US troops in Afghanistan (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
International diplomacy requires countless decisions: the large, small, mundane and monumental. Some turn out to have been wise and some not; some can be corrected, while others bring consequences that must be survived. A few are so pivotal that they reset the course of history.
We can’t be certain how the world would be different had a different course been chosen, but we can identify turning points and their cascading tumbles of consequences. And we can hypothesise an alternative history that, absent some fateful step, might have unfolded instead. Such “Planet Ifs” are more than thought experiments; if we can uncover what these wrong turns have in common, we can try harder to avoid them in the future. To see how, let’s consider four.
The first is almost as old as America: What if the United States had never permitted slavery? Slavery, after all, was an ethical transgression, while the Civil War that followed ripped the country apart. Today, slavery’s toxic effects still impact the nation — socially, economically, culturally, politically. Nor was this outweighed by any significant benefits, as plantation-style farming was not essential to southern agriculture. A national story free of slavery would thus be indisputably preferable. Case closed.
On to our second Planet If, this time in Europe: What if the Treaty of Versailles had refrained from deliberately humiliating Germany after the First World War? The Treaty placed exceptionally harsh conditions on defeated Germany. The Bundestag was forced to cede territory and portions of its population, to accept burdens that prevented their economic recovery, and to demilitarise and to pay massive reparations. Such a vindictive stance fuelled Germany’s subsequent nationalism, with economic despair rendering its populace vulnerable to the recovery and pride promised by Hitler.
This lesson was learned by the end of the Second World War. In 1945, few would deny that a contemptuous and vindictive attitude towards Germany would have been warranted — but the decision was made to aim for rehabilitation and reintegration into the international system. They were obliged to pay reparations, and there was mandatory public education about the camps and the genocide, but there was also a roadmap for Germany’s return to being a normal and respected nation. Had such an approach been taken in 1918, it is entirely possible that we would not have had the Second World War. It seems unlikely Hitler would have seized power. And projecting forward: no expulsions of Jews, no genocide, and therefore no Israel, no Middle-East conflict, no PLO, no Hezbollah, no Hamas, and no Gaza War.
Third, let’s visit a more recent Planet If: What if Mohammad Mosaddegh, a secular reformer, had been allowed to remain as Iran’s elected Prime Minister?
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SubscribeDon’t violate your own beliefs and core values? The Americans did just that with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. It was a fiasco, but that’s not the point. The point was to get rid of a potential ally of the Soviet Union in the Caribbean. Suppose it had worked? No Castro, so no Cuban Missile Crisis – which came within an ace of starting a nuclear war.
Toppling Castro as the head of government in an independent state was certainly immoral. But, with the benefit of hindsight, was it a foolish thing to attempt?
You don’t know who would have replaced him. It could have been a moderate or an absolute lunatic, which is the underlying point of the article. These things rarely work at as planned long term
I had to stop reading at the regurgitation of the myth that Versailles was punitive. Much of it was never enforced, and the Germans continuously evaded its terms with the help of the Soviets.
As Kissinger points out in his volume “Diplomacy”, it was punitive sure, but left it strong enough to start dominating the many new small nation states of central Europe. It never had to accept its eastern border with Poland even during thr Weimar period and simply could pick and choose when to shake off each of the Versailles obligations.
I find the author’s analysis extremely simplistic in this sense, as it simply takes as fact that Versailles was too punitive, but without consideration that few such punitive peace treaties left their victims in a position to dominate the continent in the medium term. As Foch observed, it was a 20-year armistice.
Wasn’t it General Pershing who predicted that WW1 would start again in twenty years’ time?
And then there’s the view that WW1 and WW2 were in fact just one war with an ‘interlude’ in between….
Lloyd George and Churchill predicted 21 years based on Prussian militarism not being defeated, Keynesd ditto but because reparations were to extreme and Pershing said the Germans will consider they have been defeated when we march through Berlin.
French treatment of Germans in the Saar/Rhineland did much to generate hate which fed into Nazi support.
The belief in the virtus of military power had developed in Prussia since the1680s and then influenced the rest of Germany post 1850s . Hitler/Nazis made use of the desire for military conquest by the Prussians.
Yes, but it was the standard wisdom taught in most history classes for most of the last few decades, but of course my own knowledge isn’t current. Most journalists wouldn’t know more history than whatever they were taught in their one or two collegiate history classes. Versailles was a bad treaty, though, but not exclusively because it punished Germany. It was bad because it punished the German people enough to drive public anger but not enough to actually render Germany incapable of becoming a military power again. It left Germany basically intact, but with punitive financial measures that were hated by the people who didn’t feel like they’d lost. It went both too far and not far enough.
