The Narcissism of the Political

 

The Narcissism of the Political

Peter Schultz

 

                  “Vanity and the desire to dominate other(s) are passions that arise…in society,” according to Montesquieu, ala’ Thomas Pangle.

 

                  Which means that vanity and dominance are the political passions par excellence and are made socially acceptable via politics. That is, it is via the political that humans motivated by vanity and a desire to dominate others can have their narcissism made acceptable and even honored. Those who are characterized by vanity and dominance lust for fame, which is a kind of immortality. Hence, as Lincoln pointed out in his “Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” lyceum address, for the most ambitious politicians, it is immaterial whether they enslave freemen or free slaves. Their acts disguise and socially legitimize the passions that underlie them, vanity and the desire for dominance. Such narcissism lies at the root of the political, in its meanness and in its greatness.

 

                  To say that the best regime is the least pathological regime is to say there is no political solution to human problems. There are no simply good options and there is nothing that can be done about that. The fate of the nuclear strategists reveals this truth. The “MAD-ness” of the nuclear age clarifies all ages. Human problems cannot be solved politically, militarily, or morally. Hence, it helps tremendously to have a sense of humor, as that allows you to see the human drama for the comedy it is. Ironically, the most serious matters are best treated humorously or light heartedly. Hence, the value of seeing the irony of Plato’s Republic, of Aristotle’s Politics, and of Machiavelli’s The Prince and his Discourses, as well as his Mandragola. It will lighten your load.

The Fate of Nuclear Strategists: MAD-ness

 

The Fate of Nuclear Strategists: MAD-ness

Peter Schultz

 

                  “The nuclear strategists had come to impose order – but in the end, chaos still prevailed.” [The Wizards of Armageddon, 391]

 

                  Reformulation: The politicians had come to impose order – but in the end, chaos still prevailed. Or even more so: The politicians, through politics, fed the chaos, facilitated it. So, politics is merely disguised chaos or is chaos disguised. Politics as Pascal’s “madhouse.”

 

                  The fate of the nuclear strategists, viz., who created “a living dreamworld” wherein their strategies “became a catechism, [whose] first principles [were] carved into the mystical stone of dogma,” is simply the fate of all affirmations of the political.

Creating Beauty or Making War: The Wizards of Armageddon

 

Creating Beauty or Making War: The Wizards of Armageddon

Peter Schultz

 

                  Thoughts spurred by the book, The Wizards of Armageddon, by Fred Kaplan.

 

                  “…there was no conceivable circumstance under which using nuclear weapons would create an advantage [for the US]….Brodie’s fundamental conclusion [stood]: that there could be no winners….And so the analysts had to keep going back to the problem over and over again, even if the problem could never be solved….[And] nobody wanted to be the man in … a ghastly conflict … say to the President of the United States: ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there are no good options…, and there is nothing you can do about it.’” [p.371] (And Sheriff Bell appears.)

 

                  Oh, those vicious circles with no way out politically or militarily. The only way out is philosophically: reconceiving the human story as being about the contemplation and creation of the beautiful. The Wizards of Armageddon, while theorizing about and making war, merely succeeded in futilely spinning their wheels. There is no way to fight a nuclear war rationally. Wars are always obscene – and there is nothing to be done about that.

Political Realism: The Glorification of War

 

Political Realism: The Glorification of War

Peter Schultz

 

                  Political realism facilitates, embraces, and affirms war(s), including nuclear war(s). As one realist argued, “If we back down [from war] and let the challenge go unheeded, we will suffer losses of prestige, we will decrease our capacity for … deterrence… and we will encourage [further aggressions].” Moreover, “If … deterrence for some reason fails, then the only way to avoid perilous humiliation is to … drop atom bombs….” [The Wizards of Armageddon, p. 190]

 

                  To understand this affirmation of war, it is necessary to understand that central to political realism is what may be called “the threat.” In the 1950s, 1960s, and thereafter, the threat was Marxist communism, but the threat could and does take other forms as well, e.g., Islamic fundamentalism. The threat is as central to political realism as is the concept of original sin for Christianity.

 

                  If sin is original, that is, if humans are conceived in sin, then humans must not only be prepared to battle sin, to make war against sin, but those battles, those wars may be seen as divinely sanctioned. And this is how John Foster Dulles, et. al., understood the Cold War. “Dulles viewed … superpower competition as a titanic struggle between freedom and slavery, shining beacon and the web of darkness, God and the Devil.” [181] Thus, the Cold War and even nuclear war was divinely sanctioned. Nations and peoples prove their virtue, their piety by being willing and able to engage in apocalyptic battles, to “stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord.” In other words, there must be battles, there must be wars because they are signs of our virtue(s), signs that nations and peoples are principled. It isn’t too much to say that nations and peoples should be looking to wage war(s), perhaps even going out of their way to make war in order to prove they are godly. Appeasement proves that nations and peoples are not virtuous; making war, even nuclear war, proves that nations and peoples are principled. Making war in order to avoid humiliation, to avoid the loss of prestige is what good and decent folks do, even if that includes dropping some atom bombs.

