In September 2002, Jay Bookman posted an article on the Information Clearing House site in which he voices his concern that the Bush administration’s stated reason for going to war with Iraq, namely that Saddam Hussein is a rogue dictator who has weapons of mass destruction and who is in league with al Qaeda, is mere windowdressing. For the Bush administration, war with Iraq, Bookman argues, is a step towards the establishment of an American empire.
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman.
Crossposted at ProgressiveHistorians
In 2000, some of the “architects of this would-be American empire,” including Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, and Donald Kagan, issued a report, the “Project for a New American Century,” that called for a significant increase in America’s military spending. In order to preserve world peace, the report argues, America must assert a military presence on a global scale. Achieving that goal will be expensive. America must not only expand and modernize its forces but also establish permanent military bases in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. However high the cost of such expansion and modernization, America must be ready to assume it, since it is America’s destiny to be the policeman of global peace.
The authors of the Project produced the report after a decade of frustration and disappointment. The collapse of Communism had given America an unrestricted opportunity to assume world-wide “constabulary duties,” but America chose to turn its back on its global responsibility. The “advocates of empire,” however, have had their confidence restored because the terrorist aggression of 9/11 has inspired in America a new determination to accept its destiny and shoulder the responsibility of empire.
Bookman is not so sure that we should take on the imperial role.
If we do decide to seize empire, we should make that decision knowingly, as a democracy. The price of maintaining an empire is always high. Kagan and others argue that the price of rejecting it would be higher still.
A week later Donald Kagan posted a response in which he scoffs at Bookman’s charge that he or anyone else connected with the 2000 report is seeking a new American empire.
“All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire,” Kagan loftily intones. He points out that imperial nations, by means of superior military force, impose their will on subject nations in matters legal, social, and economic. Imperial nations, that is, deprive subject nations “of freedom and autonomy” and reduce them to the status of political and economic dependents.
“To compare the United States with any such empire is ludicrous,” Kagan sniffs. During the Cold War the US forces certainly occupied Western Europe, but such occupation, far from posing a threat to the freedom and autonomy of European democracies, was for the purpose of protecting them from the totalitarian threat of the Soviet Union.
It should thus be obvious that the US was not in those instances seeking to dominate the Western world but to lead it. In the great struggle against Soviet totalitarianism the US provided what no other nation had either the strength or the will to provide, the necessary leadership. The US was able to provide such leadership not only because it had the military strength to deter the Soviet Union but also, and more important, because it embodied the principle to which the Soviet Union and its totalitarian ideology was inevitably forced to succumb: freedom.
It is indisputable that the West prevailed in its titanic struggle against the Soviet Union because of America’s commitment to military strength and its will to deploy it. But the West prevailed also because of America’s unflagging commitment to the ideals of freedom and democracy. On such ideals empires are not founded. The fact that these are the ideals to which America is unswervingly committed demonstrates that the motives driving America’s foreign policy are not imperial. Quite the contrary, Kagan says, the overriding motive driving America’s foreign policy has always been and is now “the establishment and preservation of peace,” and peace can only be established and preserved on the basis of freedom. Therefore, if America is intent on establishing a new empire, as Bookman charges, it is an empire of freedom and democracy and peace.
1. Motives Rational and Motives Irrational
America’s leadership, then, is not just a military leadership but a moral leadership. Some policymakers, however, who make up an influential contingent that Kagan calls “realists,” argue that foreign policy must be based exclusively on calculations of economic and political self-interest. Kagan disagrees and emphatically contends that foreign policy must not be confined to a calculus of rational self-interest. In his essay “Our Interests and Our Honor,” published in the April 1997 issue of Commentary, he presents a case for motives that go beyond rational self-interest, motives that he frankly calls irrational.
Throughout history, Kagan says, nations
have acted to foster or to defend a collection of beliefs and feelings that have run…counter to their secular practical needs, persisting in this course even when the danger has been evident and the cost high. (42)
Such motives, which go beyond rational self-interest, are “irrational,” having to do with beliefs or values or ideals that cannot easily be contained within a calculus of rational self-interest.
