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Losing My Religion
No, I’m not turning away from my faith in Jesus, which began when I reached the ripe old age of 36, back in early 2004. The religion that I’m losing is the American religion that might be called “We Won The War.”
This may be a troubling post for some of you. I’m pretty confident that I would have found it very troubling and offensive, myself, about five to ten years ago. I’d appreciate a critique of these thoughts.
So, back to “We Won The War.” I take this phrase from a 2018 book by Peter Hitchens called The Phoney Victory. I highly recommend it. Peter Hitchens is the younger brother of the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens. Like his brother, Peter was a Marxist in his youth, of the Trotskyite variety, but unlike his brother, Peter ultimately turned to conservatism and Christianity. He has an interesting story, told in more detail in another book, The Rage Against God.
Peter Hitchens writes about the British version of this religion or mythology, “We Won The War.” It comes complete with a Savior, Winston Churchill, and an antichrist, Adolph Hitler. Looking back, it seems that I was raised in this religion. Interestingly, for me, even the American version identified Churchill, rather than FDR, as the Savior. In my case, I was such a big fan of Churchill that I read and re-read his Memoirs of the Second World War, his book about WWI (The World Crisis), and his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Today, I’m inclined to view Churchill as a brilliant propagandist. This has led me to question many of the WWI and WWII narratives that Churchill promoted.
I think that the narrative starts with the idea of German guilt for WWI, which I now view as quite misplaced. The work of recent WWI historians like Michael Neiberg and Christopher Clark has been particularly significant for me on this issue. (Both have excellent lectures available on YouTube, if you’re interested.) My current view is that Russia is principally to blame for the expansion of the war, which otherwise would have been a localized Balkan conflict between Austria and Serbia. The Austrians mobilized first, against Serbia, and then the Russians mobilized against both Austria and Germany.
It may seem strange that Germany responded to Russian mobilization by attacking France, but this was strategically understandable, as Russia and France were allied against Germany. Technically, as far as anyone knew, the Russo-French alliance was defensive only, so France was not obligated to join in Russia’s war against Germany. But: (1) Germany had no way to know whether there was a secret agreement, and (2) in any event, it would have been very risky for France to allow Russia to face the Germans and Austrians alone, as a Russian defeat would leave France vulnerable.
So, in August 1914, the Germans launched a massive assault on France, hoping to drive France out of the war. The Germans succeeded with this strategy in 1870 and 1940, but not in 1914.
Britain’s entry into the war is also questionable. If I remember correctly, Niall Ferguson wrote a book (The Pity of War) placing blame for WWI on the British, for intervening unnecessarily. I don’t place the bulk of the blame on Britain, but I do agree that British involvement further expanded the conflict, and probably made it more difficult to settle. It also led to dubious British actions like the starvation blockade of Germany, an action generally considered to be something akin to a war crime at the time.
The US entry into the war was odd, though the Germans didn’t help themselves with the absurd Zimmerman Telegram. (The Zimmerman Telegram, for those not familiar with this particular historical tidbit, was a telegram from Germany to Mexico seeking an alliance against the US, and offering Mexico recovery of US territory in the southwest taken by the US in the 1840s.)
Wilson campaigned in 1916 on his success in keeping us out of the war, then plunged us into the war in 1917, and compounded the problem with his unrealistic ideas about the shape of a post-WWI Europe.
The Russians, of course, collapsed into an eventual Communist revolution, and lost huge territories in the east to Germany. Germany, though, was defeated in the west, in large part due to the pressure of the British starvation blockade, and also due to the US entry into the war. I think that there is some justice in the German claim that they were misled into a cease-fire based on some fairly mild terms (or rhetoric) offered by Wilson, while the actual Treaty of Versailles was more punitive than the Germans had some right to expect.
The worst part, though, was the collapse of the imperial system in eastern Europe, which had been pretty stable for about a century (aside from the catastrophe of WWI, of course). The victorious Western Allies declared the principle of the “self-determination of peoples,” and carved a variety of small, largely defenseless nations out of the former territories of the Austrian, Russian, and German empires. (Less from the Germans than the others, though it did include that Danzig corridor that so annoyed them later.)