Part of the problem was that the war ended without a proper invasion and defeat of Germany. The German side sued for peace rather than fighting to the end, which was a sensible course, given their strategic position. The allies accepted it because again, the death total was unprecedented and they wanted it to be over. The military leaders of both Germany and the allies knew with certainty that Germany could not win, and they would eventually be pushed back into Germany proper, at the cost of millions more dead on both sides. There was a disconnect between the strategic military reality and the situation on the ground as it appeared to the German people. To many Germans, it appeared their leaders simply gave up for no reason, with Germany still technically winning because they still controlled over half of Belgium. Hitler exploited that sentiment later. They were also a few things they couldn’t do because Germany would fight on anyway rather than accept them. For example, they couldn’t partition the country into the various feudal states that had existed in pre-Napoleonic times. Their own determination to end the fighting as soon as possible proved a significant obstacle. They also had the usual problems of allies in victory squabbling over details. It didn’t help that Woodrow Wilson was a former academic and a hopeless idealist who was obsessed with his own notions of fairness and establishing the League of Nations.
As a result of the strategic situation, the reluctance to accept even more casualties in an invasion of Germany, the disagreements among the allies, and Wilson’s stubborn idealism, history got one of the worst compromise treaties in recorded history. In a way, it’s rather fitting; a war that started for basically no reason ended with a treaty that resolved nothing.
But by the end each interlude / war, Germany was exhausted of supplies of just about everything, including wool & textiles; Once beautifully attired the Germany military was wearing woolen ‘shoddy’ sans detail by each war’s end – and Germans picked up in the channel after their boats had been bombed were found to have been wearing cellulose / paper underwear.
Joe Biden wears paper underwear and sees no shame in it.
Very good points.
The West granted twice as much in loans and other economic aid than Germany ever paid in reparations. The hubris of high culture and native bellicosity were behind Germany’s aggressiveness. They felt they were more intelligent and greater warriors than their inferiors to the west.
I think it was more Prussia than Germany. Post 1871, all German speakers end up doing Prussia’s bidding whether they like it or not. As Konrad Adenauer pointed out if Prussia had not received the Ruhr post 1815 it could have caused few problems.
I think you’re missing the point.
As Janko M points out, it was intended to be more punitive than, in fact, it was. But the intention was punitive.
The article is pointing out that we have a counter-factual here, in the shape of the post WWII settlement. Not only did a a deliberately non-punitive approach deliver a better outcome but, as the author notes, it did so in circumstances where it could reasonably be argued that punishment was all the more warranted (the holocaust, the eastern front, the “second offense”).
Of course, it doesn’t quite follow that, if WWII had been avoided, the world would be totally peachy. It’s surely likely that the European empires would have staggered on rather longer. Independence struggles might have been a great deal bloodier if Europe had not been wearied by a war of its own. Etc Etc.
But, again, it doesn’t invalidate the argument that, in each individual conflict, it is better to align our actions with our values – because whatever went wrong in our counter-factual world, would require a response and we would fact the same type of choice.
As Steve Jolly points out above, the ‘non-punitive’ settlement after WWII is not completely obvious. At the end of the war 12 million+ Germans were expelled from the territories where they lived, Germany lost 25% of her pre-war territory, and somewhere between 500 000 and 2 500 000 people died during the flight and expulsion. Helping Germany grow again afterwards surely helped, but you could make a case that a major reason Germany gave up on war was that after WWII (unlike WWI) they had suffered such a huge defeat that it was clear that they had lost and there was no point in trying to overturn that.
You could add the assassination of Patrice Lumumba orchestrated by Belgium and the CIA to the list. A democratically elected PM of the newly independent Congo, as a nationalist and Pan-Africanist, he was not sufficiently deferential to western interests. The carnage of the country and region ever since can be directly attributed to western machinations. Leopold ll’s barbarity earlier in the 20th C was also a harbinger of what would follow.
Allende comes to mind as well. Stephen Kinzer’s book Overthrow is good for a deep dive on over a century of US coups and invasions.
There used to be a postcard for sale in alternative bookshops with a list of all the countries the US had interfered in since 1945 and it was staggering really. Obviously it included most of Latin America.
Blowback by Chalmers Johnson is good on US stealth imperialism in East Asia and the origins of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
There has been carnage in the Congo since long before Westerners arrived. Basic historical research here, folks…
The following diplomatic masterstroke from 1917 was omitted from the article:
‘Lenin and his closest lieutenants hastened home after the German authorities agreed to permit their passage through Germany to neutral Sweden. Berlin hoped that the return of anti-war Socialists to Russia would undermine the Russian war effort.’
– Encyclopedia Brittanica.
That played out well.
Lenin and his co-conspirators traveled in a sealed train because capitalism knew how contagious Marxism was.
And, capitalism was not yet marred by its own children turned feral: Antifa was not even a bad dream then.
Capitalism wasn’t then marred even by social democracy. It took the General strike to achieve that – and of course the terror of revolution.
