Auspundits

On Civilisations' Existentialist Challenges

Brilliant essayist, Bill Whittle, in National Review:

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

These words should sound familiar to readers of Auspundits. That is because it resembles very much the words of Christian writer Malcolm Muggeridge. Words that I am oft disposed to quoting:

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down, until at last having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction he keels over a weary old Brontosaurus and becomes extinct.

Similar words were spoken by Alexander Solzhenitsyn's in infamous 1978 Harvard address:

…no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of will power…weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions…the next war…may well bury Western civilisation forever.

Jaw-Jaw

* By Lounge Lizard

Many people of goodwill assert that, in Churchill's words, "to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

In one sense that's perfectly true. People are killed in wars. But I'm sure that Churchill didn't have in mind that force should never be on the table, that our military should never be used.

Mere talk accomplishes little. Diplomacy of itself doesn't solve anything. All the other factors have to be in place.

Indeed, done badly, 'jaw-jaw' can increase the likelihood of 'war-war'.

Kennedy's 'jaw-jaw' with Khrushchev in 1961 was one such case. Khrushchev was so pleased with these discussions that he felt encouraged to go ahead and build the Berlin Wall and later try to install missiles in Cuba.

A good discussion of these issues may be found in an article by Joshua Muravchik entitled Obama’s “Talking” Cure in the September issue of Commentary Magazine. Richard Fernandez discusses this article and the issues generally here.

Right now, the Europeans are attempting to resolve the nuclear problems with Iran with diplomacy and Danegeld with, I suggest, an entirely predictable result, unless the Iranian regime collapses for other reasons in the mean time.

We should beware of replacing rigorous thinking with fantasy.

Re: Drums In The Deep

* Lounge Lizard responds to Moose, revealing the inspiration of his nom de plume.

Moose,

As usual, you make some good points.

I agree with you that there seems to be a decline in rationality, which can perhaps be put down to the rise in importance of the semi-educated, such as the so called 'doctors' wives'. Perhaps 40% of young people now go to university and therefore think they must be clever, but the truth is that only about 10% of the population are really capable of university-level thought, or what was once considered university-level thought - and that eliminates many current academics!

Re: Drums In The Deep

* Moose responds to Lounge Lizard.

Lounge Lizard, some very good arguments. My responses below, inline.

Lounge Lizard wrote:

I think that Western leaders have to take into account the fact that their own people are also not always rational, and this impacts on what is considered to be in the national interest. In short, and especially when you have a democracy, you cannot divorce the perceived national interest from a people's culture and as [has been] remarked, culture will out.

I think that we are in a strange transitional phase where what you say holds. I do not however consider this phase to be stable or sustainable. The ability of the West to act as a rational society is deteriorating. On the other hand, the West is the one society, or family of societies where rationality was a bedrock of culture, and informed national interest. One thing we may agree on is that the West ain't what it used to be, and that this view holds with increasing velocity. The culture of the West is changing rapidly, and the Westerner of today has precious little in common with their grandparents.

This change is not guaranteed to lead to a sustainable, secure society. Further, I am of the opinion that the state space of possible societies contains precious few stable, free, secure, prosperous societies. So any runaway trajectory is not likely to take you to a good place. Kind of like sailing in a random direction and hoping to find Moby Dick. So, either we will develop radically new instituations, tools and legislation, or the West will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Re: Re: Re: Drums In The Deep

* Lounge Lizard enters the fray. Comments on part 1, part 2 and part 3. This was all in response to Richard's "Drums In The Deep" post.

I think that Western leaders have to take into account the fact that their own people are also not always rational, and this impacts on what is considered to be in the national interest.

In short, and especially when you have a democracy, you cannot divorce the perceived national interest from a people's culture and as the author of part 2 has remarked, culture will out.

Here are just a few examples where it could be argued that sheer cold brutal expediency didn't, in the final result, determine policy:

• "Poor Little Belgium is being raped by the Huns" - one of the reasons the British Empire entered the First World War so enthusiastically.
• Retaining the Falkland Islands. The costs of recovering and retaining these islands far exceed any economic benefits. The few people who live on them are of no importance in the great scheme of things.
• Support for Israel. If this was obviously in the national interest, both Israel and domestic Jewish lobbies wouldn't have to worry constantly about Western support.
• Support for East Timor. The East Timorese display little capability and this failed micro state will be a constant drain on Australian resources for the foreseeable future. Objectively, it would have been far preferable for it to have remained a province of Indonesia. Indonesia would have borne all the costs and Australia would have been able to negotiate a better deal over the Timor Gap. However, a religious faith shared with many in Australia together with memories of support for our soldiers during WW2 helped generate a less expedient approach.

Given our culture, nothing will stop what might be called Western Interfering Missionary Programs (or WIMPS for short). They are a product of a free society and an economic prosperity that gives people time and resources to display their moral superiority, carefully sugared with a coating of pseudo-humanitarian blather. Some WIMPS we may not dislike, others we may deplore, but whatever kind, the world will have to put up with them. I particularly dislike certain NGOs such as Greenpeace and I deplore ego-driven bureaucratic arrogant do-gooder world government monstrosities such as the International Criminal Court. But these things are here to stay. They are like the Left, of which Richard Fernandez once remarked:

The Left is the Mr. Hyde of Western civilization, and as such probably ineradicable for as long as the civilization itself exists. As a practical matter, it has to be treated as a golf handicap. There’s no use railing against it. All that anyone can do is make allowances for their inevitable input.

