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IP: Applying The Wisdom Of The Ages To The 21st Century - Robert Kaplan
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 19:02:31 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: "Howard Butcher, IV" <hbiv () netreach net> Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 19:49:31 -0500 To: "David Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu> Subject: Fw: Applying The Wisdom Of The Ages To The 21st Century - Robert Kaplan Dear David, Here is a piece that really puts the whole current world situation into proper perspective, at least in my view. Best, Howard
Foreign Policy Research Institute
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ROBERT KAPLAN On
APPLYING THE WISDOM OF THE AGES
TO THE TWENTY FIRSY CENTURY
April 4, 2002
Robert Kaplan delivered the Fifth Annual Strausz-Hupe
Lecture on January 17, 2002, drawing on his new book,
WARRIOR POLITICS: WHY LEADERSHIP DEMANDS A PAGAN ETHOS
(Random House, 2002). Author of such books as BALKAN GHOSTS
and THE COMING ANARCHY, Kaplan is a contributing editor of
The Atlantic, a fellow of the New America Foundation, and a
former senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute. WARRIOR POLITICS is available to FPRI members at
a 20 percent discount off the regular price of $22.95.
The Strausz-Hupe Lecture has been held each year since 1998
in honor of FPRI's founder, who was said to have introduced
the term "geopolitics" into the American vocabulary. Sadly,
Ambassador Strausz-Hupe passed away on February 24, 2002, at
age 98. His most famous work, "Protracted Conflict,"
published in 1959, also serves as the name of a collection
of essays appearing in the Spring 2002 issue of Orbis on the
war on terrorism; the Orbis special issue includes Strausz-
Hupe's last work, completed in December 2001. For
information about the ambassador, visit our website
(www.fpri.org).
The Fifth Annual Robert Strausz-Hupe Lecture
ROBERT KAPLAN
On
APPLYING THE WISDOM OF THE AGES
TO THE TWENTY FIRSY CENTURY
(A summary by Trudy J. Kuehner)
While many see our times as being marked by new challenges
requiring some new-age philosophy, in fact there is nothing
wholly new about the issues we face: Mr. Kaplan noted that a
framework for dealing with them can be found in the
philosophies developed in ancient Greece, Rome, and China.
He remarked that the subtitle he chose for "Warrior
Politics," "Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos," was
chosen to recognize the lessons these earlier philosophies
hold for our times.
Throughout history, economic development, the rise of middle
classes, and urbanization -- i.e., all the things we
associate with progress -- have led to revolutions and
upheavals. The perpetrators of the recent suicide attacks in
the United States and elsewhere, like so many
revolutionaries before them, are generally children of
emerging middle classes. With the dramatic socioeconomic
progress since the 1970s in countries like Indonesia, India,
Brazil, and Nigeria, the continued growth of the young male
population projected over the next 10-15 years (especially
in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East), and the
increased urbanization of the Middle East as water supplies
dwindle, we can be sure the next decade will see a cascade
of upheavals worldwide, Mr. Kaplan observed.
But again, all of this has been dealt with in earlier times.
The international order of the twenty-first century is
complex, but no more so than it was at the time of the
Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta, in which as
many as fifty states participated on each side, joined in
alliances as convoluted as those of the Cold War.
One modern student of ancient philosophies was Winston
Churchill. His "River War" (1899), a narrative of Britain's
reconquest of the Sudan, evidences the sensibilities of
Thucydides or Herodotus, a morality preceding monotheism.
Having become an avid reader of ancient history once he
experienced war for himself, Churchill would have been well
familiar with the story in the "Iliad" of the Trojans, who
believed that through their prosperity they could buy off
enemies and ensure peace -- until they were invaded by Greek
warriors and besieged.
The lesson for Churchill, as for us, Mr. Kaplan stated, is
that without a challenge, a great power will descend into
decadence and partisanship. Britain in the 1890s was an
empire at peace. London was the financial capital of the
world, and Britain's navy was supreme. But because it was at
peace, it lacked a uniting moral struggle. Its campaign in
the Sudan presages the policy battles in the United States
in the 1990s over Bosnia and Kosovo and the debate whether
those interventions were in our self-interest as a nation at
peace. Churchill concludes that it's through serving its
self-interest that a country shapes and improves the world.
