Comments on: Our Great Passion for War http://senseorsensibility.com/blog/our-great-passion-for-war/ The Philosophy of Jane Austen's Novels Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:00:20 +0100 hourly 1 By: chris http://senseorsensibility.com/blog/our-great-passion-for-war/comment-page-1/#comment-659 chris Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:34:59 +0000 http://senseorsensibility.com/?p=1560#comment-659 Yes indeed Roberto-I will look out for it. Every which way you look at this it is folly. Even if your motivation is to maximise our ability to dominate other nations this is folly. The ideological left and right both reject the goal of even trying to dominate other nations of course and I agree with their critique. I am also comfortable with intelligent realists like Stephen Walt that argue that every nation will try to maximise its interests, including ourselves, and that to try and fight this is to bend things out of shape and invite more trouble and disaster in the long run. My approach to the realists is to say fine, but we must all see that our enlightened self-interest lies co-operative frameworks that avoid zero-sum games and encourage states to pursue enlightened self-interest. (Scott Horton's <a href="http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/10/30/john-v-walsh-4/" rel="nofollow">recent discussion</a> with John V. Walsh of China's preference for trade over military development was striking in emphasising the folly of militarism, I thought.) My problem is with the belligerent noeconservatives and liberal hawks and their great army enablers, the incredibly lazy thinking you find even--and maybe especially--in the intelligentsia. The bottom line is that you can't afford to be lazy about these matters. It requires constant self-examination. My angle is less the pathology of the loonies than how our pervasive habits of thought enable their agenda. Yes indeed Roberto-I will look out for it. Every which way you look at this it is folly. Even if your motivation is to maximise our ability to dominate other nations this is folly. The ideological left and right both reject the goal of even trying to dominate other nations of course and I agree with their critique. I am also comfortable with intelligent realists like Stephen Walt that argue that every nation will try to maximise its interests, including ourselves, and that to try and fight this is to bend things out of shape and invite more trouble and disaster in the long run. My approach to the realists is to say fine, but we must all see that our enlightened self-interest lies co-operative frameworks that avoid zero-sum games and encourage states to pursue enlightened self-interest. (Scott Horton’s recent discussion with John V. Walsh of China’s preference for trade over military development was striking in emphasising the folly of militarism, I thought.)

My problem is with the belligerent noeconservatives and liberal hawks and their great army enablers, the incredibly lazy thinking you find even–and maybe especially–in the intelligentsia.

The bottom line is that you can’t afford to be lazy about these matters. It requires constant self-examination. My angle is less the pathology of the loonies than how our pervasive habits of thought enable their agenda.

]]> By: Roberto http://senseorsensibility.com/blog/our-great-passion-for-war/comment-page-1/#comment-657 Roberto Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:33:40 +0000 http://senseorsensibility.com/?p=1560#comment-657 An indispensable aide to understanding the is passion is "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" by Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a former career Army officer and now a professor at Boston University. As he points out, we are now spending 20-plus more (adjusted for inflation) on defense than we did at the height of the Cold War, when we had a real enemy who could do us serious harm. Thing is: it's not for "defense" in any real sense -- it's about policing the borders of an imperium. Bacevich isn't a man of the Left, he's a conservative Catholic whose own son was killed in Iraq. (He criticized that exercise in empire before his terrible loss.) An indispensable aide to understanding the is passion is “The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War” by Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a former career Army officer and now a professor at Boston University. As he points out, we are now spending 20-plus more (adjusted for inflation) on defense than we did at the height of the Cold War, when we had a real enemy who could do us serious harm.

Thing is: it’s not for “defense” in any real sense — it’s about policing the borders of an imperium. Bacevich isn’t a man of the Left, he’s a conservative Catholic whose own son was killed in Iraq. (He criticized that exercise in empire before his terrible loss.)

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