Darth Wong wrote:
By the same reasoning, ruthless, evil people have an advantage over good people, because they strike first and without scruples. Therefore, we should all forget morality and just go with ruthless evil.
No, but it does mean that even if our morality opposes killing others or doing them harm, we may have to sacrifice that morality to defend ourselves from the ruthless, evil people.
BTW, this does not address my point about idealism not being any less rational than "realpolitik"; the word rational is thrown around an awful lot but not always used correctly.
You have ascertained that realpolitik is not rational because it is "based on the premise that morality is irrelevant and that each person should fuck over everybody else if it suits him, unless the repercussions from that behaviour are too expensive".
And that's not too far from the
Wikipedia definition, but a note must be made: you then have to explain why morality cannot be made irrelevant from the principle of international diplomacy.
Two words: foreign aid. States can and do make sacrifices for the greater good on many occasions. The fact that some people think this is a waste of time and should be eliminated does not change that fact.
Foreign aid is also a tool of policy. We give aid to other nations to secure their friendship and alliance, or to bolster them against outside or inside threats that are contrary to our interests.
Secondly, there is a gulf between giving a homeless bum a buck and taking a bullet for someone.
So? Sneak attacks, murder, assassination, and cruelty have also been staples of international diplomacy since ancient times; do you defend those also? Please look up "appeal to tradition" in the "logic fallacies" section of your textbook.
Appeal to tradition for what? I'm pointing out an ongoing characteristic that States have.
And look how well things turned out for them in the long run.
Of course. They were the progenitors of this very society, one you have defended quite eloquently in the past, or at least our secular and scientific mindsets (not the Judeo-Christian faiths that have latched on to the West since the Roman Empire).
They fell after centuries of self-rule, which for some was not continuous due to a brief occupation by the Persian Great King Xerxes in 380-79 B.C.
The fact that all Nations will eventually fall or have alteration of some form or another (Hellenic culture survived the destruction of the Hellenic city-states' autonomy) does not refute the basic tendency of international diplomacy to be amoral.
If "responsible" is a word for "realpolitik limited by ethical principles", I agree. If "responsible" is a word for "whatever we can safely get away with", then I disagree.
Responsible, I would say, is a realist outlook on policy that balances both the practical issues and the moral ones. One Nation can be ethical toward others at times of peace, but when one or the other has interests or even territorial integrity threatened, it cannot be expected to maintain it's ethical stance, with the potential breach determined by the weight of the political object under contest.
Do not apply the self-defense paradigm universally. Unless a state is actually in peril, it is irrelevant. The assumption of a constant state of low-level warfare is self-fulfilling.
Not so much as low-level warfare as contradictory interests. States sometimes agree, mutually, to let these contradictory interests slip to the wayside for mutual benefit. Prussia and Austria did briefly ally to take Schlieswig-Holstein from Denmark, and Britain did allow, conditionally, the Bourbon Phillip V of Spain to take his throne in the end of the War of Spanish Succession, because said conditions gave mutual benefits for both Britain and the Bourbons (France primarily), whom had been warring for years over the issue. (The primary catalyst, of course, was that the other candidate the British were supporting was the Hapsburg Carlos III, who became the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire after his brother passed away with no heirs). But it would be a bit silly to say that States do not have contradictory interests in regions. Our interests and Turkish interests diverge in relation to the Kurds, the Greeks and Turks have been arguing for decades about islands in the Aegean, and how many nations claim Rockall? Four? Hell, just look at Anglo-Argentinian relations, which get prickly whenver the Argentinians make noise about the Falklands.
You assume that everything should be treated as a self-defense situation: "try or die". But self-defense is a perfectly legitimate principle, so I see no reason to classify it as disproof of the utility of ethical behaviour. Moreover, not everything is a self-defense situation anyway. Try as they might, people who try to paint everything as self-defense are usually bullshitters. Who are these bogeymen running around attacking countries who are more ethical? Iraq? They tried that in 1991, and unlike the 2003 war, everyone agreed that it had to be stopped.
Not as a "try or die" situation. But as a situation where interests are on the line.
I'll go more into my own views of
realpolitik at the end of the post.
Nice list, but apart from showing off, what was it supposed to accomplish?
