Black Mass: How Religion Led the World into Crisis

by John Gray

  Atomic bombs killed fewer people than the famine in the Ukraine, fewer than the Nazis slaughtered in the Ukraine and Poland. But what the bombs and the slaughters have in common is that their perpetrators all thought they were but a means to achieve a good. However, the bombs have another feature: they are a source of pride to those who made and dropped them … whereas totalitarian crimes, even if they were considered by their perpetrators to be useful and even praiseworthy political acts, were kept secret … Both the Soviet and the Nazi leadership knew that the world would damn them if it knew exactly what they had done. They were not wrong, because as soon as their crimes were revealed they were treated as the emblems of absolute evil. Things are quite different in the case of the atomic bombs, and for that very reason, even if the crime is less grave, the moral mistake of the people who killed in the name of democracy is greater.7

  The loss of life inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the largest in the Second World War – more civilians were killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo than in either of the cities on which atomic bombs were dropped, for example – but it illustrates Todorov’s point. Liberal democracies are not only willing to commit acts that when perpetrated by despotic regimes are condemned as signs of barbarism – they are ready to praise these acts as heroic. It may be that such attacks on civilian populations can be justified if they shortened the war and contributed to the destruction of abhorrent regimes. Historians differ on their effects; the issue remains open. But if an attack of this kind can be defended it is only as a hideous necessity, not a triumphant display of higher virtue.

  Liberalism is often described as a sceptical creed. The description hardly does justice to the missionary zeal with which it has been promoted. Liberalism is a lineal descendant from Christianity and shares the militancy of its parent faith. The ferocity with which liberal societies have treated their enemies cannot be accounted for in terms of self-defence alone. Liberal societies are worth defending, for they embody a type of civilized life in which rival beliefs can coexist in peace. When they become missionary regimes this achievement is put at risk. In waging war to promote their values actually existing liberal societies are corrupted. This is what happened when torture, whose prohibition was the result of an Enlightenment campaign that began in the eighteenth century, was used at the start of the twenty-first as a weapon in an Enlightenment crusade for universal democracy. Preserving the hard-won restraints of civilization is less exciting than throwing them away in order to realize impossible dreams. Barbarism has a certain charm, particularly when it comes clothed in virtue.

  LLVING IN AN INTRACTABLE WORLD: THE LOST TRADITION OF REALISM

  The business of so conducting ourselves to avoid the worst dangers of this environment will consist of the constant application of palliatives. It will not be a matter of taking a single dramatic step of sweeping difficulties aside, but of the constant surmounting of new crises and facing of fresh difficulties. Hedley Bull8

  During the past twenty years western governments, led by America, have tried to export a version of liberal values to the world. These policies have been distinguished by the nebulous grandeur of their goals, but the overall aim was a mutation in the nature of war and power, which would come about as a result of the universal adoption of democracy. The attempt to remake the international system has had effects similar to those of previous Utopias. The disaster that continues to unfold in Iraq is the result of an entire way of thinking, and it is this that must be abandoned.

  New thought is needed, but it must renew an old tradition. The pursuit of Utopia must be replaced by an attempt to cope with reality. We cannot return to the writings of the realist thinkers of the past with the hope that they will resolve all our dilemmas.9 The root of realist thinking is Machiavelli’s insight that governments exist, and must achieve all of their goals in a world of ceaseless conflict that is never far from a state of war. Despite the distance between Renaissance Italy and the present, this continues to be true; but the implications of Machiavelli’s insight change according to circumstances, and even in their time the realist theories of recent generations were seriously flawed. Yet it is from realism more than from any other school that we can learn how to think about current conflicts.