Capitalism in 1917 was not the same beast as post WWII capitalism
Can we do one of these for the early rise of Islam? That was certainly a world catastrophe. And what about one for the rise of anti-liberal elitism (“woke”)? Something went really wrong there too.
Just one comment re Versailles: Although (with 20/20 hindsight) the folly of punishing the Germans with reparations that were not achievable is not in doubt, one forgets the state of the Allies’ economies at the end of the war.
Primarily, the French economy was probably in the same (more or less) state than that of Germany, probably even worse. The coffers were empty, loss of manpower huge, millions of men in arms without any money to compensate them, let alone jobs available. I do not think France had any option but to recuparate as much as possible from Germany even very short-term to overcome what could have become an social revolution or to alleviate the worst.
And in many ways there has been such social upheaval in France in the decades after, just not as sudden and violent that may have had direct consequences. Let’s not forget that the Bolshevist example was very near.
So, yes, 20/20 hindsight is great but historical context even more important when judging.
Counter factual history is a fun game. But with so much turmoil in the world, a view on how we proceed from here would be more helpful.
This is silly. It is way too cheap to start dreaming that if we (only we) had done something different, the world would have been wonderful, to compare the known problems against the problem-free dream. Would the USSR have collapsed without the defeat in Afghanistan? Would a stronger, freer Germany after 1918 have rearmed and tried for European dominance again, with more success? Would Mossadegh’s continued rule have lead to corruption, failure, Islamist take-over, and military rule (think of how democracy has fared in North Africa)? Could the American colonies even have joined into a single state if slavery had been abolished, or would there have been wars of unification on the continent? Might the slavers even have won? Or how about some other what-if’s like what would have happened if Arafat had offered a peace without the ‘right of return’, and his people had backed him? Or if Russia had made a success of democracy instead of going for kleptocracy, dictatorship, and neo-imperialism? Is the West the only actor that is free to change its mind? What is the moral course of action when faced with people like Assad or Ghaddafi or Saddam Hussein?
The one thing we can certainly get from following our strict principles is a warm, self-righteous glow. Whether the world would be any better for it is entirely conjecture.
I was mulling incoherent thoughts about how this piece was, as the kids like to say, ethnocentric. But you have it, it’s come out well on your hand.
Quite. I can say with quite a bit of certainty that there would have been no United States without an accommodation for slavery. The states would have gone their separate ways and probably fought each other in various ways throughout the inevitable process of western expansion, from sea to shining sea, as they say, and yes, the slavers might have won. However many nations emerged from the revolution, they almost certainly would have been courted and played against each other by the European powers. Once the power differences and conflicts of Europe come into play, there’s no telling who would emerge with an advantage or how many players there could be. What’s now the USA could be carved up into a few or dozens of independent nations, each with their own alliances and interests. It’s an interesting scenario for speculative historical fiction, but not remotely useful.
It’s easy to come up with what if scenarios that make a moral lesson like the one the author is trying to give us, but it just doesn’t hold water because it’s equally easy to add on more what-if’s to the original and keep adding to the uncertainty. One can literally do it all day, and writers of historical fiction have made quite a bit of money doing so. The tree of possibilities from any given starting point would approach infinity as more variables are considered and more time passes, and most of us aren’t that good at guessing the future from our own starting point, let alone one from hundreds of years ago.
The author’s moralizing suggests a dangerous level of idealism. It’s equally easy to conjure what-ifs that would lead to ruin if we always rigidly clung to our principles. The real world is not a Disney movie filled with cliches about ‘following your heart’ and ‘doing the right thing’. There’s a reason that those movies are targeted to children. They’re the only ones naive enough to believe such nonsense, or so one would think. There are far too many adults these days that are just as idealistic as the children they pander to.
I’m not sure it’s silly – that’s taking it a bit far.
I would agree though it’s unrealistic to say that the four examples of historic error could have been avoided and led to better futures had our statespeople only to their own selves been true. I would also say, though, it’s a nice idea even so.
The problem with such a simple rule is, I’m guessing, that we’re all assuming that each of us would act the same way when adhering to the rule to be true to ourselves. I am pretty sure Churchill was doing exactly that when he refused to allow the loss of control of Iranian oil, for instance.
But that’s what democracy and free speech is about: a fifth example here could be the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which our political leaders pursued even in the face of enormous domestic political opposition and popular dislike of the campaign. Certainly, given what we’ve since discovered Tony Blair thinks is ethical conduct, we could hardly leave it up to him, anyway: the answer therefore is, for statespeople in democracies, to thine own electorates be true.
Excellent riposte, thank you.
Yes, you’re right – we cannot know the outcome. But that still leaves us with the problem of how to act. And if the long term impact of my actions is uncertain, then the best I can do – and all I can do – is act according to my beliefs and core values.
True enough – but remarkably hard to apply unless you already know the answer. For me, you should certainly consider your beliefs and values. But then you should also consider what are the realistic options and their likely outcomes. And then you should go for a course of action that looks like leading to a good outcome – and accept the risk of it all going horribly wrong.