 

                  Of course, in a nuclear age “victory in the traditional sense cannot be a proper goal” because “nobody desires self-annihilation.” [198] Wars in a nuclear age should be “limited,” which means that the “proper aim on the battlefield is sustained stalemate.” [198-99] So, “playing for a stalemate … would … seem to be desirable.” In other words, wars should be endless; at least that’s what rationality recommends. “We are asked to make sacrifices and then cheer lustily for a tie in a game that we did not even ask to play.” [199] The iron cage of rationality is, in fact, characterized by, permeated by endless war(s). Rationally considered, the political is defined by endless war(s). Or as Clausewitz put it: War is what politics becomes. In a nuclear age, limited or endless war(s) is as good as it gets. Ironically, endless battles, endless war are the best possible outcomes. The best regime is permeated by war. So it goes.

 

The Wizards of Armageddon

 

The Wizards of Armageddon

Peter Schultz

 

                  From the book The Wizards of Armageddon by Fred Kaplan, being an account of the alleged wisemen and women who “for thirty years [were] a small group inside the U.S. strategic community [who] devised the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the bomb.” The book bills itself as “their untold story.”

 

                  Kaplan’s summation of the work of the likes of Albert Wohlstetter, et. al.: “These sorts of studies were scientific, so it was thought; there were numbers, calculations, rigorously checked, sometimes figured on a computer. Maybe the numbers were questionable, but they were tangible, unlike the theorizing, the Kremlinology, the academic historical research and interpretation produced by social science. Wohlstetter snootily denigrated all such works as being in ‘the essay tradition.’” [p. 121]

 

                  And so, allegedly, Wohlstetter et. al. did science; they were scientific realists and were, in their own minds, superior to those who worked in the essay tradition, political theorists, Kremlinologists, historians, and social scientists. And yet the “strategic community … formed at RAND … had reached … a … consensus … which was the not unlikely prospect of a Soviet surprise attack against the increasingly vulnerable Strategic Air Command. To many, it appeared that the Russians might indeed attack sometime in the near future.” [pp. 123-24]

 

                  Note well: These allegedly hard-headed scientists viewed the political at the time as a morality tale, with “good guys” and “bad guys” engaged apocalyptic battles. And, of course, the RANDites like Albert Wohlstetter would be the heroes of this morality tale, and so, unsurprisingly, Wohlstetter was described by one colleague as if he sounded like “he was reciting the Sermon on the Mount.” [123] Wohlstetter, et. al., saw themselves as standing at Armageddon and battling for the Lord, armed with their science and their rationality. Nuclear weapons were, apparently, divinely sanctioned. Indeed, so too was nuclear war.  

 

                  And so, these scientists, these alleged realists, affirmed the political, while being blind to their affirmation, its consequences, and its controversies. Apocalyptic battles are especially appealing to the self-righteous, but they are universally destructive especially in a nuclear age. It is questionable whether they should be embraced as divinely or scientifically sanctioned.

 

                  So, while science “added … legitimacy to the general feeling among many in government that the arms race must be continued and accelerated at all costs,” [131] the realists’ affirmation of the political as a morality tale fed their aggressiveness vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. It was their politics, not their science, that explained their understanding of and opposition to the Soviet Union. So, while “Wohlstetter snootily denigrated” social science and social scientists, his own politics were easily denigrated as blind to the “real Soviet Union.” Had he not viewed politics as a morality tale, Wohlstetter might have been able to achieve a more nuanced view of the Soviet Union than as an “evil empire” ready to strike the U.S. at its earliest opportunity in order to achieve its ultimate goal of world domination. Such a view would have helped moderate the arms race that these scientists thought must be continued and accelerated at all costs, including of course the embrace of thermonuclear weapons capable of destroying the world and humanity. These scientists had become capable of, as Robert Oppenheimer knew, destroying worlds.  