Britain was pursing naked self-interest in the Sudan in the
1890s, and yet in doing so laid the groundwork for more than
fifty years of civil administration thereafter that
dramatically raised the Sudanese standard of living.
Churchill believed in a morality of consequence, not of
intentions. If the results are good, then virtue attaches to
them.
Churchill also believed that geography and history were
things to be acknowledged and overcome, not denied. Both a
realist and an idealist, he painted a pessimistic portrait
of Sudan, with its brutal climate and warring tribes, and
yet he saw the challenges as being ones that moral people
could surmount. Indeed, to him, without evil and
intractability, there could be no good, no moral behavior,
and no heroism.
Importantly, Churchill recognized the paramount importance
of patriotic pride. A nation without pride in its history
will lack courage. Livy's romanticization of the earlier
Roman struggle against Carthage is mirrored in the Allies'
subsequent romanticization of World War II. The way the
United States was able to deal with September 11, finding
strength and pride in its history, is testament to the key
role this can play.
The moral priorities Churchill was willing to establish,
too, are more connected to the ancient understanding of the
need to choose one good over another than to the Judeo-
Christian struggle between good and evil. In foreign policy,
leaders are often forced to choose between two goods and may
have to perpetrate evil to serve the greater good. The Bush
administration's preparedness on 9/11 to shoot down the
fourth hijacked plane if necessary shows that it understands
this, too, Mr. Kaplan stated.
There is often an ancient, real morality in states'
relations where we might not perceive it, he went on. In his
1972 essay "The Originality of Machiavelli," Sir Isaiah
Berlin concludes that far from being amoral, Machiavelli is
guided by a definite morality -- just not the Christian
morality. Rather, his is the morality of the ancient polis,
the values that secure a stable community. A different level
of morality is required for those who must take personal
responsibility for millions. Unlike our religious morality
as interpreted in public discourse by politicians, good
intentions are not enough for these leaders. In
Machiavelli's political and social world, if an outcome were
unsuccessful, the act could not be virtuous.
This was also observed in the 20th century by George Kennan,
who wrote that in foreign affairs, "other criteria, sadder,
more limited, more practical, must be allowed to prevail"
("Realities of American Foreign Policy," 1954) and Arthur
Schlesinger, to whom morality in foreign affairs derived
from "one's own sense of honor and decency" and "the
assumption that other nations have legitimate traditions,
interests, values and rights of their own" ("Cycles of
American History," 1986). But they are only stating what was
known to Machiavelli, Thucydides, and back to Aristotle, Mr.
Kaplan noted.
Machiavelli's "Prince" is for those who reject determinism
and will use any means to overcome their fate. Because he
liberated politics from the fatalism and self-righteousness
of the medieval church and brought it into the realm of
self-interest, which allows nations to deal with each other
in mutual respect, William Manchester named Machiavelli the
father of the Renaissance. Mr. Kaplan offered the examples
of two recent leaders in the tradition of Machiavelli's
"Prince": Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein I.
In the late 1980s, it was Rabin's hard line on the first
Palestinian intifada that earned him the political support
which he drew upon later in reaching the Oslo accords. And
when King Hussein disbanded a Soviet-leaning, democratizing
government in the 1950s and took strong measures to suppress
terrorism in the 1970s, he knew that he was saving Jordan
from other, crueler leaders. Both adhered to Machiavelli's
insistence on using only the minimum amount of cruelty
needed and only when it was likely to do the greatest good.
By contrast, because of his excessive cruelty, no virtue
attaches to General Pinochet, even if he did make Chile the
most prosperous Latin American country.
Thucydides wrote that only three things govern our
intentions: fear, self-interest, and honor. In foreign
affairs, these should not be denied, Thucydides explained,
but managed in ways that optimize outcomes for the given
nation. War is not an aberration, and the constant potential
for it must be acknowledged. Similarly, the way to avoid
tragedy is to cultivate a sense of it. Indeed, Mr. Kaplan
observed, it was by thinking tragically, envisioning "What
can go wrong?" that our founding fathers created a nation of
optimism.