  Realism is the only way of thinking about issues of tyranny and freedom, war and peace that can truly claim not to be based on faith and, despite its reputation for amorality, the only one that is ethically serious. This is, no doubt, why it is viewed with suspicion. Realism requires a discipline of thought that may be too austere for a culture that prizes psychological comfort above anything else, and it is a reasonable question whether western liberal societies are capable of the moral effort that is involved in setting aside hopes of world-transformation. Cultures that have not been shaped by Christianity and its secular surrogates have always harboured a tradition of realist thought, which is likely to be as strong in future as it has been in the past. In China, Sun Tzu’s Art of War is a bible of realist strategy, and Taoist and Legalist philosophies contain powerful currents of realist thinking, while in India, Kautilya’s writings on war and diplomacy have a similar place. Machiavelli’s writings were a scandal because they subverted the claims of Christian morality. They have not had the same explosive force in non-Christian cultures, where realist thinking comes more easily. In post-Christian liberal democracies it has been political and intellectual elites, more than the majority of voters, that have favoured war as an instrument for improving the world; but public opinion still finds realist thinking distasteful. Can the task of staving off perennial evils satisfy a generation weaned on unrealizable dreams? Perhaps it prefers the romance of a meaningless quest to coping with difficulties that can never be finally overcome. But this has not always been so, and only a couple of generations ago realist thinking enabled western governments to prevail in conflicts far more dangerous than any they have yet had to face in the present century.

  It was realism rather than secular faith that allowed liberal democracies to defeat Nazism and contain communism. The long secret telegram that George F. Kennan sent to Washington in 1946, which shaped the policy that averted nuclear disaster during the Cold War while preventing the expansion of Soviet power, did not seek to work up a frenzy of rectitude. It urged that the Soviet system be studied ‘with the same courage, detachment, objectivity and the same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it’ as a doctor studies an unruly and unreasonable patient. It did not take for granted that the Soviet elites were ruled by ideology, or always reasonable. Instead it warned against being infected by their irrationality: ‘The greatest danger that can befall us … is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.’10 Though the dangers are different, Kennan’s style of thinking is urgently needed today. Dealing with terrorism and proliferation is not a job for missionaries or crusaders. The heady certainty of faith, which sees every crisis as a heaven-sent opportunity to save humanity, is ill-suited to dealing with dangers that can never be defused. In times of danger, stoical determination and intellectual detachment are more useful qualities, and at its best realism embodied them.

  Realist thinking is not error-proof. There are many examples of realist policies failing in their goals, or causing immense suffering while achieving nothing – the bombing of Cambodia during the period when Henry Kissinger was American secretary of state is an obvious example of the latter. A realist approach to international affairs does not ensure success, and there is a kind of crackpot realpolitik that is extremely unrealistic. Albert Wohlstetter’s picture of the Soviet Union was far removed from actual conditions, as was his disciple Paul Wolfowitz’s view of Iraq. Wohlstetter’s strategic calculus may seem a world away from Wolfowitz’s delusional programme to install liberal democracy in Iraq. Yet the idea that decisions about war and peace can be reduced to a game-theoretic calculus is a symbiosis of rationalism and magic – in other words, a superstition.

  Realists do not accept that int
ernational relations, any more than human life in general, consist of soluble problems. There are situations in which whatever is done contains wrong – for example, the situation that has been created by American intervention in Iraq. Certainly we can avoid multiplying these situations: we may have to deal out mass death to defeat Hitler but we need not wade in blood to democratize the world. Realism is an Occam’s Razor that works to minimize radical choices among evils. It cannot enable us to escape these choices, for they go with being human.

  In the past, realist thinkers wanted to replace talk of morality in politics with the analysis of power and interest, which were supposed to be defined in rigorously factual terms. States were supposed to be entities devoted to maximizing their power, and their relations with one another were theorized in terms borrowed from natural science. Developing a discipline of this kind is a type of scientism – the mistaken application of scientific method to areas of experience where universal laws do not exist – and helped discredit realist thinking. There is a good deal of regularity in the behaviour of states that can be identified by a study of history, but these regularities cannot be formulated as universal laws. Again, all the ideas we use to understand politics – such as legitimacy, tyranny and the concept of violence –contain values as an essential part of their meaning. Thinking about international relations cannot avoid being a moral enterprise.

