comments are hereby solicitedAs I have repeatedly said, we must first answer the question: are we a republic primarily concerned with our own affairs and defending our own borders, minding our own business and avoiding both entangling alliances and meddling in the territorial disputes of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; or are we a world power with imperial interests?
This is not a trivial question. Republics cannot BE world powers, for the simple reason that republics are not capable of long term policies without victories and successes. We cannot sustain a trooper a day meatgrinder for a decade; much less thirty casualties a week, even though that is far fewer than we routinely lose to traffic. Yet that may well be the cost of a long term commitment overseas.
Our intervention in Iraq was not well done, but one reason it was not well done was domestic politics: the President could not simply say "It is in our interest to send in a punitive expedition, grab the oil, and destabilize that regime." Whether or not anyone believed it -- my friend Greg Cochran insists I am a naive fool for thinking anyone did -- the invasion was cloaked in the language of Jacobinism, and we went in and acted as if we believed in the Jacobin ideals. We did that because the very liberal elements in the nation, including those in the press, insisted that we must have more noble motives (or else it was all a criminal conspiracy). This nation doesn't react well to that kind of internal pressure. Republics need national unity to be able to pursue wars; and in fact, most republics are not comfortable with small wars, limited wars, wars of expediency: Republics expect and react best to WARRE. Over there. Make the world safe for democracy. Jacobinism can sometimes substitute: Jacobinism is noble, and fighting to implant democracy and spread freedom may bring national unity. Of course Jacobinism as a public goal makes it very difficult to pursue realistic foreign goals.
It is my belief that if we wish to become a world power with imperial interests we will inevitably be transformed into the kind of nation that can BE a world power with imperial interests. One of those transformations is willingness to put up with a great deal of failure without turning to criminalization of those failures. The recent muttering about prosecuting Rumsfeld comes to mind. Think about the consequences of those muttering, and what may come of it.
Now I note that a female general has decided to go to Germany to testify in a criminal charge against the Secretary of Defense. Think on the consequences of such things.
Enough on topical matters: my point is that we need to think carefully about what should be our role in the world. And we must decide fairly overwhelmingly: competent empires cannot spend a great deal of time catering to the Old Republic and its ideals. Cicero had no place in Caesar's new world order even though Caesar himself wished mightily that there would be. Mark Anthony and Octavian were made of sterner stuff.
If we decide that we are a world power with imperial interests, and we are willing to undergo the domestic transformations that will come from that, then this essay shows the kind of thinking we must indulge in; and this is a very important essay. He is not an inspired genius, he is merely a realist with a sense of history. He may be in error, but he is not in error in his fundamental ways of thinking.
Of course the fact that he says what I said about going into Iraq and what Israel ought to have done in the Lebanon may color my thinking...
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail439.html#Iran
