I follow the news in several countries, the US and France mainly but also Britain and Germany. Hardly had Trump decided to become a clone of George W Bush and to bomb Syria after a particularly terrible crime was committed I saw the huge wave of approval for the “new Trump” or the guy that Zakaria felt was at last becoming presidential.
Where does this strange love for the new Doctor Strangelove come from? Kubrick’s movie which came out in 1964 had a very explanatory title: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. An unhinged Cold Warrior, a US general, feels justified in attacking the Soviet Union. The logic at work has constantly been replicated: attacking the “evil empire” or a new Hitler or other (Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi, Assad) is justified for he is a dictator, wants to commit genocide or is a threat to US national interest. The bad guys give a justification and their elimination is humanitarian.
In many cases there is no doubt that the bad guys are indeed terrible leaders and in most cases the West or the US by itself had played ball with the bad guy before he stepped out of line (Hussein, Ghaddafi, even Assad again). The simplistic Strangelove idea that bombs, aerial bombing or boots on the ground and bombs will solve a moral problem. Politics become a sub branch of ethics and punishing the bad guy is the be all and end all of international relations.
In the approach there is no historical context, for instance the US and Western responsibility in the rise of ISIS is ignored, Western support of Saudi Arabia which funded and armed djihadist groups is forgotten and the evil leader is psychologically evil with again no historical context.
Punishing bad guys is a powerful motivator and works well in the public sphere even though it is short sighted. After Libya was attacked, supposedly to stop a genocide, chaos reigned supreme and masses of refugees were thrown into the sea. After Iraq was destroyed chaos led to the rise of ISIS. After the attack on Afghanistan a 16 year old unwinnable asymmetrical war ensued. The lessons of a pseudo-ethical reduction of international relations to a morality play are clear: military interventions solve nothing and even when the bad guy is killed chaos and bloodshed are the main results.
Trump is caught up by the Deep state (the military-industrial complex plus mainstream media and the various secret services) and after declaring his admiration for strongman Putin he decides to bash Assad his ally. The liberals who were calling him a Putin puppet are in rapture: now he’s talking, he’s determined and not a Russian stooge. His action, of course, cannot protect Syrian from further bloodshed and US and Saudi crimes (with US weapons) are eclipsed by this lightening strike which proves nothing. The dead in Yemen and Mosul count for less than the victims of chemicals in Syria (once again a terrible crime which should have been investigated before the Tomahawks were fired). The liberals admire the sound of the Tomahawks instead of asking the key question: why more bloodshed when there is no evidence that it will hasten a solution. The Russians are evil and the bad guys are bad and that is enough justification.
Then there is the awkward fact that Trump’s action, like George W Bush’s ones in Iraq, is illegal, not sanctioned by the UN or the US Congress. The war loving liberals are not daunted, no problem: for them “illegal” becomes “legitimate” and the discussion about Trump’s many illegal statements disappears. Like the Kosovo war in 1999: the warmongers calling themselves liberal (or socialist in the case of France) are not embarrassed by the rule of law and transform illegality into legitimacy. Now why would we, who are “civilized”, care for the rule of law when we are dealing with a barbarian, a monster, a killer of his own people?
Well it looks as if the “democrats” hate the democracy they keep praising and the rule of law which is supposed to be the basis of it. So it’s OK for us, the “civilized nations” to behave in the same way as the so-called barbarians and call this behavior legitimate. We thus become like the Russians we find so abhorrent but for a good cause, of course, because we are so much more ethical.
When the Russians refer to a previous violation of law by the West, like Kosovo in 1999, liberal interventionists reject the comparison. Liberals are willing to believe that Trump was affected by pictures of the “children of God” being killed savagely by gas but forget he does not care about the “children of God” killed by the Saudis in Yemen or Bahrain before, by the Western-Iraqi alliance in Mosul. Trump the cruel clown becomes a sensitive person precisely when he resorts to military strikes.
The Tomahawk liberals love the military-industrial complex, Hilary Clinton advocated even more powerful strikes in Syria just a few hours before Trump did it and the actors of the deep state, Democrat or Republican can commune in the self-congratulation which comes from alleged ethical superiority. The victims in Syria and the crocodile tears shed about them are just a pretext for militarist hegemony.
The socialists in France or Merkel in Germany who had all (justifiably) expressed disgust at Trump and his policies are now also falling into line and applauding Trump’s new realism and his assuming the mantle of the defense of the West. That his actions are not motivated by humanistic considerations and may lead to a flare up in the Middle East does not seem to trouble them. He bashed the Russians and big bad Putin so he cannot be bad himself. It does not even matter that he is giving Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu the trio of strongmen he admires a perfect alibi when they violate international or domestic law.
In a Manichean world there can only be two types of policies: good and evil, so necessarily the enemy of my enemy is a good guy. That Trump is still a bad guy who will destroy the planet, civil rights and, if his generals let him, the Middle East does not matter. The liberals love Strangelove-Trump.
In 1962 both Kennedy and Khrushchev, though they came from countries that were far from ethical on all matters, managed to transcend the moral grandstanding pushing them toward conflict. The resolution of the Cuba missile crisis was a smart move precisely because it was not based on Strangelovian rhetoric.
When Obama decided not to bomb Syria in 2013 it was not a sign of weakness but a realization that Iraq and Libya had shown that military interventions made things worse. The new Trump lovers among liberals and socialists are not even pondering the lessons of their liberal heroes. They are blind warmongers who disregard the rule of law, feel good about themselves but bring the world closer to disaster. Obama, on this point, had the smartness of asking: what comes after the Tomahawks? The current Tomahawk liberals are wallowing in their insane admiration of deadly weapons. They are not Putin opponents but clones of the Russian strongman.