| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Orson Scott Card: "Realism" isn't realistic |
| 2005-11-09 |
| The author of Ender's Game takes on Brent Scowcroft. EFL, emphasis added. RTWT. . . . Scowcroft is the kind of strategic thinker who seems unable to grasp that it is not "peace" to postpone a war, or "statesmanship" to end a war under such terms as to generate the next one. His strategy of leaving Saddam in place in Iraq after the Gulf War of 1991 was designed with the "realistic" goal of leaving Iraq strong enough to counterbalance Iran's growing power in the Middle East. But at what cost? The Shi'ites of Iraq felt, correctly, that they had been betrayed, and much of their best leadership was murdered in the aftermath of Scowcroft's "realistic" abandonment of them during their revolt after the Gulf War. And it was, in part, the flabby outcome of the Gulf War that convinced Osama that America was not serious -- that even when we went to all the trouble of fighting a war, all we aimed for was the status quo ante. We could be attacked with impunity. After all, if we didn't get rid of a monster like Saddam, whom, exactly, would we bother to get rid of? The trouble with "realism" in foreign policy is that it only works if you actually know what "reality" is -- that is, if you can grasp the present situation so thoroughly that you can predict all possible outcomes and their relative probability. Whenever you can't do that -- which is always -- then "realism" amounts to "putting off uncontrollable events as long as possible" and "trying to get along with monsters." In other words, realism begins to overlap quite dangerously with appeasement. When you start to think, "Better the monster we know than the chaos we don't know," you are ready to go to Munich and return triumphantly with "peace in our time," which might, with luck, last as long as a year and a half. That was Scowcroft's genius -- to be utterly discredited by leaving the world far more dangerous than he found it. Even as he claimed to be establishing a "new world order," all he really did was cling desperately to such fragments of the old order as he could. People who espouse "realistic" foreign policy love to talk as if the only alternative were "unrealistic" foreign policies -- and who would argue for those? But the truth is that America is an ideological nation. Whatever the complicated origins of our revolution in 1776, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of 1783, with the Bill of Rights, established us as a nation with a cause. We would be a beacon of liberty to the nations of the world. . . . . . . Americans are ashamed to act like other nations. Intellectual Brits can mock us for being cowboys -- though their empire once covered the world; the French can resent us for running roughshod over the tender sensibilities of former would-be world conquerors. But we hate it when the world accuses us of acting only in our "realistic" self-interest, because that's not who we are, or at least not who we want to be. We need to be the good guys. We Americans hated watching as tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men were slaughtered in the genocidal war in the former Yugoslavia; that's why we sat still for Clinton's day-late-and-a-dollar-short bombing of Serbia over Kosovo. We Americans hated ending the Gulf War in 1991 with Saddam still in power and the Republican Guard deliberately allowed to keep its military ability to slaughter Iraqis at will. When our soldiers go off to kill and die, they had better be dying for something that actually matters or we won't stand for it. Stalemates feel like losing; realpolitik feels like we're no better than the cynical 19th-century border-drawers who got the world into such an ugly shape in the first place. Americans will not long endure a government whose goal is a "balance of power." We don't want power to be balanced. We want to feel like our power is enormously lopsided, but that it is used exclusively for either a noble cause or our own direct national defense. What is more, "realism" does not work. It cannot work, because the equations of power-balancing are fully readable by our enemies and opponents and rivals. When they know that we will go this far and no farther, we become predictable to them. And when we are predictable, then our enemies are free to act as they wish within the safe, "realistic" boundaries we have laid out for them. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 When you start to think, "Better the monster we know than the chaos we don't know," you are ready to go to Munich and return triumphantly with "peace in our time," which might, with luck, last as long as a year and a half. I'll take this as confirmation that we are better off decapping corrupt governments like Iran and Sudan. The chaos that follows, however difficult to predict, will be easier to contain in that those who assume power will be less well connected and not as experienced. Better the imp we do not know than the devil we do. Kim, Mugabe, Assad and all of their vile ilk satisfy this formula quite nicely. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2005-11-09 19:21 |
| #3 Bean for president! |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2005-11-09 18:20 |
| #2 "[I]t is not 'peace' to postpone a war, or 'statesmanship' to end a war under such terms as to generate the next one." That deserves a spot in Bartlett's. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-11-09 08:33 |
| #1 Excellent! This is a battle for minds, screw the hearts. And for those who don't get it, they are to be beaten back by whatever means necessary. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-11-09 06:49 |