Humiliation in War
As a factor of political and social instability, to lose a war is perhaps the most obvious form of humiliation, but the United States has never really lost a war, at least not in the classical sense where the national sovereignty is impugned and one nation finds itself subject to another. In each of our three major wars, our own Civil War, the first World War, and the second World War, there was a clear victor in the classical sense. The North prevailed over the South, and thenceforth the South became something a subject people, politically reintegrated into the union, while remaining culturally distinct. There is much that can be said about our Civil War, and much has been said. Suffice it to say that the painful lessons learned during our own period of reconstruction have not been fully overcome, now almost two centuries later, as exemplified by the contentious battle over the heritage represented by confederate statues in confederate states. The first World War, the war to end all wars and make the world safe for democracy, did neither, in part because the prevailing nations insisted on exercising a form of humiliating suzerainty over the conquered nation. Here again, much can and has been said about the armistice ending the war, but there was a clear consensus that it set in place the conditions that would lead on short order to the second World War. Here again, it is questionable whether the end of the second would have been any more propitious for Germany than the first had it not been for the implicit distrust of our erstwhile member of the allied forces, the Soviet Union, the emergence of the cold war, and the beginning of our “permanent” war footing.
Having said that, since the end of the second World War, the good war, the last war animated by a clear and compelling moral imperative, we have not exactly won a war. The Korean conflict ended in stalemate, with a country partitioned along the 38th parallel, requiring a permanent military presence to ensure the communist North would never again attack the US aligned South. We could never quite achieve a stalemate in Vietnam, and it ended in something resembling outright defeat, the unilateral withdrawal of US forces leaving the South Vietnamese to quickly succumb to the forces from the North. One might argue that the larger Cold War, the ideological battle with communism that justified both the Korean and the Vietnam war, was finally won with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it quickly turned out to be something of a pyrrhic victory, with Russia reemerging as a contentious and disruptive political force, with China emerging as an equally contentious and disruptive economic force, and with North Korea asserting itself with astonishing swagger as the newest member of the nuclear club. Our responses to each, at least within the current administration, have been at best inept, at worst facilitative. Nor have we exactly lost a war. Although one might argue that American sovereignty has been compromised, by the election meddling of the Russians, by the economic recalcitrance of the Chinese in the trade talks, and even by the bravado of the North Koreans in the continuing developing of their nuclear program, none exercise anything like suzerainty over the American polity or economy. One hopes, of course, that sanity will prevail in North Korea, and there is good reason to fear that it won’t, but the threat of a nuclear exchange with North Korea has met with neither public outrage nor fear in the US.
Then, of course, there is the perpetual war in the middle east. Despite our overwhelming military superiority, we cannot win the war. Likewise, because of our overwhelming military superiority, we cannot lose the war either. Nor can we withdraw. I am not a military historian, and prognostications are wrong more often than right, but I would suggest three things differentiate between the Vietnam War and the current morass in the middle east. The first is the absence of a draft. If there was one thing that galvanized the American public against the war, it was the draft and the steady erosion of deferments. It was a war to be fought, not only by the conscripted poor, but by the solid American middle class. There is nuance, but with the end of deferments for higher education, those educated enough to ask, with some urgency, “ok, now, why exactly are we fighting in Vietnam?” and those for whom the answer, “because your country called,” proved insufficient. With the implementation of the all-volunteer force, the imminent threat to be among those called to fight, and in the absence of any perceptible disruption in American life, the war can go on indefinitely, a subject for the evening news, but not one of immediate concern, particularly to a vast majority of solid middle class Americans whose lives are not perceptibly affected, though one might argue that eventually, with the national debt mounting into the stratosphere, there will be an eventual comeuppance, both in the form of higher taxes on the middle class and the continuing degradation of social welfare programs for the poor.
