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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
political ethics and moraility, March 13, 2003
This review is from: Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (Paperback)
Anyone wishing to see what is to be must consider what has been; all the things of this world in every era have their counterparts in ancient times - Machiavelli In Warrior Politics, Kaplan explores the wisdom of the ages for answers for today's leaders. While the modern world may seem more complex and dangerous than ever before, Kaplan writes from a deeper historical perspective to reveal how little things actually change. Indeed, as Kaplan shows us, we can look to history's most influential thinkers, who would have understood and known how to navigate today's dangerous political waters.
Drawing on the work of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, among others, Kaplan argues that in a world of unstable states and an uncertain future, it is increasingly imperative to wrest from the past what we need to arm ourselves for the road ahead Kaplan says about Western foreign policy pretty much what one wag once said of Queen Victoria: we have pursued goodness to the point of self-indulgence. The result has too often been bloody chaos. Take East Timor, for example. Before the UN insisted on conducting an independence referendum in the region, two things were clear. First, the people would vote for independence from Indonesia. Second, Indonesian partisans would exact revenge violently, unless a foreign security force was placed on the ground to keep the peace. The UN, or rather its members, would not provide such a force, but the do-gooders of the world nonetheless insisted on the international norm of self-determination. The result was disaster. Particularly since the end of the Cold War, the West in general and the U.S. in particular have been guilty of many such exercises of catastrophic good intentions. We punished military governments in places like Pakistan and Nigeria because they were not democracies, though we knew those countries could unravel if civilians took over. We imposed economic sanctions on nations with imperfect human rights records, even though we needed their help in combating forces that were lethally disposed toward us. Often enough, such policies have been driven by nothing more than the irresponsible harping of the press. We could not have continued to conduct foreign policy like that forever. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, we haven't been. Warrior Politics does not directly discuss those attacks, but it does The "warrior ethos" that Kaplan endorses takes something from each of them: Churchill's animal spirits, Thucydides' caution against arrogance, Machiavelli's injunction to "anxious foresight," Hobbes' assessment of man as a dangerous predator, and the willingness of Malthus to consider that history need not tend toward the increase of human happiness. Inspired in part by an unpublished essay by Michael Lind on the "honor paradigm" in international relations, Kaplan says that the wise statesman of the twenty-first century should be guided by something rather like the code duello. In civil society the state protects us, but in lawless regions we must look to self-help, or to strong protectors. The safety of the weak, in fact, depends on the willingness of the strong to use violence on their behalf. In such an environment, the strong dare not suffer insult, lest their credibility diminish and so invite further attacks against them and their clients. There are limits to violence, however. The strong act from self-interest, but only to the point dictated by necessity. To use more force or cruelty than the occasion demands provokes one's enemies to unite in self-defense. Kaplan imagines a world in which conventional military conflict is rare but continues through "asymmetrical" means. Terror and assassination will become, he thinks, the preferred methods of attack, not by the weak, but by the ambitious. The leaders of the West, and particularly the United States, must be prepared to function in a world in which democratic mass armies no longer ensure security. Future wars "will feature warriors on one side, motivated by grievance and rapine, and an aristocracy of statesmen, motivated, perhaps, by ancient virtue." The role of the United States in all this is unique. While not quite a world Leviathan, it is clearly a planetary hegemon. It does not have the luxury that Great Britain had after the Second World War of handing its place in the world over to a compatible power. If anyone is going to embed human rights and the rule of law in the world system, it has to be us. As Kaplan puts it, "Global institutions are an outgrowth of Western power, not a replacement for it." At least on a military level, that power lies almost exclusively with the United States.