Well, I was giving examples of practical gain and idealistic gain together, but I'll confess to some showing off. That, and I'm a great admirer of Epaminondas, and consider it a disgrace that more people don't know about him, probably the greatest emancipator in the history of Classical Greece.
In the end, the question remains: do you think it's important to behave in an ethical fashion? Or do you think it's just a convenient bonus if it happens to come about as an unintended side-effect of pure self-interest?
Both.
Or, more to the point.... I would
prefer to have everyone behave in an ethical fashion. I would try to do so myself whenever the situation allows. But you must be prepared to have to take an amoral, or even immoral, approach in certain matters.
So? Unless everyone is ethical, I might as well not be either? What kind of thinking is that? And don't give me this "they might gain an advantage" nonsense; not every nation is a military threat. You are not under siege or in any legitimate fear of being invaded or wiped out.
No, but you cannot
always act ethical. You must be prepared to make the sacrifice of your own moral conscious if a situation calls for it.
And of course not every nation is a military threat to our existance, but some are to the existance of our allies, or to our well-being or their well-being. Osama bin Laden may not be able to topple the US Government and destroy the West, but he could still kill thousands more and do severe damage to our economy through more and greater terrorist attacks (especially ones involving chemical or biological warfare agents).
You must approximate your response depending on the scale of the threat and it's capabilities. Maintain ethical stances and actions where possible, but be ready to discard them when it is required.
Don't play word-games. It is impossible to sacrifice morality for the greater good, since the furtherment of the greater good is one of the goals of morality.
So a man who kills ten good people to save a thousand has not acted for the greater good?
It's immoral to weaken a nation's power? So the enlargement of power and influence is somehow a MORAL goal to you, hence its loss is immoral? Fascinating argument ... what the fuck have you been smoking?
I'm talking about
responsibility, Michael. If you were to be made the leader of your Nation, you would have a responsibility to your people, just as you, today, have a responsibility to your wife and sons. Now, you've got a good heart, and you're kind to anyone who doesn't first do something stupid to piss you off, but considering the devotion you show your family, I doubt that you consider your conscious to be more important than their well-being.
Now, as for
realpolitik....
I have been reading Clausewitz lately. Clausewitz, in the opening chapter of his "On War", identifies war as a duel on an extensive scale, and likens it to two wrestlers, in that warring Nations are opponents who try to compel each other to fulfill their will. This is done in the end by complete disarmament, in theory.
Just the same,
realpolitik is the implementation of policy based on realism, or practicality if you prefer, that benefits the Nation in question. In theory, this would mean that a Nation does whatever is practical to further it's interests, even at the expense of others.
In "On War" Clausewitz then goes on to describe aspects of the theoretical abstract of war, but then makes the final point: reality does not permit "Ideal" War. It is impossible. Other factors come into play to prevent the great and immediate clash of forces between Nations that could end with one forced to fulfill the other's will. Instead, war is governed by the political object (hence Clausewitz's famous assertion that "war is an extension of politics by other means"), and the weight, or value, of this object determines the effort that a Nation will put into fulfilling that object.
Much the same, factors do not permit all Nations to do whatever is practical to further their interests even if at the expense of others. An easy example would be you, Michael, and those with the same ethics as you in government positions, who influence a State to not take practical actions if they violate the professed ethics of a nation. International Law backed by the threat of force from other more powerful nations can be another deterrant. Ideology yet another. Surely it wasn't in the best
political interests of the Third Reich to exterminate German and Austrian Jews, or to treat all Russians and Ukrainians with equal cruelty when they could have been made allies against Stalin. Because of this, the political object is again at the center of the issue. The weight, or value, of the political object determines the amount of practical means that will be applied to fulfill it, at the expense of ethical or ideological constraints. If the object is the survival of a Nation, all means will be made no matter how unethical. If the object is to maintain a sympathetic leader in a minor nation with no or little strategic value or available resources, then the practical and potentially unethical means applied will be few, if any are used at all, and some leaders would simply shrug and let things develop without interfering, even if it is contrary to the national interest, because it isn't worth the cost in material or national stature.
As I said before, I greatly prefer ethical solutions to every problem, but if you can't find a viable ethical solution, you have to bite the bullet and do what's necessary (with what's necessary being derived from the value of the political object).
