by Eric Martin
Matt Yglesias discusses the tendency to misconstrue morality in intention and consquence when analyzing foreign policy options – especially relevant after the latest round of preening surrounding the conflict between Russia and Georgia (though the stench of "Bomb Burma for the Sake of the Burmese" still lingers in the air).
…I think a lot of people have a tendency to wave the flag of “morality” or “idealism” in foreign policy as a way of evading responsibility for the consequences of their ideas…There would have been nothing “moral” about it if Dwight Eisenhower had taken an “idealistic” stand over Hungary in 1956 and wound up causing a nuclear war. Nor would the fact that the resulting war would, in an important sense, have been the result of immoral Soviet actions really done a great deal to exculpate Eisenhower. There’s nothing new about this idea, it’s all in Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” where he says that in the political domain we need an ethic of responsibility, where you put forth initiatives that actually lead to good consequences.
True to form, the McCain camp described Obama’s level-headed reaction to the Georgia/Russia conflict (a reaction shared by our European allies and the Bush administration itself!) as a "naive" brand of "appeasement" – betraying a lack of concern for human suffering. Along these lines, McCain’s allies shrouded their calls for a widespread confrontation between the US and Russia (and their exhortations to the Georgians to "let’s you and him fight") in the cloak of compassion – defending the people of Georgia from a rapacious Russia which had morphed into some freakish Stalin/Hitler hybrid (our enemies always manage this transformation somehow).
In the rush to claim the moral high ground in the periodic game of king of the sanctimonious mountain, however, none of the would-be humanitarians were forced to account for the repercussions that would actually result from their preferred course of action. The death toll from the conflict if joined by the United States (or from a prolonged insurgency by Georgians with our aid) would be astronomical – potentially cataclysmic considering the availability of nuclear weapons. Yet war supporters were safe to bask in their smug judgmentalism in the knowledge that even the Bush administration would not be so reckless.
However, Andrew Sullivan is right to be concerned that when it comes to a potential McCain presidency, the safe harbor for the judgmental-set might be lost. Not that this would deter them. When their advocacy leads to disaster, the moral stalwarts will just hide behind the nobility of their intentions – Max Weber be damned!
There is another aspect of the tendency to equate bellicosity with righteousness that is worth analyzing: many of the deeply concerned idealists that reach the solemn conclusion that war is necessary (with a frequency that belies the supposed painstaking deliberations taken to reach the oft-visited option of last resort) tend to be unmoved when presented with non-violent means to better the lot of a beleagured population. The impassioned calls to action vanish, the brows un-furrow and the pious cloak is put back in the closet for another day. Humanitarian crises just seem to draw less consternation when one of the options to help the target population isn’t to target the population. This commenter sums it up succinctly: