Ledeen:
Of all
the popular myths about “how the world works,” the most dangerous to us at this
moment is the one that goes “peace is normal, war is an aberration.” Truth is, war is normal and peace very
unusual. We’ve lived through a happy
time, ever since the Second World War.
Thanks to American superpower, and the destruction of the totalitarian
regimes in Rome, Berlin and Moscow, we’ve had a happy period of relative
peace. Very few big wars. Little genocides (China is exceptional, but
they changed to accommodate the global pattern). Deterrence (as in “mutual assured
destruction”) mostly worked.
That
was a rare time. Now we’re getting back
to normal. There’s a good reason for
that old Roman wisdom “if you want peace, prepare for war.” It’s because “peace” most always happens when
somebody wins a war, and then imposes conditions on the losers. That’s what “peace conferences” are all
about. Our recent happy time was the
result of war, and our adoption of the Roman wisdom. We smashed our enemies, we created military
alliances to deter our new enemies (NATO, etcetera), we built and maintained a
big arsenal on land, air and sea.
We
prepared for war to make peace possible.
It
worked so well and lasted so long that we forgot why we were doing it. Over
time, the “peace is normal” myth took hold and its attendant policies — “future
wars will be economic, not military” and “guns to butter” — came to define our
strategic thinking.
Moreover,
Americans have always been conflicted over foreign policy. We have always wanted two incompatible things
at once: we want to export the American
model, and we want to stay out of other countries’ affairs. We have invariably waited until the eleventh
hour before fighting. In the last
century, we were torpedoed into the First World War by the Germans, bombed into
the Second World War by the Japanese, and frightened into the Cold War by
Stalin.
Then
came 9/11 and we were reminded that there are (always) enemies out there. In time, we forgot that, too, and now, having
deceived ourselves into believing that peace is normal, we are trying to talk
our way out of the global war. It won’t
work. It never has.
So
we’re back to normal. War, and the runup
to more war, is the order of the day, as it has been for most of human
history. Our real options are the same
as they have always been: win or
lose. Both lead to “peace,” but the one
is a happy peace while the other is an extended humiliation.
If we
accept that war, and the preparation for war, is the basic leitmotif of human
history, we might also overcome the parallel myth: that all men are basically the same, and all
men want the same (good) things. Not
so. Just ask Vladimir Putin, Ali
Khamenei, and their friends, proxies, and agents. They want bad things for us, namely death and
domination. And they’re not likely to
change, which is why it’s very dangerous to give Khamenei more money, and try
to make Putin more “reasonable.” They’re
going to continue the war.
“Man is
more inclined to do evil than to do good,” Machiavelli wrote, and he knew
whereof he spoke. Which is why war is
normal, and peace so rare. And why we’d
better get used to it.
That
happy time is done and gone, at least for now.
We’d better stop whining and get about the business of winning.
