Several days ago I heard a talk by the co-editors of 1965: Indonesia and the World. Also, the author of this book was there.
One of many points made by the speakers was how difficult it still is to discuss openly "the events" (as they are called) in Indonesia today.
Showing posts with label atrocities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atrocities. Show all posts
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Reason of state and the ethics of statecraft
When was the last time a politician used the phrase "reason of state"? I'm not sure, but it must be quite a while. Phrases such as "the national interest" displaced "reason of state" in leaders' vocabularies long ago. But a brief historical look at reason of state may be interesting, at least (if you'll pardon the tautology) to those who are interested in this sort of thing.
The statesman most associated with the notion of raison d'état is Richelieu, who sided with Protestant princes/polities in the Thirty Years War, breaking the link between religion and foreign policy. Richelieu's main concern was to counter the Habsburgs, though not necessarily to defeat them: according to one historian, "French policy aimed to restore a balance in Germany, not to bring about a Protestant triumph" (R. Briggs, Early Modern France, 2d ed. 1998, pp.102-103). At any rate, as David Bell wrote last year in reviewing a recent biography of Richelieu, the Cardinal "was hardly the first European statesman to place national interest above moral or religious imperatives...." No doubt that's true, but by now Richelieu's name is so firmly linked with reason of state that the connection is probably unshakeable.
While Richelieu is the politician most associated with reason of state, the writer most associated with the notion is Machiavelli, even though he never used the phrase. As Michel Foucault observed in one of his 1978 lectures at the Collège de France, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates about reason of state were "conducted through" Machiavelli; the invocation of his name became, to some extent, a signaling device. In the debates of the time, opponents of Richelieu used the accusation of Machiavellism to signal that the lodestar of policy was the ruler's (in this case Louis XIII's) "whims or interests," not -- what reason of state more properly should have denoted -- an "autonomous and specific art of government," as Foucault put it. Writers more favorable to raison d'état were divided, some distancing themselves from the charge of Machiavellism, others praising the author of The Prince (see Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, trans. G. Burchell, pp.243, 245).
Controversies and polemics invoking Machiavelli began not long after the posthumous publication of The Prince in 1532, five years after his death. In 1559 the Church put all of Machiavelli's books on the Index of condemned works. Before that the English cardinal Reginald Pole had concluded that The Prince was devilish; Pole "issued a warning against Machiavelli" in his Apology for Emperor Charles V, which was "written in the late 1530s but not published for over two centuries" (R. Bireley,The Counter-Reformation Prince, 1990, p.15).
Some Protestant writers also fiercely criticized Machiavelli. A key event in this connection was the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 1572) in which several thousand Protestants were killed in Paris (and more in the following days in other parts of France). Many Protestants blamed Catherine de Medici, an Italian and a Catholic and the French king Charles lX's mother, for the massacre, though she intended not a mass killing but "the elimination of a relatively small group" of Protestant leaders (Briggs, Early Modern France, pp.21-22). However, Catherine's intentions were probably unclear to everyone outside her inner circle.
The Huguenot lawyer and writer Innocent Gentillet penned a Contre-Machiavel or Discourse against Machiavelli (the full title is longer; it was written in Latin in 1571 [thus actually before the St. Bartholomew Massacre], then published in French in 1576 and in English in 1602 [or 1608, depending on which catalog entry one goes with]). Gentillet linked Catherine de Medici to "Italian statecraft" as allegedly exemplified by Machiavelli. Gentillet's book, as Robert Bireley notes, "was the first attempt at a systematic refutation of Machiavelli and was to have a far-reaching influence on Catholic as well as Protestant authors." Interestingly, Gentillet referred to The Prince as the "Koran of the courtiers" (Bireley, Counter-Reformation Prince, p.17).
As mentioned above, Machiavelli did have defenders. There was an attempt or two to argue that his views were compatible with the Bible (see Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, p.245), and today at least a couple of scholars argue that Machiavelli was not hostile to Christianity (see C. Nederman's entry on Machiavelli in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, here [with a good bibliography]). A considered view is that "Machiavelli's whole work is based on the contrast between ordinary Christian ethics and the ethics of statecraft...not an 'immoral' code of behavior, except by Christian standards, but a different code of morality, which wills the means to the noble end of civic survival" (S. Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders (1981), p.23). And "[r]ather than an abstract sovereign institution, the state, for Machiavelli, was nothing less -- or more -- than the government, the prince himself at home and abroad" (M. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (1997), p.97).
