And the Western orthodoxy is nuts. We know the price of appeasement. It's high, and only gets higher.
Posted on 04/20/2005 7:49:53 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD
I would say that pretty much since the bloody and muddy stalemate of WWI, there has been a growing orthodoxy amongst Western opinion leaders that is contra Von Clausewitz.
In a nutshell, the orthodox logic goes something like this:
1. The Flanders mud, and the horrors of stalemate trench battles, endless artillery bombardment and chemical warfare, taught us that modern, mass, mechanized, highly destructive warfare is so damaging to civilization that war of any serious magnitude must now be considered uncivilized.
2. The League of Nations was the right idea but the implementation was flawed.
3. The leaders who started WW2 were uncivilized monsters. (Largely true, by the way, but this fact, twisted for convenience, serves as a key bolster plate to the anti Clausewitzian argument).
4. While the ethics of the USA's use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945 are subject to debate, their effects told us that nuclear weapons are "doomsday weapons." Rightfully, shocked and awed by the destruction impressed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we foreswore any notion of using such weapons except as an ultimate last resort. Therefore, the primary value of nuclear weapons (as well as any past, present or future other WMD technologies) is psychological, but WMDs should not be factored in as actual usable tools of war.
5. The new and improved League of Nations, the United Nations, must be viewed as the be all and the end all in terms of preserving global peace. Even if the US temporarily takes on a leadership role in dealing with any particular crisis, ultimately, we must support this institution and drive its reform rather than its demise.
6. The pattern of conflict since 1945, whereby the West / US has not dared take the ultimate step of engaging in direct military confontation with any non Western great power(s), is the new equilibrium, and in fact, must be preserved to a fault. Any war between great powers is so unethical and possibly, apocalyptic, that it cannot be considered. Therefore, there will be no serious modeling of, planning for or even consideration of, general, large scale great war. Certainly, contingencies for regional emergencies will remain, but the concept of great war will not be seriously entertained.
7. Were it to occur, the Third World War would be so destructive, that any subsequent wars would be fought with sticks and stones.
8. The West's defeat of Soviet Communism proves that this strategy, if coupled with other means in the economic dimension, is correct. Strategies beyond war are to be used for dealing with other great powers, war is reserved for dealing with rogue states.
9. The future is one of dealing with rogue states and terrorism. This is due to the slow but certain disappearance of the nation-state as an important layer of political and economic organization.
I'll stop here, I think you all get the idea.
Do a Google search on "war between great powers." Look at how many mentions there are of war between great powers being "unthinkable," "impossible," "obsolete" and the like.
And what it tells me is, since the enemies of the West also know how to Google, they know the West's Achilles Heel. The Western orthodoxy are such disbelievers in great war, that the signs of its approach will be completely missed and ignored. Failing that, they will be rationalized away.
That's where we're at.
Ping.
The great irony, of course, is that the understandings you have outlined above make a great war more possible, not less, because they make us weaker (and especially appear weaker) before our enemies, and they therefore embolden everyone from buffoons like Chavez to Bin Laden to the tyrants in Beijing to use force or to threaten force without realizing what they are about to provoke.
Yep! The law of unintended consequences.
Just curious...have you read "Civilization and its enemies"? His thinking parallels your in many ways but he cops out and does not have the courage to articulate the logical conclusions.
And the Western orthodoxy is nuts. We know the price of appeasement. It's high, and only gets higher.
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