Few have made the case for liberal interventionism more consistently than Bernard-Henri Lévy. Despite the disasters of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, the French public intellectual’s worldview has remained largely unchanged.
But with the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan — and signs of resistance dwindling — is he still convinced the West was right to invade?
He joined Freddie Sayers in our London studio to discuss his new book, The Will to See. An edited transcript is below.
The worldview you espouse and are famous for, what we might call liberal interventionism, seems more out of fashion than at any point in the past 30 years. Do you feel you now write in a spirit of defiance?
I never was concerned with being out of fashion or not out of fashion. I have my line, my conviction. It never moved since the beginning of my career. And I’m still the same. I believe that democracy deserves to be shared. I believe that there is no place in the world that is unfit for democracy. I believe in human rights. I believe in universality of values. And it is not because of the illiberal trend, or because of Mr Putin and Mr Erdogan being on the move, that I’m going to change my opinion.
But after all the disasters of the past 20 or 30 years, do you really think we should still be trying to export democracy around the world?
I never said that democracy has to be exported. What I say is that, where you have some democrats, if you have some democrats in a place or in another, we have the moral duty and sometimes the political duty to help, to encourage, to embrace, to reinforce, not to export. You have to have first the existence of a strong political force.
So in Afghanistan, for example?
There is a growing movement of women in particular, wishing equality, wishing to unveil their face, refusing the law of Taliban… The number grows from year to year. We had the moral duty of supporting them and when we denied it we betrayed this moral duty, and that it is a huge moral fault and political mistake.
So should we still be there?
In Afghanistan a few weeks ago, how many soldiers there were — two or three thousand? No more. They were not in war operations. They were in their barracks at the end of the day, but their symbolic presence, the fact that they were there, was like a shelter permitting the women to unveil, permitting the little girls to go to school, permitting your colleagues, journalists in Afghanistan, to do their job. My prescription was that America, and the UK and France have troops all over the world — in Korea, in Germany, in Europe. So what was the cost of leaving 2,500 or 3,000 troops on the non combat-mission? To leave them there just to show that we care, that we have a policy, that we are not withdrawing behind the walls of our fortress, that we don’t give space and abandon the field to Turks, Russians and Chinese.
You write about the massacre of Christians of Nigeria. Do you think it’s reasonable for Christians in Western countries to care more about because of a solidarity of faith?
They should care about massacres in general. They should care about people embracing their values, our values. Why do the Christians in the West support so much the Christians of the Middle East, and of Mosul. I pleaded for that a lot! But nothing for the Christians of Nigeria. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because there is a blackout in the press. Maybe because Africa is considered as being remote.
Many people who, like you, are proud defenders of Western liberalism, feel that we would be better defended by moving on from the universalist delusions of the past decades — i.e. that every country will eventually look like our countries, and that we have no business being in faraway lands. What do you say to those people?
It’s a mistake. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. I know this way of thinking; it’s a big mistake. It’s a big mistake because the game is worldwide. And the people whom I confront in Mogadishu, in Nigeria, the Muslim Brotherhood, extremist Islamists — they have their equivalents in London and in Paris. What happens when their equivalents in Paris see that we let them act? That we leave them free to act in Nigeria or Mogadishu? They are emboldened, they are happy. They feel encouraged and every victory which they make in Nigeria or in Syria is an encouragement to fight more in London or in Paris. We cannot strengthen our model of liberal society at home, if we give the feeling that we quit the field and abandon the field in the rest of the world.
Realistically, though, there simply isn’t the political will in Western countries for these kind of ongoing foreign campaigns. If you’re a true democrat, surely what the majority of the citizens of those countries want is the point?
The majority is not the point. Majority is the point for a prime minister, for a president. But for a whistleblower, for an intellectual, the question is to say what one feels to be the truth. And if you are alone, to say it even louder. And you have to go against the majority. If the majority does not want to hear, you have to try your best to help them to see.
So your solution to populism, after all that has happened in the past few years, is still to try to “educate” the people out of their mistakes? It doesn’t seem to work very well.
It depends. In the fifties in France, for example, we had a populist movement. It was very strong, but they were defeated by the return to power of General de Gaulle. Then it was a high way for a long time. Now it’s a low, and the populists did gain some ground. This is the old story. It goes back and forth. We are in a moment where these sort of ideas which I defend are on low tide. I’m not discouraged by that. I don’t believe that it means that I’m wrong. I continue and I do hope that I will see a reversal of the tide.
But surely there must be lessons to learn from the past 30 years. Look at China — part of the reason China was brought in to the global market was the idea that they would liberalise and become more democratic. But it didn’t work.