But the notion that the only thing rational or real in the conduct of nations is the search for economic benefits or physical security is itself a prejudice of our time…Such an approach is no more adequate to explain behavior today than it ever was. (42)
Kagan does not deny that a motive driving America’s foreign policy is now and always has been self-interest. America has always and must always act in such a way as to protect itself from threats to its sovereignty and to advance the economic well-being of its citizens. But to explain the driving force behind America’s leadership today we must have recourse to a motive that goes beyond self-interest and the quest for security. Kagan has just such a motive in mind, one that has propelled nations into action since antiquity: honor.
Kagan isolates three components in his analysis of national honor. First, a nation strives to attain and to secure for itself “fame and glory.” Second, a nation feels compelled to “avenge” any damage that has been done to its reputation, that is, to restore its honor after it has been blemished or besmirched. Intimately related to this drive to avenge dishonor is a nation’s intent to avoid the antithesis of honor: “shame, disgrace, embarrassment.” And the third aspect of honor is a nation’s “determination to behave in accordance with certain moral ideals,” such as liberty and freedom.
It is precisely this recognition that nations act in accordance with such “irrational” motives as honor that separates the “realist” approach to policy from the “idealist” approach. The realist point of view in politics holds that nations seek to gain and use power for reasons of self-interest, and Kagan does not deny that such is the case. It is obvious that a militarily powerful nation can more successfully compete for resources and can more effectively protect itself from the aggression of other nations.
But even realists have seen the political utility of honor. “When a state’s power grows, the deference and respect in which it is held is likely to grow as well” (42). Such deference and respect are politically advantageous to the powerful nation, and it is well aware that for its own political benefit it must act honorably towards those less powerful nations that respect and defer to it. The powerful and honorable nation never, for example, violates the sovereignty of a less powerful nation nor politically exploits its weakness. It always, that is, strives to comport itself with restraint in international affairs.
Further, the powerful nation actively constructs and faithfully adheres to mutually beneficial alliances with less powerful nations. On the basis of such alliances a nation establishes its international credibility. When less powerful nations know that their more powerful ally can be trusted to keep its word, they will be more inclined to defer to its judgment. The powerful nation will therefore act honorably not so much because it is the morally right thing to do as because it is the politically advantageous thing to do.
2. Honor and the Irrational: the Democratic Ideal
But honor today moves a great nation to act for reasons that go beyond self-interest. Kagan argues that the great political and ideological struggles of the 20th century “introduced…a new sense of honor into international relations” (44). Two great forces arose out of the conflict of the Great War and began a momentous struggle: Freedom, embodied in democracies, and Tyranny, embodied first in fascist dictatorships and then in totalitarian Communism.
The forces of Tyranny were inherently expansive and aggressively sought to enlarge their sphere of power by means of war. Democracies, on the other hand, were inherently peaceful and had recourse to war only to protect themselves from the aggression of tyrannies. When the tyrannies of Nazism and Communism proved unappeasably aggressive, resistance became a moral imperative, and not only political leaders in democracies but also the people themselves “firmly linked the need to resist aggression with the concept of moral honor” (44).
The power of the irrational, of ideas and ideals, to move nations, shape events, and define whole swaths of history is nowhere better seen than in the world-historical struggle, lasting nearly half a century, between Freedom, embodied in the US, and Tyranny, embodied in the Soviet Union. The conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was certainly one of economic and political interests, expressed in space races, arms races, and proxy wars. But this momentous confrontation was also one “of values and ideas, in which questions of honor were inextricably entwined” (45).
The Soviet Union was the embodiment of an ideology, Marxism-Leninism, that was the negation and antithesis of the value on which the American way of life was founded: freedom. “Not only American security,” therefore, “but also decency and honor argued for [the Soviet Union’s] containment, if not its defeat” (45). To allow the Soviet Union to expand its sphere of totalitarian terror, to allow it to subjugate free peoples and subject them to the horrors of Communism, was dishonorable. Indeed, the only honorable course of action was to try to liberate those whom the Soviet Union had already enslaved and to protect those whom it was attempting, through a proxy like North Vietnam, to subjugate.