Worse still, once the principle of “self-determination” was established, the Germans would naturally expect this to apply to them, as well. Austria sought to unite with Germany, an action that the Western Allies would not allow, and there were significant German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland. This set the stage for Hitler’s actions in the years preceding WWII.
Hitler is often portrayed as a madman. I don’t see any madness in his plan. It was ruthless. He accurately perceived a problem faced by the German nation: inadequate natural resources, especially farmland and oil. He targeted Ukraine and the Caucasus as the regions that could satisfy these requirements. Conveniently, these areas were ruled by the horrid Soviets, so Hitler might have expected relatively little objection from the West.
Not so, as it turned out, though the British and French were slow to react to Hitler’s initial moves. I think that the legitimate German grievances relating to the post-WWI borders of the newly-created Poland and Czechoslovakia explains much of this British and French reticence to act, through the Munich Conference in 1938.
The fate of Czechoslovakia is more complex than it is typically portrayed (though to his credit, Churchill does point out the connivance of Poland). After the agreed German annexation of the Sudetenland, both Poland and Hungary took chunks out of Czechoslovakia, and then Slovakia declared independence. Hitler then moved into the power vacuum in the rump Czech state, and ended up forming alliances with Slovakia and Hungary.
I have come to view the British guarantee to Poland, shortly in advance of the German invasion in 1939, as a bizarre action. Hitchens makes this point, at length, in The Phoney Victory. The British and French had no practical way to defend Poland, and it’s hard to see why they thought that it was very important. Poland had been partitioned between the Germans, Russians, and Austrians for about a century before WWI. Poland was in the path of Hitler’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union, which was hardly a secret after the publication of Mein Kampf.
So why was Britain — and especially Churchill — so keen to defend Poland? It drew them into a disastrous war, which resulted in British bankruptcy and the loss of the Empire. What was the point? To defend Stalin? Stalin, by the way, ended up as the major victor of WWII.
Many of Hitler’s outrages seem to have flowed from this British decision. The French joined the British, but my impression is that the British were leading the way. I don’t see any reason for Hitler to have invaded Denmark, or Norway, or the Low Countries, or France, absent the foolish guarantee to Poland and the Anglo-French declarations of war on Germany. (It appears that Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway to forestall British efforts to cut off Swedish iron shipments via Norway’s coastal waters, which led the British to commit an act of war by mining the territorial waters of then-neutral Norway.)
Hitchens reports something that I don’t recall reading or hearing before, about the American attitude toward Britain at the start of WWII. Apparently, we were quite annoyed at the British for having defaulted on their WWI debt. We agreed to supply Britain and France in their war with Hitler’s Germany, but demanded cash payment — and gold — right up until a de facto bankruptcy hearing for the British Empire before our Secretary of the Treasury. Confident that the British had paid us all that they could, we then adopted Lend-Lease and started supplying arms and war material to Germany’s enemies.
For free.
Gee, I wonder why Hitler ended up being annoyed at us?
Then there’s Japan’s war in China. Japan was bogged down in a land war in China for years, and we were making good money on the consequent trade, especially in oil. But for some reason, FDR decided that we couldn’t stand for Japan to rule part of China. You know, much the way that we were then ruling the Philippines. So FDR embargoed oil sales (and other exports) to Japan, an action that would cripple the Japanese war effort.
I don’t recall reading or hearing an analysis of the response that FDR’s administration expected from the Japanese. It should have been pretty obvious that the Japanese would need an alternative source of oil, conveniently available to them in the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya, which were virtually defenseless at the time. (The Dutch had been conquered by the Germans, and the British had their hands full fighting the Germans and the Italians.) A Japanese attack toward the East Indies, though, would open the Japanese flank to American forces in the Philippines, a risky move for the Japanese. So it seems, to me, that it should have been no surprise for the Japanese to conclude that the least-bad of their options was an attack on the US. This was provoked by FDR, in violation of the principle of free trade declared by FDR himself in the Atlantic Charter, just a few months earlier in August 1941.