On China, what I said 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, was that we had a duty to protect and defend the dissidents. For example, I was expelled from China in 1998, or 99, because I went there for in a movie festival and I dared to defend and to speak in favour of dissidents. And I think that we did not do that enough. So: defend the dissidents, not accept like stupid morons or beggars the Belt and Road which they are building now. Not accept their compact with Turkey and Russia in Africa to expel the West from this part of the world. I don’t believe that we have to exclude China, I believe that we have to intelligently confront them, not leave the ground; to have a real, proper diplomacy, not to be like, again, stupid morons swallowing all the propaganda of the Chinese when they say that they are creating prosperity and so on. We democrats should not be on the defence.
So you must be very unhappy with the isolationism of President Biden — seems it wasn’t only President Trump then?
I never said that it was only Donald Trump. I wrote a book before this one a few years ago, saying that the isolationism as a trend in America started with Barack Obama, and started on 29 August 2013, when Barack Obama decided not to respect his own red line in Syria… I even said that it was older than that, even years before. And Biden today embodies that… I am disappointed by the way in which he validated the choice of Trump. Trump dreamt the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden did it. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a joint operation — conceived by Trump; executed by Biden.
But again – the reason that leaders of both Republicans and Democrats have pulled out of Afghanistan is that majorities of voters in both of their parties wanted it. So in a way, isn’t the withdrawal by President Biden from Afghanistan a success story for liberal democracy?
No, because liberal democracy is not only the rule of numbers; liberal democracy is also the rule of law. And even if the numbers disagree with the law, both are still valid — liberal democracy is a mix, an an encounter between number, law, institutions, a sort of civilisation and of practices… It is also a big trend in public opinion, which is an egoist trend, which is a trend, leading an increasing number of people to believe that their interest is a selfish interest reduced to the little home of their narcissism. And this is not a liberal democracy. This is something else, a new pattern of society, which you have, by the way, in some countries of Europe, like Hungary, for example. And which has not to be blessed. An intellectual is not here just to bless all that is happening in what is happening. Things have to be blessed, and things that have to be confronted. Liberal democracy is not amor fati — love of destiny — no!
Are you worried about that we are importing some illiberal trends within our Western Democracies?
Yes we are, we are, of course. The woke culture, the cancel culture, attacks on freedom of speech. I know it comes from the Left, but it does not deserve, in my eyes, more indulgence because it comes from the Left than if it came from the Right. For me, the new political dividing line crosses the Left and the Right. We have to adapt our mind, our behaviour, our way of acting, to these new dividing lines, and cancel culture, attacks to freedom of speech is really a huge problem on which we have to be very careful.
How does the pandemic feature in this? Lockdowns were a policy that came out of China and spread very rapidly around the Western world. Were you troubled by the curtailment of liberty and due process?
Of course, it reduced some liberties and it accelerated a process which was already going on, which consists in tracing all of us, collecting data on us and so on and so on. So I may understand that it was necessary for a while, but number one, it has to be just a while. Number two, citizens should be asking for guarantees that when it is over, these liberty measures will be destroyed. Number three, as for myself, I believe this isa terrible time. This is why I escaped to Syria, Iraq, Mogadishu and the Ukraine during this time because for me, it was, I am impossible to lock down — I cannot be locked. And number four, this has not been a good period for the care of the others, has not been a good period for brotherhood, has not been a good period for internet journalism.
It’s thrown up its own miniature revolution, hasn’t it? We now see on the streets of Berlin, London and Paris regular protests against vaccine passports and steps towards mandatory vaccines. Do you think it’s important not to demonise those people?
I don’t like to demonise anyone. I am a man of words. I try to convince, I try to plead. Ideas are a battle, like an arm wrestling… These anti-vax people they are conspiracy theorists.
Some…
A lot of them. They have a stupid conception of health… So they have to be confronted.
They might feel like they’re your people. They are missing and trying to defend the liberal world order that you’re talking about. They want their freedoms. They want due process. They want to make their own decisions.
No, no, no. Because I listen to them. I listen — I am ready of course to hear, I try to hear everything. They are not — they pretend to be in favour of liberal freedom. But when you ask them what they want, a majority of them or big lot of them what they want, what is the ideal regime for them? It is not a liberal one.
In France, Éric Zemmour is doing very well. How worried are you and how do you propose that people of your political persuasion confront his popularity?
You have to try to show that Zemmour is not a new way of being far-Right — he is pumping the votes of Marine le Pen and incorporating them to him, but it’s the same. I would like to say that he is falsely sophisticated and fond of history, I don’t think he is so much. It seems to me useful to say that his conception of France is a tiny, retracted conception of France — little France. Like in UK when you had the debate about Brexit, they wanted the UK great again, the result is that they made England more and more little.
