Joho the Blog
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March 20, 2003
When I was 12, I remember listening in my bedroom for sirens to tell me that soon I'd be inhaling the radiated dust that once was New York City 15 miles away. The US Navy was going to intercept Russian ships suspected of transporting nuclear missiles to Cuba. The Russians would either allow us to board or they would fight back, likely escalating quickly into a "nuclear exchange." The Russians "blinked." Kruschev didn't have JFK's balls. (The fact that we actually did a deal with him — we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey on his border — didn't emerge until years later.) We won and we learned the wrong lessons. We are going to win in Iraq and we will also learn the wrong lessons. The Cuban Missile Crisis was only a crisis because we made it one. Having nuclear missiles in Cuba did not affect our national security one iota. Soviet subs armed with nuclear missiles patrolled our shores, so why did it matter that there were a handful more nukes 90 miles away? The presence of Cuban missiles only meant that Miami might be vaporized 8 minutes sooner than New York. The deterrent to any attack remained the 28,000 nuclear weapons we had dispersed around the world. The Cuban missile crisis was our fault. It was reckless. It was machismo that put the world at risk. Thank God Kruschev didn't have JFK's balls. In fact, the Cuban missile crisis is the best argument in history against balls. But, we learned from it that playing chicken "works." We learned that threatening to end life on the planet is an effective way of getting what you want. We escalated the arms race — it was JFK, after all, who campaigned by making up a "missile gap" — to heights that almost bankrupted us before it bankrupted the Soviet Union. The real lesson should have been, IMO, that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to use except for deterrence. And if deterrence was our goal, we only needed a few subs swimming deep under water. Now we are going to win another fight; we would turn the desert to glass before we would lose. And the lesson we'll draw from this is that it's honorable to be willing to wage war alone, that war works, that the UN doesn't, that we are not secure unless every risk is removed, that peace means no strife or disagreement, that strength means power and that restraining from the use of violence is weakness. Each of these lessons is wrong. The world will be more dangerous because of it. And there's not a thing we can do about it. It'd be like suggesting that the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't really an American triumph at all. Posted
by D. Weinberger at March 20, 2003 09:52 AM
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Comments
David
Great post, I have some suggested improvements to your incorrect lessons.
David's Incorrect Lessons
1) it's honorable to be willing to wage war alone
2) war works,
3) the UN doesn't,
4) we are not secure unless every risk is removed,
5) peace means no strife or disagreement,
6) strength means power and
7) restraining from the use of violence is weakness.
Some Suggested Improvements
1) it is sometimes necessary to wage war alone
2) war is sometimes effective in disarming dangerous rogue states
3) the UN is rarely effective in dealing with or disarming dangerous rogue states
4) we are never totally secure, but it makes sense to deal with serious risks
5) peace means life, Iraq is not a county of peace
6) strength means the fortitude to do what is right
7) restraining from violence whenever possible is a prudent policy
Posted by: Mike Sanders | March 20, 2003 10:38 AM
Mike Sanders' basically takes all of David's lessons (which Mike believes are the wrong lessons to learn), puts them into more neutral and wordy language, and turns them into lessons that he approves of. This makes Mike's lessons sound more reasonable, but I think they are not.
This is an interesting example of how the choice of language and grammar is used to convey a message, in this case very different ones.
Like the difference between saying "the bomb caused collateral damage when the building was hit" and "I killed innocent people when I dropped a bomb on the building they were living next to". Same event, different spin.
Or, from a radio program I listened to recently:
"We will fight them on the beaches..." (Winston Churchill)
compared with
"These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and attack the military capability of the Taliban regime." (George W Bush).
I understand Churchill. Its personal, to the point, its about what people are to do. But what the hell is Bush saying - its completely abstract, as if there is not a person in sight.
I've taken the liberty to comment further on Mike Sanders' "improvements".
1) it is sometimes necessary to wage war alone
This wording still means you think it is OK to wage war without getting the agreement of the international bodies to which our countries belong. The whole point is that we want a world where relations are governed by rules and agreements, not belligerence and sheer force.
2) war is sometimes effective in disarming dangerous rogue states
Saying "war is sometimes effective in disarming dangerous rogue states" is more specific than saying "war works", but the essential message is the same; the point remains that war should be justified, a last resort, and authorised by the international community. This war meets none of these criteria.
3) the UN is rarely effective in dealing with or disarming dangerous rogue states
The statement isn't true for a start. When Bush could see he wasn't going to achieve his aim of gaining legitimacy for an offensive/pre-emptive action (ie his aim of trying to make the attack "honourable"), he created the impression that the UN had somehow failed. The UN has certainly failed to stop the war - but that is because the USA has decided to be a law until itself - in effect a rogue state itself - and it is still highly debatable that the USA's approach will be more effective in stopping "rogue states" than the UN's. Bush's intended lesson, clearly, is that the UN has failed; that it doesn't work. But this is wrong, the Bush Administration has failed to justify its actions, and instead uses its power to get its way.
