Least possible necessary aggression as an important correction to soft power
It's just occurred to me, this afternoon why my work with least possible necessary aggression is an important correction to soft power, and makes me very grateful to have waited before I published anything on it in more formal scholarly journals.
Joe's idea of soft power often assumes and seems intended to assume, given many of Joe's comments on soft power, to be a means of manipulative power. Meaning, Joe argues that using softer forms of power like culture, media, education, etc., that we can make others do what we want them to do. We can coopt them or win them to our way of thinking about things. And Joe argues that such soft power is important for liberal democracies like America to exercise power in the world.
What Joe is saying is true. It is also manipulative. And it is this manipulation that less liberal, traditional, and especially, today, Muslim, cultures often object to in liberal democracies. It is also this more manipulative tendency of more illiberal values, institutions, cultures, and governments which these same people use to rationalize all of the worst abuses of power like theocracy, despotism, genocide, slavery, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, terrorism, political pressure and manipulation in lieu of more genuine liberal democratic engagement, discussion, debate, and thought and other abuses of power (I just want to be clear that it is pretty clear to me that the underlying cause of terrorism is not poverty or humiliation or any of the other pet theories of terrorism; the underlying cause of terrorism is a desire for power to influence and pressure for political outcomes desired by terrorists and the people who support them and that they are willing to rationalize murder of innocent civilians in order to do so).
Many more repressive, repressed, illiberal, traditional, and theocratic or authoritarian cultures of one kind or another see a decadent, libertine side of American and liberal cultures that they - and many American and liberal folks, as well - confound with a freedom respecting and loving liberal culture based on liberal education and liberal democratic values. I don't think most serious liberal democrats - small "l" and small "d", meaning anyone who cares about freedom and democracy - would argue that liberal means "anything goes". What liberals like me, at least, argue, and I think most liberal peoples, is that liberal values and liberal institutions provide and should provide the maximum freedom possible to realize a more self-actualized form of virtue, morality, and a whole host of political, economic, cultural, and other valuable ends that less liberal cultures persistently romanticize and glamourize but are much farther away from achieving.
Liberal values allow us to achieve our highest values with the most integrity most reliably, with much allowance for the propensity of people, in liberal or illiberal cultures, to fall short of those values and to learn from their mistakes. Liberal values, institutions, and cultures allow people to learn from their mistakes more readily, and less liberal values, institutions, and cultures do not allow people to learn from their mistakes as readily, thus entrenching, rationalizing, repressing and repeating them, as people feel social, political, and legal pressure to be defensive of serious mistakes of humanity and of the human heart and rationalize them in the wake of that defensiveness rather than face them more openly and honestly, as liberal values, institutions, and cultures allow. All people, individuals, cultures, institutions, governments, etc. make mistakes. What makes liberal values, people, individuals, institutions, cultures, governments, etc. stronger and better at dealing with the problems and opportunities they face is that the greater freedom they experience allows them more space to face and correct mistakes and problems as they occur. And, perhaps more important than all of that, liberal values allow us to better distinguish between what actually is a mistake and what might be a valuable pluralism, change, experimentation, learning experience or other variation on more homogenous, especially illiberally imposed thinking.
Joe's concept of soft power is often manipulative. There are times when such manipulation may be a better option than harder power and more aggressive options when more aggressive action directed at people is imminent and threatening (though not when such action is not imminent or threatening and when there is legitimate issues of self-defense at stake; the Iranian and North Korean situation and all matters of nuclear proliferation are complicated situations, for that reason, which Western powers have rationalized away in the name of their power to control nuclear proliferation, which is a legitimate concern, but which also needs to respect the legitimate concern and right of sovereign nations to prepare for matters of self-defense).
My assumptions with least possible necessary aggression only assumes a legitimate purpose for the more manipulative use of power when physical danger is truly imminent and when genuine alternatives are more aggressive.
I do not want these principles being rationalized to imply, as has been implied with the "good cop/bad cop" implications of this political period, that soft power or least possible necessary aggression can essentially be used to soften and provide the means of manipulation for any matter of life that anyone may want to regulate. That is a variation on manipulative repressive governing philosophy that is responsible for so much of the irrationality and failures of governing and culture in more liberal and democratic cultures, as well as more illiberal and undemocratic cultures, for as long as they have been around. Aggressive regulation of behavior is only necessary and should only be present when there is imminent physical danger to people. Otherwise, there should be a broad zone of freedom for people, with more collaborative and least aggressive possible efforts, and, ideally, no aggression, to engage difficult matters of life and conflicts and public policy, with an ideal world being one where grown-ups resolve problems between grown-ups in ways that do not involve threatening and aggressive behavior and where disagreement and conscience has as much room as is necessary to sort out even important and difficult matters of conscience, war policy being a particularly important area where respect for disagreements on matters of conscience are needed and where as much room as possible for substative discussion, debate, and disagreement and respect for the consciences of people involved - without rationalizing forcing, pressuring, or otherwise aggressively circumventing conscience - is necessary for more thoughtful policies to be pursued.