Further, what was the uniting factor behind our eventual Axis opponents, Germany, Italy, and Japan? They were part of the Anti-Comintern Pact, an alliance specifically aimed at the tyrannical and potentially expansionist Soviet Union. Why would Britain — or the US — want to take the Soviet side in such a conflict?
I’ve rambled for quite a while here. This is all pretty complicated, I think, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the events leading to the two catastrophic wars of the 20th Century.
The story that we’re taught, though, is very simple. Hitler was a madman and a monster, launching wars of “aggression.” So was Mussolini, in a smaller and more contemptible way. Why, Mussolini had the temerity to conquer Ethiopia, outraging the British and the French. That’s right, the British and the French, who between them ruled just about all of the rest of Africa at the time. Let’s not forget Japan, portrayed as a Yellow Menace that was somehow going to be invading California soon, and which supposedly attacked us for absolutely no reason.
It is interesting to see people objecting to Putin’s potentially cutting off supplies of oil and gas to Europe, a tactic apparently considered perfectly fine when we did it to Japan in 1941.
They were evil, we were good. The brave British, especially, were good, led by the indomitable Savior Churchill. You know, the Churchill who imposed the starvation blockade on the Germans in WWI. The Churchill whose failed Dardanelles campaign aimed at the massive naval bombardment of the Turkish civilian population of Istanbul. The Churchill who illegally mined those Norwegian territorial waters, then expressed outrage at the German invasion that this triggered. The Churchill who presided over the deliberate terror-bombing of women and children in German cities.
I’m not claiming that the Axis were a bunch of great guys. They did terrible things. So did our side, which included Stalin’s Evil Empire. War is hell.
There’s no changing the past. We might be able to learn a lesson, and the lesson that I’ve come to learn is the wisdom of our Founders, who cautioned against involvement in foreign wars. They are costly in blood and treasure. We often have little understanding of the cultures and nations involved, but are inclined to want to force our ways on them. Perhaps worst of all, if we take sides and help one side win — the Soviets in WWII, for example — we might find out that they are just about as bad as the side that we opposed.
Moreover, the policy of “unconditional surrender” adopted in WWII eliminated three major checks on Soviet expansionism, placing the burden of the Cold War on us. In hindsight, this seems like a bad decision.
It is impossible to be certain of the outcome of various alternative choices. If Britain had not guaranteed Poland, what would have happened? If we had not supplied Britain and the Soviets, or had not embargoed Japan, what would have happened?
My impression is that the general answer is something like: Germany and Japan would have conquered the world, and would have come after us. Something like the premise of the Amazon series The Man in the High Tower.
I’ve come to doubt that this is true, and even to view it as a bit paranoid. There are precious few examples of successful conquest of this type. Most of the time, a conqueror becomes bogged down pacifying the territory it has occupied, and the occupation ends up being a drain on resources, not an addition. This was true of the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe and Afghanistan. It was true of our own occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was true of Napoleon’s various conquests.
I’d be curious to hear from those of you who disagree with this. I used to disagree with my present view, quite strongly. Maybe some of you could address two issues:
- Part of the motivation for America’s 20th Century policy seems to be the promotion of “liberal democracy.” Do you even like this? The location of the most obvious success of this policy is Western Europe. Do you like the EU? Do you like its policies? Do you like its culture, its focus on the Rainbow agenda, its undermining of traditional faith and culture, its crusade against Climate Change, its bureaucratic Leftism?
- Part of the motivation for America’s 20th-century policy seems to be a sense of pride for being defenders of, well, something. The people that we like, it seems. The French, and the Jews, and the Ukrainians (at the moment). The Taiwanese. Some of the Afghans and Iraqis, perhaps.
My new view of things still troubles me a bit, as it makes me far less inclined to think favorably of our country. My old religion, “We Won The War,” was comforting in some ways. It made me feel good about myself, and about America. I just don’t buy it anymore.
Published in General
David, thanks. There remains a lot of disagreement about the causes of WWI.