Kaplan suggests that the world is moving to a greater level of institutional unity. He dwells on an analogy between modernity and the Warring States Period in China. That era resulted, after three appalling centuries, in the Han Dynasty at the end of the third century b.c. Kaplan characterizes the dynasty as a loose system of "governance" for the newly unified but highly diverse Chinese world. Inevitably, he also makes the analogy between the United States and Rome; the point of departure is the frequently made comparison between the Second Punic War and World War II. Warrior Politics does not propose a formal system of ethics, not even an ethics of statecraft. Still, while describing an ethos is not quite the same as elaborating an ethics, we may note that the ethical systems that come down to us from the ancient pagans have little to do with the "ancient pagan ethos" of international relations that Kaplan submits for our approval. The eminently pagan Epicureanism and Stoicism were very much philosophies of self-cultivation, not blueprints for empire-building.
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55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Employ Skeptical Pragmatism to Power Social Values, December 27, 2001
Usually books are valuable because they explain an important point of view that everyone will agree with, as soon as the point is understood. The views expressed in Warrior Politics, however, will probably turn out to be different from your own views about what U.S. foreign policy should be. Warrior Politics is valuable to you in that it will provide a context for good discussions and thinking about what the role of power politics and U.S. idealism should be in pursuing our foreign policy. Warrior Politics draws on the point of view that "ancient history . . . is the surest guide . . . in the early decades of the twenty-first century." Mr. Kaplan argues for following the "ancient tradition of skepticism and contentious realism." Some of the lessons Mr. Kaplan cites are that even "moral" states vary in morality. The Athenians treated the Melians horribly, simply because they could. Many of Mr. Kaplan's points will outrage at least some readers. For example, he goes to some lengths to argue that Tiberius (usually thought of as a cruel tyrant who did little good) strengthened the Roman state in such a way that it survived longer than it otherwise would have against the "barbarians." He also speaks positively about being very tough on disorder in poor countries which have little effective government. Mr. Kaplan also argues that Judeo-Christian beliefs in proper behavior are "personal virtues" that should not have a primary role in creating foreign policy. If the U.S. has power it can project and those beliefs can be effectively acted on, Mr. Kaplan then feels that the U.S. should move when it is in its self interest. One of the most interesting questions in the book is what differentiated Neville Chamberlain from Winston Churchill in addressing Hitler. Mr. Kaplan argues that it was Churchill's "historical imagination" that made all of the difference. By this, Mr. Kaplan means that seeing a current situation in terms of historical analogies allows a leader to know when to dig in and when to fold. Which course worked best in similar situations? Think of this as the "best practice" approach to foreign policy. In making this point, Mr. Kaplan likens Osama bin Laden to the Mahdi whom the British moved against in the Sudan after "Chinese" Gordon and his men were wiped out. On the other hand, Mr. Kaplan is more idealistic than this sounds, which will offend extreme pragmatists. He sees the U.S. military as a model for the sort of multi-ethnic forces that can operate under a "loose world governance" to root out the worst threats to safety and progress, such as weapons of mass destruction in the hands of high-tech terrorists. Personally, I think that modern successes are more important than Mr. Kaplan gives credit for. Our experiences in conducting the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, in keeping Iraq peaceful since then, and in pursuing al-Queda with broad cooperation from other nations provide important lessons and possible directions for the future. I agree that the handling of Yugoslavia's disintegration can be compared to many older examples of poorly designed policies that did not work. Ultimately, it seems to me that U.S. foreign policy works best when it combines plenty of pragmatism, persistence, and idealism which others would agree with combined with strong leadership. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Does the world lack a consensus that health, happiness, peace, and prosperity are desirable for all? I don't think so. Reasonable people can and will disagree about how to get there. We don't know many of the answers. We often don't even know the right questions yet. But without the United States playing a role in building practical actions to make progress in that direction, much less will be accomplished. Although Mr. Kaplan is willing to admit that ideas are important (and cites Jesus and the development of Christianity), he fails to explore the examples of what leadership did in South Africa and India to make more peaceful changes in political power occur. Some researchers report that radio broadcasts into Eastern Europe played a large role in developing public opinion in favor of political change towards democracy. In this book, such important examples are largely ignored in favor of the traditional definitions of power politics. Surely, we can increasingly grow the power of ideas by demonstrating what the ideas can do. How can you address the challenges of today's world? How can our country play a more effective, constructive role? A better future begins with our questions, ideas and acts of today.
