Warrior Politics
Making the Best of a Bad Job

Week of Monday, February 25, 2002

At the turn of the year one of my favorite authors, Robert Kaplan, released a new book entitled Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands A Pagan Ethos.¹ With a slick marketing title like that, and having enjoyed his deliberately provocative style in five of his previous books, I was an easy touch to go straight to Amazon, buy the book, and read. Kaplan writes for the Atlantic Monthly, and for the better part of twenty five years has lived abroad writing about foreign affairs and travel.

Several of Kaplan's books have been eerily prescient. Balkan Ghosts (1993) appeared in conjunction with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and now reads something like prophecy. Soldiers of God: With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan (1990) went out of print, but since September 11, 2001 has now been reissued (2001). Or take his insight from Warrior Politics that we no longer live in a “modern” world where foreign policy and statecraft can be thought of in traditional ways:

“[T]he post-Industrial Revolution empowers anyone with a cellular phone and a bag of explosives. America's military superiority guarantees that such new adversaries will not fight according to our notions of fairness: they will come at us by surprise, asymmetrically, at our weakest points, as they often have in the past. Asymmetry gives terrorists and cybercriminals their strength, since such adversaries operate beyond accepted international norms and value systems on a plane where atrocity is a legitimate form of war” (9).

In today's world, statecraft must learn to think the unthinkable and realize that it is people like Radovan Karadzic, Saddam Hussein, and, yes, Osama bin Laden (27, 60, 119–120, 123) who define what henceforth we should think of as typical rather than exceptional.

A number of Kaplan's books have been criticized as not only unduly provocative but as overly pessimistic. His titles can sound alarmist, as with his recent The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (2000). Kaplan would not deny that he is pessimistic; rather, he has tried to contend that when you look at the world carefully, the empirical realities justify such alarm. In addition, he reminds us in Warrior Politics that he focuses on the dark side not because the future will necessarily be bad, but because anticipating those possibilities is what statecraft and foreign affairs are all about (5).

The pagan ethos necessary for effective statecraft today that Kaplan commends begins, then, with a “constructive pessimism” (xxi, 81) or “realism” (103), a pragmatic realpolitik. It requires us to think “tragically” about history and take a very grim view of the “bleak forces of human nature that lie just beneath the veneer of civilization” (49). Hobbes and Malthus, says Kaplan, are sure guides at this point. We should not be surprised at anarchy, barbarism and irrationality, especially as those manifest themselves among popular masses. We must remember that war is not an aberration but instead inherent in the human condition. Given the record of world history, it would be foolish hubris to lapse into exceptionalism, the idea that our country is so different or superior that it is immune from tragic history (a theme he also addresses in his book Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future).

With so much of the world characterized by flimsy institutions of law, economics, and government, destabilized by corruption, ethnic rivalry, environmental degradation, unsustainable population growth, urbanization, globalization, and the like, and with such a pessimistic view of human nature, statecraft means learning how best to wield coercive power to make the best of very bad situations and so to bring order to chaos. And this, of course, can be a very inexact and unpredictable science that often admits no good solutions. In places like Sierra Leone or Uganda, for example, “the challenge was to maintain civil order and the integrity of the state by whatever means available, with whatever allies were available. While the ultimate goal was moral, the means were sometimes offensive” (59). Or, to take another example, Churchill, Kaplan suggests, provides a commendable model to emulate: he thought tragically, knew how irrationally leaders and states can act, exhibited brutal realism instead of romantic illusions and, as a result, was successful in his “unapologetic warmongering” against Hitler (25).

Further, says Kaplan, modern statecraft must always separate personal virtue from public policy, and never let the former hinder the latter. The first duty of any state is its own, secular, self-interest. Politics is the realm of political expedience, whereas personal, individual virtue is the realm of moral perfection. The good warrior politician who intends to do good, said Machiavelli, must know how to be bad to accomplish that good (53). He must readily promote what might be necessary rather than nice, as in sanctioning deceit to avoid war (42–43), refusing intervention where there is no strategic self-interest, or killing many people to avoid killing more people. In an interesting aside, Kaplan observes that the liberal media, with its tendency to champion universal moral principles and human rights over national self-interest, might actually cause us to fight wars we would not and maybe even should not fight. In serving as an advocate for the powerless, the media shows very little sympathy with the “awful ironies” that foreign policy people must face (pp. 124–125, 154).

Kaplan's focus is foreign policy, so whereas willful deceit might be necessary for a military general, it would be wrong for a judge. Nor are warrior politics amoral. There can even be a “significant overlap” (108–109) with Christian virtue (he cites Saint Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr). Moderation, for example, would wisely avoid excessive cruelty or violence. Wielding decisive, coercive power just might punish evil and ameliorate human rights abuses. Naked power without “honor and decency” (Schlesinger) would be reckless. Christian notions of human depravity alert us to the will to violence and justify separation of powers.

Although I find Kaplan's political pragmatism compelling, they disturb my Christian conscience. It would seem the Christian who considers statecraft faces two options: withdraw from this realm of unsavory activity in order to preserve your sense of personal virtue. But as a friend of mine urges, he is not ready to relinquish any sphere of human activity totally to non-Christians. Perhaps the salt and light we bring to the world might not change world history, but I find it scary to think about a world without them. Furthermore, it strikes me as disingenuous to ask others to do the dirty work of statecraft so that we in turn can enjoy all the benefits of a strong and stable free society. The other alternative would be to enter the fray with all its moral ambiguities, use any and all means to succeed in securing the necessary end of national self interest, and, in the process, lose a bit of your soul. I've always wondered how a Christian, who identifies with both the kingdom of God and citizenship in the world, can pay such a high price for patriotism.

Reading Warrior Politics made me think of a few of my Christian friends involved in senior government positions. Kaplan's bracing insights are a reminder of how complex their world is, and how much more seriously I should pray for them and for “kings and all those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:2).