Take Vietnam, back then, or Afghanistan, more recently. Should the US have followed their core values and tried to give the peoples of those countries, freedom, democracy, equal rights, education for women, etc.? Or should they have followed the core value of non-interventionism and left the countries to suffer the dictatorship of communists or jihadists? *) With hindsight the most obvious answer is simply that the US could not win, and so whatever the morality of the choice, it was wrong to inflict the suffering of war when no good outcome could be achieved. More recently, should the west have supported the Libyan rebels and toppled Ghedaffi – which led to the current state of permanent civil war? Or should we have supported Gheddaffi and his dictatorship while he massacred his opponents, in the interest of peace and order? Or just turned our backs, so however terrible the outcome might be, we could honestly say it was someone else’s fault?
Doing what you think is moral in a complex situation is not necessarily a clear guide, and even if you do it you can still get terrible results. Even Jesus, after all, advised his disciples to be not only meek as doves, but also cunning as serpents.
*) I do know that by far not all US motives were idealistic, then or now. But that still does not answer my question.
Have you seen the excellent film, “The Fog of War”? Essentially, an extended interview with Robert McNamara. In it, he recalls an interview with a Vietnamese diplomat long after the conflict was over. McNamara outlines much the same dilemma you just did and the diplomat thinks for a bit.
“You can’t have read much Vietnmaese history” he said, “if you had then you’d have realised that the central question of 3,000 years of Vietnamese history was how to keep the Chinese out. And literally the only thing in the world which would have induced us to invite them in was your invasion.”
See also Scott Andersons brilliant “The Quiet Americans” which contains an excellent account of US intelligence operations in Vietnam in the years prior to the war. There were options short of war.
No, I have not seen it, but I agree with your point. Actually I do not think we are that far apart, when it comes down to it. All I want to say is that morality is not enough. We cannot avoid considering the likely consequences of our actions, nor opt out of having to act and decide in an unpredictable and sometimes nasty world. .
With respect, the argument that we can’t predict the future, (or even construct a counter-factual starting from a point in the past) actually weighs on the opposite side of the argument.
A utilitarian argument makes sense only when we do know the future. We can then act in a manner that is immoral in order to achieve a greater good.
But if I don’t know the future, if the only thing about which I can be certain is my own actions then I should act in a manner consistent with my moral system – not only to salve my own conscience but also to preserve my status as a moral actor and also, to avoid blowback from my own misdeeds.
The point that the article is making is that, in each of these cases, the participants, acted in a way that was contrary to the morality of their societies (although not necessarily of the individuals concerned) because they thought they could see far enough into the future to justify their skulduggery. But, in fact, not only were their predictions (and hence their moral calculus) incorrect but they failed to account for the reaction to their own bad actions. Which meant that, with the benefit of hindsight the ultimate outcome was both a moral AND a practical failure.
I might add another obvious example, which the author misses – Iraq.
You surely remember the opprobrium heaped upon the head of Robin Cook for his naivitee in advocating for a “moral element” in our foreign policy. And yet, if the coalition had acted in accordance with his conscience, the bloody quagmire of Iraq would have been avoided. He wasn’t naive at all.
None of which is to suggest that the world would be a utopian paradise if these errors had not been made – I’m sure you don’t believe in utopias. The article is simply suggesting that we learn from history in order to avoid repeating it. Specifically, we should be far more cautious when arguing that the “end justifies the means” and (I would argue) far less forgiving of those whose reliance on such arguments leads us into disaster.
And yes, I think that both Tony Blair and Bush Jnr have richly earned their day at the Hague.
We should certainly be careful, avoid hubris, take due account of uncertainty, and, yes, take our morality into our decision making. And I actually marched against the Iraq war – about the only demonstration I have ever done. But, taken to the limit, the only way to avoid bad consequences from our actions is to never do anything. You are forgetting that there can also be blowback and bad consequences from our inaction. In the crudest possible terms: how much avoidable death and suffering is it worth to you to preserve your status as a moral actor? And how much omniscience should we demand of our decision makers?
What we need to learn from history is when to act, when to intervene, when to use our power. Cheryl Barnard’s answer seems to be never, to which I will give you a couple of quotes:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
[attributed to Edmund Burke]
“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right”
[Salvor Hardin, as quoted by Isaac Asimov]
Rasmus, I’m emphatically not saying that we should do nothing. I am saying that we should be careful about doing bad things in the hope of achieving good outcomes – of allowing the end to justify the means.
To take the example of Iraq, upon which we agree, Bush and Blair surely knew that what they were doing was wrong – little children know that starting wars is wrong. But they were hoping for an outcome so wonderful that it would wipe out their transgression. It did not happen. You and I both foresaw that they were deluding themselves in order to do the bad thing they wanted to do.
