Anti-Climacus

WELL: I've not blogged on the concept of solidarity for a long time (well, I've not blogged on most things for a long time), but this Harry's Place post does put me back in mind of it (quoting from Ali from Free Iraq):

"I looked at him with wide opened eyes and said (in a low voice), "Are you serious??" He said, "Let's go play chess you and I", and we took a table away from TV, and before we started playing he said, "Do you really think I meant what I said? It's just that this Ba'athist is listening and watching everyone's reaction. You know what I think of Tony Blair? I love this man! He's the only one whom when speaks about Iraq speaks with such a passion and honesty that makes you feel his blood is boiling and that he wants nothing more than helping us. He really makes me believe sometimes he has an Iraqi blood in him! I mean he speaks like he KNOWS and FEELS what's happening here".

I couldn't agree more, and I still remember it very well, when Blair was speaking to the Labor Party shortly before the war and he was the only coalition leader I heard saying he's going to the war for human reasons mainly. He said it clear to the people gathering there that yes the WMDs was the major issue and that there are serious reports that cannot be ignored, but then his personal main reason to go to this war was to liberate 25 million people. He added (surely not his exact words but I remember very well what they spoke) that even if these reports were wrong then my conscience would be clear and I would feel no regret at all because we would be liberating and saving 25 million people from a life that's worth than death.

After all that, yes I'm amazed that people still think he lied about the reasons to go to war. I wish I could get a tape of that speech and show it to these people, but I'm sure they can access such things much better than me and that they have listened to his words just as I did. Hell, he was speaking to them not me!"

So I want to take a stab at this, analytically, from the perspective of what I think is the Niebuhrian concept of double citizenship: basically, the notion that a person has a real, non-arbitrary affiliation to their nation-state*, which always makes the state the main actor on the international scene, but that they also (with the help of some ideological/ontological stance, where Christianity, Judaism, Marxism or whatever all qualify) have obligations towards other people which they at least sometimes need to act on. It's that latter sort of moral/political affiliation that leads people to do otherwise non-rational things (like campaign for someone who won't be representing you), and gives them the intensity of spirit to overcome a lot of obstacles to do whatever is right (this is the sort of look Ali describes Blair as having). It is, in short, the notion that the boundaries of the nation-state are totally irrelevant.

The real question then becomes, I think, whether it's right for Blair (as PM, and thus an official of the state) to act on the basis of his private convictions** through the auspices of the state. It's here that I find myself coming to a stop again and again. Hans Morgenthau argues (in practically everything he ever wrote; the man wouldn't stop using a good line once he found it) that fiat justitia, pereat mundus is a fine principle for individuals to apply in their own lives, but wrong for state leaders to apply, since their first duty is to preserve the state first and foremost, and not do anything that might weaken the state. On this view, Blair was clearly wrong to act (unless one argues that the relative military capabilities of Iraq and Britain were such that even a disasterous war for Britain wouldn't have really endangered them that much): even accepting the view in the parentheses, there certainly would need to be some mechanism by which the Labour government could justify or solicit opinions on the moral rightness and worthwhileness of the war, and accepting that view, I believe, means falling into the deliberative democracy trap.

Of course, Morgenthau also (nicely) contradicts himself on this matter, saying (in Scientific Man and Power Politics) that most theories of ethics in government fail because they try too much to differentiate 'political' and 'personal' decisions: as long as it's people deciding things (and it always is), there ought to be one unified theory to explain both. Fine then, Morgenthau might say: if the personal and the political have to go together in moral theory, and we know that moral imperatives are no better than second-best for states, they can be no better than second-best for individuals. But this is obviously a silly point: the examples in which self-sacrificing responses to moral imperatives are numerous and, on most folk conceptions of morality, noble and/or justified. So clearly, then, I think there's a need to better theorize when states can properly act on moral imperatives. To have the kind of moral inspiration Blair had and not do anything with it*** seems, well, wrong.

*on the theory that geographic, linguistic, historical and social forces are actually not very easily overcome as bases for identity. This is perhaps an IR analog to the American politics link between party affiliations between generations.

**though, insomuch as they represent a correct interpretation of moral imperatives, his convictions could be a. demonstrated correct and b. adopted, in principle, by anyone with a sufficiently comprehensive conception of the right.

***if you don't like Iraq as an example, pick your own pet international issue