Give War A Chance
More and more, we're told outright war isn't just necessary and right, but the thing that will solve America's existential problems
Robert Kagan, neoconservative writer and husband to Deputy Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, wrote a piece called āThe Price of Hegemonyā in Foreign Affairs last week that was fascinating. If Iād written his opening, people would denounce me as a Putin-concubine:
Although it is obscene to blame the United States for Putinās inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.
Just as Pearl Harbor was the consequence of U.S. efforts to blunt Japanese expansion on the Asian mainland, and just as the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to the United Statesā dominant presence in the Middle East after the first Gulf War, so Russian decisions have been a response to the expanding postāCold War hegemony of the United States and its allies in Europe.
Kagan went on to make an argument straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Instead of doing what some critics want and focusing on āimproving the well-being of Americans,ā the U.S. government is instead properly recognizing the responsibility that comes with being a superpower. So, while Russiaās invasion may indeed have been a foreseeable consequence of a decision to expand our hegemonic reach, now that weāre here, thereās only one option left. Total commitment:
It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then. And it has always been extraordinarily smallā¦
A month after Putinās invasion of Ukraine, blood seems to be rushing to all the wrong places across the Commentariat, which has begun in earnest the predictable process of asking the public to dismiss fears of nuclear combat. Headlines of the āWeāll take those oddsā variety are springing up everywhere, from the Seattle Times (āAtrocities change the nuclear weapons calculusā) to Radio Free Europe (āFormer NATO Commander Says Western Fears Of Nuclear War Are Preventing A Proper Response To Putinā) to Fox (which had on Sean Penn, of all people, to say to Sean Hannity, āCountries that have nuclear weapons can remain intimidated to use them, and weāre seeing that now with our own countryā). This is fast becoming a bipartisan consensus. Check out Republican Adam Kinzingerās recent comment:
Most of us look back at 9/11 and wish weād tried to narrow the scope of the problem, not expand it in grandiose ways and make it the central fact of the lives of every person on the planet. We were told right away that 9/11 meant so much more than a policing problem, that instead of a few nut-jobs slipping through the net, bin Ladenās Twin Tower attacks heralded an inevitable, and desirable, Final Battle between new and old worlds. Weāre going through something similar now. The pundit excitement over the final clash between āDemocracy and Autocracyā perhaps being at hand reminds me exactly of the open praying for signs of the Apocalypse I once heard among the Rapture-ready flock of pastor John Hagee in San Antonio.
We saw a ton of this thinking after 9/11. World-domination advocates whoād been laughed out of meetings for years were taken seriously overnight. Rigid with jingoistic fervor, they were suddenly in print and on air everywhere, bursting with āplans for everyone,ā as Iggy Pop put it. Such people always rush to the front of the debate in these moments and theyāre always listened to, until about ten years later, when it quietly becomes okay to reflect on a question we probably should have pondered in the moment, i.e. āHey, are these people crazy?ā
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