Fragmenta Philosophica

Hypocrisy and Foreign Policy

I mentioned some time ago that I had been given a subscription to The Economist. I'm not sure that I'm going to renew it - while it provides valuable thumbnail-style-sketches of global events from week to week, I haven't been overly impressed with its "leaders" (editorials).

I thought well of a recent one, however, as it rather insightfully touched on something that I've been mulling over for quite some time. A current vogue criticism of Bush and Co. concerns the "hypocrisy" of fixing democratization as a pressing desideratum  (especially in the Middle East), while continuing to make common-cause with non-democratic regimes. My own view is that it is literally impossible to operate in the de facto anarchic milieu of the international scene without sullying one's ideals, to some extent - for the simple reason that the route to the ideal world must traverse the actual one. (I'm not sure, especially in light of the fiasco with Iraq and "oil-for-food," if some critics are really serious when they advert to sanctions as a "solution" for refractory regimes, whether nominal allies or otherwise. I wonder, at the least, whether they're morally serious). In other words, Realpolitik is here to stay - though whether there can be, and whether there currently is gestating, a style of Realpolitik which might entail its own supersession long-term is a different, and fascinating, question (in fact, THE question, I'd say). Alas, many critics seem more content to make partisan noise and score points, rather than think through the logic of their vituperations.

The economist leader for the February 26 issue begins thus,

"If anyone still doubted that hypocrisy, or at least inconsistency, is endemic in international relations, this week surely proved the point. As George Bush toured Europe emphasising, in speech after speech, that the central principle of his foreign policy is the effort to spread liberty and democracy, Europeans queued up to mutter about how many American allies are unfree and undemocratic, and how contradictory it is to use guns and tanks as prime tools in that cause. Far better, they said, to be a 'moral power' like the European Union, spreading freedom through softer and subtler means of influence and engagement - means like, as Mr. Bush heard to his horror, lifting the EU's embargo on arms sales to China, in return for precisely nothing from that communist regime on human rights, or democracy, or on its sabre-rattling over Taiwan. Oh, except more trade, including more arms sales."

Later in the piece, the editorialist deftly illustrates how a welter (mark the term well) of interests conspires to make for shifting allegiances and oscillating mutual usefulness between nations, in the tension between shorter and longer-term goals:

"Achieving a consistent foreign policy towards China is famously difficult. This week, America was simultaneously grateful for Chinese help in persuading North Korea to return (well, perhaps return) to six-party talks about its nuclear programme, and angry (especially in Congress) at the Europeans for wanting to sell China more arms. Japan is angry too ... but simultaneously glad that China is now its biggest trading partner and quiet about the question of human rights. China too is inconsistent: it purports to be hugely insulted by the arms embargo, yet also considers its relationship with America to be passing through one of its better phases." [Ed. We can pass over whether the last point is an inconsistency].

My own hunch is that anyone condemning current "hypocrisy," and proposing an alternative course, is not actually proposing a course free of hypocrisy - but rather is recommending an approach animated by a different hypocrisy. Even isolationism (a policy to which I must admit I am attracted), while having a more obvious consistency, can run afoul of a nation's ideals and values; there are sins of omission as well as commission. In the past, I've likened the best nations (in which group I certainly include the U.S., despite its many faults) to "tragic" heroes - and by "tragic," I mean a condition/state of affairs in which it is impossible to act without doing harm, and thereby incurring a kind of "guilt." That some think this can be wiped away with a few simple reorientations of policy here or there is beyond comedic - its farcical.

The most dangerous aspect of "marriages of convenience" with unsavory regimes is inertia - a kind of moral corrosion occurs, such that what were once distasteful expedients become insitutionalized relationships, with an imagination atrophied as to preferable alternatives (cp. the American "Twin Pillars" policy in the Gulf, which made a certain sense in the context of preventing the sovietization of the region). The most promising approach that I can envision to prevent this is for policymakers to structure such working relationships explicitly along shorter-term lines, with, in effect, "sunset" provisions. If the alliances are regularly reevaluated, as per a schedule, then there is less risk of becoming inured to the tyranny du jour.

Rational Redoubts

Why don't discussants make much progress in debate, as occasioned by conversation, blogging or whatnot?