The bottom line is that my work - and, ideally, Joe's work on soft power - should not be used to rationalize manipulation that undermines and disrespects matters of conscience. Least possible necessary aggression is an explicit presumption on the use of power to avoid just that manipulation and all its corresponding failures and injustices. It should be used to deal with situations where real danger and threat is imminent and where less aggressive options are and have been used. This current period does not justify well enough, to my mind, more aggressive options since more aggressive options are so readily rationalized and used and less aggressive options are so infrequently used and still abused as a matter of manipulation that circumvents conscience and legitimate self-governance and self-determination, which is exactly what has rationalized the threats of military action to resolve the situation in Iran, for instance.
The idea that a nation or a people could use the threat of military action and supremacy and the most aggressive action to get their way on any important matter of policy or conscience should be recognized as foolish and repugnant to people with more genuine liberal democratic commitments and more genuinely internalized liberal values. What is the use of liberal values if they are going to be perpetually used to rationalize, excuse, and provide cover for more repressive, manipulative, and dominating action by any actor? How exactly are they distinguished from illiberal action or illiberal governance, then?
The short answer that liberal democratic peoples have settled for, at this point, is "Whatever we say it means." Which is not good enough. And it is certainly not good enough for those people who are subject to the power and its abuses of even people with more general liberal democratic commitments, values, institutions, and cultures.
"Liberal democracy" is not an excuse for "whatever I damn well please." And the irony is that those who act in the name of liberal democratic values but who are, in fact, more repressive in their policies, governance, advocacy, thinking, and outlooks are generally the most libertine in this respect. They more often than not want to limit and restrain the behavior of others, but will rationalize any of the worst of abuses of power and ignore or fight limits on their own use of power (and the pride that sustains that abuse) for themselves in the name of any favored causes.
Joe Lieberman will walk to his synagogue on Friday, but he will rationalize a military strike on Iran, even when the Iranians have not engaged in open warfare with Americans? They most likely have provided weapons and munitions to an enemy with which Americans are engaged in open conflict, but if that were justification for open warfare, then Americans have an awful lot of people and governments who have grievances - current and in the recent past - for engaging us in open warfare for our provision of weapons, munitions and other forms of support to their enemies.
If America does not want a free-for-all when it comes to such wartime or peace-time behavior, then they need more than international institutions, treaties, democratic discussion, and laws with empirical, objective justifications and presumptions around the use of force, aggression, and defense - hard power in the form of military, political, and economic aggression and soft power in the form of cultural, educational, media, entertainment, and other forms of power - than just "We attack when we think we are threatened" or "We use hard power and soft power when it suits our pleasure with no presumption on its use, misuse, abuse, or when we should avoid using it". Joe's idea of soft power is clearly too flexible and libertine to create a more empirical, objective justification and presumption for its use to provide any kind of distinction between just uses of force and unjust uses of force.
That accounting for the reality of arguments and use of force don't sound restrained do they? Because they are not. Because their open-endedness gives unlimited justification for the use of power and force whenever it so suits its users.
That is the reason for a need for a presumption and an internalized, reason-based limit on the use of power and force. That is the reason for the need of the presumption of least possible necessary aggression, particularly when the assumption that force and power should only be used when physical danger is clearly imminent and when no other means can protect from physical danger.
The rhetoric of "rules," "accountability," "strict enforcement," have dominated this period. But the truth is that they have done so with virtually unlimited aggression. Meaning, they have done so in a way that is both repressive of others and libertine with its own vices and limits, even as it is justified on the grounds of self-righteous interpretations of matters of public policy. The only way to prevent that more repressive and libertine interpretation of aggression and enforcement is to have a more thoughtful conception of the use of aggression and force that does not justify force and aggression at every turn or in any way that people see fit. Such a conception may be roughly democratic in various political and historical eras, but it far from more ideally liberal democratic values, aspirations, institutions, cultures which presume against the use of aggression and force and external regulation of people and in favor of education, self-governance, self-determination and a broad zone of freedom meant to allow people the space and learning experiences to internalize and self-actualize our best values and to solve new problems and even older problems in novel, innovative, and ground-breaking ways.