  Realists take for granted a number of facts about how the world works. However much empty chatter there may be about the end of the Westphalian era, sovereign states remain the central actors in world affairs. Transnational institutions such as the UNare devices for moderating the rivalries of sovereign powers, not embryonic forms of global governance. In this sense the world of states is a realm of anarchy and will remain so. Of course, states accept many restraints, including those imposed by international treaties, such as the Geneva Convention, that lay down norms of civilized behaviour, and to some extent mutually beneficial trade and civil traditions can replace destructive conflict with competition and cooperation. But such conventions and practices are fragile, and over the long run war is as common as peace.

  Realists should reject teleological views of history. The belief that humanity is moving towards a condition in which there will be no more conflict over the nature of government is not only delusive but also dangerous. Basing policies on an assumption that a mysterious process of evolution is taking mankind to a promised land leads to a state of mind that is unprepared for intractable conflict. At its most extreme, historical teleology is embodied in programmes that aim to accelerate this process of evolution, such as the neo-conservative ‘global democratic revolution’ that for a time deformed American foreign policy. But ‘passive teleology’ that rejects any attempt to force the pace of evolution is also an unsafe basis for policy. There is nothing in the process of modernization that points to a time when all or most states will be variants of a single type. Modern states come in many varieties – good and bad, intolerable and indifferent. Hitler’s Germany was no less modern than social-democratic Sweden, and the popular theocracy that rules Iran is as much a modern system of government as that of contemporary Switzerland. As the world becomes more modern it does not become more uniform. Modern states use the power of knowledge to serve their different ends and are as prone to conflict as any others.

  If realists reject any belief in ultimate convergence in history, one reason is that they resist the lure of harmony in ethics. Moral conflicts, sometimes of a kind that cannot be fully resolved, are permanent features in the relations of states. Many moral philosophies take for granted that the requirements of morality, or at least of some part of it, such as the demands of justice, must all be compatible. At least in principle, it is assumed no dictate of morality can collide with any other. This belief underlies all varieties of utopianism, and a version of it underpins the theories of human rights that have been used to justify pre-emptive war. As Isaiah Berlin observed, this belief in moral harmony does not rest on experience; when it is accepted by Enlightenment thinkers it expresses an idea of perfection that is owed to religion. Among Enlightenment thinkers, Berlin writes,

  we find the same common assumption: that the answers to all the great questions must of necessity agree with one another; for they must correspond with reality, and reality is a harmonious whole. If this were not so, there is chaos at the heart of things: which is unthinkable. Liberty, equality, property, knowledge, security, practical wisdom, purity of character, sincerity, kindness, rational self-love, all these ideals … cannot (if they are truly desirable) conflict with one another; if they appear to do so it must be due to some misunderstanding of their properties. No truly good thing can ever be finally incompatible with any other; indeed they virtually entail one another: men cannot be wise unless they are free, or free unless they are just, happy and so forth.

  Here we conspicuously abandon the voice of experience – which records very obvious conflicts of ultimate ideals – and encounter a doctrine that stems from older theological roots – from the belief that unless all the positive virtues are harmonious with one another, or at least not incompatible, the notion of the Perfect Entity – whether it be called nature or God or Ultimate Reality – is not conceivable.11

  Liberalism has been as utopian as other philosophies in positing a kind of ultimate harmony as an achievable goal. The vision of a world where human rights are universally respected belongs in the same category as Fourier’s idea of ‘anti-lions’ and ‘anti-whales’ that exist only to serve humans. It is a daydream, which obscures the conflicts among rights and the many sources of human violence.

