It is indeed interesting that the only U.S. President in recent memory who didn’t get involved in war was not the one who received the Nobel Peace Prize days after he was inaugurated, due to the prospect of the coming world peace, but the one who was widely predicted, by many in the liberal press, to initiate WWWIII if he were to be elected. Yes, it was the evil orange man!
And what’s more he did exactly what he said he’d do – which also makes him almost unique
Charles Mimoun
2 years ago
This idea that a hegemonic and overwhelming power, by the fact that it does not suffer substantial losses, is the cause of more and more wars seems sensible and allows us to look at events differently. This state of mind, this desire to act, but not for the primary purpose of being effective, but to be good, is also a central problem in civilian life.
A very nice article.
A version of this argument has been made against the principle of proportionality in international law. The idea is the same. By preventing short, intense wars, this just perpetuates conflicts over time because there is no end and no decisive winner.
It is a totally new framework for society which is based on principles and not on reality. The most evocative instance is, I think, the Western obsession with the 1948’s border in Israel, which doesn’t mean anything in today’s world, and that cripples international institutions not to do anything sensible to settle the Palestinian problem. And there are many other examples …
Yes. The comparison is usually made to the resolution of Germany’s borders and population transfers after WWII. No one speaks of the Sudeten Germans these days. That has been settled because the winners were able to dictate the terms of its resolution.
Yes interesting insight on conflicts that’s new to me.
Applying it practically – could the Syrian civil war have been brought to a quick close, without the endless agony and loss, if the USA had adopted a shock and awe approach against Assad instead of ‘humanitarian’ war? Could the poor people of Afghanistan have kept a modern civilisation of some kind if the USA just brutally occupied the place, British empire style with the support of local leaders?
Is the much maligned empire, Pax Britannica, the way to wage war and ensure peace, with losses minimised?
I’m not sure the British Empire was more brutal and faster therefore more skilled. Regarding Afghanistan, it’s a geography issue, so it was a desperate attempt. In Syria, the problem is different because the USA should not have intervened.
Lee Jones
2 years ago
I always find your writings to be utterly depressing, not because they are bad (quite the opposite) but because you expose the moral hypocrisy of the western mass (or perhaps the media’s bastardised version of such), although it Is dismal, it is honest. Your last UnHerd article (that I read) talked of your intentions for your family and it’s future in your plans. This was, at last reading condemned by the same moral hypocrites, as if saving yourself and your family were somehow reprehensible (I stopped reading after the 3rd comment). I’m not sure I have a strong opinion of either, but should the world indeed collapse (has it has done for many), are you a good man if you anticipate and plan for it or are you good if you pretend nothing is happening and carry on as normal? I know which path I would chose. Dead men can’t help anyone.
William Hickey
2 years ago
Many conservatives criticize the lack of consequences for those progressives who engage in social engineering from safe enclaves. Those conservatives correctly claim that if elites had to suffer the results of their dreamy schemes and policies the way ordinary folks on the ground do, the elites would be more sober and judicious.
But that is exactly how our military works today — from afar and virtually immune to consequences — and conservatives are all in favor of “bombing the shit out of ISIS.”
And then after some terrorist attack they wonder “Why do they hate us? They must be evil.”
Why, that’s exactly what America’s insular elites think about Middle Americans.
Last edited 2 years ago by William Hickey
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton
2 years ago
First class article, if sometimes harrowing in its observed details. Thanks very much Aris
Janko M
2 years ago
As always, superb article from Aris. Two thoughts to add:
1. In the West, we don’t like to think about war, but it also makes us extremely naive about the future. What already started happening during the Cold War is that weapons proliferate easier than ever and any group sufficiently motivated can compete through violence. The rest of the world, outside authoritarian countries are already well on this path, but in the West, this is now also slowly emerging – I recommend the book “Out of the Mountains – Rise of the Urban Guerilla” for this. As bonds of citizenship fray, violent competition will emerge, but we currently seem to take citizenship for granted, responsibilities included.