I mentioned a couple of my favorite sources above, Michael Neiberg and Christopher Clark. Here are a couple of their lectures:
Neiberg at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, about 1 hour, 18 minutes:
Neiberg’s presentation was particularly compelling to me, arguing against the traditional “MAIN” explanation (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism), and also arguing that virtually nobody cared about poor assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand or poor wife Sophie. At most, this provided a justification for a bit of Austrian conquest in the chaotic Balkans, in the aftermath of the collapse of Ottoman rule of the area. It’s hard to see any reason for the other great powers to be concerned about it.
Clark in London, about 53 minutes:
Clark doesn’t assign blame, but provides a complicated explanation of what happened. There are many interesting details about the Archduke and Sophie (undermined a bit by Neiberg’s argument that the assassination wasn’t relevant). I find Clark a pretty entertaining speaker, too, as a stylistic matter.
Actually, this was my response to Zafar, not you.
I partially agree in the sense that I think there can be good moral reasons for aggression and bad moral reasons for aggression.
Just as an example, I think the United States putting captured Nazi German soldiers in a POW camp doesn’t have the same moral valence as Nazi Germany putting Jews in concentration camps.
Another example, I don’t think the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 has the same moral valence as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
You also mentioned “the arc of history bending toward justice.” That is a somewhat impersonal and possibly deterministic attitude towards moral progress. Perhaps it would be better to point out that moral progress has been made over the past 500 years (some people disagree with this assertion) not because it is inevitable, but because various individuals and various nations have acted in certain ways rather than others.
This is where we disagree. That’s why I mentioned the serial killer analogy in a previous comment.
I understand the analogy.
The thing is, in the real world, the serial killer is in Outer Mongolia. He’s no threat to you. I think that this argument is just paranoid, a tale to frighten children. We’re seeing this again in Ukraine, in real time.
Think about the Ukraine narrative. The Soviet Juggernaut is emerging, and we have to act or Putin will conquer Europe — and at the same time, the Russians are so incompetent that they still haven’t taken Bakhmut in Donetsk, after months and months. But hey, they’re going to conquer Poland, and then they’ll be in Berlin presumably, and then . . . what, exactly. How do they get to Boston?
Not our problem, I say.
I also think that it’s rather childish to hypothesize that our geopolitical opponents are “serial killers.” They are nations, pursing their own interests. This actually seems almost a religious view, which is strange coming from you, HW. We’re the good guys, and the people that I don’t like are all Jeffrey Dahmer.
About that peaceful and prosperous thing — I think that you’re right that we’ve made the rest of the world more prosperous. Maybe more peaceful, though that depends on the time period. Sure, it’s been more peaceful than the catastrophic World Wars. Has it been more peaceful than, say, the second half of the 19th Century?
On the other hand, I think that we’ve made our own country less peaceful and prosperous, in the process.
I also think that the peaceful part may be at an end. That prosperity that we brought to the rest of the world, including China, may be turning into a big problem.
I didn’t focus, yet, on the foolishness of our China policy. Given the hand that they were dealt, it may have been a good idea when Nixon and Kissinger adopted a China-friendly policy in the 1970s. By the early 1990s, it should have been clear that: (1) we no longer needed a China-friendly policy to oppose the Soviets, and (2) promoting growing prosperity for another pseudo-Communist tyranny was a bad idea. We hurt our own workers and enriched an enemy.
What was the plan? Well, my recollection is that that unholy alliance of the Neocons and the Liberal Imperialists — the Blob — explained that when the Chinese got rich, of course they’d become just like us!
Because, you know, when the Germans got rich in the late 19th and early 20th Century, they became just like us, right? And the Japanese, at about the same time?
I’m sorry if I come across as dismissive. I actually used to view things very much as you do. I’ve come to believe that I was badly duped, and it ticks me off. You didn’t do the duping, of course. I think that we’ve been fed a false narrative, our entire lives.
The Chinese may be the most dangerous potential threat that we’ve faced. It would still be very, very difficult for them to get to us. Taiwan may be in trouble. Maybe the Philippines. Probably not Japan, because if push comes to shove, Japan can build itself a bunch of nukes.
How do the concentration camps compare, in moral valence, to our putting Indians on reservations? Or, for that matter, to our internment of Japanese residents and Japanese-American citizens?
