A little evil can be good
What President Obama can learn from Machiavelli
Machiavellian, an epithet used to describe “every thing which is perfidious and base in politics” is not a new term. The quote I gave was from a book published in 1829 — which is somewhat remarkable, considering the distance between then and now in terms of political discourse. What other language that was used in 1829 is still used, and has the exact meaning as it does now?
It is a useful descriptor. Referring to Bashar Al-Assad or Vladimir Putin simply as “evil” — which does happen — is not terribly useful. After all, even if their motivation is disagreed with, simply being morally bankrupt is not why Putin annexed Crimea or Assad refused to step away from the presidency. States are big, complex things and they rely upon thousands of moving, human, parts. If Assad was simply bad and evil, he would not have the support of those innumerable fleshy moving parts keeping his state afloat. Even regimes that we can look back upon and rather certainly describe as evil, such as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, did not collapse under its own creaky moral foundation. Someone can be wrong and still believe in what they are doing — and these regimes we would call evil most certainly do reply upon people.
It’s also difficult to ascribe evil to something as complex as a state. Individual guards or wardens of concentration camps might have been evil — but were the workmen who assembled the rail lines leading to them? Were the architects? The soldiers who herded people onto trains? Certainly, individuals may have been, but it is impossible to ascribe evil to every such person involved in the operations. Rather, they might be selfish, oblivious, or otherwise distracted from seeing what they are taking part of — willingly or otherwise — and while they are something, evil they are not.
So it’s too easy to just call a leader evil. You could call them amoral, which can have the same meaning as Machiavellian. But not quite. A toad is amoral when it eats a cricket. My foot, and by extension myself is amoral when I accidentally step on said toad. Careless, sure. But not amoral. All amoral describes is a lack of something. Being Machiavellian describes being a certain kind of son of a bitch.
But don’t you want your leader to be a certain kind of son of a bitch? Especially in times of tension, crisis, or near crisis — don’t you want someone who will act with cunning or force, as the situation requires? Cautious leaders do not inspire action. There’s something to be said for having an even hand at the keel. In particular, in times of there being a “caretaker” government, or one whose modus operandi is not to act, but to simply not screw things up. There is also something to be said to laying about into your foes, striking down the innocent and rescuing the aggrieved. You need both. Consider the downing of Malyasia air flight MH17 over Ukraine. 193 Dutch citizens died. What did the Dutch government do? Not a god damned thing. 193 of its nationals died at the hands of, what are in effect, brigands — people who in the international order, have no business shooting down civilian aircraft. Not only was this a tragic moment, not only was it a moment highlight European impotence, it was also a moment in which an opportunity was lost. That is, suppose NATO responded to the downing of this airliner with an attack similar to what the US did against Libya in 1986, where the US sent in 45 aircraft on a punitive raid against Qaddafi’s military infrastructure. That would force Russian hands to reveal the nature of their relationship to these freedom fighters in the Donblass.
So, “don’t do stupid shit” might be a compelling slogan in the 70’s after defeat in Vietnam, in the 90’s after the Soviet Union became the stuff of history, or for the latter half of the 19th century — but it really isn’t when the sort of threats the United States, international order and international actors face in the teens of the new millennium. I write this as someone who truly believed that President Obama was doing the right things in the lions share of international relations events he had to navigate as president. In fact, I remember thinking that the president would be remembered for having a canny, if underwhelming, foreign policy during his presidency.
Yet, more or less with the arrival or the Islamic State — and we can consider that to either be the execution of James Foley or the crisis on Sinjar — it has been a waking nightmare in terms of American foreign policy. While that was my “wakening” moment, the true start would have to be the intervention in Libya. No, not the attack in Benghazi, but the start of the entire sorry enterprise. Why? Because without intervention in Libya, Benghazi would have never been a household name today.
But this isn’t a treatise on where Obama’s foreign policy went wrong. It is about what leaders can learn from Machiavelli, and the leader in question would be the current US President, Barack Obama. One of the most striking images presented in The Prince is that of the lion and the fox. To Machiavelli, both have distinct uses — A lion can chase away wolves, and a fox can escape traps. It could be supposed then that these represent two traits. The first, through the lion, is that of pure, unrestrained power. This is what the US has found itself as many times; unbridled, elemental force. After all, who wasn’t shocked/awed when seeing the footage of American airpower lighting up Baghdad in 2003? I have vivid memories of strangely clear video, situated across the Euphrates as Saddam’s palaces and barracks were being destroyed. American power is considerable to the point of being able to extend it anywhere on the globe, with the potential to inflict magnitudes greater losses on the recipient that suffered by American hands to deliver. Yet, power is not the start, the end, or even the middle in terms of foreign policy. Yes, it can be all of those things. But in and of itself, it is not a start or an end by its mere existence.
Because of this, we have the fox. The fox is individually weak, capable of only going after small game. Further, it is a solitary creature — foxes cannot mitigate their relatively weak physical stature by forming a larger group. The strength of the fox, then, is through its cunning and its perception. A fox is not going to be able to do long form division, but it can certainly hide better, quicker, and more efficiently than a human. However, the fox does have competition, such as the wolf. Wolves may not be as individually clever as a fox, but they do not need to be, as they are social creatures and not work alone.
To quote The Prince “A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.”
It is interesting how Machiavelli does not beseech the prince to become the wolf. The reasons for this may be elucidated upon a later date. Yet, a point should be made. The imagery that man has of the wolf could be summarized in Aesop fable about the wolf and the lamb — here the wolf is seen as cruel, capricious; willing to do anything to fill its own belly.
The issue is that much of the world sees American influence as the wolf, the American government sees itself as the Lion, and the American people see the American application of power lacking any of the cunning that the fox would bring. What do we have then? A world who sees American power as capricious, a government who sees itself as all powerful, and a people who sees its leaders as bumbling and ineffectual.
