War as a Tool

Brian Tamanaha at Balkinization thinks that the recent spat of neocon mea culpas over Iraq don't go far enough.  He writes:

The first and overarching error of neoconservatives, Mr. Sullivan, is their willingness (nay, eagerness) to use war to achieve their ideological objectives. Neoconservatives see war as a tool, perhaps messy and unpleasant, not to mention expensive, but sometimes useful.

War is the greatest horror we inflict upon one another, destroying bodies and lives, inflicting untold pain, often on innocent bystanders. War must be a last resort, undertaken with great reluctance, when no other option is available--appropriate only when necessary to defend ourselves against an immediate aggressor (as international law recognizes).

(HT Mirror of Justice)

Broadly speaking, it seems to me that there are two arguments that could support Tamanaha's position. The first is some sort of Kantian duty never to do harm to others (except in particular circumstances like immediate self-defense) regardless of the consequences, which could include things like leaving a brutal and murderous regime in power. Notice, this argument is not based on any calculus of costs and benefits or means and ends.

The second argument would be that war never actually solves problems, but will only beget more violence and death. This is the more pragmatic intuition behind Sting's lines, "There's no such thing as a winnable war/It's the lie we don't believe any more." I actually think that this is the more interesting argument.

The neocons clearly did not subscribe to Sting's position. In so doing, it seems to me that they were inheritors of a peculiarly American strategic heritage. The fact of the matter is that through out its history America has been able to solve strategic problems through war. Indeed, America's wars -- with some notable exceptions like Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War -- have always resulted in a transformed world where the old threats and problems simply no longer existed. Contrast this to the European experience, where wars routinely left precisely the same strategic situation in place that called them into being. The most dramatic example of this was World War I, which began with a resentful and ultimately expansionist Germany surrounded by anxious powers, and ended with a resentful and ultimately expansionist Germany surrounded by anxious powers. However, lesser examples abound, e.g. the Peace of Utrecht, the Peace of Augsburg, the Peace of Paris, etc. all of which left the same balance-of-power system in place that had led to war to begin with.

Ironically, World War II is the war that fixed the American and European views of war. In European eyes it is the holocaust that showed that war just doesn't work. In American eyes it is the evidence that American strength has the ability to solve even the most intractable of strategic problems, namely the centuries of bloody balance of power war making in Europe.

I think that both the American and European view of war are wrong. Tamanaha is surely right that war is a horrible catastrophe. On the other hand, I am not convinced that it is the worse catastrophe that could befall someone, and I don't think that the universe of things worse than war is exhausted by immediate threats to one's own safety. Yet the neocons have clearly been seduced by America's history of military successes, viewing the inconclusive wars of the second half of the 20th century as aberrations from the norm. The fact is that war is always a dangerous and terribly costly tool. Sometimes it will work, and sometimes it will not, and one needs more than good intentions to decide which case is which.

Comments

[TMD]

Tamanaha is taking is a view of war that is both idealistic and naive. That said, I think you're also wrong in saying that war has not worked for Europe.

T is wrong because war is not generally all that distructive: more people died in transportation accidents than in wars during the 20th century--even including the holocaust and WWI. Moreover, war is but one of the possibly violent tools states use to get their ways. Considering their effects on human lives, the use of military force is no less violent, and sometimes less so, than other compellant acts, like sanctions. If we buy the most generous estimates of deaths in both periods (which use similar methodologies, relying on population simulations), the decade of sanctions on Iraq killed more than the Iraq war has so far. But because war is active and overt, it seems worse than these relatively passive forms of coercion. Sometimes, war may be the humane way.

Nate, you're a smart guy but you're wrong in saying that war has not worked for the Europeans, historically, as well as it has for Americans, and as evidence for this, you cite the fact that the balance of power system re-curred. Yet, from at least the 15th century, this balance of power system was exactly what many statesmen fought to maintain--so it's hard to say that it did not meet their strategic objectives. From the perspective of, say, England, war was a remarkably successful prospect from at least 1688 until 1945 (when they were spent under the table). A number of other European states have enjoyed success and do not hesitate to use force--for instance, France, which, despite American biases, often uses force productively in Africa, particularly. Even some small European states have found war to be very useful--Finland saved its independence from the USSR through war when no one else would support them, in 1939-40. Finland still retains conscription, and it is very popular there.

Some wars are just through reference to moral principles, some are just through reference to utilitarian principles, and some wars are just better options than the available alternatives. If we value human life and key ideals, we are foolish to renounce war--even though these are, in themselves, goals that are in some sense ideological.