2. I used to think Americans are militarists, but now I see them as having a mostly infantile notion of the armed forces. Most of them do not serve, the civilian-military gap is massive and the rituals of “Thank you for your service” are empty. Past that, there are those who openly criticise the armed forces without a shred of understanding that their own comfort is predicated on the sustained engagement of those uniform worldwide. This is also a trend to some extent across the West, but is all the more striking in the US for how insular it is. Fundamentally, the population is happy to send their troops to some corner of the planet, leave them there for 25 years and then forget about them, without any real strategic goal or purpose. It’s not a genuine affection for those who serve, rather a set of vague and ultimately meaningless rituals.
Who jumped onto the bandwagon when the Yazidis, who were being raped and slaughtered were chased by Isis and Sunni militants to the mountains with nowhere left to run? The world clamoured for something to be done by someone and was that ‘someone’ assumed to be the USA? I assumed it to be the US – rightly or wrongly.
I am sure that Samantha Power will write a new book about how sad this made her.
rick stubbs
2 years ago
The US/allied liberation of Kuwait in 1991 altered the ‘never again’ thinking of Democratic party politicians. Only a handful voted for this successful international police effort. They and the press played the ‘another VN’ narrative up to the end. However, Iraq was quickly expelled from Kuwait and US forces immediately returned home or back to Europe. Precision bombing played a big role for the first time.
The Clinton democrats thus started warning up to the human rights angle. They were also horrified by the Rwandan massacre and the absolute failure of the UN to mount any military effort to prevent it.
Next comes the Balkan wars/genocide. Since European powers were militarily incapable of managing their own backyard, it becomes a NATO peacekeeping effort featuring US precision bombing, ground forces, logistics, etc. Fast forward to the Lybia affair and another European cry for intervention help to protect their oil concessions? Obama consents reluctantly to air support under NATO auspices. Subsequently the Arab spring arrives in Syria with ISIS, etc. These become forever wars when Russia and Iran intervene.
The US is certainly capable of disastrous and deadly foreign interventions on its own. Only two senators voted against the 2003 Iraq incursion. However, Europeans have never been reluctant to employ the US military when their interests are a stake and no one should overlook this fact. Even as Macron bangs on about EU military independence from NATO, he accepts US logistic/intelligence support in Africa. Is there more than a little hypocrisy here??
Last edited 2 years ago by rick stubbs
Saul D
2 years ago
It feels like a lot of reports and discussion mentioning war recently. China and Taiwan, and Russia and Ukraine. Or is it just me?
These are the places where the Western world order ends and competeing orders begin.
William Hickey
2 years ago
I’ve long said that the unstated motto of the Democratic Party is “A nice agenda for nice people.”
After reading Aris’ interesting review of Moyn’s thesis I now extend it to the neoliberal elite: “Nice wars for a nice empire.”
Bill W
2 years ago
An interesting and thought provoking piece. I for one have had a great deal of difficulty trying to make sense of Western/US foreign policy since the fall of the Berlin Wall so anything which sheds light on what to me has seemed like an almost complete inversion of the rules/standards/criteria I was taught about and witnessed pre 1989 is to be welcomed.
There is nothing to understand. I have several former classmates who advise government on foreign policy and they are complete idiots. We would be in much better hands if we outsourced foreign policy to the comment section of UnHerd.
The crazy thing is Kissinger in his book “Diplomacy” back in the 90s already identified that the US will struggle with excessive idealism and the constraints of reality. Without any rival, it seemed unable to put together any grand strategy, would fly into fits of idealism then into bouts of indifference, then be swept up by the consequences of those very actions.
Even today, only out of necessity, are the roots of a grand strategy being assembled, but it is too late. The US cannot face both Russia and China at the same time whilst being in debt worse than WW2 before even a single shot being fired plus consumed internally by a bizzare ideological zeal that is wokeness.