The author’s point is that state actors often seek to use these utilitarian justifications for actions that are horrible in themselves but she also points out that the track record of these things coming out right in the end is awful. Mossadegh, Iran/Contra, the Iran/Iraq war, both of the Gulf Wars represent just a small selection of “miscalculations” in this region alone. If you’re always doing bad things but the good outcome never materialises then you’re just doing bad things – no matter how hard you argue that your intentions were pure.
The alternative is not to do nothing, it is to take actions consistent with our values – to engage and nurture those who actually share our values rather than those who oppose our enemies. The Marshall Plan was not “doing nothing*,” South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process after the end of Apartheid was not doing nothing and neither was West Germany’s benificence towards East Germany after reuninfication – indeed, it contrasts starkly with the shock doctrine that the West encouraged in Russia in the same period.
As to the idea that acting morally is merely a salve to our conscience, again, you haven’t understood my point at all. My point is that moral consistency engenders better outcomes in the sphere of foreign affairs just as in personal matters. Trustworthy people benefit from their reputation for trustworthiness.
Incidents will always occur. But the West would find those problems less grave and easier to fix if the rest of the world had any reason to trust us. Which, presently, they do not.
That mattered less in the brief moment when the US was the unipolar hegemon of the planet. Other countries had little choice but to take it on the chin. But the tide is going out on that now.
*I note your comments below, but the Marshall Plan itself was non-punitive
Thanks for continuing to engage – this is an interesting conversation.
So far, agreed.
Still agreed.
I think that has limited validity. And I especially think that a simple judgement of ‘war bad, peace good’ , ‘am I being nice or nasty’, does not take you very far in a lot of situations. Foreign policy is an arena where everybody have their own interests and are willing to fight for them. Being morally consistent can only help you up to point, when the other participants have opposite interests and are willing to be nasty to achieve them. If you refuse to use force, on moral principles, there are plenty of others who will use it, happy in the knowledge that you, at least, will not stand in their way.
I’d like your opinion on some less clear-cut cases:
The first Gulf war, for instance. Why is it the moral choice for the west to stand aside while Saddam Hussein conquers Kuwait?
Syria, then. Arguably the west helped and supported those Syrians who shared our values, when they rebelled against Assad. The west then, ultimately, refused to get too deeply involved and stood aside while Assad and the Russians smashed them. Was that moral? Might it not have been more moral to either encourage them to submit to Assad from the outset – if we predicted that they could not win anyway? Or to get our hands dirty and act for a better outcome, like a partition of Syria, if we felt it might work? And is the key point not what we can realistically achieve, rather than ‘even little children know that war is bad’?
Yugoslavia. We left Serbia and Croatia to it, since it was never clear which side deserved support against the other. In the end the US intervened to prevent Serbia from conquering Kosovo and Bosnia. Why is it morally superior that Serbia should conquer its neighbours? If we think that this kind of conquest is bad, why should we not stop it, in those cases where we can do it? What better outcomes does it engender that we stand aside and say ‘now, now, that is really not a nice thing to do’?
Libya, finally. Is it more moral to work for a quick end to the violence, which means a quick victory for Ghedaffi, law and order, with suitable Gheddafi vengeance on the rebels? Or is it more moral to support those who seem to share our values and want an end to dictatorship? Or to stand aside and say ‘me no do war, war very bad’ and wash our hands of the result?
In a lot of cases – Israel/Palestine, 1914 Germany, current Russia, the conflicts are there whether we like it or not. The best we can do is act on the information we have – violently or not, and hope for the best. And my big beef against Ms Benard is that whatever we do or do not do, she will blame the outcome on us and claim that if only we (and only we) had been more moral everything would have been just great.
You may or may not be aware that, shortly before the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein effectively asked Washington about the extent of its interests in Kuwait. Here was a regime that the US had until recently been backing in a very bloody war against Iran, essentially asking its sponsor whether it would object if Iraq recovered some of its costs by annexing Kuwait. Rather than respond forthrightly that Washington did not condone any such adventure, it effectively shrugged. An emboldened Saddam Hussein then invaded Kuwait and the US cried foul. A diplomatic mix up?
On Syria, yes. All through the Arab spring, there were people saying that, if this thing ever reached Syria it would be a bloodbath. It was knowingly rash of the West to encourage a rebellion agains Assad who was likely to put up a far fiercer resistance than Ben Ali in Tunisia. Not the least of the reason for this is that Iran would see the fall of Assad as a huge threat and would be extremely keen to avoid it. When Assad did not roll over, the West seems to have doubled down, to the point of arming the remnants of ISIS alligned forces in Syria (with whom we share no values) simply because they opposed Assad. Could we have done more to encourage reform in Syria without encouraging a revolution? Probably.
I was a bit young to remember the details of the Yugoslav conflict in detail (it was fabulously complicated) but Declassified’s recent reporting suggests that it was one in which the West’s role was scarcely that of white knight, as it so often pretended.