 

 

The Logic of Realism: With Sides

 

The Logic of Realism: With Sides

Peter Schultz

 

                  The logic of realism, from Newman’s book, JFK and Vietnam: “At the time the picture of the war MACV presented to McNamara was one of gradual success but one in which more aircraft, equipment, and men were always needed to get the job done. The success story both forestalled the notion that the situation was desperate enough to warrant a Laotian-type political solution and justified the further expansion an intensification of the ‘winning’ US effort.” [p. 320 emphasis original]

 

                  It is important to recognize that as a realist McNamara was already convinced by such logic, and the intelligence General Harkins offered merely validated his doctrinaire realism. Hence, he didn’t question Harkins’ intelligence. To see the need to question Harkins, McNamara would have to have seen the need to questioned realism, his and others. Had he been willing to do that, he wouldn’t have been among “the best and the brightest.” Rather, he would have resembled Kurt Vonnegut or Cormac McCarthy. To be a “player” requires buying into the prevailing ideology, into realism, into the single vision. And such a purchase, rendered the best and the brightest, unbeknownst to themselves, blind.

 

                  An aside: Trump’s blindness. Trump may be able to dismantle the Department of Education, but this will be useless unless he subverts the realism, the single vision ideology that underlies our educational institutions. Our problem isn’t bureaucratic. It is philosophic. Unless that is understood, playing around with bureaucracies will prove futile. Bureaucracies do not create evils; rather, the evils are created by the philosophy of realism, of the single vision. “If the rule you followed brought you to this point, then what good was your rule? “(Anton Chigurh, No Country of Old Men)

 

                  Another aside: JFK’s blindness. Because he was a realist, JFK was forced to act deceptively regarding Vietnam. His realism required that he claim to be leaving Vietnam without losing the war. Realists cannot abide by defeats because defeats call into question their beliefs. Failures are unacceptable for realists by undercutting their convictions.

 

                  But deception is problematic insofar as JFK’s deceptions could be – and eventually were – subverted by events in Vietnam. As the war worsened, the logic of realism required renewed and intensified efforts to succeed, to avoid defeat. So as the war worsened, the commitment to an intensified war effort grew. Only insofar as defeat could be legitimated, made acceptable, justified, could the logic of realism and an ever-greater war effort be subverted. What was needed was a mindset that rejected the idea that defeat in Vietnam would be “losing Vietnam.” A mindset was needed that did not see Vietnam as a nation to be “won.” A mindset was needed that did not see nations as merely entries in either “the win column” or “the loss column” of international politics. A mindset was needed that sees nations as entitled to self-determination, i.e., as entitled to choose their politics, their destinies, despite how those choices impacted U.S. national security. A mindset was needed by which U.S. national security did not trump the right of a people to self-determination, ala’ the Declaration of Independence.

 

                  The logic of realism is all about winning and losing, about winners and losers. Were JFK to “lose” Vietnam, he would have been condemned as a “loser” and presidents cannot legitimately be losers. They have to be winners or, at the very least, look like winners. Hence, deception or duplicity is legitimate, even when it means putting US soldiers’ lives at risk in order to win an election - which is what JFK was doing in 1963. It is also what LBJ did prior to and after the presidential election of 1964, as well as what Nixon did in his first term. The politics of realism involves, repeatedly, deception or duplicity because failure is inevitable in politics. Ironically though, our realists cannot accept this reality. So it goes.

 

 

Realism and the Political: Reflections on Vietnam

 

Realism and the Political: Reflections on Vietnam

Peter Schultz

 

                  Here is an interesting passage from John M. Newman’s book, JFK and Vietnam: “McNamara did not question [General] Harkins’ view that the war was being won….Harkins’ claim seems so incredibly naïve that one may ask: how could the American commander [and the Secretary of Defense McNamara] be so out of touch with reality? … We do not know what motivated Harkins, but whatever it was it surely defies a sound military explanation.” [pp. 287 and 288]

 

                  Newman fails to see that McNamara and Harkins, et. al., were realists. They embraced realism as a doctrine or dogma and so long as they did, success was taken for granted, at least once the realistic way forward was discovered and applied. That’s the essence of doctrinaire realism, viz., that being realistic guarantees success. Doctrinaire realists have no reason to doubt their eventual success because that’s the promise of being a realist, being successful. One becomes a realist in order to be successful. So, it is only by questioning and abandoning realism as doctrine that failure becomes visible, becomes a real possibility. So long as elites embrace realism as a doctrine, just so long will they be unable to see failure as a real possibility. Realists always presume when facing what looks like failure something like the following: “We just haven’t found the realistic way forward and if we keep looking and trying, we will find that way. Guaranteed!”

 

                  So, McNamara and Harkins, et. al., not only had “a wholly unrealistic view of the war,” they also embraced a doctrinaire view of the world that blinded them to “real reality,” which includes of course the possibility of failure. Being realists was, unbeknownst to McNamara and Harkins, their real problem. Their problem was a philosophical problem, not a military or a political problem. Their philosophy of realism blinded them to the possibility of failure, which was obvious to many U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers and even to many Vietnamese peasants and many American dissenters. “The best and the brightest” were neither.