  Realists accept that states are bound to rank what they take to be their vital interests over more universal considerations. They cannot avoid trying to sustain themselves as legitimate institutions. This involves giving priority to their citizens – protecting them from insecurity and conquest, securing a decent subsistence for them and embodying their values and identities. Because they must first serve the interests of those they rule, states cannot adopt an impartial perspective of the kind often thought to be essential to morality; but that does not mean their policies cannot be judged morally. In its ethical aspect a realist foreign policy might be described as one that aims to hold the worst evils at bay. Tyranny and anarchy, war and civil war are threats to what Hobbes called commodious living. No power will ever exist that can rid the world of these evils; but states can refrain from adding to their sum for the sake of inchoate ideals that will never be achieved. A state that acts to suppress torture in its own institutions is more civilized than one that practises it in the pursuit of universal human rights, and more likely to succeed in its goals.

  A commitment to civilized restraints on the use of force is a necessary part of realism. Contrary to the thinking of post-modernists who believe all human values are cultural constructions and reject the idea of human nature, there are some values that reflect universal human needs. But these needs are many and discordant, and universal values can be embodied in different ways. If many types of government have been accepted as legitimate, it is not because humanity has yet to accept the local pieties of Atlantic democracy. It is because there is no one right way of settling conflicts among universal values. The prevention of great evils may involve rationally unresolvable dilemmas, as when reasonable people differ on the aerial bombing of civilian populations in the struggle to defend civilization against Nazism. Rationalist philosophers will ask the meaning of civilization, as if in the absence of a definition it could not be defended, while liberal humanists will say that the necessary restraints are provided by human rights. But the problem is not that we do not agree on moral issues, or fail to enforce human rights – it is that there are moral dilemmas, some of which occur fairly regularly, for which there is no solution. Liberal thinkers view human rights as embodying a kind of universal moral minimum that should be secured before any other goals are pursued. A worthy notion, but it passes over the fact that the components of the
minimum are often at odds with one another. Toppling a tyrant may result in anarchy, but propping up tyranny can worsen the abuse of power. Freedom of religion is good, but where it leads to sectarian strife it is self-destroying. A private realm protected from intrusion is part of civilized life, but some incursion into privacy may be unavoidable if other freedoms are to be secure. It is better to accept these conflicts and deal with them than deny them, as liberals do when they look to theories of human rights to resolve dilemmas of war and security.

  The cardinal need is to change the prevailing view of human beings, which sees them as inherently good creatures unaccountably burdened with a history of violence and oppression. Here we reach the nub of realism and its chief stumbling-point for prevailing opinion: its assertion of the innate defects of human beings. Nearly all pre-modern thinkers took it as given that human nature is fixed and flawed, and in this as in some other ways they were close to the truth of the matter. No theory of politics can be credible that assumes that human impulses are naturally benign, peaceable or reasonable. As Jonathan Swift acknowledged when he placed the only Utopia he could imagine in the kingdom of horses, the pursuit of harmony envisions a form of life that humans cannot live.

  Realism need not be a conservative stance. The slow development of institutions, which was favoured by Burke and other conservative thinkers, is very often impracticable. Revolution cannot always be prevented, and may not be undesirable. In any case the sudden destruction of societies and ways of life, which recurs throughout history, has today become normal. Nostalgia for the supposed organic unity of previous societies, to which conservatives are often prone, is a type of utopianism. Nor does realism have anything to do with moral fundamentalism of the kind that promotes the ‘right to life’, ‘traditional values’, and similar nonsense. It is nevertheless true that realists share with the conservative philosophies that once existed the perception that no change in human institutions can resolve the contradictions of human needs. Human beings may want freedom, but usually only when other needs have been met, and not always then. Tyrants are not only feared, they are often loved. States do not act only to protect their interests; they are also vehicles for myths, fantasies and mass psychosis. Neo-conservatives and liberal internationalists are fond of saying freedom is contagious, but tyranny can also be contagious. During much of the last century dictators were worshipped. It would be a bold prophet who forecast that this could not happen again.