Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

War’s Mythology

WHAT HAVE OUR RULERS TOLD US THEIR WARS WERE ABOUT? Every leader understands that there are things people will die for and many of them revolve around protecting our homes, family, society, culture, and way of life. Hence America’s presidents, like all nations’ leaders, have emphasized the threats to hearth and home and other meritorious considerations as the justification for war’s death and destruction. Never have they said that war was to be about their advancement at our expense. Woodrow Wilson, seeking a declaration of war against Germany, exhorted the US Congress, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”8 Barack Obama, in speaking of genocide, noted that “We are haunted by the atrocities we did not stop.”9 George W. Bush, echoing Wilson’s sentiment, nobly called on US citizens to advance freedom and democracy throughout the world. As he said, “America is a Nation with a mission—and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace—a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”10 And how could the United States, the “one nation under God,” possibly forget that as venerable a source as Deuteronomy (20: 3–4) calls on us to go to war with no other than God at our side: “Hear, O Israel, ye draw nigh this day unto battle against your enemies; let not your heart faint; fear not, nor be alarmed, neither be ye affrighted at them; for the LORD your God is He that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.”11

These are the noble messages that stir us to action. They are the arguments that set the nation to work to combat evil in the world. And yet, inveterate cynics that we are, we doubt that many wars—US or otherwise—are really motivated by these ideals. Spreading democracy, preventing genocide, advancing God’s will, doing the right thing—these are all lofty goals and we do not for a moment doubt that America’s leaders have been willing to embrace them. And certainly we agree that it is pleasant to think that the righteous prevail; that right makes might; that God is on our side. Indeed as long as there has been war, we humans have been taught to understand it through lofty ideas. We have been educated to believe that foreign affairs are high politics, the stuff that goes beyond petty calculations of personal power and glory. What a pity. A focus on big ideas misleads us from the truth.

Would any leader, however noble a cause, be so foolish as to plunge a country into the devastation of war without first thinking through what the consequences are likely to be? Who would want a leader, who would keep a leader, who would reelect an incumbent so foolish as not to look ahead, just like any decent chess player, before making a move that could prove to be catastrophic? Surely no American president, having survived the torture of campaigning, can be accused of such naïveté as to plunge the nation into war without careful calculation of the anticipated costs and benefits, without working out the expected results of his or her choices, and adjusting strategies to make those choices work out as well as possible.

But when leaders do look ahead, what are they looking for? There really can be no doubt that a big part of their calculations concern whether things will go well for them .12 If that means things will also go well for the nation, so much the better! That is icing on the cake; it is not the essential ingredient that decides between war and peace. This, as we will see, is true even of our greatest wartime presidents. Indeed, it is especially true of them.

To explain war and peace we have to look no further than to what works best for egotistical politicians. To understand the workings of foreign affairs, we have to be ready to put aside the lofty ideas that we have been taught to believe govern what our leaders do. We have to realize that talk of nations and their policies is metaphor. Nations don’t have policies; nations don’t wage war; nations don’t pay a price for failure: people do! The founding fathers understood this message. They set out to design a government that would protect “We, the people” from their own cynical pursuit of power and glory. In that they succeeded better than many countries have, but they did not succeed as well as any of us dare to hope. They designed a government to limit their personal discretion in plunging us into war and they figured out how to thwart that design. That, we must acknowledge, is a lesson not lost on their successors. It is, however, a dual lesson from which we should learn to restore the intent—rather than the practice—of their design: to make war so unattractive for leaders that it is never their first resort and, likewise, to ensure that it is not delayed when other means to promote peace, prosperity, and justice have failed. Let us consider how the founders saw the danger of personal ambition as a defining motivation for war and then we can dissect the history of American presidents at war.

The Founders Fathomed the Dangers We Forget!

UNEASY WERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS AS THEY CREATED THE POWERS of the president. They worried, and rightly so, that the office might fall captive to the avarice, ambition, and personal aggrandizement of those elected to it. War, and the potential for presidents to wage it for their own benefit, was foremost on their minds. James Madison, addressing the decision to grant sole authority over the declaration of war to Congress, observed that

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.13

Today we look upon the founding fathers as wise and noble men who were eager to avoid in America the errant ways of Europe’s monarchies. In large measure we are right to view them so. They had a profound comprehension of the dangers inherent in different forms of government, including the very one they invented in the American Constitution. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton most particularly foresaw many of the political and economic struggles that were likely to befall the new nation. Madison understood that competitive electoral politics would naturally give rise to factions, such as political parties and regional divisions, and that these would conspire to satisfy the interests of each party’s or faction’s own supporters, sometimes at the expense of everyone else.14 Today’s partisan divide would certainly have been no surprise to Madison and, indeed, might be seen as quite mild compared to the vicious attacks in his day by one founding father against another. Madison himself might, in fact, be described as the dirty-tricks advance man for Thomas Jefferson’s own ambitions.15 Still, that was Madison as a day-to-day politician. However base the politics of the day may have been, we simply can have no doubt that these were deep-thinking, insightful political philosophers as well as practical politicians and revolutionaries.

It is our desire to strike a proper balance in our understanding of the two swords borne by such men as Madison, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, as well as by their presidential successors. They wielded the sword of ideas. As political theorists and revolutionaries, they wrenched the world away from monarchy and, in the later times of Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, away from other forms of repressive governance. The other sword they wielded was that of day-to-day politicians. This sword was used in service to the very flaws highlighted in Madison’s statement quoted earlier. We pay too little attention to the consequences for war and peace of that second sword, the sword of daily political competition and ambition—a knowledge deficiency we hope to correct.