Machiavelli and the Kagans
Merry Christmas!
A thought I had while struggling through last night (I just had surgery on my left shoulder and spend my time either in great pain or delirious on painkillers): it seems to me that the Kagans' (father and son Fred) mission vis a vis this war has been to revitalize Machiavelli's distinction between the feared and the hated prince: the ruler must strive to be feared, but avoid being hated at all costs--a fine line to walk. Our refusal to make this distinction, however, has left us with a completely ineffectual security policy for Iraq: we are so afraid of being hated that we cannot effectively convince the insurgents we are adequately powerful and committed to destroy them. We need a bigger footprint in Iraq exactly to do so, while at the same time providing the necessary infrastructure and services to keep us from being despised.
I'm not attributing these thoughts directly to the Kagans, but in my percocet-induced haze last night this Machiavelli-model came to mind as a useful way to think about how they've seen this war from the beginning.
A thought I had while struggling through last night (I just had surgery on my left shoulder and spend my time either in great pain or delirious on painkillers): it seems to me that the Kagans' (father and son Fred) mission vis a vis this war has been to revitalize Machiavelli's distinction between the feared and the hated prince: the ruler must strive to be feared, but avoid being hated at all costs--a fine line to walk. Our refusal to make this distinction, however, has left us with a completely ineffectual security policy for Iraq: we are so afraid of being hated that we cannot effectively convince the insurgents we are adequately powerful and committed to destroy them. We need a bigger footprint in Iraq exactly to do so, while at the same time providing the necessary infrastructure and services to keep us from being despised.
I'm not attributing these thoughts directly to the Kagans, but in my percocet-induced haze last night this Machiavelli-model came to mind as a useful way to think about how they've seen this war from the beginning.
posted by James at 10:11 AM
1 Comments:
i think that's a cool distiction between fear and hatred and it actually applies to a broader question about US foreign policy towards the middle east for the last 50 years. Some people say that a lot of Arab anger and radicalism stems from US foreign policy - the coup in Iran, troops in Saudi Arabia, and general involvementin the Middle East has brought much hatred; that if we simply toned it down and disengaged the situation would improve. But then - just like when Israel left Gaza - we will be perceived as weak and will not be feared, even IF this may slightly decrease the extent to which we are hated.
By the way - I haven't look at the Prince in a while, but perhaps this distiction bteween feared/hated applies only internally, to the prince's own people within his country? perhaps fear/hatred in this intra-national context is very different from establishing - or trying to remedy - fear/hatred across the entire globe?
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