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Syria and the limits of realpolitik - by Hugh Gusterson
http://www.thebulletin.org/syria-and-limits-realpolitik
Syria and the limits of realpolitik
Hugh Gusterson
6 September 2013
Among the cacophony of voices arguing for and against US intervention in Syria, one opinion has stood out both for its cold clear logic and its chillingly frank amorality. The influential defense intellectual Edward Luttwak, writing on the opinion page of The New York Times, argued that in Syria “a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.” Saying that “it would be disastrous” if Assad won because this would strengthen Iran and Hezbollah, he observes that “a rebel victory would also be extremely dangerous” because Islamic extremists, “some identified with Al Qaeda,” would then prevail. “Given this depressing state of affairs,” he argues, “maintaining a stalemate should be America’s objective. And the only possible method for achieving this is to arm the rebels when it seems that Mr. Assad’s forces are ascendant and to stop supplying the rebels if they actually seem to be winning.”
My corner of the Internet lit up with outrage when Luttwak’s op-ed came out. “How immoral can a man be?” was the title of one message. The fury focused on Luttwak’s apparent indifference to the loss of Syrian life: He seems to see Syria as a piece in a board game rather than a country inhabited by people who can bleed and suffer. But framing a critique of Luttwak in moral terms implies that he may be right on realist grounds—and he’s not. Luttwak’s op-ed was appalling not just because of its callous indifference to Arab life, but because it suggests that many self-styled realists—who argue that states should follow their self-evident interests regardless of morality—still have not learned the intellectual lesson of the failed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, namely that violence, once unleashed, is hard to control. Luttwak’s argument is not only immoral; it is unrealistic and naïve.
Luttwak espouses what we might call a Newtonian approach to international security. His world is full of forces, balances, equilibria, and solutions. Conflict participants are clearly-defined units with positive charges if they are US allies (in this case, Israel), and negative charges if they are not (the Assad regime, Iran, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda). It is the analyst’s job to arrange them in stable configurations that will advance US interests.
<snip>
But there is a still deeper flaw in Luttwak’s argument. From the lofty distance of his Washington think tank, where the Middle East looks like a board game, Luttwak does not seem to understand the profoundly deformative effects of war on those who are, willingly or unwillingly, inside it. While Washington defense intellectuals like to speak of violence in terms of “surgical strikes” and “calibrated attacks,” those who are inside the violence may have a very different experience. The violence that envelops their world may seem thrilling or terrifying, depending on their relationship to it, but in its vividness, unpredictability and sensory force, it is unlikely to feel surgical. They will see children, comrades, and loved ones blown apart and they may break the taboo against killing other humans—a transgression that, however licensed, changes a person forever. Whether they experience the rush of the executioner, the terror of the victim, or the grief of the bereaved, war will remake them. After the war is over, some will pile the skeletons in the mental closet and go on with civilian life, and some will quietly spiral downwards into alcoholism, homelessness, or a chafing mental isolation. But some, twisted and disinhibited by war, will carry the violence forward. Timothy McVeigh, before he blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building, fought in the first Gulf War. Adolf Hitler’s murderous ambitions were shaped by trench warfare in World War I. And in Afghanistan in the early 1980s, Osama bin Laden developed his disinhibition against killing, partly at the US taxpayer’s expense, in a war that American national security officials saw as a cunning way of tying down their Russian adversary—just as Luttwak sees endemic civil war in Syria as a clever way of distracting America’s enemies today.
<snip>
Syria and the limits of realpolitik
Hugh Gusterson
6 September 2013
Among the cacophony of voices arguing for and against US intervention in Syria, one opinion has stood out both for its cold clear logic and its chillingly frank amorality. The influential defense intellectual Edward Luttwak, writing on the opinion page of The New York Times, argued that in Syria “a prolonged stalemate is the only outcome that would not be damaging to American interests.” Saying that “it would be disastrous” if Assad won because this would strengthen Iran and Hezbollah, he observes that “a rebel victory would also be extremely dangerous” because Islamic extremists, “some identified with Al Qaeda,” would then prevail. “Given this depressing state of affairs,” he argues, “maintaining a stalemate should be America’s objective. And the only possible method for achieving this is to arm the rebels when it seems that Mr. Assad’s forces are ascendant and to stop supplying the rebels if they actually seem to be winning.”
My corner of the Internet lit up with outrage when Luttwak’s op-ed came out. “How immoral can a man be?” was the title of one message. The fury focused on Luttwak’s apparent indifference to the loss of Syrian life: He seems to see Syria as a piece in a board game rather than a country inhabited by people who can bleed and suffer. But framing a critique of Luttwak in moral terms implies that he may be right on realist grounds—and he’s not. Luttwak’s op-ed was appalling not just because of its callous indifference to Arab life, but because it suggests that many self-styled realists—who argue that states should follow their self-evident interests regardless of morality—still have not learned the intellectual lesson of the failed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, namely that violence, once unleashed, is hard to control. Luttwak’s argument is not only immoral; it is unrealistic and naïve.
Luttwak espouses what we might call a Newtonian approach to international security. His world is full of forces, balances, equilibria, and solutions. Conflict participants are clearly-defined units with positive charges if they are US allies (in this case, Israel), and negative charges if they are not (the Assad regime, Iran, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda). It is the analyst’s job to arrange them in stable configurations that will advance US interests.
<snip>
But there is a still deeper flaw in Luttwak’s argument. From the lofty distance of his Washington think tank, where the Middle East looks like a board game, Luttwak does not seem to understand the profoundly deformative effects of war on those who are, willingly or unwillingly, inside it. While Washington defense intellectuals like to speak of violence in terms of “surgical strikes” and “calibrated attacks,” those who are inside the violence may have a very different experience. The violence that envelops their world may seem thrilling or terrifying, depending on their relationship to it, but in its vividness, unpredictability and sensory force, it is unlikely to feel surgical. They will see children, comrades, and loved ones blown apart and they may break the taboo against killing other humans—a transgression that, however licensed, changes a person forever. Whether they experience the rush of the executioner, the terror of the victim, or the grief of the bereaved, war will remake them. After the war is over, some will pile the skeletons in the mental closet and go on with civilian life, and some will quietly spiral downwards into alcoholism, homelessness, or a chafing mental isolation. But some, twisted and disinhibited by war, will carry the violence forward. Timothy McVeigh, before he blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building, fought in the first Gulf War. Adolf Hitler’s murderous ambitions were shaped by trench warfare in World War I. And in Afghanistan in the early 1980s, Osama bin Laden developed his disinhibition against killing, partly at the US taxpayer’s expense, in a war that American national security officials saw as a cunning way of tying down their Russian adversary—just as Luttwak sees endemic civil war in Syria as a clever way of distracting America’s enemies today.
<snip>
Hugh Gusterson
An anthropologist, Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. He has conducted considerable fieldwork in the United States and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books encapsulate this work--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). He also coedited Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005) and the sequel, The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009). Previously, he taught in MIT's Program on Science, Technology, and Society.
An anthropologist, Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. He has conducted considerable fieldwork in the United States and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books encapsulate this work--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). He also coedited Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005) and the sequel, The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009). Previously, he taught in MIT's Program on Science, Technology, and Society.