Moose may deplore the Orange Revolution, but you have as much chance of stopping the promotion of this kind of thing as you have of stopping the spread of the common cold. The key is that it's more a matter of culture rather than of calculation. Sometimes there will be successes, perhaps temporary, as with the Ukraine; other times, hopeless and perpetual failure, as with Tibet. Bad experiences may slow and defeats reverse the changes sought, but like war itself, which they will help promote, WIMPS will continue to the end of time, or at least to the end of Western Civilisation as we currently know it.

Re: Re: Drums In The Deep

Moose enters the "Drums In The Deep" fray. See part 1 and part 2.

Russian leaders are seldom guided by much more than sheer cold brutal expediency. They do however have to work with political support from a less than rational people.

The same is true of the Pakis.

And far less true of the Norks.

As for the Russians not making sense:

• In geopolitics pride and anger are justifications, almost never core reasons for action.
• Russia's core strategic assets are being threatened and key agreements made in the early Yeltsin years are trampled on. Russia's sovereignty, security, ethnic groups abroad and key economic assets are all under threat as of the Orange Mistake of 2005.
• The significance of Georgia, and particularly the Ukraine to key Russian interests should not be underestimated. To take Russia to task for having these interests is to take the Euroweenie pacifist "end of history" perspective, which is paradoxically what the West has been doing these past few weeks. It is also to ignore that the US has the Monroe Doctrine, and Australia has its own "near abroad" in the Pacific Islands, where we play Big Daddy, and rightly so. And not always with the poor little fuzzy wuzzy's interests at heart, as in the case of Timor Sea oil negotiations. And rightly so again.

Now one may still say that there is reason to pressure or cripple Russia, either for a better deal on other geopolitical matters, or for the endgame of depriving them of their nukes. But even then it serves us little to pretend that Russia does not have serious interests driving its actions.

Re: Drums In The Deep

In response to my email, posted here, on Richard's "Drums in The Deep post", one of my friends sent this response.

Comrades,

Steady on. The North Koreans are behaving like North Koreans, the Russians are behaving like Russians and the Pakis, unfortunately for them, are behaving like Pakis.

Culture will out. Perhaps the next US president, whoever he is, will behave like an American.

If there is a worry, it is that the Russians are acting out of anger and wounded pride. They do not make much sense.

Drums In The Deep

I sent the following (after some minor modifications) in an email to a few friends with regards to this post by Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club. I will post some of the responses over the next few days.

Richard posted:

...this new crisis comes [NORKs retreating from nuclear deal with the U.S.] on the heels of Georgia and events in Pakistan. About the only good news is ironically from Iraq. What’s going on? The question is whether we are still in the End of History, at “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal,” or whether the stars are veiled; a sleepless malice is stirring, and a new menace is taking shape, not for the last time but in our time.

I agree something is up. But more likely to be confluence of interests than a veiled malice. I think I was only recently reading that the NORKs had crossed the rubicon in terms of sustainability. By NORKs I mean the head honchos. Something about murmurs that the military are going to depose the Great Leader. Seems like the NORKs want some immediate liquidity. And Americans and Europeans are focused on the Caucuses and Pakistan and Iran. Hence the NORKs more brazen and confident.

Agree that we could be seeing the black swan moment in international affairs of the 21st century unfolding. If it does occur, then it will make September 11 pale in comparison. The Europeans may need to dust off those sabres yet.

Book Quote Of The Day

From Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles:

Not every application of the RMA [Revolution in Military Affairs] is suitable to a market-state strategy for the United States...Because the United States is so well placed to exploit a high-tech RMA, conflict with a power such as Russia (over a dispute in Eastern Europe or one of the states of the former Soviet Union) or China (over Taiwan) - that is, with a great power whose vital interests are at stake in a territorial conflict - invites resort to nuclear weapons on the part of the American adversary, because almost no other option would be effective against a United States armed with advanced twenty-first century technology. Considerations such as these prompted Eliot Cohen to observe, "the RMA may bring a kind of tactical clarity to the battlefield, but at the price of strategic obscurity."

A few points:

• This of course is predicated on the United States' willingness to flout its military might in such near competitor conflicts. Some American stick is being shown, as discussed at in some lucid commentary at The Belmont Club and described by Simon at Classical Values. A few U.S. warships float into the Black Sea and Russia's Black Sea dwarfs in comparison. Although the U.S. navy ships did try to anchor at Poti but were moved along by Russia forces stationed there. So the assumption on which Bobbitt's argument is predicated is not necessarily true.
• Bobbitt didn't precisely specify against whom the American adversary would wield its nuclear weapon. Presumably the U.S.. However Russia threatened to point it's targeting system at Warsaw. Perhaps this demonstrates Russia's tacit acknowledgement of the United States' strategic and tactical preponderance?
• Cohen's point on tactical clarity requires tactical resolve. And so far the U.S. has demonstrated nothing short of ambivalence in this regard.

Meanwhile, Russia recognises the sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. French President Nicholas Sarkozy, angered by Russian recalcitrance in withdrawing as per his peace agreement, has called for an emergency summit of the E.U. to discuss "future of relations between the EU and Russia and on aid to Georgia."

Re: Re: Re: The Doomsday Clock Resurrected

* By Moose

Here's further discussion of the "Russian nuclear arsenal first" argument I made in my first post.