It doesn’t so far feel like Brexit has turned out quite as badly as you feared though, does it? In 2016, you came to London and delivered a play imploring people not to vote for Brexit. We’ve just done a deal with Australia and the US which, although it upset Mr Macron, does not exactly imply a “little England” mentality. Were your fears about Brexit overblown?
I don’t feel that way, but I hope that they are unfounded. I love this country. As I often say, I would not be born without the sacrifice of British young boys on D-Day so I hope I was wrong. But alas, let’s wait to see what happens in in Ulster, in Northern Ireland. Let’s wait. Let’s wait to see what happens in Scotland. I arrived in London on a day when the newspapers were full of the shortage of fuel for the cars, of the shortage of people to work.
What about Boris Johnson. Do you view him as a liberal who just does some things you don’t like, or some kind of dangerous populist?
I think that nobody knows who is Boris Johnson, including himself. He doesn’t know himself if he’s still a liberal, or a really dangerous populist. From outside, it seems to me that it depends on the day. It depends on the hour. It depends on the mood. He’s a strange guy. I’m sure that if I had met him 20 years ago when he was journalist in Brussels, he would have seemed like a jolly and a sympathetic guy. Today, he seems more like Viktor Orbán. A populist — not authoritarian, but more of a populist than his buddy Macron, for example.
BHL, thank you.
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of more than 30 books. His most recent, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope, is published by Yale University Press.
BHL 
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Subscribe“These anti-vax people they are conspiracy theorists.”
What an amazingly naive and ignorant generalisation. For someone who talks so much about liberalism and democracy he seems to not have a true understanding of those things whenever it comes to something outside of his own personal worldview.
I read that too and felt the same. There are many sensible people not taking this jab. It can’t even be rightly called a vaccine.
Absolutely right. And in a liberal democracy, the kind that this guy talks about, people should have the freedom to choose without someone trying to cancel them by calling them a conspiracy theorist.
Vaccines against a threat to public health transcend choice.
Cancel ≠ disagree with, even strongly disagree with. Now if he were YouTube, actually censoring the conspiracy theorists, you’d have a point. But he’s explicitly against that.
Sensible? Hmmn.
He’s right.
If you are against people’s rights to choose what they put in their body, including experimental medications, then he is indeed absolutely right.
I’m against a person refusing to do the right thing in the face of a global threat to the health and well being of others.
The right thing in YOUR opinion. Other people have a different opinion. Maybe you are right or maybe they are right. At this stage nobody knows. In a democracy they have a right to THEIR opinion and you have a right to yours. These are human rights.
We do know. You are trampling over human rights with this hideous nonsense.
The Newspeak is strong in this one. Coercion is Liberty. Submission is Empowerment. Freedom is Slavery
I’m not against people doing what they want to their own body, however by and large those that are refusing the vaccine are doing so because of conspiracy theories. They’re free to believe them, and others are free to believe they’re idiots for doing so
I must say, I was often with him much of the way – until the last 10 minutes when he suddenly just reverted to using stereotypes about the “anti-vax” people and Brexit. I am myself vaccinated – but I am not at all for this “Covid passport” – and it was unfortunate to hear what was an interesting discussion be so spoiled by such a bad ending. It’s ironic that he was against demonizing people but it felt as if that’s precisely how he ended. A great disappointment on that score.
There is a lot here, but one line jumped out. The moral duty to “support democrats” in any country around the world. Given the discussion about Afghanistan which follows, it is clear Mr. Levy defines “support” to include military intervention. He does not define “democrats” (are, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt democrats in his definition?) but Western nations are apparently supposed to support them around the world.
Mr. Levy also acknowledges these “democrats” may be a small minority in their country. Tying this all together, he is arguing the West should always and eternally be involved military in any country around the world where there are “democrats,” even when that means being involved in a civil war against the wishes of the majority of the nation being invaded. Is that about right? How does he think that is remotely feasible?
And there was peace in Afghanistan with only a small number of US troops because the Taliban knew they were about to leave .
I don’t recall anyone’s argument for Brexit being about ‘making the UK great again’. That was a slogan in the USA, not the UK. Brexit was above all about sovereignty, in my opinion.
But then, Lévy appears quite enthusiastic about interfering in the affairs of other countries. So I imagine that sovereignty ranks so low in his hierarchy of values that he wouldn’t have spotted the urge for sovereignty (or would have despised it if he had).