As to Libya, it would certainly have been desperately grim to watch Gaddafi snuff out a small popular rising. But what has happened since is grimmer still. Moreover, you may recall that Libya was a rogue state that had recently given up its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and which was beginning to integrate with the West. What chance of persuading Iran or the PRK to abandon their own nuclear ambitions after what happened to Gaddafi.
OK, we are reaching a plateau, I think. But I notice that your answer in each case is to keep looking until you find some imperfection in the behaviour of the West, and then, essentially, conclude that it is all our fault because we had previously sinned, and the solution to the problem of e.g. Saddam’s invasion is that we should not have that problem because we should have found a way to avoid it in the first place. To someone in a position to take actual decisions to deal with real problems this seems singularly unhelpful.
But I really noticed this one:
Do you really think there is a way to sweet-talk a dictator like Assad (or MBS, or Putin, or…) to reform and become nice and democratic, without threatening any adverse consequences if he does not comply? Do you also think that we should find a non-violent way to encourage ISIS and Hamas to reform and stop using violent means to pursue their goals? Should we have done more to peacefully encourage Harold Shipman to stop killing people, rather than being gross enough to put him in prison?
I can respect someone who thinks that encouraging Syrians to rebel leads to too much suffering so it is better to leave Assad in place as the lesser evil – if he is honest and consistent enough to face up to the consequences, i.e. that they will then continue to live under Assad’s tyranny. If instead he chooses to believe that no bad consequences would follow from his advice because all the problems would miraculously disappear if only we stopped being violent – I see that as a sign of refusing to believe in reality. Not to mention a complete lack of moral courage.
Rasmus, I’m empahtically not saying, take no action. I am saying that you should be aware of your own fallibility in predicting outcomes and that, where you cannot predict the future, your actions should be consistent with your values for reasons that are practical as well as moral.
On the specific question of Syria. I was in Syria shortly before the civil war. It was far from perfect. But life there was vastly better than it was during and after the war and, given that Assad remains in place, I very much doubt that his tyranny has abated one bit. I’m 100% clear about that. But, doesn’t honesty require you to acknowledge that the actual outcome of the West’s attempts to topple Assad have been a calamity?
As to sweet talking Dictators, no, that doesn’t work. but that’s hardly the only alternative to fighting an extremely dirty proxy war. Because you surely know that the “anti-Assad” groups that the US was backing weren’t Middle Eastern versions of Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela – many of them were, essentially, ISIS.
Indeed, I would say that the specific tactic of re-branding terrorists as freedom-fighters in the hope that they will topple some regime you don’t like has an especially poor track record. That general lesson would apply to, among others, the Contras, the Ukrainian far right, the Mujahadeen and even (from Israel’s point of view) Hamas.
“Your act was unwise, I said, as you can see
by the outcome. He solemnly eyed me:
When choosing the course of my action, said he,
I had not the outcome to guide me.”
[Ambrose Bierce]
The west has acted, and a lot of things have gone badly. ‘What would have happened if’, is harder to judge. I still wait to hear you tell me which moral acts, consistent with our values, joined only with equally moral allies, would have a realistic chance of moderating the various bloodstained dictators around. Until you can give some damn good proof how your ‘alternatives’ would actually work, you really should accept that the most likely alternative to trying to topple bad guys by force is that the bad guys stay power forever an keep doing bad things. Better than war? Maybe. But you do not get to blame my realpolitik because the outcome is worse than that of your wishful thinking.
An embarrassingly jejune essay that UnHerd should be embarrassed for publishing. To save everyone else the time, you unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected]
Yes, this may be the most immature and uneducated essay I’ve ever read on this site.
I would like to engage in a counterfactual myself…. imagine for a moment this essay had never been written, and never been published, and I never spent the time reading it…? Imagine all the flowers I could’ve planted or children I could’ve helped.
Dean Acheson was an outstanding statesman…a member of the American Brahmin class which, unfortunately, no longer exists.
For each intervention that caused unfortunate and unintended long term results, one can quote others which were unexpectedly positive. If one focuses on the Cold War, the prosperity of South Korea and the consolidation of liberal democracy in Western Europe are good examples.
It is also true that it is often unclear what the long term consequences of specific action are. The 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh, for example, is often held – not least by the author – to have led inevitably to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. I think this is simplistic. Firstly, there was a genuine risk of a communist takeover; it was not just about oil. Second, if the Shah had avoided certain errors the Revolution might not have occurred. In particular, the gratuitous viciousness of SAVAK (the secret police) alienated much of the upper middle class quite unnecessarily.
Actually, the greatest unfortunate consequence of 1953 was probably that it convinced the Americans that they had found a cheap and effective magic wand. This led to the twenty years of the CIA in rogue elephant mode organising far too many coups and other interventions with growing “blowback”.
