Our World-Historical Gamble

Tech Central Station ^ | March 11, 2003 | Lee Harris

[beckett]

1: THE PROBLEM

Of the many words written for and against the coming war with Iraq, none has been more perceptive than Paul Johnson's observation in his essay "Leviathan to the Rescue" that such a war "has no precedent in history" and that "in terms of presidential power and national sovereignty, Mr. Bush is walking into unknown territory. By comparison, the Gulf War of the 1990's was a straightforward, conventional case of unprovoked aggression, like Germany's invasion of Belgium in 1914 and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor."

The implications of this remark - like the implications of the war with Iraq - are profound. The war with Iraq will constitute one of those momentous turning points of history in which one nation under the guidance of a strong-willed, self-confident leader undertakes to alter the fundamental state of the world. It is, to use the language of Hegel, an event that is world-historical in its significance and scope. And it will be world-historical, no matter what the outcome may be.

Such world-historical events, according to Hegel, are inherently sui generis - they break the mold and shatter tradition.

[beckett]

Long think piece with a novel point of view from Lee Harris, an author with solid competence in philosophy who has already written a few oft-cited articles post 911, including Al-Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology.

Well worth reading.

[xm177e2]

Yes, he wrote Fantasy Ideology. That's one of the best articles out there. I'm halfway through this one, and I like it a lot.

[Cicero]

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Anyone who doesn't have time to read it now should save it for future reference. I'm sending the URL to my e-mail list.

[Arkinsaw]

Fantastic.

[Arkinsaw]

YEH,YEH,YEH, Lots of talk !!!

And even some of that there thinkin' stuff.

[Mackey]

Lee Harris definitely has his head on straight. I hope Powell reads this piece and takes it to heart.

[Valin]

Bump for later.

[nathanbedford]

About 40 years ago I was a freshly washed college student who happened to find himself in the Senate gallery when a balding man with a gravellely voice began to drone on and on about "new myths and old realities." I didn't get much out of it, my excuse is the acoustics were bad but the truth is the implications of his speech went over my head. I never agreed with his speech, even when I understood it but it got a lot of press and attention in acedemia.

Now this author calls for a new paradigm but I don't understand what it is nor what his solutions are. Yet I know that he is performing a valuable service by cleaning out the underbrush which is confusing our thinking and fueling the left which steadfastly refuses to abandon its outmoded and dangerous shibboleths.

I see that we are in a foot race with these maniacs to annihiliate them before they blow up Pittsburg. I see that they are playing armeggedon while the UN and most of the western world plays tea party. And I see that after Iraq we must take on and permanently neutralize the nuclear regimes of Iran and Korea. I believe that George Bush sees all this much clearer than I do.

But I do not see a way clear. After Afganistan and Irak the US could find itself out of gas and out of favor, unable to take on Korea and Irak without allies and disintigrating at home. May God help us if Bush is replaced by a democrat before he can get us to the Promised Land.

[Cacique]

cerebral ping

[veryconernedamerican]

The very pushing of the agenda we are currently pursuing will feed the next ten years in US policy, whether it be democrat or republican, this war is for survival as much as world war II was. Rational thought is the at the heart of true peace, when people are not held repsonsible for their actions all is lost, on any level. Individuals, nations and all other groups of like minded people must be held completely responsible for their actions in order for peace to exist. this is the folly of the peaceniks, appeasement doesn't ever work. Hard realty rules on every level.

[ggekko]

"Now this author calls for a new paradigm but I don't understand what it is nor what his solutions are...."

This author's article is seminal as it addresses the fallacy that has accompanied every foreign policy mistake we have made since the end of the Cold War. This fallacy involves the concept of "rational actors" that is presumed in the educations of almost every Western diplomat working today. Almost all policy leaders and diplomats were trained by studying concepts and theorists who came of age in the 19th century.

In any negotiation or business transaction we engage in everyday life we always base on our actions on the presumption that the person we are negotiating with values his own interests and life. In the Western world whether it is individuals or nations the presumption of self-interest is taken for granted.

With the phenomena of radical Islam, however, we are confronted with the phenomena of individuals and groups who value a self-destructive fantasy more than their lives and interests. The presumption self-intrest is no longer valid when dealing with many parts of the Islamic world. This realization is tremendously disorienting for a typical Westerner.

The consequence of this realization is that states mired in this ideology cannot be treated as if they are rational actors seeking their self-interest. It requires a different strategy analogous to how an adult treats children.

In order to act in concert with this new paradigm it will be necessary to reject one of the most pernicious fallacies of the Modern Age: cultural relativism. All cultures are not equal and an unashamed sense of the historic superiority of Western civilization will have be adopted by our leaders.

[tpaine]

THe author proposes:


"a double standard imposed by the U.S. on the rest of the world, whereby the U.S. can unilaterally decide to act, if need be, to override and even to cancel the existence of any state regime that proposes to develop WMD, especially in those cases where the state regime in question has demonstrated its dangerous lack of a sense of the realistic.
What the critics of this policy fail to see is the simple and obvious fact that if any social order is to achieve stability there must be, at the heart of it, a double standard governing the use of violence and force.
There must be one agent who is permitted to use force against other agents who are not permitted to use force.
The implementation of the fashionable myth that all violence is equally immoral and reprehensible would inevitably result, in a typical dialectical reversal, in the Hobbesian state of universal war.
Every civilized order, precisely in so far as it is a civilized order, relies on such a double standard.
The only alternative to this is the frank and candid acceptance of anarchy, the state in which all recourse to violence is equally legitimate. But what Mr. Butler and others fail to realize is that anarchy with clubs and sticks is a much preferable to anarchy with nuclear weapons.
_________________________________


-- He then goes on to stress that the USA can ~only~ exercise this double standard in regard to the use of weapons of mass destrution. -- And, -- that in order to do so, we would have to actually curtail efforts in our conventional 'peacekeeping' roles.

-- That the USA would ever adopt a role with such a limit on its power is very naive, imo.

[Just another Joe]

Bump for a long read later.

[jackbob]

But perhaps our greatest challenge will be to our own thinking. We must take a hard look at every idea we hold dear and ask, Does this idea even fit any more? And does it any longer make sense to speak of conservatives in a world in which a catastrophic change of some kind looms, or liberals when it is the core liberal values of all of us - even the most conservative - that are being threatened?

This is not going to go over very well here at FR, even for those who otherwise agree with this guy.

[nathanbedford]

I agree that he has identified the underbrush that will not work but I am not clear about what he thinks will work.

[fporretto]

Bookmarked for later, extended reflection.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com