The second difference is the improvements in weapons technology. Consider, for example, the way in which Major General Qassim Suleimani was assassinated, not to mention my own casual use of the word assassinated. The use of drones, of course, is controversial, but the principle justification for their use is summed up neatly by Laura Maguire. They are, as she put it, “precise, effective weapons that reduce unintended casualties” – that is to say, US casualties. “Soldiers can be calm and dispassionate, and not act out of fear,” in large part because they are in no real danger, but whether that detachment allows them take time “to hit the target, making sure there are no civilians around who could get killed” is deeply questionable. As Maguire put it, “hundreds upon hundreds of civilians have been killed by drones,” and “a big part of the moral problem with drones is that they make it too easy for the power-that-be to bomb whomever they want without much political fallout. Sending troops in on the ground and putting them in direct danger comes with political consequences.”[1] Although there are, of course, troops on the ground throughout the middle east, and some do come home in body bags or maimed, physically or psychologically, as the Pew Research Center points out, “the share of Americans serving in the active-duty military has declined marginally to 0.4% of the population in 2015,” and a vast majority of that 0.4% do not serve in hum-vees patrolling the streets with rifles.[2] In short, “the technology itself makes going to war far too politically easy,” the current instance, the assassination of Suleimani, being a case in point. It’s difficult to avoid the “wag-the-dog” implications of this current attack on a “terrorist leader,” the threats of Iranian retaliation for the attack and their incremental withdrawal from the Obama era nuclear agreement, both provide a useful distraction from the on-going impeachment drama. It’s a real crises, in the real world, and if Iran carries out its threats of retaliation, American lives will no doubt be lost, generating enough outrage to sustain several news cycles, which seems to be precisely the point.
All of which leads me to the third difference. The Korean and Vietnam war were justified against the world-historical clash between the irreconcilable ideologies of liberal-capitalist-democracy and communism.[3] Consider, for example, what it means when Trump threatens to attack Iranian cultural sites. While it is not particularly clear what Mr. Trump has in mind, the implication is clear, since most “cultural sites” have religious implications, and the battle we are fighting in the middle east is not only, or not simply, about oil and access to resources. It’s about religion, or as Lindsey Graham put it, “we’re in conflict with the theology, the ayatollah and his way of doing business.” There were, of course, both secular and religious reasons to oppose the soviet brand of communism, and consequently, there was a “bi-partisan” consensus in opposition to Soviet communism. I am referring not so much to the Democratic/Republican divide, but to the deeper divide against which the two parties have sorted, the great American agon, between those whose vision for the future is largely secular and those whose vision is largely religious. A good portion of Mr. Trump’s so-called base will simply not care if the US violates international law by targeting cultural sites, in part because they see the US engaged, not in real-politic, but in a crusade against the encroachments of Islam. Despite Senator Graham’s protests to the contrary, insofar as the culture of Iran is Muslim, we are “at with the culture of the Iranian people,” and the Iranian people, for the most part, understand that. As the Times reports, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, said “Today, the seeds of hared for the US have been sown in the hearts of Muslims,” not Iranians, not Iraqis, but Muslims. Although responsible bureaucrats have rushed to disclaim any preparation to commit war crimes, and whether we do commit war crimes is irrelevant. Mr. Trump’s bellicosity and braggadocio will appeal to those engaged in a holy crusade against secular humanists at home and the terrorist threat of Islam abroad, but it lacks anything that might be called a “grand strategy.”