I am all for approaching interventions with greater intellectual humility and caution than Washington has often displayed in the past but this piece is too vague and naive to be a helpful practical guide.
I think it’s important not to dismiss counter- factual history altogether. The author possibly has chosen simplistic examples. A more valid counter- factual regarding American policy could have been FDR’s role in triggering Indian independence and whether it ” stimulated” Churchill to turn even more rigid in his approach to Congress, and the favouring by a significant section of British officialdom of the Muslim League.
Or the intervention by NATO in Kosovo in 1999, or even Iraq in 2003.
I am sure there can be many more such instances of exploring the results of ” roads not taken” where possibilities existed for a different course of action.
If one reads history in a Rankean fashion, the role of chance and co- incidences cannot be entirely dismissed.
Agree.
An enjoyable read, thank you. Que sera…
What if Adam had said: No thanks, I’m not hungry.
‘Be good and fair and everything will work out for the best’ ??
It’s a bit of a naive and self-motivated use of counterfactual speculation
Or Cheryl, perhaps the motto is: pursue your own national interest relentlessly, don’t lose interest once you’ve achieved the first summit.
I was preparing for a grander conclusion, re-imagining Western response to 9/11. Because that has been the most single damaging episode of the past 30 years and the consequences are changing the West forever. Although maybe the author sees that as positive.
What if the United States had never permitted slavery?
Slavery pre-dated the founding of the US. It existed longer when this place was colonies than it did after America became a country. An academic should know this. She should also know that slavery was hardly exclusive to these shores and that this country and Britain were among the very few to commit treasure and blood to slavery’s eradication.
As to the thought experiment, I have little doubt the US would be infinitely better off had slavery not occurred. A raft of social ills would have been greatly minimized. The education would not be teaching its young to hate the country and Western civilization as a whole.
Today, slavery’s toxic effects still impact the nation — socially, economically, culturally, politically.
Sure, they do. Because there is an incentive in pretending that nothing has changed since 1619. Or 1865. Or 1965. Even now, there are “leaders” trying to shake down the city of Boston and local churches. Because grifters are gonna grift. That’s the whole point of activism.
If America had never allowed slavery (which is virtually impossible to imagine, given its ubiquity all over the world in the mid-1700’s), then American culture would be totally different and the world would be missing its largest body of successful middle class and upper middle class black professionals, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, etc.
It’s a bit like wishing away the Holocaust and doing away with Israel at the same time.
A better way to view history, in my opinion, is that all great ills can be redeemed.
“A national story free of slavery would thus be indisputably preferable. Case closed.”
I stopped reading at this point. The whole “civilised” world up until recently was built on slavery. America was the new world at the time it imported large numbers of slaves. To simplistically say it would have been indisputably better had there been no slavery is utter nonsense. Even the bad things she points to have significant effect on the way the nation is today and those effects are both good and bad. I am generally open to new ideas and things that challenge my preconceptions but if the author cannot deal with the confounding complexities of things like slavery effectively then there is no point to reading the rest of the article as far as I am concerned
Interesting, but ironic.
The author wisely states that the architects of the post-WW II settlement avoided the pitfalls of Versailles: Humiliation, loss of territory, reparations… Leaving aside that Germany lost a lot more territory as a result of WW II than it did after WW I (more than ⅓, as opposed to fringe bits and bobs) and the Soviet Union helped itself to the factories in its zone of occupation by way of reparations, Versailles at least left Germany as an autonomous nation. WW II resulted in Germany becoming a ward of the Soviet Union and the US. The Soviet Union has given up that role, the US has not.
But turning to Iran; the author says:
Under the Shah, Iran was a regional ally, the US’ staunchest. But even worse is the coda – Iran has no interest in bringing down the US. It is the US that has stated on numerous occasions that it is determined to bring down Iran – not only meddling with Iran’s democracy by engineering the coup against Mossadegh, but then applying sanctions against Iran that in intent mirrored that of the drafters of the Treaty of Versailles.
The author suffers from the same myopia and paranoia US foreign policy suffers from – a complete inability to objectively assess the US’ actions and how they appear to the outside world, and the conviction that a country which is not promoting the interests of the US is ipso facto scheming for the US’ downfall.
One of the consequences is a complete absence of diplomacy in the US’ international posture. The US’ foreign policy tools these days consist of haranguing, arm-twisting, sanctions, and military intervention.
There is no better way of creating self-fulfilling prophesies.
Has anyone told that to Putin?
I believe the phrase is “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” (copyright G W Bush)…
Unfortunately for the USA much of the world has chosen not to be with them…they’ve chosen to choose something else…
“I believe the phrase is “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” (copyright G W Bush)…”
Actually, that sentiment was uttered first by Hillary Clinton on 13SEP2001.