How do they compare, in moral valence, to the British putting the Boers in concentration camps?
And more recently, how do they compare to how the Israelis treat the Palestinians in Gaza?
David — this is a response to just a part of one of your early comments.
You know, I don’t think that Germany did murder millions of its own citizens. The Nazis did kill several million Jews, and quite a few other people like Gypsies. I don’t think that the Jewish population of Germany was actually very large. My recollection is that the bulk of the Jews were Poles, and maybe Ukrainians.
I found this source at the Holocaust Museum. It reports about 2.7-3.0 million Polish Jews killed, about 1.3 million Soviet Jews, and about 165,000 German Jews.
Killing people isn’t very nice, of course. But your comment made the point about the dead supposedly being Germany’s “own innocent citizens.” It looks like this is incorrect. It appears that most of them were citizens of Germany’s enemies.
About Japan — so what if Japan’s only option was military. Is that how you judge our actions. Was our only option military in Iraq? Afghanistan? Vietnam? Korea?
I think not.
This is difficult, and I’m a bit sorry if I’m giving you a hard time. In this area, smart people seem to have a set of little rules like the ones that you state, which seem overly simplified, to me. Even cliche. And then, they don’t seem to apply their stated rules in a consistent way.
I think that it’s actually impossible to construct any moral system, including principles applying to military conflict, from reason. From my point of view, people don’t have valid moral arguments, they have rationalizations, and those are often quite thin. If you press, they get annoyed at you. I used to get annoyed, too, when I used to think that way.
Just to lighten the mood a little:
“I think I’m gonna take a piece of Russia and a piece of Germany
And give them to Poland again
I’ll put together Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
And hope that is how they’ll remain
Then I’ll take a bit of Turkey, then a lot of Turkey
This is all quite a heady affair”
Well, one reason why the Russians are doing so badly in Ukraine is because the United States is providing Ukraine lots of weapons and some training to go along with those weapons.
One might think of what would have happened if the United States had just blown off the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “not our problem.”
This is why I use the serial killer analogy.
The serial killer has not killed you and he hasn’t killed your wife or any of your children or any of your friends or co-workers.
So, you could conclude that the serial killer isn’t your problem, using the logic that you have presented regarding foreign policy and national security policy.
But I think most people would understand that this would be short-sighted way of approaching the serial killer situation.
Many people might be concerned that others will notice that little or no effort is being expended to detain the serial killer. Some of these people who observe this might think that they would like to kill their ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend, realizing that everyone else will say, “Not my problem.“
One could see how this situation could gain some momentum, as more and more people become aware of a power vacuum.
It’s not a religious view. It’s just an analysis of human nature and how various societies have tried to deal with human nature.
People have, for a long time, understood that people will killer, rape and steal if they can get away with it. That’s why people have developed methods of deterrence and detention to reduce or eliminate killing, raping and stealing.
You might say, “Why should I care if other people are being killed, raped and stolen from? Not my problem.”
My sense is that if Hitler had estimated that his 1936 occupation of the Rhineland would have been met by a military response by the United States, Great Britain and France, he wouldn’t have ordered his military to occupy the Rhineland.
But Hitler likely estimated that the US, the UK and France would do nothing, just as Putin likely underestimated the response of the US and Europe to his invasion of Ukraine.
I find the article way off base in general as well as in basics. The world is beyond understanding and attempts to put it all into perspective is doomed. Bottom up allows massive human failure but, like organic life, it sorts itself out with time. Top down does then same, I suppose in some fashion, but it destroys itself rather than evolving toward functional outcomes. Bottom up worked for us. Top down will end up worse than historically observed because the top in history had some experience managing its own survival. The folks who want to run us from he top are complete fools.
The gas chambers, for starters.
Well, to me the difference is that we were actually at war with Japan when we went after their merchant vessels. We were not at war with the German Empire when it resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. We were officially neutral.
Now, one can argue that the U.S. was not acting like a neutral in 1915-early 1917, and one would have a fair point. But in that case the German Empire should have declared war on the U.S.
