Recently, there have been a lot of pundits advocating a pre-emptive war against Iran, even if such talk was almost non-existent as of the beginning of this year. The first pundit I saw who advocated such a strike writes for the Asia Times Online under the pen name “Spengler” – an apt characterization, for what he writes. “Spengler” is a professional cynic.
He does have a knack for being ahead of the curve on some issues. Instead of a typical neo-con drum-thumper who mixes a standardized education with war fumes, he's a thinker who shows both depth and sense. His advocacy of premature (pre-emptive) war, published back on October 18, 2004, is the first advice of this sort I have read – but as fumes grow thicker and heat up, it has become further and further away from being the last.
"Spengler" does show a fair bit of erudition as he makes his case for premature war. His thesis is: the usual balance-of-power norm for keeping the peace ensures that, once an un-preventable war erupts, it will be a blood-soaked war of attrition, like World Wars 1 and 2, the American Civil War, the Thirty Years' War and the Peloponnesian War were. The clear implication of his article is that, once war is inevitable, the peacemaker becomes an ineffectual “mother goose-hen” who winds up making the conflict worse for both sides.
Since his analysis is rooted in a conditional – "if war is inevitable, then pre-emptive war is less bloody than postponed war" – it would be a mistake to single "Spengler" out for blame if the U.S. government does launch a pre-emptive war. He isn't the one who has the eminence, let alone the authority, to decide whether or not a war is inevitable. Rather than pick on him, it would be better to examine why such wars of attrition do occur, and why pre-emptive war, a doctrine which has never failed because it never really has been tried, fails when it is broached.
It would be neat to conclude that wars of attrition result from war policy decisions turning arthritic. Instead of maintaining mental flexibility, the governments who wind up fighting a long and bloody attritional war have too-restrictive criteria for what constitutes a casus belli. This is the meat-and-potatoes part of such an analysis. The tasty dessert comes with blaming the "peace creeps" for the stiffening of the war-policy joints: this post-dinner appetizer always comes with a generous topping of schadenfreude sauce. "Mmm…Bismarck Surprise!"
As I indicated, war policy always has a domestic component to it. The present-day peace activists who oppose the present Iraqi operation with the slogan "No Blood For Oil!" know it all too well: they see the Iraqi war as a hegemonic exchange of American blood for Middle East oil. More right wing scholars have made a similar point about World Wars 1 and 2: their slogan could very well have been "No Enslavement For Self-Determination!" Like many professional cynics, "Spengler" presents a well-thought-out analysis which omits the "why"s. Confining a second opinion to America's participation in World Wars 1 and 2, as well as to the Civil War, does hint at why wars launched by governments are pre-postponed by citizens who are not "peace ninnies." If your government is bellicose enough to break through norms which counsel peace, then what domestic norms is it going to violate too?
This factor has no better supporting evidence than the recent story by USA Today exposing domestic “data mining” from telephone records by the NSA. The facts in that story should be mixed with the old maxim “when the masses are restive, start a war.” What does a pre-emptive war really pre-empt?
Consider what is permitted – or even obligatory – during war in the home front. What would be insufferable nosiness in times of peace is considered patriotic in war. What would be no more than free thought in peacetime runs the hazard of aiding and abetting in times of war. War by a government all-but-forces its citizens to anesthetize their motive-questioning faculty, except in only one way. Paying lip service to "victory" excuses many faults in times of war. War sets loose the finger pointer, the blamer, the prudent troublemaker, the censor, the bully – and not all of them wear a uniform. What is insufferable in normal times, and barely tolerable during times of subversion hunting, becomes glorified during times of war. Thus, there is little need to wonder why the New Left's 1969 slogan "Bring The War Home" stuck in so many minds.
There is also a geopolitical angle to consider, which relates to geopolitical economy. Since war is so awful, the declarer of it needs a very good reason to enter into one. Adding pre-emptive war as a desirable good makes "attack u2018em while it's easy" a casus belli. An economist would conclude that a sharp lowering of the costs of war, in terms of blood and treasure, would result in more pre-emptive wars being fought. It should always be remembered that the overconfidence enjoyed by war strategists on the eve of World War 1 resulted from earlier easy victories against "backward" peoples. All it takes, once this mind-set is established, is to see a strong foe as "backward" and the bloody war of attrition is all-but launched. The counter-argument which renders "Spengler"'s analysis doubtful is: what if the governments who started those wars of attrition thought, after weighty deliberations, that the right moment for a good and easy pre-emptive war had arrived at the time when those wars were really started? It should be remembered that "attack u2018em while it's easy" can only mean, "attack u2018em while it seems easy" in real time.
What is also forgotten is the possibility that the "inevitability doctrine" can be gamed. Given that what is called extremist Islam has a penchant for using suicide bombers, it isn't a sign of either pink blood or closet anti-Semitism to wonder whether or not Iran's President Ahmadinejad is not the Hitler he is portrayed as. A cigar-chomping cynic could ask, "what if he's pulling a Hitler act in order to goad the United States to launch an aggressive war for the sake of a bloody shirt, one which his allies – or political masters – can later wave to the world? Is he just trying to get our goat?"
Yes, this is the logical counter-stratagem to pre-emptive war: goat-getting and throwing the game – perhaps as a prelude to a guerilla sequel. The ultimate weakness of the doctrine of pre-emptive war is that it makes guerilla counter-responses more practical because the pre-emptive striker is easy to portray as an evil bully to the conquered. The ultimate cost of pre-emptive war is the loss of world trust. The British Empire did have "the mighty modern Maxim gun, which sent the Dervish to the sun" but it later had a series of guerilla insurgencies which cost it its Empire. Pre-emptive war seems attractive because these secondary consequences are overlooked.
Come to think of it, the easy victory in Iraq is beginning to look a lot like that kind of prequel, which suggests that the U.S. did get suckered. It's a real pity that our war hawks with their "mo" never got taken advantage of by a snooker hustler.
May 13, 2006