One might argue that the notion of raison d'état lives on, albeit in sometimes very attenuated form, in two ways: first, through the mushy idea of the national interest; second, through the view, famously stated by Weber in "Politics as a Vocation," that politicians must always weigh the likely consequences of their actions rather than just acting in accord with a principle regardless of likely results -- though in this second case the connection to reason of state is debatable.
Following the Weberian line, various writers have argued that the ethics of statecraft is "situational." As Robert Jackson puts it (in The Global Covenant (2000), pp.135-36), "scholars of international ethics should...lay open the conduct of statespeople to appropriate moral standards" but also should take into account the circumstances in which that conduct occurs. Stated in this general way, the position leaves open the questions of which moral standards apply in a given case and which circumstances are the more or less relevant ones. But those questions are probably best debated and answered in the context of specific decisions. (Note: I don't entirely agree with R. Jackson that the ethics of statecraft is "conservative more than progressive" (ibid., p.139) but won't pursue this here.)
P.s. A post on this subject shouldn't neglect to mention Friedrich Meinecke's 1924 book The Idea of Reason of State in Modern History (later translated into English under the title Machiavellism).
Added later: The chronology in this post, I've sort of belatedly realized, goes in reverse: it starts with the 17th cent. (Thirty Years' War), then goes back to the 16th cent. (French Wars of Religion). That's probably not the best way to have organized it, but you know, you get what you pay for here... ;)
The statesman most associated with the notion of raison d'état is Richelieu, who sided with Protestant princes/polities in the Thirty Years War, breaking the link between religion and foreign policy. Richelieu's main concern was to counter the Habsburgs, though not necessarily to defeat them: according to one historian, "French policy aimed to restore a balance in Germany, not to bring about a Protestant triumph" (R. Briggs, Early Modern France, 2d ed. 1998, pp.102-103). At any rate, as David Bell wrote last year in reviewing a recent biography of Richelieu, the Cardinal "was hardly the first European statesman to place national interest above moral or religious imperatives...." No doubt that's true, but by now Richelieu's name is so firmly linked with reason of state that the connection is probably unshakeable.
While Richelieu is the politician most associated with reason of state, the writer most associated with the notion is Machiavelli, even though he never used the phrase. As Michel Foucault observed in one of his 1978 lectures at the Collège de France, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates about reason of state were "conducted through" Machiavelli; the invocation of his name became, to some extent, a signaling device. In the debates of the time, opponents of Richelieu used the accusation of Machiavellism to signal that the lodestar of policy was the ruler's (in this case Louis XIII's) "whims or interests," not -- what reason of state more properly should have denoted -- an "autonomous and specific art of government," as Foucault put it. Writers more favorable to raison d'état were divided, some distancing themselves from the charge of Machiavellism, others praising the author of The Prince (see Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, trans. G. Burchell, pp.243, 245).
Controversies and polemics invoking Machiavelli began not long after the posthumous publication of The Prince in 1532, five years after his death. In 1559 the Church put all of Machiavelli's books on the Index of condemned works. Before that the English cardinal Reginald Pole had concluded that The Prince was devilish; Pole "issued a warning against Machiavelli" in his Apology for Emperor Charles V, which was "written in the late 1530s but not published for over two centuries" (R. Bireley,The Counter-Reformation Prince, 1990, p.15).
Some Protestant writers also fiercely criticized Machiavelli. A key event in this connection was the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 1572) in which several thousand Protestants were killed in Paris (and more in the following days in other parts of France). Many Protestants blamed Catherine de Medici, an Italian and a Catholic and the French king Charles lX's mother, for the massacre, though she intended not a mass killing but "the elimination of a relatively small group" of Protestant leaders (Briggs, Early Modern France, pp.21-22). However, Catherine's intentions were probably unclear to everyone outside her inner circle.