It is also, part and parcel of the American ethos to rally behind the commander-in-chief in times of war. One of the perverse lessons of the Vietnam war, one we have internalized by reflexively “thanking” American troops for their service, suggested that the peace movement provided aid and comfort to the enemy, subverting our war effort and leading to our loss. Many Democrats, however, will have a difficult time rallying behind Mr. Trump, in part because the crisis appears to be so blatantly manufactured and so blatantly convenient in its timing. It appears to be altogether cynical and self-serving in its motives. Unlike the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which appeared at least to be predicated on an “aha! Gotcha” moment, the assassination of Suleimani seems gratuitous and timed for domestic effect not only as a distraction from impeachment, but to impugn the motives and morality of those who do not reflexively rally behind the commander-in-chief now that we are, in fact, sliding toward war with Iran. As Eric Lutz, writing for Vanity Fair, put it, “speaking on the Senate floor Friday, McConnell suggested that concerns about the raid amounted to partisan hyperventilating.” As McConnel himself put it, “predictably enough in this political environment, the operation that led to Soleimani’s death may prove controversial or divisive. I recommend all senators wait to review the facts and hear from the administration before passing much public judgment on this operation and its potential consequences.”[4] It is our duty, in short, shut up and trust the President. It is, however, another of the perverse lessons learned in the Vietnam war that, in matters of war, the President should not necessarily be trusted. Both the Democrat Johnson and the Republican Nixon effectively lied to the American people, and were able to do so, relying on the secrecy that surrounds military actions (neither the Senate nor the American people will really have the opportunity to review all the facts, only those that the administration choses to release) and on a culture that insists on American good intentions and innocence.
It is difficult to imagine anything like a grand strategy emerging within the Trump administration, and in the absence of a goal against which the success or failure of our foreign interventions can be measured, there will be no success, no failure, only a protracted flailing about. Trump is simply a bully with a bully’s impulse. The bully is usually the biggest kid on the playground, and because he’s the biggest kid on the playground, able to intimidate, he develops a sense of entitlement to deference. The strategy has worked domestically, at least within the republican party. He has successfully intimidated them into submission. While there are always signs of discontent – submission to Trump must ultimately be utterly humiliating – the rank and file Republicans nevertheless submit, in part because they fear getting “beat up,” by their dependence on Trump’s cult of followers, by a party leadership struggling to maintain a sense of party dignity in unity, and by Trump himself on the bully pulpit of his twitter account. As Krugman notes, however, “from his first days in office, Trump has acted on the apparent belief that he could easily intimidate foreign governments – that they would quickly fold and allow themselves to be humiliated” – but it hasn’t worked out. So far as Iraq and Iron have not quickly fold and allow themselves to be humiliated is in itself a humiliation to the US, an indicator of the powerless of the powerful. As Krugman goes on to note, the bully’s strategy “keeps failing; the regimes he threatens are strengthened rather than weakened, and Trump is the one who ends up making humiliating concessions.”[5] The bully’s strategy hasn’t worked with North Korea. It hasn’t worked with China. It won’t work in the middle east. Among Trump’s base and the Republican party, there will be some “patriotic rallying around the flag” in America, contrary to Krugman’s opinion, the intensity of which will be inversely proportionate to the validity of its justification. But Krugman is correct in asserting that “many are (with good reason) deeply suspicious of Donald Trump’s motives.” It will simply be, as McConnel implied, just another occasion for the Republican party to lay claim to the patriotic moral high-ground and excoriate the contentious Democrats as nothing less than “enemies of the people,” particularly as they set about impeaching a President in time of war!
[1] Laura
McGuire, “The Ethics of Drone Warfare,” philosophytalk.org, September 9,
2015.
[2] Kim
Parker, Anthony Cilluffo, and Renee Stepler, pewresearch.org, April
13, 2017.
[3] It
is exemplified in the Truman Doctrine, “adopted in 1947 at the urging of
bombed-out European countries fearful of takeover by the Soviet Union,” as
Cobbs and Fields put it writing for the New York Times (Jan 7, 2020). “Under this policy, the United States
accepted primary responsibility for the military security of an ever-expanding
number of allies as a way of checking Soviet expansion and developing markets
for American exports.” In Asia, the
Doctrine provided a check on Chinese expansion, without, however, the clear imperative
of “developing markets for American exports.”
At least part of the objection to the Vietnam war was the missing
capitalist imperative.
[4] Eric
Lutz, Vanity Fair, January 3, 2020.
[5] Paul
Krugman, New York Times, January 6, 2020.
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