http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/autumn05/polaut05-8.htm
"To simplify an already simplistic argument, Europeans and Americans
differ specifically on the use of military force and its utility, the
legitimacy of power and, more generally, on the question of
international order and the role of international institutions and
international law. These differences have two main sources. The first
is the vast disparity in military capability. It is inherently true
that nations which have greater military power tend to use it more,
and believe in its legitimacy more, while nations which are weaker
tend to believe less in military power and less in its legitimacy, and
seek to use mechanisms to constrain those who have more military
power."
This seems to me to be a direct transliteration of Nietzsche's account
of "slave morality" in _The Genealogy of Morals_: that "the weak" seek
to "use mechanisms" to constrain "the strong". (That is, given
Nietzsche's definitions of weakness and strength). There is also a
parallel with the now infamous line about "reality-based" policy, the
policy of reaction and adjustment, versus a policy that creates its
own reality as it goes along. "The strong" in Nietzsche's account are
precisely the creators of new reality in this sense.
What happens, though, if you start taking your lead from Nietzsche is
that you are then subject to the complications his argument embraces.
_The Genealogy of Morals_ is concerned with a specific problem: it
needs to account for the force of *ressentiment*, its ability to
effect a revolution in morals. How can "the weak" defeat "the strong",
imposing their own values and morality in order to bind the hands of
their masters? Through deviousness, cunning and malice, through an
introversion that enables them to modify their own essence, the
"priestly caste" are able to bring about an inversion of the order of
priority between word and action, symbol and thing, such that morals
and laws obtain a binding power in place of the direct application of
force. In Nietzsche's telling of the fable, the "priestly caste"
effectively trick their rulers out of their power; but in order to do
this, they must bind themselves with a novel and terrible discipline
(this is the origin of "conscience").
There are then two ways of creating "new reality": through direct and
unmediated action, the privilege of "the strong", and through the dark
arts of introversion and "spiritual" discipline. Nietzsche represents
the priestly revolution as an intensification and redistribution of
violence, violence diverted from its "natural" expression and turned
inwards, rather as Foucault regarded the birth of the penal system as
a continuation by other means of the violence rather more innocently
expressed by the flayings and mutilations of the previous age.
This is undoubtedly a rather revolting way of looking at actual
geopolitics, but there you go: if one follows Kagan's lead in
analysing US and European attitudes towards military strength in a
Nietzschean light, then that is where that analysis will take you:
towards an identification of "Europe" with the anti-semitic stereotype
that Nietzsche was working from - the type of the "inverted"
intellectual, the devious and resentful confounder of action - and of
"America" with the cruel and impetuous aryan master whose fate it is
to be made obsolete by a revolution he cannot understand (since he has
not undergone the spiritual self-violence necessary for the formation
of the priestly conscience).
As a description of some of the caricatures presently cavorting on the
stage of Opinion, I'd say this has some traction. As I said before, as
a view of actual geopolitics it pretty much stinks.
Dominic
--
"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas,
obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
With a little practice, writing can be an
intimidating and impenetrable fog!" - Calvin
|