Last edited 2 years ago by Janko M
Alex Stonor
2 years ago
Great piece. Is the new humanitarian war, the war on Covid and especially those that contest the mainstream narrative & solutions? These dissenters are dealt with in ways that should be an anathema in a free world but it is acceptable to throw human rights & freedoms out of the window to protect our loved ones and the NHS.
David Pinder
2 years ago
A fascinating, if somewhat disconcerting, essay. Thank you. The idea that remote, precision munitions actually extend wars is a really scary one. It feels like a flipside of the coin of 1960s MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear warfare. Mind you, today, there’s another popular, scary way to carry on horrifically – the proxy war.
GA Woolley
2 years ago
The major flaw in this article is the insinuation that, if the US weren’t involved, the wars wouldn’t happen. Certainly, without US intervention many wars would reach a faster conclusion, but the resulting situation would not exactly equate to ‘peace’ for the vanquished; the victors could simply go about ‘cleansing’ their enemies without fear of retribution.
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
This is a truly outstanding piece of journalism. Thank you.
The idea that a supposedly liberal democratic power acting on the basis of falsely self-evident rational scientific or humanitarian ethical truths can, and perhaps can only, make a radical violent intervention without material harm and without moral ambiguity is greatest conceit, deceit, and evil of our day. There is not, and can never be, any love, justice, truth or beauty in war, however it manifests itself. It’s always humans substituting means for ends, trying to impose their feeble ideologies and worthless theories against an impassive, hard reality, further enslaving themselves in a futile and misguided bid to make themselves free.
If only we could all just let it be.
Chris Eaton
2 years ago
“Naked geopolitical ambition now trumps human rights”
As it has always been. Were you born last night?
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
The greatest liberal intervention by America over the last sixty odd years has been its policing of the high seas in all the world’s oceans. No big American navy, no world trade, no relief of poverty worldwide.
Colin Elliott
2 years ago
All very plausible, and once again, the USA finds itslef accused and condemned. Wars have always been appalling and shocking, whether for soldiers at the lowest level or hapless civilians who find themselves in the way, and yet it never stopped yet more wars. Even the inhibition against war caused by the ghastliness if the first world war didn’t last long, and indeed was unfortunate in that the effects and thus enthusiasm for disarmament manifested itself unequally.
Let me put another point of view; did not the absolutely enormous volume of manufacture and distribution of the AK47 and the RPG not change things much more dramatically than precision bombing, and continue to do so?
Peter Mott
2 years ago
We are back to a world of Great Powers and territorial disputes, especially revanchist ones. Not sure that “wars of necessity” really fits.
Last edited 2 years ago by Peter Mott
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
This idea is new to me – the principle of provoking a lot of small, humane wars in order to prevent a large war. You can see that the USA has been doing this for a long time.
But….the author of the article and the book he is reviewing seem to find this idea OK in principle. Would they also find it OK if China and Russia were fighting these continuous wars as well? I suppose that Russia has been doing this since 1991 with Chechnia and the Ukraine and others. In theory, China can’t be a superpower until it does the same so it would be sort of normal if they attacked Taiwan?
Creates a lot of refugees though.
Last edited 2 years ago by Chris Wheatley
hugh bennett
2 years ago
I am no fan of this writer. I have outlined my reasons for that in other comments, I find his style just over complicated for the sake of it. He portrays his scribbles as offering new insight when most often they provide little but a vison of himself running around in ever decreasing mental circles failing to digest and spew out other peoples work.
Its almost embarrassing the way he tells us about his tough experiences, what the heck do expect if you are a war reporter, its as if he wants a little pat on the head all the time. Also, there is always the whiff of an anti America hovering in the air.
Simply put there are pure types of war are distinguished – absolute war, instrumental war, and agonistic fighting. Nothing has changed in millenia
No-one will ever convince me that few if any Western political leaders were/ are clever enough to even comprehend the concepts outlined in this rambling.
The idea that a war reporter is remotely knowledgeable about ‘the way of war’ is a conceit they award themselves. They see the immediate, and local, effects of a single action, but the big picture of strategies, planning, intelligence, major operations of all sorts, diplomatic and military negotiations, and all the other currents swirling around conflict, remain well outside their comprehension.