Our confrontations, about this or that, reflect deeper antecedent disagreements. We're less likely to concede a matter if to do so seems to overturn a cornerstone of our worldview.

My advocacy of social security privatization rests on my distrust of the state, and relative confidence in the market and its incentives; your opposition thereto rests on a distrust of the market, and relative confidence in the state and its incentives. Or: we differ as to what is the "just" distribution of costs and risk - who should bear them, and why. This one apparently "compact" question is pregnant with a panoply of assumptions in regards to political philosophy, economics, history, and human nature - a worldview in miniature.

I was for the invasion of Iraq, you were against it. We differ over: the normative status/character of the United Nations and International Law; the sense(s) in which Iraq was relevant to 9.11; the best use of finite military resources (money and manpower) and/or the priorities we ought to have, to best serve our security, and other important values; the moral hue of the modern ("capitalistic") nation-state, the personal character of our leaders, their trustworthiness; etc.

Differences which evidently entail a religious commitment (or its lack) are almost too obvious to mention.

It seems as if progress is made when/if one of the disputants comes to realize that his principles can, or ought to, entail the initially opposing view, so that a principle is, in effect, strengthened by embracing a newly discovered consequent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I believe that one of my own core beliefs is exemplified and fortified by these reflections: even though persuasion is the fittingly humane instrument to realize social cohesion, "rational" discourse - especially in an age, ironically enough, where "everyone is Aristotle" - has a surprisingly limited efficacy, at least with respect to normative matters (properly scientific questions, which can more easily be resolved according to accepted procedures, are a different matter). Hence we cannot do without rhetoric, including "myth," and, alas, coercion; not now, or, I expect, ever.

The "libertarian" hope is that, by narrowly circumscribing the controversies in terms of which the private is made public (viz., is subject to legislation), the agreement to disagree in civil fashion can be afforded the widest scope. But this ideal is quite vulnerable to attacks on its Left and Right flanks, since such a "thin" view of social life isn't likely to command the civic spirit required to sustain it for any length of time. Hence libertarianism degenerates into apparent libertinism and indifference (or seems little more inspiring than "a nation of shopkeepers"), which provokes a cultural counter-reaction.

xocolati

Even better than the blogosphere is the chocosphere.

I'm well-disposed to a fine bar of dark chocolate (70-75% cacao) - for my money, Villars is virtually peerless.

The metaphysics of analogies

My friend and good-natured foil, Roger Gathman, has overplayed his rhetorical hand in a recent post, "War Crimes Alert."

(First, my usual exhortation: read the original piece, to make sure I've read him accurately/fairly. And read it anyway, because Roger is a great writer and has a powerful mind).

The burden of the piece seems to be that the U.S. has been systematically indiscriminate in the means of warfare it has employed throughout the occupation of Iraq, particularly in Falluja - the levelling of which is now gleefully planned for other insurgent holdouts, like Ramadi. The tacit conclusion (implication) seems to be that the entire enterprise is morally bankrupt. Far from being the point established by the piece, however, I believe that this view is actually Roger's point of departure - petitio principii.

He ends with the zinger: "So, in the hall of shame, where the Sand Creek massacre stands next to My Lae and Falluja, we will soon be inscribe the name Ramadi."

These alleged analogies are instructive: why not the firebombing of German and Japanese cities in WWII; or a case nearly sui generis, like Hiroshima or Nagasaki? If ever one wanted paradigmatic modern instances of the "good guys" targetting non-combatants intentionally, these would be the ones.

Here's where, I think, Roger's piece is itself paradigmatic: the case of WWII is usually ignored because it's morally ambiguous. One - or a sane one - is certainly glad that the U.S. and its allies prevailed, despite the "war crimes" committed along the way (and alas there are numerous other instances of, speaking charitably, morally dubious allied conduct). I certainly am troubled - deeply - by these actions, but I can make a kind of "sense" out of them by adverting to a principle of the tragic view: clashes and conflicts on the world stage are usually a meeting of wrong with greater wrong, so that the former becomes, relatively speaking, "right."