The ‘intellectual elites’ don’t deserve their titles when they dismiss as complex and multi faceted a debate as Brexit down to ‘just little Englanders wanting their Empire back’. As if the EU is not a wannabe Empire, as if the French constantly throwing their toys out of their pram is not their own Imperialistic sabre rattling. As if being in the EU political project is somehow mandatory
Levy is a democrat up until the point when someone votes in a way he doesn’t like. He has no respect at all for the Brexit vote.
M. Lévy is being naïve, verging on risible, when he says that two or three thousand US troops stationed in Afghanistan were a “like a shelter permitting the women to unveil … “. In reality, the American diplomats cut a deal with the Taliban to save face: the Taliban promised not to attack the Americans, so long as the Americans promised to pull out of Afghanistan by the agreed deadline. Had the USA reneged and stayed on, M. Lévy would discover just how little two or three thousand troops could achieve.
I read comments like this and come to the conclusion a lot of people only learned about the Afghan war a couple months ago. In reality it goes back two decades and involves many players. It’s actually an interesting and complex history for those who care to know. Oh, and the Taliban was originally kicked out with far less than two thousand US troops on the ground. Of course that’s because it was the Afghans themselves who were primarily responsible for getting rid of them, and is the exceptionally large elephant in the room when people try to claim there was never any chance of the Afghans keeping the Taliban at bay.
Maybe instead of making snide remarks, you cold focus a little more on the logic of your argument. I said that 2,000 GIs cannot achieve much. Your “counter-argument” is that “less than two thousand US troops” were involved in kicking out the taliban, but then you say it was not the US troops who kicked them out anyway. So you are not really saying anything about what 2,000 GIs can achieve in Afghanistan.
A bunch of warlords forced them out! Some democrats! The Taliban were viewed as uncorrupted and motivated by Islam, like it or not by far the most powerful belief system in that part of the world.
I think he’s being a bit floral in his description but is otherwise correct. 2,000 troops, the bulk of which being special forces and specialist troops is not insignificant. Furthermore the air power and aviation support and experience that goes with them is highly potent against a foe with neither (then at least!).
That small troop footprint will bolster Afghan forces both physically and in terms of morale, plus if it came under threat could be reinforced very very easily with secured airbases and territory under coalition control.
Now with no footprint on the ground any insertion of troops would have to be a full on invasion/opposed insertion into unknown terrain. Highly risky with no logistic framework in place.
What you say is just common knowledge amongst all of us “armchair generals”, but it is irrelevant to what M. Lévy actually said. Re-read the words of M. Lévy: “So what was the cost of leaving 2,500 or 3,000 troops on the non combat-mission?” M. Lévy is talking about 3,000 troops maximum and those would only be in a non-combat role. That is completely different from what you said and also completely different from what Mr. Penley said.
Incorrect I am afraid. Precisely – look at his words “non-combat mission” not non-combat troops. He’s referring to what was in place prior which, broadly speaking, was working. The troops are not there to fight the Taliban, but in a training and mentoring capacity. In that sense they are in a non-combat role – they have not got a defined mission to defeat an enemy. It doesn’t mean they are 2-3k support or logistics troops.
Rest assured those troops can fight when called upon. It’s extremely potent to have specialist troops mentoring and advising an ally as they do the fighting.
I suggest that you look at the terms of the 2020 “peace” accord. The USA promised to withdraw if the Taliban promised not to attack. You can speculate about what might have happened in the last 18 months had the accord not been signed, but it is just speculation.
“It’s extremely potent to have specialist troops mentoring and advising an ally as they do the fighting.” A fat lot of good that did.
It did. Hence the rapid collapse after they were removed.
The collapse was not rapid. The Taliban have been steadily winning for the last 18 months. The events after the final withdrawal were just a coup de grâce.
“Winning for the past 18 months”. Indeed. And what changed 18 months ago? The US signed its surrender agreement, the Taliban quietly told the people who mattered that the writing was on the wall, they gave them the choice of folding or having their families murdered, and… well… look what happened.
Why is this complicated? The Afghans don’t want to become an American ‘woke’ puppet state, or a Communist one. They will fight against all such external ideological impositions, wherever they come from. We are obsessed with listening to tiny, unrepresentative advocates of Western intervention among the Afghan intelligentsia. I don’t want the West to be dominated by Islam, but it is entirely natural that the Middle East and Central Asia will be. Perhaps we could eventually make western democrats and liberals out of the Afghans arguably be changed, but we haven’t in 20.years and all historical experience shows that it would take a full blown colonisation of 100 years, probably more.
But fine, it is colonialism-lite you are advocating. The Taliban did not have air support or a 250,000 strong army! The advocates of ongoing intervention can never explain why the whole state collapsed like a pack of cards. It should, with the resources poured in over 20 years have been robust to policy mistakes, if so they were, by the US under Biden (or Trump). The Taliban have a huge amount of support! Let us get real here.