During the Cold War, however, and especially after the humiliation of Vietnam, the idealists who sought to confront the tyrannical expansionism of the Soviet Union were opposed by another faction “of the American foreign-policy establishment,” the realists. “Arguing from calculation of interest, the realists urged instead that we accept the permanence of world Communism and concentrate on finding areas of mutual accommodation” (45). This policy of détente, or “dishonorable retreat,” as Kagan calls it, had as its result the further expansion of Soviet military power and international influence in the 70s.
But 1980 saw the arrival of a new presidential administration “committed to restoring American strength and honor” (45). That administration was headed, of course, by an idealist, Ronald Reagan. His commitment to military strength and the foundational ideal of America, freedom, routed the realists in the foreign policy establishment and led, finally, to “the collapse of the Soviet Union, the discrediting of Communist dictatorship, and the vindication of freedom and democracy” (45).
Realists do not deny that military power is an important element in international relations, and they are willing to use it to advance America’s economic and geopolitical interests. Idealists, though, know full well that “power is never pursued for itself, but always for the sake of some value or values” (45). The core value of any democracy is of course freedom. But in today’s world, honor has become the indispensable partner of freedom. Tyranny, in the form of Islamic terrorism, is once again threatening peace-loving nations, and America’s honor requires that once again it use its power to defeat tyranny and advance freedom.
Those who accuse the US of acting to establish an empire do not understand the role of the “irrational,” of values and ideals, in international relations. We need to protect freedom in those places where it is already established and in those places where, young and vulnerable, it is striving to establish itself. However, when the opportunity offers, we need also to advance and project freedom into those places where people languish under the sway of terror and tyranny.
Realists do not understand this moral activism and criticize the “messianic” or “missionary” drive in American foreign policy. It is dangerous, they say, to actively project our values in the world. Yes, it is dangerous. But idealists understand that a leader does not flinch in the face of danger. America today is the world’s moral leader, and when it is the world’s freedom and its own honor that are at stake, America will not flinch, whatever the danger.
3. Honor and the Irrational: the Warrior Ideal
Kagan’s defense of the “irrational” in international affairs thus seems not only reasonable but even heroic. The New American Imperium is indeed one of values and ideals, of honor and freedom and heroism, of brave and courageous men and women fighting gloriously to establish freedom in face of tyrannical aggression and terror.
But Kagan’s discussion of honor in human affairs touches on another aspect of the irrational, a “feeling” often associated with the warrior: the desire for fame and glory.
Kagan is best known for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. The principal source of his history is of course the history of the Peloponnesian War written by the great Athenian historian Thucydides, and to illustrate the “warrior” conception of honor Kagan cites Thucydides’ discussion of the fateful conflict between Corinth and Corcyra.
Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, but it refused to act like one, deliberately neglecting to show its parent city the deference and respect that Corinth considered its due. Worse yet, the Corcyraeans opposed Corinth’s attempt to intervene in the affairs of Corcyra’s own colony, Epidamnus. Feeling its dignity besmirched by such defiance and opposition, Corinth attacked Corcyra and thus set in motion the forces that soon led to the quarter-century war between Athens and Sparta.
Corinth was incited to attack its colony not by a rational calculation of self-interest but by an irrational desire to protect its dignity and honor, not only in its own eyes but in the eyes of the Greek world.
No question of economic interest, no requirement of the competition for power, no danger to security, no practical fear, but rather a sense of unrequited grievance and shame provoked them to unleash a terrible war. (43)
An irrational emotion took precedence over a rational estimation. The Corinthians were provoked to rage because the Corcyraeans, who should have been submissive, had defied them. Such defiance, if left unpunished, would have been humiliating and would have exposed them, before the gaze of the Greek world, to shame and disgrace. To restore their honor, in their own eyes and in the eyes of their peers, the Corinthians had to teach their inferior a lesson. By means of force they had to compel their colony to once again acknowledge them its master. Only then would the Corinthians erase their shame, annul their disgrace, and expunge their dishonor.
