Thoughts on US Politics and the Political

 

Thoughts on US Politics and the Political

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following is a quote from a Catholic commentator, assessing American politics as he sees it. Following this assessment are my observations.

 

                  “As the nation’s power increased in the world, so too have its imperial tendencies, and those who govern the United States increasingly find unacceptable any competing visions of political and economic life that threaten the country’s dominance of world affairs.”

 

                  According to this assessment, America’s quest for dominance was and is reactionary. The US is responding to challenges, “threats” properly understood. So, dominance is the result of calculation and not the result of human desires. Dominance is not seen as moral imperative. It’s as if people were saying: “We wish we didn’t have to pursue dominance, but these threats make that absolutely essential.”

 

                  In fact, however, the underlying and motivating wish is to be dominant, and it is that wish that explains what governing elites label “threats.” Those other visions are “competing” only because America’s governing elites wish to be dominant. That wish, and not the other visions themselves, is the bottom line.

 

                  This helps understand what is called “realism.” Realists justify their politics because the world is a dangerous place, a war of all against all. But the actual justification of their politics is their desire, endemic the political animals everywhere, for dominance. Consider by way of illumination an imagined conversation between General Giap of Vietnam and Robert McNamara of the US, a conversation that actually took place once. Giap accused McNamara and the United States of being imperialistic, a charge McNamara denied. Why? Because McNamara saw his actions, not due to a desire to dominate, but as reactionary to threats. McNamara thought of himself as essentially peaceful, forced into war. To which we can imagine Giap saying: “No, you are not essentially peaceful. You’re essentially war-like because war proves you dominate, you deserve to dominate because you are the best. Absent the desire to dominate, to be the best, Vietnam would not be a threat. In fact, communist nations as communists would not be threats.

 

                  Why are humans war-like? Because being war-like is deemed being moral, good, virtuous. And so, the warriors, the war makers are celebrated. War demonstrates one’s power and, of course, the powerful are the best. The powerful are the best because they can do what they need to do and, most especially, they commit injustices successfully. [Cf. Pericles’ Funeral Oration]

 

                  And this is, I think, the root of hierarchy, the desire to achieve and then demonstrate one’s power, most especially the power to commit injustice when it serves your interests or desires. And what better description is there of the Vietnam War than as the United States’s governing elites demonstrating they could, because they were “the best and the brightest,” successfully be unjust?  That war could demonstrate its ability to wage an unjust and unwinnable war successfully. Now, that’s powerful, that’s being a great nation. That that’s political greatness is illustrated by empires throughout human history. And this is why those arguing against the Vietnam war as unjust were bound to lose the argument. The quest for dominance overrides concerns with justice because being dominant and being just are two very different phenomena.