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44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating but also somewhat sketchily framed book, January 4, 2002
Kaplan has written an interesting long essay, for that is what this book is. It reflects Kaplan's attempt to move away from the political travel genre, and into the seminar room. (Whether it is the philosophical or the International Relations or the history seminar room is not clear, and indeed it does not really matter, for the strength of Kaplan's work is that it blurs the borders between these disciplines, something perhaps only an outsider can afford to do.) This work extends some of his thoughts first outlined in Atlantic Monthly and in "The Coming Anarchy", the work (essay and later book) he is perhaps best known for, after "Balkan Ghosts". The difference is that Kaplan is now providing himself with intellectual forebears or allies (Livy, Machiavelli, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, to name the most prominent, though Kaplan is still somewhat journalistic in comparison to these luminaries). This helps to place his own ruminations in a kind of trajectory that might best be called thoughtful pessimism. Kaplan is often described, even by himself, as a kind of realist, but I don't think this ill-defined term is useful here. (Almost everyone sensible wants to be realistic, or to be a realist about certain matters. The same, of course, goes for pragmatism.) There are many realisms and besides it isn't clear that Kaplan is concerned about defining this notion, which would take him far away from his chosen task in this book. That task here is: to make pointed and incisive remarks about the need to avoid being arrogant or historically unaware, or naive about 'the way the world is', and about the need to accept that our leaders and rulers must sometimes make decisions that are at odds with the pieties that dominate the everyday world of any civilized liberal democracy if only to ensure that the polity can survive. What Kaplan also wants to do -- and here he echoes Thucydides and Machiavelli -- is give advice to rulers and fellow citizens: be aware that, as Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes repeatedly state, human nature is not so very different from age to age, and do not be so affected by hubris as to think that great thinkers haven't trod a similar path, having to make similarly fraught decisions. This advice is generally sound, in part because it is so general. In this sense Kaplan's book is really just a spur to further thought and it is by no means a great treatise (as for example Thucydides' work is) to be read and re-read. It is moreover possible to quibble about a couple of things. One is the writing. While Kaplan's is a muscular and readable style, thankfully free of jargon, it cannot be said that he matches some of the excellent 'thoughtful pessimists' that might be said to share his politics: for example, the tremendous stylists Paul Johnson or Roger Scruton, or even the lucid John Gray. Nor is Kaplan as learned as, say, Paul Rahe, whom Kaplan cites. Perhaps this isn't a fair criticism; on the other hand, I enjoyed the book and really wanted Kaplan to provide more detail, and better arguments, and more learning. A more substantial problem, as I see it, is his favourable impression of Tiberius with which he closes the book, surely something to raise some eyebrows. (And why Tiberius and not Trajan?) Tiberius was in fact maligned by the great Tacitus, who profoundly influenced Machiavelli and the whole 'civic humanist'/republican tradition. Is it not odd to align oneself with Machiavelli and then hold up an imperial autocrat as a paragon of rule? If part of what it means to be a 'conservative pessimist' a'la Thucydides or Gibbon is that one eschew instant or utopian schemes for betterment, and instead favour thoughtful incremental improvements over time keeping an eye (or a lid) on human nature, then one must also guard against a corrosive cynicism that denies all betterment altogether. Cynicism is but the extreme form realism can take. One should remember that Thucydides does not always cynically shrug his shoulders as he remarks on the necessities of power and politics; rather, he also rages with fury at the appalling waste of life and energy and time by a great Athens that ought to know better. The key here is the moral conditional 'ought'. I am reminded of those who urge a Singapore-style ('Tiberian') government on the Third World. Not a bad idea, if the alternative is Arafat or Mugabe, but should we who have both liberty and wealth not attempt to make the case for everyone to have both liberty and wealth? Only a hardbitten cynic -- or cultural relativist -- would say that only Westerners deserve the best. Indeed it is both 'moral' and in our own interest to export liberty and democracy and the market economy. Kaplan's very interesting but also limited book raises such questions, but only between the lines.
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