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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - June 22, 2010
Marching Towards National Tragedy
By: William Pfaff
Paris, June 15, 2010 ? This writer has recently published
a book which examines the cultural origins of a certain
American outlook that since the Second World War has
inspired generally unsuccessful military interventions
into non-western countries, the most dramatic of the
results being the defeat in Vietnam followed by the
genocide in Cambodia. This American outlook subsequently
inspired the 2001-2003 invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,
neither of them successfully settled (or indeed "won"),
and both of them, these days, looking as if they may
crumble again into internecine violence, despite the
continued presence of American troops (and in Afghanistan,
those of NATO).
This may make the book sound like just one more American
recitation of how the Bush and Obama administrations have
gone wrong, accompanied by some new argument about how the
U.S. might "surge" its way out of its problems, or renew
its efforts to turn Iraq, Afghanistan (and Pakistan), and
other non-western countries, into modern global democracies,
or reorganize the world generally according to some
progressive (or neo-conservative) scheme.
I am in fact more inclined to recommend that the U.S.
simply walk away from these disasters, but the principal
concern of the book is to explain why all this happened,
so as to prevent it from going on happening. Thus the
book's title is "The Irony of Manifest Destiny." The
subtitle is "The Tragedy of American Foreign Policy."
(It's published by Walker in New York, a part of the
Bloomsbury International group).
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Let me start with the 18th century Enlightenment. As Peter
Gay, the American historian of the Enlightenment has said
(as have others before him), one of the principal outcomes
of the Enlightenment's intellectual revolution was to under-
mine Christianity and substitute what Gay calls the Modern
Paganism. It is easy to see that one of the chief results
of this was to cause a great many of the intellectual
leaders of the period to cease to believe in a heavenly
destiny for humans. Christianity had said (and continues
to say) that if you obeyed God's injunctions, as revealed
to humans in scripture and prophecy, you would go to heaven
to share the company of God. The political significance of
this was that earthly life and struggle settle nothing
fundamental, and find a religious resolution.
The isolated American colonies largely escaped the European
Enlightenment experience, and therefore escaped the lessons
it taught the Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Modern Paganism inspired the effort to create secular
utopias. It taught that as there was no God, no heaven,
and presumably no end to history, men would have to change
human society and destiny, if there was to be any change
at all. A better world would have to come from human effort
-- if there was ever to be a better world.
Therefore in the 19th century a series of theories about
human destiny were proclaimed, nearly always accompanied
by a plan showing how people must behave to make a heaven
on earth, or something close to it.. There was Marxism, to
lead to the triumph of the working class and perfection
of society. There were doctrines of racial superiority
and triumph over lesser races, or other human groups or
classes. Nazism was the obvious case, but there were plenty
of others, few of them peaceful, most involving conquest
by war, the destruction of rival groups, and the arrival
of a New Man. Usually it was assumed ? as in the 20th
century totalitarianisms ? that ruthless action was
essential to make this happen. Any degree of bloodshed was
permissible if the outcome was to be a utopian society.
The alternative of peaceful utopian evolution was proclaim-
ed by Francis Fukuyama ? in an expression he probably wish-
es he had never invented ? as the End of History, in which
the collapse of Communism had left society perfected in a
liberal democratic capitalist order that had no need for
future change. There would be no more history because there
would be no need for it. All the important problems would
have been solved, largely through peaceful action and the
good example and leadership of the United States.
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It has not turned out that way. Even after the well-
intentioned wars waged by the United States, Americans
are still struggling to establish their own version of
a utopian world order, the great illusion of the Enlighten-
ment. We are still at it by means of American interventions
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly Iran, Central
Asia, and elsewhere.
The conclusion of my argument is that no secular Utopia is
going to be created. The lesson of modern European history
? the world wars and the great totalitarian convulsions ?
is that trying to create one invites disaster.
My other conclusion is a very old one. No single power is
going to "conquer" the world ? even if its motivation is
benevolent. The effort is nearly always destructive to all.
This is a lesson to which few listen. It was formulated in
the great period of classical Greek philosophy and drama,
and summed up in classical tragedy. The pattern is simple:
the achievement of great power, the growth of unchecked
ambition, power's misuse through the flaws of human
character, produce crimes against what the commonality of
society understands as moral order. This constitutes hubris
? arrogant overreaching. It invariably ends in defeat and
retribution. It undoubtedly will happen to us too. Read
the book.
Copyright 2010 by Tribune Media Services International.
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