Now, one might admit that the terror bombing in the Second World War was indefensible absolutely speaking, but that the desperation of the times - what was at stake - mitigates the blame; i.e., makes such conduct, to some extent, forgivable. And, judged according to the same standard, the "adventure" in Iraq is not analogous. Two things can be said about this reasonable gambit: a whole host of assumptions is made about the overall significance of the longstanding conflict with Iraq, and the "meta-intentions" of the invaders(petitio principii again?); and this is still to face up to the moral enormity of allied actions in the cases cited - they might be "forgivable," but they must be acknowledged as glaring instances of intentionally harming noncombatants (and hence still belong in a "hall of shame" [ed. "hall of tragedy"?]).

By contrast, since we all "know" that the treatment of native Americans, the aims and conduct of war in Vietnam, and now, Falluja, were unqualifiedly diabolical, they serve as perfect Manichean touchstones to indict current American actions under difficult conditions, where every option is morally and strategically risky. In other words, if you already believe that Iraq is analogous to past military outrages, then you'll have a keen eye for "war crimes." If you do not, you might be of the view that even putative misdeeds in warfare are not the whole story when it comes to hazarding an overall evaluation.

Habits and Change

"It is difficult to overestimate the power of habits"
(Gurdjieff)

Choices congeal into behavior patterns, which come to characterize a person. Who we are, in large part, is what we do; what we do reflects who we are. In the Ethica Nichomachea, Aristotle quotes Evenus, who states that "Habit's but long practice friend, and becomes man's nature in the end."

The Aristotelian ethical doctrine centers around character, understood as the stable product of myriad, concrete choices, conditioned by one's upbringing, one's social milieu, and even one's "nature" in the sense of aboriginal temperament. One's habits, then - exhibiting their own rule and measure, i.e., quasi-systematicity or coherence - bespeak an "ethos" (hence the term ethike, and the cognate Latin term, moralia).

A "good" character exemplifies the dispositions of the "man of high standards" (spoudaios) or, alternatively, characteristic choices consonant with the rightly understood human ergon (characteristic work or activity, "function"). Such dispositions are classifiable according to their several fields of operation (viz., the contexts in which they are meaningful - e.g., temperance is concerned with the appetitive, courage the fearful, etc.). Despite the differences in their "matter," they are formally identical in the sense that they each exemplify a human excellence, or, in a manner of speaking, "powerfulness" (virtu). Good character thus betokens human efflorescence. (Similarly, a "good" eye is that which possesses keen, discerning sight; a "good" violinist evinces tunefulness, expressiveness, fluency and, generally, mastery; a "good" plant, whatever its other characteristics, would exhibit a strong and sturdy stalk; etc.) In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel gets at the same idea by contrasting what the Will is "in itself" - to wit, essentially - vs. what an individual will is "for itself," i.e., what its current existential determination is; the former "ideal" will is the standard of measure/value for the latter "empirical" will. Conceiving of the relation between the two in quasi-mathematical fashion: if there is no remainder when what the will is for-itself is subtracted from what it is in-itself, a kind of perfection has been realized. However framed, such notions are irreducibly teleological.

As far as I can tell, much of Modern Psychology justifies and complements (and extends, in some interesting directions) the ancient focus on habits and character, deepening our understanding of the "mechanics" of habits - how and why they are so enduring and powerful. The central contribution is the focus on the pivotal psychological role of anxiety, understood as a vague or diffuse sense of anticipatory dis-ease. (The relation of developmental psychology to earlier intuitions about the importance of a "good upbringing" could justify several separate inquiries; I'll simply mention the connection and pass over it here).

The positive correlate of anxiety would be something like "comfort," the crucial notion being that the familiar - in our own circumstances, feelings, inclinations, dispositions, and so on - has a strong attractiveness and comfort-factor, even if it is loathed. (At the other extreme, caprice has perenially been recognized as a dread foe). When one deviates from the script of one's settled characteristics (say, attempts to change oneself in some way) anxiety almost inevitably is awakened, the usual response being an inclination, willy-nilly, to re-establish psychological equilibrium, and quell the cause(s) occasioning the anxiety. This is a simple - but not simplistic - idea, which (aside from whatever personal-experiential warrant it has) goes a long way towards explaining, e.g., recidivism in criminals, and failure generally in attempts at self-reform, from diets to teetotalism (and also why adolescence, with its Sturm Und Drang, is such an unsettling time - there are few recognized and reliable signposts).

Anxiety situates the efficacy of "habits" in the viscera - at the root level, not only does it not "feel right," it often feels positively wrong to be a self at-odds with one's normal and accustomed states (despite them being, ex hypothesi, lamented, even hated).

