Many Americans hold an idealistic view of the world community that leads them to conclude that any military action against Iraq should be approved by the U.N. Security Council, while others stung by criticism the U.S. is arrogant and unilateralist, favor military action under the umbrella of United Nations approval simply to pacify world opinion.
Murphy omits the most compelling reasons for seeking a multilateral umbrella for military action against Iraq. These reasons are so obvious that it is hard to believe that the oversight is an accident. It may be expedient to overlook the good arguments against your case and concentrate on debunking the bad ones, but it is not terribly honest.
The CFR/Baker Institute report points out what most of us already know: “there should be no illusions that the reconstruction of Iraq will be anything but difficult, confusing, and dangerous for everyone involved”. I could add another thing that most people who have thought seriously about it know: it will also be staggeringly expensive. If we embark on a unilateral war, why should anybody else want to share the difficulty, confusion, danger, and monumental expense of rebuilding Iraq?
It is always dangerous to view war in exclusively military terms. In this case we don’t need allies to win the war, but we probably will need them to win the peace. If we lose the peace, we might as well have lost the war.
The notion that considering the impact that our actions will have on world opinion is simply a question of pacifying the weak is dangerously short sighted. Opinions are reflected in policies. If unilateral action compromises our relations with countries whose cooperation we need in the war on terrorism, we may do ourselves more harm than good. Americans hate the idea that we have to consider what Arabs think of us. We would rather say “F*ck the Arabs, who cares what they think”. Before we take this course, though, we have to realistically anticipate the consequences of our actions. Military action against Iraq will increase popular support for terrorist movements in the Middle East. The terrorists will have more money, more recruits, and more influence. The probability of terrorist attack on the US and on US citizens and interests abroad will increase. All of these factors will be exacerbated if the attack is unilateral.
This idealistic view that the U.N. will do the "right thing" about Iraq, fails to recognize the realities of international politics and the impact that national self-interest has on the decision making process in the U.N.
Of course the other members of the UN make decisions based on self-interest. So do we.
The description of our policies as “the right thing” assumes that we are serving some higher moral imperative, rather than our own perception of our own interests. This is both stupid and dangerous. What we want is not “the right thing”. What we want is what we want.
Interests change, and policies have to change with them. Perception of interest often changes as circumstances change. Moral imperatives are by nature inflexible. Trying to disguise service to our own interests as action in support of an externally defined absolute good strips us of flexibility and makes it difficult to alter a course if it no longer serves our interests, or if it becomes clear that it never did. If we do things because it is in our perceived interest to do them, and admit that openly, we are free to change course as our interest demands. If we pretend that we are acting as the agents of a higher cause, we find it very difficult to change policies that prove ineffective.
Moral absolutism is not just logically insupportable. It’s the intellectual equivalent of an amphetamine rush. The sense of security and euphoria it produces has no grounding in reality. It blinds, and it leads the blind to charge cheerfully down dead ends and blind alleys and bang their heads against brick walls. Also like an amphetamine rush, moral absolutism is a sensation as addictive as it is destructive.
If individuals wish to take this course, I have no objection, being possessed of libertarian inclinations. It is not a direction one wishes to see in a nation, especially a nation as heavily armed as the United States. |