It is indeed interesting that the only U.S. President in recent memory who didn’t get involved in war was not the one who received the Nobel Peace Prize days after he was inaugurated, due to the prospect of the coming world peace, but the one who was widely predicted, by many in the liberal press, to initiate WWWIII if he were to be elected. Yes, it was the evil orange man!
And what’s more he did exactly what he said he’d do – which also makes him almost unique
This idea that a hegemonic and overwhelming power, by the fact that it does not suffer substantial losses, is the cause of more and more wars seems sensible and allows us to look at events differently. This state of mind, this desire to act, but not for the primary purpose of being effective, but to be good, is also a central problem in civilian life.
A very nice article.
A version of this argument has been made against the principle of proportionality in international law. The idea is the same. By preventing short, intense wars, this just perpetuates conflicts over time because there is no end and no decisive winner.
It is a totally new framework for society which is based on principles and not on reality. The most evocative instance is, I think, the Western obsession with the 1948’s border in Israel, which doesn’t mean anything in today’s world, and that cripples international institutions not to do anything sensible to settle the Palestinian problem. And there are many other examples …
Yes. The comparison is usually made to the resolution of Germany’s borders and population transfers after WWII. No one speaks of the Sudeten Germans these days. That has been settled because the winners were able to dictate the terms of its resolution.
https://english.radio.cz/merkel-calls-sudeten-german-expulsion-immoral-drawing-czech-ire-8157867
Irredentism masquerading as human rights.Thanks for sharing this.
Yes it is. As usual
Yes interesting insight on conflicts that’s new to me.
Applying it practically – could the Syrian civil war have been brought to a quick close, without the endless agony and loss, if the USA had adopted a shock and awe approach against Assad instead of ‘humanitarian’ war? Could the poor people of Afghanistan have kept a modern civilisation of some kind if the USA just brutally occupied the place, British empire style with the support of local leaders?
Is the much maligned empire, Pax Britannica, the way to wage war and ensure peace, with losses minimised?
I’m not sure the British Empire was more brutal and faster therefore more skilled. Regarding Afghanistan, it’s a geography issue, so it was a desperate attempt. In Syria, the problem is different because the USA should not have intervened.
I always find your writings to be utterly depressing, not because they are bad (quite the opposite) but because you expose the moral hypocrisy of the western mass (or perhaps the media’s bastardised version of such), although it Is dismal, it is honest. Your last UnHerd article (that I read) talked of your intentions for your family and it’s future in your plans. This was, at last reading condemned by the same moral hypocrites, as if saving yourself and your family were somehow reprehensible (I stopped reading after the 3rd comment). I’m not sure I have a strong opinion of either, but should the world indeed collapse (has it has done for many), are you a good man if you anticipate and plan for it or are you good if you pretend nothing is happening and carry on as normal? I know which path I would chose. Dead men can’t help anyone.
Many conservatives criticize the lack of consequences for those progressives who engage in social engineering from safe enclaves. Those conservatives correctly claim that if elites had to suffer the results of their dreamy schemes and policies the way ordinary folks on the ground do, the elites would be more sober and judicious.
But that is exactly how our military works today — from afar and virtually immune to consequences — and conservatives are all in favor of “bombing the shit out of ISIS.”
And then after some terrorist attack they wonder “Why do they hate us? They must be evil.”
Why, that’s exactly what America’s insular elites think about Middle Americans.
First class article, if sometimes harrowing in its observed details. Thanks very much Aris
As always, superb article from Aris. Two thoughts to add:
1. In the West, we don’t like to think about war, but it also makes us extremely naive about the future. What already started happening during the Cold War is that weapons proliferate easier than ever and any group sufficiently motivated can compete through violence. The rest of the world, outside authoritarian countries are already well on this path, but in the West, this is now also slowly emerging – I recommend the book “Out of the Mountains – Rise of the Urban Guerilla” for this. As bonds of citizenship fray, violent competition will emerge, but we currently seem to take citizenship for granted, responsibilities included.
