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.