Kagan connects this desire for dignity and respect to another desire that has never ceased to spur individuals and nations into action: the desire for fame and glory.
Throughout the ages, for better and for worse, honor in this sense—of fame, glory, renown, and splendor—has likewise motivated decisions about international relations and war and peace. (44)
Just as an individual strives to compel others to acknowledge his mastery and superiority, so too does a nation strive to rise above all others in achievement and renown. As an example of the individual drive for fame, Kagan cites the example of Achilles. When summoned by Odysseus to defend the honor of the Greeks, Achilles could have refused and chosen peace and safety and the pleasures of a long and uncomplicated life. But he chose to answer the call of war. He knew that had he remained safely in Greece while all the other Greek warriors sailed to Troy and danger and death, he would have condemned himself to an eternity of obscurity and deprived himself forever “of the fame and glory that alone make a hero’s life worth living.” So too, throughout history great kings and sovereigns have renounced the meager satisfactions of peace and safety and “have risked the prosperity and security of their kingdoms and their persons to achieve glory” (44).
The example of Achilles is a more revealing one than Kagan seems to realize, because as Homer tells us in the very first line of the Iliad, it is not the fame and glory of Achilles that he sings, but something other, something disruptive, violent, and terrible: “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles…” (trans. Robert Fagles). What, initially, has prompted Achilles’ rage? Agamemnon has insulted him, a man who is his superior in rank but who is also, and more important, his inferior in strength and skill. And just as the Corinthians reacted in rage to the disrespect shown them by their inferiors, the Corcyraeans, so too Achilles reacts in rage to the disrespect shown him by his inferior, Agamemnon.
Both an individual, Achilles, and a nation, Corinth, demanded that others acknowledge their superiority, and when they didn’t receive what they considered their due, when they felt that their honor had been sullied and their glory diminished, they reacted with an emotion that, it seems, is inextricably linked with the grandiose desire for fame, an emotion that is characteristic of the warrior and that indeed escapes the confines of the rational: rage.
4. There is Honor and Then There is Honor
The dynamic that defines the democratic ideal of honor certainly seems different from the one that defines the warrior ideal of honor. The nation motivated by the democratic ideal of honor puts its energy and power at the disposal of other nations in order to bring them the blessings of democracy and freedom. The nation motivated by the warrior ideal of honor, on the other hand, puts its power and energy at the disposal of its own drive for glory and renown and uses other nations as the mirror in which it sees its grandiose self reproduced and reflected.
Still, in spite of the differences that separate the warrior ideal from the democratic ideal, Kagan argues that these differences “conceal a fundamental similarity or even identity” (42). He does not identify the quality or attribute that his different ideals of honor share, but whatever it is, it cannot be contained within the cold, objective calculations of rational self-interest. The attribute that all manifestations of honor share is something subjective, emotive, irrational, and as the examples of Achilles and Corinth clearly show, dangerous.
The Kagan who has written most extensively and most provocatively about this “dangerous” aspect of honor and its effect in international relations is Donald’s son, Robert, and I will begin next time to explore his ideas concering honor and power and America's role as leader in today's dangerous world.
But for Robert Kagan it is not only the world that is dangerous. The title of his most recent book, Dangerous Nation, refers to America and to the quality that has defined it since its inception. America has certainly been, according to Robert Kagan, a commercially ambitious and territorially expansive nation, but it has also been a politically revolutionary and ideologically disruptive one, a nation whose commitment to change and progress has consistently proven to be dangerous for other nations committed to the settled ways of the past.
Realists neither understand nor accept this essential attribute of America, that it is a nation committed not only to practical interests but also to universal ideals and to the spread of those ideals throughout the world. America's commitment to moral leadership is indeed its most dynamic and dangerous attribute.