitly asked, let alone required, to do so for an object so absurd as the defense of Georgia.

The basic disagreement between paleocons and neocons is itself reduced to a Machiavellian calculus of what serves our own selfish interests, as opposed to what is the right - and thus always necessarily modest, and constrained by prudence - thing to do.

Neither have I ever expressed disagreement with these thoughts, or anything akin to them. Though I'm not so certain as you that paleoconservatives are cynical; I merely believe that their moral calculus is perhaps somewhat different. Then again, I consider most of the policies which America pursues through the instrumentalities of its allies dubious at best, and illicit at worst. Were America to spin the globe and point to some country, selecting as a sort of friend and partner nation, say, Burkina Faso, I'd probably say that it was swell and wish the endeavour all the best. However, America's allies in vast swathes of the world are expected to function as chess pieces in those immodest, imprudent, and illicit games of empire-construction: Georgia, Ukraine, parts of Central Asia, and so on. In other words, minding one's own business, accepting limitations, understanding that one's own political dogmas are not universal prescriptions, and that American interests are not entitled to access and control wherever they wish to go, are factors of moral analysis. I perceive a great deal of hubris and imprudence, and little altruism.

I'm not sure you can justly remove the interests of of a political community from the calculation of whether or not said community can justly enter into a war. The purpose of government is to provide for the common good of the political community that it governs. If there is no compelling interest to enter into a war(and I mean this in a broad sense, viz. not just in terms of wealth and strategic value, but also morally, spiritually, &c.), then to enter into the war would be unjust, insofar as doing so would involve government violating the very principle by which its just action is measured.

Well, while trying not to thread-jack Zippy's thread to an argument about our entry into WWII, I will say that embargoes and trade limitations do not, in my opinion, have to meet the same criteria as war. For example, they don't have to have a high probability of success. When another country is engaging in evil actions, refusing to do business with said country has, in my book, a moral strike *for* it aside from whether we succeed by such passive means in stopping the evil actions. In fact, ironically, the moral arguments against trade with China having to do with China's one-child policy and the like seem to me far stronger than arguments about American jobs. Anti-free-trade is itself a theme of those who tend to agree with Mr. Buchanan, but I sometimes agree with them for reasons having to do with our pulling away from evil regimes. Seen in this light, an oil embargo against Japan makes sense to me in itself. This is not to say that prudential considerations are irrelevant there but rather to say that I don't consider such actions to be tantamount to going to war with the country, and I do consider them to have moral arguments going for them. In short, I don't think that "minding our own business" is trumps, much as I like the concept, and I _certainly_ don't think it's trumps when it comes to merely refusing to aid an aggressor directly or indirectly. And I do think that the language (which I know, Maximos, you must have heard even more often than I have) of our having "forced Japan to attack us" goes far beyond such a mild statement as "Prudential considerations might have weighed against an oil embargo on Japan" and is instead just nuts and ideological in the worst of senses.

I'm not sure you can justly remove the interests of a political community from the calculation of whether or not said community can justly enter into a war.

That is probably true very broadly speaking; but expressing the nobility and valor of the community in a selfless act in defense of the innocent would have to fall under the "very broadly" rubric for me to go along with it. IOW, if it is a limit it isn't much of one.