Least possible necessary aggression, then, should be read as an important correction to soft power. It should not, nor should soft power, be read as one more manipulative means in the toolkit of propangandists, demagogues, power-mongers, despots, and terrorists. Least possible necessary aggression should be read as a important correction to the notion that power is properly conceived in liberal democracies as the means to get what we want. Power in liberal democracies carries a liberal and moral component to respect the freedoms and self-governance of citizens. Private and public partnerships, for instance, should act as just that: partnerships. Not governance lording over private life. And aggression should be reserved for the clearly and physically threatening and dangerous features of liberal democratic life. All other engagements should be as least threatening and aggressive and cynical and most genuinely collaborative, partnering, respectful of differences, and respecting a broad zone for freedoms as possible. Everything else is a profound distortion of liberal democratic values and life, no matter what laws do or do not get written.
Slavery may be legal in a liberal democracy. But it is hardly liberal or democratic. And liberal democracy should not be read as an institution that must or does entrench illiberal or undemocratic instititutions just because they walk about in liberal democratic clothing. Naziism may use the language and institution of a Wieber liberal democracy, but it hardly either and should not be treated as either just because it can manipulate its way into liberal democratic politics. And, in neither case, are people obligated to obey laws - fugitive slave laws, Nuremberg laws, etc. - that are clearly wrong by any objective liberal democratic standard. Liberal democracy is, at its heart, an idea that all people are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It is not a rationalization for whatever repressive instincts happen to be exercised or institutionalized in a democratic political process. Socialist institutions may be conceived and developed to address important problems in liberal democracies. But socialism, itself, is hardly the most liberal of democratic institutions, which accounts for many of the problems it experiences in even it most liberal democratic forms, even as it may use democratic institutions to achieve its aims. And with its assumptions come many serious problems for people who, by their natures, need liberal and democratic values and institutions to live genuinely self-governing and self-actualized lives and all the important tangible and intangible benefits that come with those values.
The idea that power is the means to get what you want is exactly what Lord Acton was concerned with when he said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is true that more illiberal conceptions of power do not achieve their long terms ends as well as more liberal conceptions of power. But the idea that power can or should be rationalized to get what people want is exactly why power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm not convinced that this is exactly what Joe is arguing, though he is clearly creating the flexibility for interpreting power in this way and seriously flirting with this conception of power in some of his most recent work. That is a turn in his thinking that concerns me and should concern all of us, though my assumption is that more liberal and less power-hungry conceptions of power will out over the long haul, independent of what any particular leader or politician or powerful individual may want, largely because less liberal conceptions of power are unsustainable.
China will not remain a Communist nation, forever, obviously. It will play around the edges as long as it can until its people expect something different, when a more democratic future becomes more readily and generally expected and when a more democratic transition becomes more clearly recognized as inevitable by Chinese leaders, and when, hopefully as peaceful and least chaotic and disruptive democratic transition as possible is made. But the idea that a totalitarian state is a sustainable path to progress, economic or political, is laughable, repugnant, and wrong (incorrect, as much as immoral). And, similarly, the idea that a more repressive path in liberal democracies is a sustainable path to progress, economic or political, is foolish and wrong and will soon give way to less repressive, regressive and a more liberalized path because its folly becomes inescapable, at a certain point, as it fails to achieve its ideals or its commitments.
And, similarly, illiberal governments and cultures cannot and will not remain illiberal, repressive, and regressive forever, since, by definition, if they are to become more progressive and reap the rewards and benefits, tangible and intangible, that more progressive, liberal democratic cultures reap, then will need to become more liberal and progressive. And neither liberal nor illiberal cultures will or can remain blissfully ignorant or avoid noticing and wanting the tangible and intangible benefits of political, economic, cultural, religious, professional, personal and individual freedom, forever. Eventually, all people will expect these freedoms and more liberal values and directions because they so clearly deliver better ideas, values and outcomes, with the stronger values and ideas delivering the better outcomes.
Greed and power-hunger do often deliver money or power. But they are both often either or both short-lived and miserable experiences. And those committed to generating wealth and using power with more integrity do clearly accumulate more by likely any objective standard. And neither accumulation of power or money nor their abuse are celebrated in the long view of history. Because neither offer sustainable ideas and values and outcomes that create better lives and quality of life for people, for individuals and majorities, both of which are taken seriously by liberal democratic values and institutions for good reason and which produce better lives for individuals and institutions, generally.
This notion that liberal democratic cultures can use their ideas and values and the cultures they build to accumulate power to do whatever they damn well please is a pernicious and dangerous rationalization of power that must be corrected by better ideas of liberal values, democratic institutions, and ideas of power. Least possible necessary aggression is one idea to contribute to that end.
Love,
Ben