[TMD]

First line should have read 'blindly idealistic'

[Arwyn]

Interesting post, Nate -- and cool new blog.

I have a hard time buying the resoning behind this American view of war at you propose -- that is, I agree that we have such a view, but I'm not sure it's caused by our being sucessful in all our past endeavours.

Take, for example, the War of 1812. Other than the death of a bunch of British soldiers and getting Washington burned, it hardly accomplished anything -- the resulting peace was built on terms that equalled those that existed before the war began.

Given the number of wars we've engaged in (I'm counting ten or so past major conflicts), these four "notable exceptions" make up almost half of our experience.

This leads me to think that our attitude toward war comes less from our record of successes and more from the scale of them -- when we do win, we win big; when we don't, we tie.

Like the batter who's given the sign to swing away, we're more willing to take the risk and swing at the fences on the hopes that well hit a home run -- not because we've always hit them, but because we've hit a few, and we've never struck out in a clutch situation.

[Nate Oman]

Arwyn: Perhaps you are right. The War of 1812 did ultimately result in what the American's wanted, namely freedom of the seas and an end to British impressment. On the other hand, this probably had more to do with the end of the Napoleonic wars than with the success of American arms.

[Hellmut Lotz]

When was the last time the United States suffered civilian casualties in war? That is the category that explains different popular attitudes about war in Europe and the United States.

[Nate Oman]

Hellmut: That strikes me as a very good point, but if I had to date the rise of European military malaise, I would point toward World War I. I think that what led to the malaise there was less civilian deaths than:

1. Horrendous military causalties that resulted in
2. no fundamental change in the strategic conditions that gave rise to the war.

[Hellmut Lotz]

That's true. And it did. The winners, including the United States drew the lesson that there should never be another war.

That lesson was not lost on many Germans either. Kurt Tucholsky and Ernst Toller, for example, were voices that discredited war.

However, others argued that Germany only had to try harder, sacrifice more and defeat would become victory.

When the latter took over Germany, they armed themselves against opponents who were unwilling to fight. In part, that explains Hitler's early successes. During the Great Depression neither France, Britain nor the United States had been willing to maintain and modernize their armed forces at sufficient levels. Most decision makers believed that nobody wanted war, not even Hitler.

Unlike World War I, Germany suffered tremendous civilian casualties in World War II and has thus responded with a fairly pacifist culture. Only after World War II did Germany and France share a consensus in public opinion about the undesirability of war.

[Nate Oman]

I agree with you except that you are leaving out one other important factor: American hegmony in post-war Western Europe solved the basic strategic problem that have bedeviled Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, namely Franco-German competition. In other words, Germans and French could afford to become pacifists because the American guaranteed both that they wouldn't fight with one another and that the Soviets would be kept out.

[Seth R.]

War can be a useful tool for change, but only when there is the requisite strength to use the tool.

You can debate about the rightness or wrongness of war if you wish. But as a threshold matter, I would at least like to see the US use it competently.

Americans have a vastly over-inflated view of their relative share of power in the world. The truth is that we don't have the capacity for unlimited unilateral action. The truth is that the US's share of relative world power has been in steady decline ever since the end of World War II (when we were top-dog by sole virtue of being the "last man standing").

The US has significant security commitments all over the globe, and our neighbors are not as weak (economically, politically, or militarily) as they used to be.

One of the most alarming pieces of news I received after the 2nd invasion of Iraq was that Japan was not only re-arming (which they'd been doing for the past 20 years), but also taking a much more aggressive tone with it's own military political doctrine.

The Japanese are seeing the writing on the wall, even if Americans aren't. The US is too weak to keep the peace in the Pacific Rim and it falls to Japan to look to it's own interests on its own.

War can be useful, but you must have a realistic view of what you are capable of and know when it's time to grit your teeth and let things slide simply because you can't do anything about it without seriously damaging yourself.

[Yvan]

Helmut Lotz
"Unlike World War I, Germany suffered tremendous civilian casualties in World War II and has thus responded with a fairly pacifist culture."

Interesting point. But doesn't that mean wars essentially get supported whenever nationals from a country are doing the killing? If we're winning, we can't see the problem. Hence the fundamental immorality of war. If, as stated, war can be used to achieve strategic (i.e. economic) objectives, does that then mean that populations are willing to sanction state banditry when it benefits them and oppose it when they're on the receiving end? Could this be just a dark glimpse into a basically predatorial human nature?