27 Nov Sleepwalking Toward War
I do not think . . . that it was by arms that our ancestors made the republic great from being small. Had that been the case, the republic of our day would have been by far more flourishing than that of their times, for the number of our allies and citizens is far greater; and, besides, we possess a far greater abundance of armor and of horses than they did. But it was other things than these that made them great, and we have none of them: industry at home, just government without, a mind free in deliberation, addicted neither to crime nor to lust. Instead of these, we have luxury and avarice, poverty in the state, opulence among citizens; we laud riches, we follow laziness; there is no difference made between the good and the bad; all the rewards of virtue are got possession of by intrigue. And no wonder, when every individual consults only for his own good, when ye are the slaves of pleasure at home, and, in public affairs, of money and favor, no wonder that an onslaught is made upon the unprotected republic.
— Cato the Elder, as cited by St. Augustine in The City of God, 426 A.D.
For virtually the entirety of human history, man waged war for a variety of reasons, but principally to expand his economic opportunities. Even in the twentieth century, Russia waged war in pursuit of a warm-water port. Hitler waged war to gain lebensraum. And the United States waged war – or entered wars – in search of new or expanded markets.
After World War II, however, and with the development of weapons that could destroy the entire world, it became the case that war could no longer be considered a pursuit aimed at expanding economic power. The stakes were too high. The potential for mass damage was too great. The likelihood of a mistake occurring or of random chance leading to civilizational destruction became too real. War – that is to say the total war that existed for millennia beforehand – became an economic liability, a risk too great to take. In her classic On Violence, Hannah Arendt put it this way:
Anybody looking for some kind of sense in the records of the past was almost bound to see violence as a marginal phenomenon. Whether it is Clausewitz calling war “the continuation of politics by other means,” or Engels defining violence as the accelerator of economic development, the emphasis is on political or economic continuity, on the continuity of a process that remains determined by what preceded violent action. Hence, students of international relations have held until recently that “it was a maxim that a military resolution in discord with the deeper cultural sources of national power could not be stable,” or that, in Engels’ words, “wherever the power structure of a country contradicts its economic development” it is political power with its means of violence that will suffer defeat.
Today all these old verities about the relation between war and politics or about violence and power have become inapplicable. The Second World War was not followed by peace but by a cold war and the establishment of the military-industrial-labor complex. To speak of “the priority of war-making potential as the principal structuring force in society,” to maintain that “economic systems, political philosophies, and corpora juris serve and extend the war system, not vice versa,” to conclude that “war itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire”—all this sounds much more plausible than Engels’ or Clausewitz’s nineteenth-century formulas. Even more conclusive than this simple reversal proposed by the anonymous author of the Report from Iron Mountain — instead of war being “an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of economic objectives),” peace is the continuation of war by other means — is the actual development in the techniques of warfare. In the words of the Russian physicist Sakharov, “A thermonuclear war cannot be considered a continuation of politics by other means (according to the formula of Clausewitz). It would be a means of universal suicide.”
For years, I have relied on this theory, coupled with a corollary, to explain why open warfare with China seemed nearly impossible. The corollary: the global integration of economies – especially the integration of the American and Chinese economies – makes war virtually impossible. For China to attack the United States, or vice versa, would be economic suicide.
But what if that’s not true? What if China doesn’t really care all that much about its direct economic relationship with the United States? What if the vacuum of leadership in the West has left its nation-states incapable of rational and thoughtful foreign policy? What if the horrors of real war have become so far removed from the ruling classes of the West that they doubt Sakharov’s dictum and think of war as a thing that only happens somewhere else?
Obviously, these are questions no one can possibly know the answer to – at least not yet. But here are a few things we do know:
First, China is, as the inimitable David P. Goldman (i.e. “Spengler”) puts it, “just not that into us.” The United States relies heavily on China for a handful of critical imports, unavailable anywhere else from any other trading partner. But the relationship is mostly one-way. Goldman continues, noting that “China’s exports to the US peaked at over 10% of its GDP (in US dollars) in 2005, but have fallen to just over 2% of GDP today.” By contrast, “Vietnam and Mexico now export 25% of their GDP to the United States.”
China, wisely, has focused its export strategy – and much of its 21st-century economic strategy – on the global South, on the developing world, which it hopes will favor it over the United States going forward. Add this to the fact that foreign investment in China has fallen off a cliff over the last 18 months, and the problem becomes clear: there’s not much that outright war could do China that either hasn’t been done already or for which that it hasn’t at least nominally prepared itself.
Second, we know that North America is largely leaderless at the moment, and those who are making the important decisions are doing so with half their brains tied behind their backs.
One could argue that Canada has been on an extended vacation from reality since 2015, when it made the hopelessly dim-witted Justin Trudeau its prime minister. Unfortunately, reality has a nasty habit of reasserting itself at the most awkward of moments, and in this case, that moment came while Trudeau danced and sang the night away with Taylor Swift, even as Montreal burned. Trudeau is a particularly simple man, and his declaration that Canada would abide by the International Criminal Court’s demand that Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested to stand trial for war crimes serves as proof positive that he should be allowed nowhere near the levers of power in any country, much less one as important as Canada.
Of course, at least Trudeau is an elected official, which is more than can be said of the person or persons making the decisions in the world’s lone hyperpower. The Vice President of the United States, Kamal Harris, has been on an extended vacation ever since the American people managed somehow to laugh harder at her than she laughs at her own jokes. As for her boss, the ostensible leader of the free world, he has been on an extended vacation for several years now, and probably couldn’t even tell you who the President of the United States is. The people who are actually running the show have made it clear that they are making decisions based not on the principles of sophia and prudentia but on the dictates of their Trump Derangement Syndrome (emphasis added):
In recent days, Mr. Biden authorized the use of those missiles, known as ATACMS, for Army Tactical Missile Systems. Ukraine used them on Tuesday to strike an ammunition depot in southwestern Russia, according to Ukrainian officials.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said the Biden administration had approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines….
In another shift this month, the Pentagon said it was lifting a ban on U.S. military contractors deploying to Ukraine to help the country’s military maintain and repair U.S.-provided weapons systems, particularly F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defenses….
Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the French paper LeMonde reported that the Brits and French are both contemplating sending ground troops to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The government of the execrable Keir Starmer denied the reports, saying that the UK had no plans to send troops “at this time.” The French, by contrast, said that no options – including ground troops – were off the table.
The Russians, for their part, already have North Korean troops in country, while continuing to strengthen their alliance with the Chinese and Iranians as well. This is in addition to Russia’s use last week of its new intermediate-range ballistic missile system.
In short, while I hate to be pessimistic during Thanksgiving week, I also think that the Western world, lacking leadership and miscalculating its influence with the rising superpower in Asia, is asking for trouble. It is – if you’ll pardon the cliché – sleepwalking toward war