The Huguenot lawyer and writer Innocent Gentillet penned a Contre-Machiavel or Discourse against Machiavelli (the full title is longer; it was written in Latin in 1571 [thus actually before the St. Bartholomew Massacre], then published in French in 1576 and in English in 1602 [or 1608, depending on which catalog entry one goes with]). Gentillet linked Catherine de Medici to "Italian statecraft" as allegedly exemplified by Machiavelli. Gentillet's book, as Robert Bireley notes, "was the first attempt at a systematic refutation of Machiavelli and was to have a far-reaching influence on Catholic as well as Protestant authors." Interestingly, Gentillet referred to The Prince as the "Koran of the courtiers" (Bireley, Counter-Reformation Prince, p.17).
As mentioned above, Machiavelli did have defenders. There was an attempt or two to argue that his views were compatible with the Bible (see Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, p.245), and today at least a couple of scholars argue that Machiavelli was not hostile to Christianity (see C. Nederman's entry on Machiavelli in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, here [with a good bibliography]). A considered view is that "Machiavelli's whole work is based on the contrast between ordinary Christian ethics and the ethics of statecraft...not an 'immoral' code of behavior, except by Christian standards, but a different code of morality, which wills the means to the noble end of civic survival" (S. Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders (1981), p.23). And "[r]ather than an abstract sovereign institution, the state, for Machiavelli, was nothing less -- or more -- than the government, the prince himself at home and abroad" (M. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (1997), p.97).
One might argue that the notion of raison d'état lives on, albeit in sometimes very attenuated form, in two ways: first, through the mushy idea of the national interest; second, through the view, famously stated by Weber in "Politics as a Vocation," that politicians must always weigh the likely consequences of their actions rather than just acting in accord with a principle regardless of likely results -- though in this second case the connection to reason of state is debatable.
Following the Weberian line, various writers have argued that the ethics of statecraft is "situational." As Robert Jackson puts it (in The Global Covenant (2000), pp.135-36), "scholars of international ethics should...lay open the conduct of statespeople to appropriate moral standards" but also should take into account the circumstances in which that conduct occurs. Stated in this general way, the position leaves open the questions of which moral standards apply in a given case and which circumstances are the more or less relevant ones. But those questions are probably best debated and answered in the context of specific decisions. (Note: I don't entirely agree with R. Jackson that the ethics of statecraft is "conservative more than progressive" (ibid., p.139) but won't pursue this here.)
P.s. A post on this subject shouldn't neglect to mention Friedrich Meinecke's 1924 book The Idea of Reason of State in Modern History (later translated into English under the title Machiavellism).
Added later: The chronology in this post, I've sort of belatedly realized, goes in reverse: it starts with the 17th cent. (Thirty Years' War), then goes back to the 16th cent. (French Wars of Religion). That's probably not the best way to have organized it, but you know, you get what you pay for here... ;)
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
'Brutal realpolitik' and the Katyn massacre
Jacob Heilbrunn writes:
I agree with Heilbrunn's characterization of FDR's and Churchill's actions, but the puzzling thing about Heilbrunn's post is that he criticizes FDR and Churchill while also seeming to recognize that their alternatives were very limited: "they had a weak hand to play," he notes. In the spring of 1943, Heilbrunn observes, the Nazis discovered the Katyn massacre and, blaming the Soviets for it, hoped to use it to create a rift between Stalin on on hand and Roosevelt and Churchill on the other. "But Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it," he writes.
Of course Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it. In the spring of '43 Hitler's armies were still in the USSR. They were reeling from Stalingrad but not yet totally defeated. The battle of Kursk had not yet started. The overriding aim of Roosevelt and Churchill was to defeat Nazi Germany and there were few lengths to which they would not go in pursuit of that goal. They had to feel some considerable gratitude to the USSR (and, by extension, to Stalin) for repulsing Hitler's invasion at enormous human cost.
You really don't have to know much about World War II to know that, while it was being fought, ideals took a back seat to the perceived requirements of victory in the policy decisions of the main leaders, at least of the Allies. Churchill and FDR allied themselves with a murderous dictator and helped to cover up the Katyn massacre and no doubt would have covered up other crimes of Stalin that came to their attention in the course of the war (perhaps in fact they did). Churchill said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he (Churchill) would make a favorable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons. He was serious. In 1943 victory was still not certain and it is a bit bizarre to think that FDR and Churchill would have created a breach with Stalin over anything. Should they have done so? Not even Heilbrunn says that directly.