2. I used to think Americans are militarists, but now I see them as having a mostly infantile notion of the armed forces. Most of them do not serve, the civilian-military gap is massive and the rituals of “Thank you for your service” are empty. Past that, there are those who openly criticise the armed forces without a shred of understanding that their own comfort is predicated on the sustained engagement of those uniform worldwide. This is also a trend to some extent across the West, but is all the more striking in the US for how insular it is. Fundamentally, the population is happy to send their troops to some corner of the planet, leave them there for 25 years and then forget about them, without any real strategic goal or purpose. It’s not a genuine affection for those who serve, rather a set of vague and ultimately meaningless rituals.
If I never hear “Thank you for your service” I’ll be very happy. I always want to ask, where were loo you.
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman
Who jumped onto the bandwagon when the Yazidis, who were being raped and slaughtered were chased by Isis and Sunni militants to the mountains with nowhere left to run? The world clamoured for something to be done by someone and was that ‘someone’ assumed to be the USA? I assumed it to be the US – rightly or wrongly.
I got the distinct impression the US took a long time before deciding to do something about ISIS.
I am sure that Samantha Power will write a new book about how sad this made her.
The US/allied liberation of Kuwait in 1991 altered the ‘never again’ thinking of Democratic party politicians. Only a handful voted for this successful international police effort. They and the press played the ‘another VN’ narrative up to the end. However, Iraq was quickly expelled from Kuwait and US forces immediately returned home or back to Europe. Precision bombing played a big role for the first time.
The Clinton democrats thus started warning up to the human rights angle. They were also horrified by the Rwandan massacre and the absolute failure of the UN to mount any military effort to prevent it.
Next comes the Balkan wars/genocide. Since European powers were militarily incapable of managing their own backyard, it becomes a NATO peacekeeping effort featuring US precision bombing, ground forces, logistics, etc. Fast forward to the Lybia affair and another European cry for intervention help to protect their oil concessions? Obama consents reluctantly to air support under NATO auspices. Subsequently the Arab spring arrives in Syria with ISIS, etc. These become forever wars when Russia and Iran intervene.
The US is certainly capable of disastrous and deadly foreign interventions on its own. Only two senators voted against the 2003 Iraq incursion. However, Europeans have never been reluctant to employ the US military when their interests are a stake and no one should overlook this fact. Even as Macron bangs on about EU military independence from NATO, he accepts US logistic/intelligence support in Africa. Is there more than a little hypocrisy here??
It feels like a lot of reports and discussion mentioning war recently. China and Taiwan, and Russia and Ukraine. Or is it just me?
These are the places where the Western world order ends and competeing orders begin.
I’ve long said that the unstated motto of the Democratic Party is “A nice agenda for nice people.”
After reading Aris’ interesting review of Moyn’s thesis I now extend it to the neoliberal elite: “Nice wars for a nice empire.”
An interesting and thought provoking piece. I for one have had a great deal of difficulty trying to make sense of Western/US foreign policy since the fall of the Berlin Wall so anything which sheds light on what to me has seemed like an almost complete inversion of the rules/standards/criteria I was taught about and witnessed pre 1989 is to be welcomed.
There is nothing to understand. I have several former classmates who advise government on foreign policy and they are complete idiots. We would be in much better hands if we outsourced foreign policy to the comment section of UnHerd.
The crazy thing is Kissinger in his book “Diplomacy” back in the 90s already identified that the US will struggle with excessive idealism and the constraints of reality. Without any rival, it seemed unable to put together any grand strategy, would fly into fits of idealism then into bouts of indifference, then be swept up by the consequences of those very actions.
Even today, only out of necessity, are the roots of a grand strategy being assembled, but it is too late. The US cannot face both Russia and China at the same time whilst being in debt worse than WW2 before even a single shot being fired plus consumed internally by a bizzare ideological zeal that is wokeness.