Of course, there's a lot more that could and should be said, both by way of qualification, and in objection.  In terms of the former, the modern psychological notion that each person implicitly maintains a "self image" - a kind of rational-emotive thumbnail sketch of oneself, embodying a diffuse sense of who one is at any give moment- supplies a "cognitive" complement to the visceral dimension of habits: one conceives of (i.e.,experiences) oneself as being a person of such-and-such a kind ,  which entails a set of implicit expectations about one's own possibilities - who and how one is, and will continue to be. A real sense or feeling of Kismet - fate - is involved. Patterns of actions which would ultimately herald new habits alter and distort this image, leading to a tension between what one "knows" in principle (impliclity expects of oneself), and what one experiences in the unfolding present. The claim would be that the cognitive dissonance often has an affective corollary: anxiety.

This tension was given wonderful literary expression by Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina - in the person of Konstantin Levin, who, having resolved to change himself, found himself in familiar surroundings:

    "With a cheerful feeling of hope for a new, better life, he drove up to his house between eight and nine in the evening ... The study was slowly lit up by the candle that was brought. Familiar details emerged: deer's antlers, shelves of books ... When he saw it all, he was overcome by a momentary doubt of the possibility of setting up that new life he had dreamed of on the way. All these traces of his life seemed to seize hold of him and say to him: 'No you won't escape us and be different, you'll be the same as you were: with doubts, and eternal dissatisfaction with yourself, vain attempts to improve, and failures, and an eternal expectation of the happiness that has eluded you and is not possible for you.'  But that was how his things talked, while another voice in his soul said that he must not submit to his past and that it was possible to do anything with oneself."

The Nietzschean gambit - certainly adopted (or coopted) by modern "humanistic" psychology - is to propose that one cultivate the paradoxical habit of being accustomed to, even hungry for, change, growth, "self-overcoming," in a sense welcoming the challenge of vanquishing anxiety or fear; one recalls the evocative statement from Zarathustra that "one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star" (another potent image is the metaphor of the bow and arrow in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil). Here,then, a certain amount of inner faction and turmoil is to be embraced.

The Conservative will be skeptical about, if not the status of this end as a desideratum, the capacity of the common run of makind to nurture and maintain such an ethos, as well as the negative social effects of enshrining such a goal. He might also tend to believe that, since fear is a prime motivator of human agency, coercion - whether literal or figurative (external "pressure") - is, sadly, the most reliable means to cajole bad habits into better ones. The Leftist, in pure form, would tend  to believe that "social conditions"- especially considered in terms of structures of production, and equity of distribution - must be reformed/reorganized, if any enduring changes for the better are to be induced in the psyches of most persons. Clearly, there are elements of truth in both views.

More lonely, literally and figuratively, are the views issuing from modes of thought as otherwise diverse as the the Kantian and the Nietzschean (and adopted, after a fashion, by modern "Existentialist" thinkers), which extol "autonomy" as the human ideal - not merely paying lip service to notions of responsibility and accountability, but challenging the worthy human being to fashion himself boldly according to his own "laws." (Contrary to a popular caricature, usually religious in motivation, this need not entail relativism, misology, rank subjectivism, or arbitrariness. Rather, the kernel of insight is that norms of conduct and ways of life must be rationally intelligible to the moral agent, and fit his peculiar capacities and potentialities - not be extrinsic "rules" foisted upon him).

We are freighted with the past - whence we come - which tends to establish a vector for our development (doing and suffering). No wonder that Christian theology understands the "good news" of the Gospels as potentially causing one to be "born again" - to effect an authentic  metanoia (turning, conversion), sloughing off one's psycho-spiritual skins and beginning anew in a qualitatively transformed life. In a somewhat similar vein, many Eastern "wisdom" traditions attempt to awaken the adept to the timeless present, standing athwart a regret-ridden past and an anxiety-laden future. In the freshness of the current, relatively unencumbered instant, one might become what one is.

Yes, indeed ... "It is difficult to overestimate the power of habits."

Update: A most welcome reflection from Alan Cook.

Still here

I know I've been remiss regarding my blogging - doing some serious programming RnD at the moment. I hope to post something of substance soon.