Dean's World

(cross-posted at City of Brass. Note I've categorized this article as "Philosophy" rather than "The War" here at DW.)

on the origin of the word, atomic, from the Greek atomos:

In Greek, the prefix "a" means "not" and the word "tomos" means cut. Our word atom therefore comes from atomos, a Greek word meaning uncuttable.

the problem with discourse is that we tend to load up our ideas with detail. This results in people who might actually share the same underlying principles to disagree vociferously on an issue because they perceive the other side to be opposed to the common aim. A good example is the "not anti-war but on the other side" trope that gets bandied about against lefties on the topic of Iraq.

the way it should work instead is that we articulate the basic - "atomic" - principles, and then evaluate policy against them. That evaluation can take many forms, though I personally ascribe to the methodology that demands that the means by which the desired end is achieved match in full the principles and values that defined said end. In other words, as I have argued before, the ends do not justify the means - and the means actually influence the ends. But absolutism on principle is also detrimental to success; perfection is the enemy of the good.

The process of defining principle first, defining end goals in accordance with those principles, and then devising means that both stay within the boundaries of those means AND (critically) actually achieve the desired end, is what I call "principled pragmatism". Part of the pragmatism comes from acknowledging that there is tension in the criteria for means, between principle and success; finding the right policy therefore requires human judgment, and intelligence, and knowledge. Only thus can the degree to which the two criteria are compromised be minimized. And compromised they inevitably are to some extent.

The above might be more succinctly summarized as,

principled pragmatism (PP): (a) the means influence the ends, but (b) perfection is the enemy of the good.

Here is where the need for atomic principles comes in. Principles that are too detailed ("Bush is Hitler"; "abortion is murder"; "The US is a rogue state"; "liberals are objectively pro-terrorist"; "not anti-war, but on the other side", etc) result in making it impossible to articulate effective policy. In other words, overly specific (and dogmatic) principles violate PP(b). Further, policy derived from such principles ultimately end up violating PP(a). For the requisite degrees of freedom needed to navigate the space of policy and principle without violating PP, we must have principles that are broader in scope, leaving human judgement and reason in control at the implementation level rather than blind obedience to dogma.

Of course, principle can't be so broad as to be devoid of meaning. "evil is bad" comes to mind. There needs to be a targeting of the idea towards a specific issue. This is far easier said than done, but the guiding light here can again be the "atomic" characteristic. Atomic principles literally must serve as building blocks, which can be rapidly assembled into more complex structures.

On Plato's theory of atomism:

Plato's Timaeus ... elaborates an account of the world wherein the four different basic kinds of matter—earth, air, fire, and water — are regular solids composed from plane figures: isoceles and scalene right-angled triangles.

What atomic principles might we articulate, then? Remember, these are principles, not axioms; disagreement is inevitable, and even beneficial! In the context of recent events, here are some I start with:

- Direct military intervention, including ground troops, are a moral obligation upon nations with the capability thereof, with regards to ongoing genocide and massacres.

- "With great power comes great responsibility" applies to nations as well as men; lack of direct self-interest in either case is not sufficient to excuse inaction.

- Lasting regime change for the purposes of liberalization/democratization can not succeed if driven primarily by foreign military intervention.‡

- Democracy is an end-product of liberalization, not an initial condition.

Upon these principles, rest pretty much my entire opposition to the specific implementation of the Iraq War by the present Administration, my support for almost all the Democratic presidential candidates over any GOP counterpart, and my increasingly weakening stance on maintaining a sizable troop contingent in Iraq for any length of time (though on the latter point, I still am against "withdrawal" as preferentially defined by the mainstream left). But disagreement on these issues of policy is far less fruitful than disagreement on the atomic principles above.

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Incidentally, this essay more rightly belonged at Nation-Building blog, but Google robots have declared it to be a spamblog and thus it has been suspended pending review. I don't know how long that will take or even whether it will turn out in my favor but I do hope that 4 years of blogging there aren't consigned to /dev/null. My fate is in Google's hands. This was the final straw; I will be moving City of Brass off Blogger and cease using blogger entirely in the near future.

Related essay: the means influence the ends at City of Brass

‡acknowledgements: Daniel H in comments to a previous post for inspiration, and Chris Landsdown for subsequent correction.

Aziz says this is the principle upon which he bases his opposition of the Iraq war (and, presumably, he must oppose the Afghanistan effort as well, since the same principle applies — yet oddly few seem to make this argument in relation to the more popular war):

- Lasting regime change for the purposes of liberalization/democratization can not succeed if driven primarily by foreign military intervention.

I've seen this assertion from war opponents fairly often, and I suspect this is more a case of rationalizing a position ex post facto than a previously held principle because as best I can tell it just doesn't rest on any evidence, regardless of the modifications proposed by Aziz. In fact, it is almost exactly the opposite of what the evidence argues: U.S.-led military operations to enact regime change have actually been incredibly effective in creating liberal democracies, from the obvious examples of Japan and Germany to those where the causation was arguably more indirect such as Italy or Vichy France, and even Panama seems to belong on the list of such successful operations.

In fact, I can't seem to find any examples where such an effort by the U.S. military failed! So here's my challenge:

Name me a U.S.-led military operation enacting regime change with the purpose of creating liberal democracy that failed.

A single example would not, of course, prove Aziz' principle, but surely the lack of any must doom it, given the counter-evidence.

Note that we did not invade Iran in 1953 (nor were we trying to democratize it; quite the opposite), and that in Vietnam we were defending an existing government, not invading to overthrow and replace it.

Let me also note that in all these cases (including Iraq and Afghanistan) there were obviously cassus belli other than the desire to create liberal democracy, but democratization/liberalization was manifestly a factor in all of them as well, as evidenced by the fact we did demand relatively liberal and democratic governments rather than establishing friendly dictators or negotiating for peace under terms that left their leadership intact once the bulk of their warmaking ability had been eliminated.

UPDATE: Aziz replies "Dave, we didnt go into Afganistan with the objective of democratization." Well, obviously the goal was regime change, so if not democracy what can one reasonably assert was our plan for the post-Taliban era? I can guarantee Condi and Wolfowitz were thinking about it, and there was only one possible outcome in their minds.

Gosh, Dave. We only have to look back at the Clinton Administration's biggest and most admirable foreign policy successes, those "non-humanitarian euro-imperialist military adventures" with NATO in the Balkans that resulted in: Bosnia-Herzegovina, now a functioning democracy much freer than at any time in its history (and a mostly-Muslim country, by the way) and Serbia, now actually ranking as a genuinely liberal democracy.

In fact, with the exception of the still-troubled territory of Kosovo, the Balkans today are more free, more democratic, and less violent than at any time in their history.

All due to--let's all hear it--foreign military intervention and occupation with a goal toward establishing democracy and freedom.

Or is the argument that you can only succeed at these sorts of things if you do it with NATO?

Also, by the way, remember all the Republican hypocrites who witheringly attacked Clinton for his supposed massive screwups in the Balkans? And loudly predicted that the area was so full of ethnic and religious hatred and a culture of corruption and death that only a brutal dictator could ever keep order there, and that this was none of our business? Yet, with only a decade or so's patient application of military force and aid in establishing democratic institutions, look at the result.