Turning to China's traditions, at the time the classical
world was developing, China also comprised many small
kingdoms, the larger of which fought with each other in
various alignments. Chinese thinkers learned the same thing
that those in Greece and Rome had: sovereignty does not
occur in a void. Peoples and tribes will unite and wars will
occur because of differences with others. The Warring States
period led to Sun-tzu's "Art of War," a summary of their
convential wisdom that is as wise today. War represents a
failure of a state's politics to achieve its ends. The
pursuit of pragmatic self-interest is a moral, not amoral,
act. Avoiding war requires foresight, and therefore spies;
nations that do not appreciate this are destined to
experience tragedies. (This may not have been self-evident
before 9/11 but it certainly is now, Mr. Kaplan remarked.)
The philosopher who best embodies all these ancient
sensibilities to Mr. Kaplan is Thomas Hobbes (1582-1679).
Profoundly moral, he took up where Aristotle left off.
Liberal and progressive by the standards of his time, he
rejected divine right, introducing the idea that government
is only legitimate if it serves the interests of those
governed.
Hobbes is also the first modern, moral philosopher to search
for the roots of morality, which he traced to profound fear.
We all have the deep subconscious fear of suffering violent
death at the hands of another in the dark. We will go to
great lengths to avoid this, giving up part of our freedom
to a government, or Leviathan, with the overriding authority
to protect us from other human beings. Our founding fathers
certainly were informed by this philosophy of the ancients
as stated by Hobbes, Mr. Kaplan said. This central authority
and order must precede democracy. Without a central
authority to punish wrongdoers, practically speaking nothing
is immoral. "The Federalist Papers" show their understanding
of our need for a central authority, but one they sought to
make as untyrannical as possible.
Hobbes could be the philosopher for the next twenty years,
Mr. Kaplan suggested. With a number of calcified, decaying
regimes increasingly lacking legitimacy throughout the world
-- in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia,
etc. -- our challenge is to recreate new, legitimate
authorities before we can think of making those authorities
democratic. Closer to home, the whole debate over the
attorney general's military tribunals is Hobbesian. Reading
Hobbes would enrich our understanding of what degree of
freedom we would give up for our protection.
If in the past we have had raison d'etat, which recognizes
the self-interest of the state and that foreign policy
operates on a more limited morality than domestic policy, in
the future, we will have raison de systeme, he said:
recognizing the self-interest of the system rather than of
the state. We will and should never have a strong world
government, because any world government would by definition
lack opposition and become tyrannical. But we will have
eminently strong, robust global institutions constituting
world governance. Just as individuals give up some of their
freedoms in favor of protection, nations will give up some
of their sovereignty to maintain order and limit the level
and amount of warfare around the word. This is all very
Hobbesian: the highest morality will be the morality of
keeping the system together, of moving toward more
interlocking governments, and of international institutions
to foster democracy. It closes the gap between the limited
morality of foreign affairs and the Judeo-Christian concepts
of private morality that have applied in domestic law. The
War Crimes Tribunal and the Hague represent an embryonic
beginning of this new system of order.
But one cannot bring in a more universally democratic world
situation without being periodically ruthless, using methods
indefensible by universal or democratic morality, Mr. Kaplan
concluded. President Reagan's deployment of Pershing
missiles in Western Germany in December 1983 was denounced
by the foreign policy mandarinate in the United States and
demonstrators in Europe, but it led to a change in Soviet
policy that ultimately led to the collapse of the Berlin
Wall, and so led to a more democratic world. There are many
other examples: most recently, Kabul was liberated by B-52s.
A world of more than 200 nations and thousands of non-
governmental organizations requires the organizing principle
of some great power to move it toward a more peaceful
democratic future. That great power has to operate from
self-interest, supported by a people motivated by their
romanticized past, even if it is emblemized by flags on
pick-up trucks. The twenty-first century may witness the
rough equivalent of China after the Warring States period
ended in the third century BCE. The victorious Han empire
governed a loose assemblage of states in a way that kept
disagreement to a minimum for four hundred years. The Great
Power organizing principle can work when we recognize the
role of patriotic pride, a usable past, and methods that
cannot be defended by the religious morality of public
discourse but by an older, more limited pagan morality.
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