One of the best arguments against Neoliberalism is to actually have someone try to defend it. Where to even start? I guess I will go with foreign interventions. It turns out the old fashioned Realists were right and half-assed Neoliberal and Neoconservative interventions were a bad idea all along. I would suggest reading The Afghanistan Papers published in the Washington Post if anybody is curious as to how inept, stupid, and worthless these supposedly “smart” people were. Iraq was a wonderful disaster. Libya was outright COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to all of America’s stated foreign policy goals and the powers that be always seemed to have a hard time getting any of their stories about Syria strait. China never became a freedom loving democracy! Mr. Lévy thinks having actual successes to point to is too high of a bar.
Honestly, I left this interview with two rhetorical questions:
1) How did this man become a leading intellectual voice in France?
2) How good an interviewer is Freddie Sayers in, once again, untangling the plate of thought-spaghetti so we can all see what’s underneath (bravo Freddie)?
Disappointing to hear how dismissive this intellectual was of vaccine-critical thought and its link to classical liberal values.
Anyone who in the current debate entertains the term ‘anti-vaxx’ without immediately seeking nuance or context is either deliberately deceptive or woefully ignorant. Likewise, how can someone who styles themselves a defender of liberal thought not distinguish between being pro-vaccine and being pro-vaccine mandate?
Precisely. He comes across as a pompous elitist. Anyone who disagrees with him is obviously not an intellectual.
By the way, what person calls himself/herself an intellectual in the first place? I didn’t think intellectuals introduced themselves as such, do they?
Mon Dieu, he really is vacuous with nothing very original to say now ,who
s idea was it to interview this bloke? Time me thinks to quietly don a beret, sit under dappled shade in some southern French clime, balancing your glass of vin rouge on a tower of 29 of your mouldy publications, the 30th wedging open the porte de cuisine allowing the smell of drift across the jardin d'herbes aromatiques..............s focus on Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of the triumphant Taliban zealots by proving the non-existence of God.About 20 years ago I had a laugh at a funny I saw and, motivated by this boring interview, I managed to find it again - I have edited it quite a bit to bring up to date...
"The West
Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or “Black Berets”, will be parachuted into Kabul and other main cities to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the “aulde enemy”. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of the Paris Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of sidewalk cafes at strategic points near the airports and schools for girls.
There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man’s lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers’ ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.
Their leader, Colonel Bernard-Henri Lévy, spoke in an interview with F Sayers yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. The Colonel in a classically tailored black blazer with open necked shirt, gesticulated wildly and said, “The Taliban are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am thinking ,sorry talking.”
The innovative plan,said to be largely formulated by the Biden administration and supported by the WHO is to deliver an impassioned thesis on man’s nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitch****.
However, several humanitarian agencies have broken ranks and been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the Frenchmens’ endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area”.
This makes more sense intellectually than the original interview. What is Sayers thinking about? Is he star struck?
Very amusing. Is there any way to look up other contributions by people commenting? Just wondered if you had posted anything else as enjoyable.
The clues: the open neck shirt, the Tonee Bliar wavey hands.
The guy has learned absolutely nothing from the seismic events of the last few years. Like many ‘intellectuals’, everything just proves he was right all along.
No doubt it would not be his children or grandchildren fighting a futile war in a religious tribal state to impose democracy and human rights, which the people there overwhelmingly have little understanding of, or desire for.
And as for his sniffy attitude to Brexit, as soon as real life people clash with his supposedly democratic views, he attacks them.
“….they wanted the UK great again, the result is that they made England more and more little.”
He talks a lot of sense, but persists in misunderstanding the motive for voting to leave.
I don’t care if we are ‘great’ or ‘little’ , any more I suppose than, say, Iceland, but like Iceland, I’d quite like it if we had refused to join the EC and still fished our own fish instead of having to watch the French, Spanish, Dutch etc. not only over fish, but do so while insisting that it is their right.
PS No one ever used that slogan ‘make the UK great again’. It was borrowed from the USA by Remainers to use as one of their dirty tactics, and people like Levy prove that they’re not actually very intellectual by choosing to believe it..
I share most of the same trad left concerns of BHL and agree with his negative assessment of ‘Woke culture’, although it would be good if he could admit the Frankish lineage of CRT etc, but his wish to keep non-combat troops on the ground in Afghanistan “…as shelter for women to unveil…” sounds good but is wrong.Whether they’re in their barracks or not they are still targets. As such sporadic carnage from suicide bombers would continue.