Noted…and thanks
No, the world hasn’t chosen to be against the US. Despotic and corrupt regimes have chosen to be against them. When individuals make a choice to go somewhere else they chose to go to the USA or Western Europe, now including increasing number of Chinese and Russians trying to illegally enter the USA. Have you seen those columns of refugees desperately trying to enter Russia? I haven’t either.
Economic migrants choose to go to wealthy countries…
Most articles on this site are very high quality, some are ‘ok’, this one is pretty bad. Starting with the title: strategic foreign policy considerations and Hindu spirituality do not belong together in same sentence. The actual content follows up with similar cherry-picked counter-factuals and ‘what-ifs’, ignoring the hundreds of examples that don’t conform to this superficial observation. Bad, and is not of publishing standards.
Among the ironies, let’s consider an unseen gem…. the current trend among youth and other crazy Westerners in support of Islamic extremism must therefore approve of the choices made by the US government in opposition to the Russians… in other words, our cold-war semi-imperialist actions there were correct because we supported the oppressed Muslim majority.
The article appears to have been written to magically support the conclusion:
But this is a Western liberal idea which doesn’t have any traction in other parts of the world. There are countries which prioritise ‘honour’ over other social orders. Some which are theocracies. Some which are run by warlords. Some which are dominated by political ideologies.
By all means ‘speak softly’ but remember to carry a big stick – because other countries follow their own beliefs.
I’m all for “speak softly but carry a big stick”. Unfortunately, the US’ approach has been “harangue loudly and carry a broken twig”. Ignominious US retreats in Iraq and Afghanistan, impotent shelling of the Houthis, and the US/NATO-trained and -equipped Ukrainian army being mercilessly ground into the dust do not enhance the US’ standing.
When your power rests on bluff and permits, it’s best to assure your bluff is never called. Now Russia has.
Another interpretation of Vesailles is that there was not two world wars but one, with a less violent interregnum in the middle. The Germans were not totally crushed in 1918 and everyone was getting tired of killing millions of their young men in muddy trenches. Hence the war was then carried on in non-violent, economic manner.
Someone who took this view might conclude that it is better to ensure your enemy is completely crushed before offering any relaxation of hostilities.
Likely, the other examples have alternative conclusions too.
There is never any going back. Once the decision has been implemented, there is no going back; one has to deal with the new environment.. One never knows what the new situation would have been like if a different decision has been made,
The writer overlooks the imperialism of Islam, which will end up owning the hollowed-out and hopeless West because of its internal rot, including wokeness.
What if the Afghani people had demanded freedom, democracy and free speech?
What if the United States had never permitted slavery?
What if the African tribes never had slavery so they had no slaves to sell to the Europeans?
What if the Middle East never had slavery?
What if the Indigenous peoples of the Americas never had slavery?
That was fun: the post hoc ergo propter hoc delusion: that history is a series of well-spaced railway points that only the West operates.
Gosh. What an article. What a series of What ifs? What a series of omissions.
The first what if asks what if there had never been slavery in the United States. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. A better question is why the abolitionists did not offer to pay for the emancipation of slaves as the British did in 1834.
The second relates to Imperial Germany after WW1. The allegation is that Germany was harshly treated and that this led to WW2 and the horrors of Nazism. But Germany was not harshly treated. It lost territory, it is true. But they were required to hand back some, not all of their conquests in recent years, that is all. They had to hand back the Danish speaking half of Sleswick (German Schleswig), which they had taken in their war of aggression in 1864. They had to hand back Alsace-Lorraine, taken as conquest following the Franco-German War less than 50 years earlier. They had to yield to the reborn Polish state the Corridor they had taken when they (with Austria and Russia) had partitioned Poland.
As far as reparations are concerned, Imperial Germany imposed heavy indemnities on France after the Franco Prussian War and why shouldn’t they have had to compensate the French and Belgians for their destruction of businesses and property in their 4 year long occupation of belgium and Northern France. And any one who knows their history knows Germany had far harsher terms planned if they had won.
A better what if would have been if Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated or the German military led ruling elite had not determined on war. All those lives lost. The coming on Communism to what became the Soviet Union. The destruction of so much else leading to the rise of Nazism and Fascism.
Mossadegh was a would be authoritarian. Iran should have accepted the (eventual) 50:50 offer by the UK Government.
How about this? The Arab States accept the partition of Palestine as voted by the UN in 1947. How much misery could have been avoided?
The argument over the support of insurgents in Afghanistan glamorises the Soviets and imagines that the legacy of Soviet success would have been entrenched rights for women. Yeah, right.
The author could have criticised the involvement of the US in Vietnam, the Iraq war in 2003, the toppling of Gaddafi in 2011, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 (never mind that I am a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s independence, particularly in the face of Russia’s war of aggression and annexation against Ukraine). But I am afraid that the examples she chose were often wrong and she missed much more egregious examples.
German General Ludendorf and his circle were already planning another war even before Germany’s defeat in 1918. The humiliation of Versailles was not the sole cause of WW2.