4) we are never totally secure, but it makes sense to deal with serious risks
A sentiment we can agree with. But the argument is over what is a serious risk. If you believe that Iraq is a serious risk, then to those of us who do not agree, you are giving the impression that you think pretty well everything is a serious risk. The UN makes it clear that war can only be considered where there is a clear and present danger, and then only as a last resort. None of this has been established. In any case, "deal with" can mean many more things than just "waging war".
5) peace means life, Iraq is not a country of peace
Perhaps David might have been suggesting that it would be undesireable for us to adopt the simplistic view that peace is the mere absence of strife and disagreement, because then we feel justified to rush in whenever we disagree and put the world to rights by violent means. Saying "peace is life, Iraq is not a country of peace" is exactly the same sort of simplistic statement, potentially leading to the same result. Very, very many of us suspect that the USA is not a country of peace, especially when it comes to foreign policy. And no, this should not be interpreted as thinking that I am "anti-american" - a phrase used by people who would rather avoid facing uncomfortable issues about the USA's foreign policies and behaviour.
6) strength means the fortitude to do what is right
Again, a sentiment we can agree with. But I mean the sort of strength the French and the Germans have displayed in standing up for what is the right thing to do, and for standing up against the outrageous behaviour of the Bush Adminstration.
The Prime Minister of Australia John Howard says he is doing what he thinks is right (he is fully behind the Bush Administration, and has sent 2,000 troops over). However, 71% of the Australian population think is doing the wrong thing, and that he is weak for not standing up to the Bush Administration. The Bush adminstration comes across basically as "might is right" and "the means justify the ends". Or as I've quoted Thucydides before here, "large nations do what they will, small nations do what they must".
7) restraining from violence whenever possible is a prudent policy
We can agree with this statement, but the Bush Administration has clearly portrayed the UN security council as weak and ineffective because it would not sanction violence! Thus David is right in suggesting that the lesson Bush wants us to learn is that restraining from the use of violence is a sign of weakness.
Posted by: Vergil | March 21, 2003 07:11 AM
Thanks, Vergil.
My overall response to Mike is in line with what you say: I have no argument with many of Mike's statements, but I don't think those are the lessons we are going to learn from our conquest of Iraq. The easier and more complete our victory, the lower will be our threshold for resorting to war.
Posted by: dweinberger | March 21, 2003 08:26 AM
Vergil - thanks for taking the time to respond.
I read David's post as learning general lessons from a specific situation. The point being that we can sometimes learn the wrong general lessons - and I totally agree.
David suggested 7 general "wrong" lessons, which I took the liberty of improving. Clearly in some cases the improvement was better than in others.
In the specific case of improving the situation in Iraq and the effectivness of the UN, we most likely disagree.
If you want to continue that discussion I would suggest taking it offline in email. (msand1000@hotmail.com)
Posted by: Mike Sanders | March 21, 2003 09:15 AM
David
I share you pessimism on the world learning the right lessons and I would probably apply it more broadly.
The question of quickly resorting to war might be preceded by the question of: "Were we really in a state of peace - before Iraq?" Especially in light of all the people killed around the world these past two years.
Maybe the framing of this discussion as a choice between war and peace is not sufficient any more?
Posted by: Mike Sanders | March 21, 2003 09:36 AM
Mike,
Thanks for your offer to explore this offline - though it is still really online, I suppose, more off-web than off-line!
( Actually, I am sending you this in an email, but also posting it to DW's comment area anyway, perhaps hoping others might chime in with other views!)
You are right to point out that the differences in view relate to the specifics of the actions related to Iraq and the UN.
That is the trouble with general statements of principle - the specific actions which may derive from them may differ quite considerably, even when stake holders are apparently in agreement.
I do understand that you were extracting general lessons, just like David, and that you agree that we might learn the wrong lessons. And we all share a certain pessimism about this. However, I suspect our pessimism derives from very different views of the lessons we might learn, and what the practical consequences might be. The devil is in the detail, as the saying goes. I think David gets to the heart of the matter by noting that "the easier and more complete the victory, the lower will be our threshold for resorting to war." That is a way of summarising all the "wrong" lessons put forward by David.
I feel the practical implications and methods for proceeding are at least as important (if not more) than the expression of the high level principle. That is why I think the UN is important - this is how the nations should be resolving differences and working together. The current events put all of this at risk, and will lower our" threshold for war" as a solution to problems between societies.
Another way of saying this is that I believe that more and more groups of people, workplaces, villages, societies, nations will resort to "tough" policies, violent solutions to differences, resort to "we are right, because we have might". The wrong lessons will be learned.
Posted by: Vergil | March 21, 2003 08:49 PM