Hypocrisy and Empire

Part 1

by Aron Trauring

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.   -- Bertrand Russell

Recently, my friend Sister B. send me a few articles she had written in which she ranted against what she saw as the hypocrisy of the Johnny-come-lately anti-war crowd. Essentially her argument has three components:

1. For all its faults the United States is a beacon of freedom and liberty for the world, far superior both morally and developmentally to just about any other country.
   
2. The fact that the United States deals with dictators (including Saddam in the past) is a reflection of the nasty nature of world politics, not moral shortcomings on the part of the U.S. Anyone who refuses to recognize the importance of realpolitik is living in a dream world, not the nasty real one we inhabit.
3. The inevitable conclusion of 1 and 2 is that America deserves to be praised for having the guts to take on a tyrant like Saddam and provide an opportunity for freedom to the Iraqi people, whatever its past involvement in the mess there. Those who don't admit this and blindly criticize American motives and actions, are essentially hypocritical amoral whiners.

Since Sister B. is someone who I think of as exceedingly wise, I can't just easily dismiss her arguments as the rantings of some right-wing apologist (which she is not). So I had to think long and hard about what she had to say.

Sister B.'s arguments were written in the context of the war in Iraq, but they express a wider issue - how shall we relate to the new American empire. America is the latest and greatest in a long series of Empires, and in essence post-W.W. II, it inherited the mantle of the European Empires.  The points made above were precisely the thesis of those who ran the British empire - the world is a nasty and brutal place, and Western values of justice and democracy, along with our advanced technology can make the world a better place. It is our role, in fact our destiny to impart our values and technology to the more primitive tribes and enlighten them. To do this requires the practice of realpolitik - yes, sometimes we have to dirty our hands. And the namby pambys who say we shouldn't dirty our hands, are totally out of touch with the reality of the world.

Let's begin with point number 1. I recently saw Monty Python's Life of Brian. There is an incredibly funny scene where this point is made with great humor:

To reinforce the point and burst my own intellectual bubble a bit: the Internet, this medium where I have the opportunity to reach out to thousands of people around the world and criticize the US military-industrial complex, is a creation of U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

I want to stress that point 1 is not about the West's technological superiority. The important point is what this technology is used for - improving the lot of humanity. Fundamentally, the argument is that the West is the most advanced moral civilization in human history. Once again, I illustrate the point with some scenes from a different movie: Lawrence of Arabia.

Towards the end of the movie, when the Arab tribes led by Lawrence take over Damascus, the city starts falling apart because the Arabs can't run the technology. Soon there is no water and electricity. Lawrence does not want to get the British engineers involved because that would mean the Arabs would lose their hard won independence. But in an extraordinary scene, a British doctor berates Lawrence as disgusting, because wounded Turkish soldiers are dying in the hospital since there is no water. Here we clearly see the Western value of compassion even to one's enemies intertwined with the value of Western technology. And this moral superiority plays out totally unrelated to technological advancement. In the scene where Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif) first meets Lawrence (O'Toole), Lawrence is appalled that Ali shoots down his Beduin guide in cold blood for drinking from Ali's well. Ali responds that this is the law of the desert - the guide was from a different tribe than Ali and knew he was forbidden to drink from this well. As such he was a thief and deserved to be killed. This law offends Lawrence's sensibilities about justness and fairness and he sees it as barbaric.

I am no post-modernist. I strongly agree that modern Western civilization is the current pinnacle of human moral and intellectual development. Putting this point into a broader historical context, Western civilization has achieved this status because of its unique nature. Rather than being the continuation of one specific civilization, it is an amalgam of many traditions, moral and intellectual, from many great civilizations of the past. From the Greeks and Romans we have taken ideas about democracy and individual freedom as well as our capacity to use science and technology in the service of humanity. From the monotheistic traditions of the Middle East we have taken ideas about compassion, social justice and equality before the law. Our Western Civilization was formed in the crucible of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The nature of these two intellectual revolutions, ensure that Western civilization will continue to be dynamic and fluid, open to the influences and ideas of other civilizations it encounters (such as, e.g. the Buddhist idea of universal consciousness or the Confucian idea of harmony).

Before totally conceding point 1, there are two questions that remains. First, is empire the only way to spread Western values? This is a controversial and difficult question. I recently came across a book by British historian Niall Ferguson in which he argues precisely this point. He claims that despite its many faults and shortcomings, overall the legacy of the British empire on world history has been positive, because it led to the spread of the values of Western civilization. The alternatives - other empires or no empire - would have led to a far nastier world.

The second question is, should America now lead the Western empire - does America represent the pinnacle of Western civilization? I can hear the groans out there! Are endless video clips of J.Lo and Christina Aguilera the best the world can hope for? More importantly, on any scale of social equality, a key value of Western civilization, America tends towards the bottom of the list of Western countries. The Scandinavians, for example, more fully implement Western values in their societies (although the choice between ABBA and J.Lo is not very appealing). But this is really a quibble. No doubt, the refined Greeks looked down their noses on the coarse Romans. But it was the Romans who brought Hellenic civilization to the far corners of the world. As much as I admire the Scandinavians, it is no coincidence that its the United States that is the leader of the Western world and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. Ferguson and others make essentially the same point: we may all prefer Tony Blair a thousand-fold to George Bush, but it is Bush, as leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, who must and will be the Emperor.

Do I fully accept Ferguson's arguments? Do I believe empire is both necessary and sufficient to spread superior Western values across the globe? The answer to this question is tied up with a issues raised by point 2 - can the end justify the means? The British, like the Romans before them, ruled the world because they were masters of realpolitik. Similarly, one can argue that America has achieved that position for the same reason. But the point is not whether or not realpolitik is what guides the empire's politics. The deeper question is whether or not it should? These questions will be discussed in part 2.