BTW, I appreciate your comments on the comments. I disagree with much of your analysis, but it has been though-provoking. And that’s what this site is for!
Well done!
Boy, I’ve sure issued a flurry of comments, after neglecting this thread for a day or so.
I’ve been led to an additional thought, not by any particular comment, but more by the overall discussion. Lurking in the background of this discussion seems to be something like “just war theory,” or in more modern terminology, the “laws of war.”
I’ve been critical of the “laws of war” in the past, finding them simply unhelpful from a realist perspective. My new thought — or at least one that I haven’t focused on for a while — is whether there exists any legitimate “just war theory.”
What would it be based on?
Maybe I’ll get lucky, and St. Augustine will check this thread. (I mean you, Mark, not the historic Catholic saint.) I think that the actual Saint made some points on the topic, and that Thomas Aquinas was an even more important figure in the development of just war theory as a Catholic doctrine. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered these, so I’m fuzzy on the details. On Aquinas in particular, I’d appreciate any insight into the extent to which he relied on Scripture, and the extent to which he relied on other sources or on his own argument.
I’d appreciate any further explanation, by our St. A or otherwise, about these theories. My own current view is a bit skeptical. I’ve been studying the Bible quite a bit in recent years, and I struggle to think of any clear commands against war in general, or against specific types of actions like killing prisoners or slaughtering civilians.
I know that you can find many generic statements of Jesus about peacefulness, but you can also find others along the lines of “get a sword,” and a statement in Romans about the authorities “bearing the sword” for good reason.
Great questions. I don’t take the position (one that Zafar might think I have taken) that America, the UK and Israel have never done anything wrong, ever.
What I am saying is that some countries are better than other countries, in how they treat their own people and how they treat people outside their country’s borders.
When I say “some countries are better than other countries,” think of North Korea and South Korea.
I think South Korea is better than North Korea.
You mentioned Israel and how Israel treats the Palestinians. If Israel were run by someone like Hitler or Putin there wouldn’t be any Palestinians alive in the West Bank or Gaza strip. This Hitler-Putin type would have no moral qualms about killing every Palestinian who lived in those areas.
It’s only because Israel has a moral compass that people attempt to persuade Israel to modify their policies regarding the Palestinians.
Jerry,
You have mentioned, I think, that nations like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Putin’s Russia and other nations are “simply pursuing their national interests.” Or I think you wrote something like that. You can correct me if this isn’t what you wrote.
I think it is important to remember that “national interests” tend to be defined by the political leadership of the nation. This has huge implications for foreign policy and national security policy, in my view.
Think of how radically the foreign policy of a country can change when the nature of its regime changes.
A great example of his is Japan. Japan from 1930-1945 had a foreign policy radically different from the foreign policy of Japan from 2007-2022.
The prior Japan was at war with the United States. The current Japan is a close ally of the United States.
When the Soviet Union began collapsing in 1989-1991, countries like Poland and Romania ended up with radically different foreign policies than before.
So, rather than think of a nation’s interests, it might be better to look at the nature of the regime and think of the regime’s interests.
Consider how many Russians are currently fleeing Russia because they don’t want to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine. It seems that Putin’s interests are not the same as the interests of the Russian people.
I think there’s a very critical piece of information that I think modern historians have buried and won’t let people grapple with under the umbrella of anti-semitism and it is seriously impacting our ability to soberly analyze the history here.
Thanks for the response. I see the distinction that you’re making, but I’m not convinced that it makes a difference.
The US view seems to be that we get to steam into a war zone with impunity, and woe to any country that interferes with our merchant ships doing so. Except that, as I recall, we respected the British blockade of Germany. We didn’t respect the German blockade of Britain.
The difference was that the British generally followed what were called “cruiser rules,” which essentially required warships to give merchant ships a chance to surrender. This is humane, when possible. It also gives an enormous practical advantage to the country with the stronger surface fleet. Application of this rule would mean that the British could use their cruisers and destroyers to blockade Germany, but the Germans couldn’t use their subs to blockade Britain.