There were many individual acts of heroism and idealism on the battlefields (construing that word broadly) of World War II. But in the councils where policy was made and memorandums of state were written, I think it's probably safe to say that World War II was almost entirely 'brutal realpolitik'. It was, if anyone, Hitler who was the least guided by realpolitik, as he insisted on spending bureaucratic and financial and manpower resources on the machinery of the Holocaust long after it became clear that all of Germany's resources should have been going directly into its military effort if the Third Reich were going to have a chance of survival. It was Hitler who put his ideological aims above the dictates of military necessity. FDR and Churchill issued high-minded declarations like the Atlantic Charter, but basically they were focused on one thing: prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. All other considerations got pushed aside. They were facing what they saw, with some considerable justification, as 'a supreme emergency', in Churchill's phrase, and they were going to do what they thought they had to do.
P.s. Stalin of course did a great deal of ideologically motivated killing too, but more before and after the war than during it (the Katyn massacre notwithstanding).
Winston Churchill had said he would "sup with the devil" if it would help bring about victory [in WW2]. So he—and Franklin Roosevelt—did. They allied themselves with Stalin, even pretended, at least publicly, that he was a fine man and the Soviet Union an even finer place. Now, with the release of numerous documents from the National Archives about Stalin's murder of over twenty thousand Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forest in 1940, we know in even more detail just how far they were prepared to go to extol and defend the Soviet Union.Heilbrunn goes on to observe that the newly released documents indicate that Churchill and FDR pretty much knew the Soviets were responsible for the massacre and worked to ensure that an investigation, which the Polish government-in-exile in London called for, would not occur. FDR and Churchill engaged in "a brutal act of realpolitik," Heilbrunn writes, adding that this shows they had given up on Poland's freedom before Yalta.
I agree with Heilbrunn's characterization of FDR's and Churchill's actions, but the puzzling thing about Heilbrunn's post is that he criticizes FDR and Churchill while also seeming to recognize that their alternatives were very limited: "they had a weak hand to play," he notes. In the spring of 1943, Heilbrunn observes, the Nazis discovered the Katyn massacre and, blaming the Soviets for it, hoped to use it to create a rift between Stalin on on hand and Roosevelt and Churchill on the other. "But Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it," he writes.
Of course Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it. In the spring of '43 Hitler's armies were still in the USSR. They were reeling from Stalingrad but not yet totally defeated. The battle of Kursk had not yet started. The overriding aim of Roosevelt and Churchill was to defeat Nazi Germany and there were few lengths to which they would not go in pursuit of that goal. They had to feel some considerable gratitude to the USSR (and, by extension, to Stalin) for repulsing Hitler's invasion at enormous human cost.
You really don't have to know much about World War II to know that, while it was being fought, ideals took a back seat to the perceived requirements of victory in the policy decisions of the main leaders, at least of the Allies. Churchill and FDR allied themselves with a murderous dictator and helped to cover up the Katyn massacre and no doubt would have covered up other crimes of Stalin that came to their attention in the course of the war (perhaps in fact they did). Churchill said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he (Churchill) would make a favorable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons. He was serious. In 1943 victory was still not certain and it is a bit bizarre to think that FDR and Churchill would have created a breach with Stalin over anything. Should they have done so? Not even Heilbrunn says that directly.
There were many individual acts of heroism and idealism on the battlefields (construing that word broadly) of World War II. But in the councils where policy was made and memorandums of state were written, I think it's probably safe to say that World War II was almost entirely 'brutal realpolitik'. It was, if anyone, Hitler who was the least guided by realpolitik, as he insisted on spending bureaucratic and financial and manpower resources on the machinery of the Holocaust long after it became clear that all of Germany's resources should have been going directly into its military effort if the Third Reich were going to have a chance of survival. It was Hitler who put his ideological aims above the dictates of military necessity. FDR and Churchill issued high-minded declarations like the Atlantic Charter, but basically they were focused on one thing: prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. All other considerations got pushed aside. They were facing what they saw, with some considerable justification, as 'a supreme emergency', in Churchill's phrase, and they were going to do what they thought they had to do.
P.s. Stalin of course did a great deal of ideologically motivated killing too, but more before and after the war than during it (the Katyn massacre notwithstanding).
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