Great piece. Is the new humanitarian war, the war on Covid and especially those that contest the mainstream narrative & solutions? These dissenters are dealt with in ways that should be an anathema in a free world but it is acceptable to throw human rights & freedoms out of the window to protect our loved ones and the NHS.
A fascinating, if somewhat disconcerting, essay. Thank you. The idea that remote, precision munitions actually extend wars is a really scary one. It feels like a flipside of the coin of 1960s MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear warfare. Mind you, today, there’s another popular, scary way to carry on horrifically – the proxy war.
The major flaw in this article is the insinuation that, if the US weren’t involved, the wars wouldn’t happen. Certainly, without US intervention many wars would reach a faster conclusion, but the resulting situation would not exactly equate to ‘peace’ for the vanquished; the victors could simply go about ‘cleansing’ their enemies without fear of retribution.
This is a truly outstanding piece of journalism. Thank you.
The idea that a supposedly liberal democratic power acting on the basis of falsely self-evident rational scientific or humanitarian ethical truths can, and perhaps can only, make a radical violent intervention without material harm and without moral ambiguity is greatest conceit, deceit, and evil of our day. There is not, and can never be, any love, justice, truth or beauty in war, however it manifests itself. It’s always humans substituting means for ends, trying to impose their feeble ideologies and worthless theories against an impassive, hard reality, further enslaving themselves in a futile and misguided bid to make themselves free.
If only we could all just let it be.
“Naked geopolitical ambition now trumps human rights”
As it has always been. Were you born last night?
The greatest liberal intervention by America over the last sixty odd years has been its policing of the high seas in all the world’s oceans. No big American navy, no world trade, no relief of poverty worldwide.
All very plausible, and once again, the USA finds itslef accused and condemned. Wars have always been appalling and shocking, whether for soldiers at the lowest level or hapless civilians who find themselves in the way, and yet it never stopped yet more wars. Even the inhibition against war caused by the ghastliness if the first world war didn’t last long, and indeed was unfortunate in that the effects and thus enthusiasm for disarmament manifested itself unequally.
Let me put another point of view; did not the absolutely enormous volume of manufacture and distribution of the AK47 and the RPG not change things much more dramatically than precision bombing, and continue to do so?
We are back to a world of Great Powers and territorial disputes, especially revanchist ones. Not sure that “wars of necessity” really fits.
This idea is new to me – the principle of provoking a lot of small, humane wars in order to prevent a large war. You can see that the USA has been doing this for a long time.
But….the author of the article and the book he is reviewing seem to find this idea OK in principle. Would they also find it OK if China and Russia were fighting these continuous wars as well? I suppose that Russia has been doing this since 1991 with Chechnia and the Ukraine and others. In theory, China can’t be a superpower until it does the same so it would be sort of normal if they attacked Taiwan?
Creates a lot of refugees though.
I am no fan of this writer. I have outlined my reasons for that in other comments, I find his style just over complicated for the sake of it. He portrays his scribbles as offering new insight when most often they provide little but a vison of himself running around in ever decreasing mental circles failing to digest and spew out other peoples work.
Its almost embarrassing the way he tells us about his tough experiences, what the heck do expect if you are a war reporter, its as if he wants a little pat on the head all the time. Also, there is always the whiff of an anti America hovering in the air.
Simply put there are pure types of war are distinguished – absolute war, instrumental war, and agonistic fighting. Nothing has changed in millenia
No-one will ever convince me that few if any Western political leaders were/ are clever enough to even comprehend the concepts outlined in this rambling.
Brave reply, and correct IMHO
We must not forget that journos use the expereinces
You should be top of the list of comments Hugh
The idea that a war reporter is remotely knowledgeable about ‘the way of war’ is a conceit they award themselves. They see the immediate, and local, effects of a single action, but the big picture of strategies, planning, intelligence, major operations of all sorts, diplomatic and military negotiations, and all the other currents swirling around conflict, remain well outside their comprehension.