As I understand it, the German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare set forth specific zones in which ships would be subject to sinking, generally surrounding the British Isles and also in parts of the Mediterranean. So warning was given. Obviously, honoring those limits would have blocked our trade with Britain, just as Britain was blocking our trade with Germany, albeit using different types of naval vessels.
Why is that fair? Why should the British get to set a rule that gives them the advantage? Why should we go along?
I don’t know why I’m involved In this as a ‘Zafar might think’ thing. What is my role here in local mythology?
Well that’s okay then, I guess. If you’re better than Hitler nobody can criticise your actions.
A moral compass should not be something exceptional. It’s part of being human. Hitler was unusual because he lacked one, he wasn’t setting a basic standard.
HW, I don’t think that you’re correct about your conclusion, in most cases. This is the difference between the Neocon/Liberal Internationalist school of thought, and the Realist school of thought.
I do agree that, on occasion, internal political change can lead to a change in foreign policy. In practice, though, I think that this is quite rare. Let me give a number of examples.
Have you ever read, or better yet listened to, anything by John Mearsheimer? He’s one of the leading realists, and he offers a better explanation that I. He does concede that realism — essentially the view that in international relations, states act as “black boxes” in pursuing their practical interests, irrespective of internal politics — is a model and simplification of the world, which he estimates to be accurate about 75% of the time.
I think I just got through saying that we should be able to analyze and criticize the actions of the United Statse, the UK and Israel and every other nation.
It’s just that we should be able to conclude that Country A is a good country and Country B is a bad country.
Some actions are good, some are bad.
Yes. I have listened to John Mearsheimer and I think he is very wrong.
You mentioned that Russia’s foreign policy didn’t change much from what it was under the Czar to what it was under the Communists.
But with a few seconds of reflection you might understand why. Both the Czar and the Soviet Union were both dictatorships. So, there wasn’t that much of a change in the nature of the regime compared to, say, Poland becoming a representative government after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I think this demonstrates that the liberal internationalists are correct and the realists are wrong.
Jerry, most of the examples you gave of little change in foreign policy was the result of a country moving from one type of dictatorship to another type of dictatorship. I’m surprised you didn’t mention that in your analysis.
Depending on context.
You can’t decide whether it’s good or bad to shove an old lady unless you know whether you’re pushing her into the path of the bus or out of the path of the bus.
I agree. It’s just that you and I might disagree regarding which actions are good and which actions are bad.
I think the US being involved in providing various forms of aid to non-communist governments during the Cold War was a good action. You don’t seem to agree.
Well, maybe by count, but I gave examples in democracies. The US and the Monroe Doctrine. All of the NATO countries — all democracies, I think — staying in NATO for over 70 years now. If we counted each of the changes of politics in each of the NATO countries, it would probably add up to a hundred or more.
The news today gives an interesting example of the point that I was making about the US provoking Japan into WWII.
Many of you may have already seen the posts about the explosions damaging the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic. I was watching Tucker Carlson’s discussion of this event, and he showed a clip of a White House spokeswoman talking about Russia having already cut off the supply of gas through those pipelines. She said that Putin had “weaponized energy.”
That’s exactly what we did to Japan.
Jerry, with all due respect. The more you listen to Tucker Carlson and Colonel Douglas MacGregor the more you get duped and confused.
You are soaking in bad sources of information and as a result you are reaching bad conclusions. That’s my opinion, at least.
Jerry,
My point about the foreign policy of a country changing when it moves from dictatorship to representative government is backed up by the example of Germany and Japan. Under dictatorship, Germany and Japan were invading and brutalizing other countries. Under representative government, Germany and Japan are US allies and focus their energies on creating prosperity for their people.
You decided to focus on countries that moved from one form of dictatorship to another to make it seem like nations never change their foreign policies even as a regime changes.
It’s not hard to grasp why dictators of various types (Monarchs, secular dictatorships, etc.) would have similar foreign policies.
I just don’t think that it’s the form of government that makes the difference. I think that it’s the fact that we bombed them to rubble, then occupied them for 70-plus years, during most of which they had to side with us or fall to the Soviets.
Who did we “occupy” for 70-plus years?
Wow. You’re a piece of work.