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Friday, March 11, 2022

NODDING IN YET AGAIN

Although I have not been very much present on my blog lately, I have tried to keep up with the series of comments that have been put up on the occasion of (it would be too much to say in response to) my brief posts, and I have to confess that I am somewhat mystified by them. You folks seem to think that international relations is a morality play in which we, the audience, are charged with deciding who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Sixty years ago, when I met Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago, I learned some elementary but important lessons from him and they have stood me in good stead ever since.


Great imperial powers like France, England, Russia, the United States, and now China expand their spheres of influence and control until they encounter opposed forces strong enough to compel them to adjust. At the end of the second world war, the United States and its European allies controlled all of Western Europe, which was as far as their armies took them. The Soviet Union, at enormous cost in life and treasure, had expanded its sphere of influence well into the central European plain, going so far as even to take control of the North Prussian city of Königsberg (to my great sadness), renaming it Kaliningrad and transferring its library back within the boundaries of old Russia. The nuclear standoff thus established persisted for almost half a century while the United States tried unsuccessfully to replace France as the overlord of Southeast Asia, asserted its control over Central America, and failed comically to overturn a revolution in the tiny island of Cuba “90 miles off the American shore”, as it used to be popular to say.

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, brought about in part by their disastrous failure in Afghanistan, the United States and its Western European allies expanded their sphere of influence eastward, incorporating the countries of the old Warsaw Pact as well as several of the former Soviet Socialist Republics.  Vladimir Putin has been trying with very limited success to reestablish Russian control over some of the lands bordering his country which used to be part either of the Soviet Union or of its sphere of influence.

 

It is delusional to treat these great empires as a collection of schoolyard middle schoolers who are having trouble playing peacefully together in the world sandbox. Does anybody really imagine that if Nikita Khrushchev had been a trifle more simpatico the United States would have been content to leave the world map as it was? Or that if United States had just been a bit friendlier, Vladimir Putin would not have been provoked to seek to reestablish the borders of the old Soviet Union? All of this is silliness.

 

In the calculations of the men (and sometimes the women) who make the decisions about these matters, the Vietnamese or the Iraqis or the Nicaraguans or the Cubans or the Chechnyans or the Uighurs or the Ukrainians are mere collateral damage, “mushrooms” as they used to be called in the earliest versions of computer games.

14 comments:

David Zimmerman said...

Are we to conclude from Professor Wolff's riff on Morgenthau's realist vision of foreign policy that he, Wolff, believes that moral judgements have no place the discussion of the behaviour of nation states?

If that is indeed what he is implying, then that would be a shame.

Another Anonymous said...

Prof. Wolff,

I have to say that, with Prof. Zimmerman, I find your post both disappointing and confusing, particularly given that one of your areas of expertise is Ethics. While it is true that nations make their decisions regarding international affairs based on what they regard as their individual country’s best interests, and those calculations have nothing to do with what is ethical, your specialty in Ethics deals with and evaluates whether the actions of individuals are ethical. You have written and lectured extensively on the merits of Kant’s Ethics, which relate to the actions of individuals and whether those actions can be analyzed in any meaningful way as to label certain actions as ethical or unethical. Nations are led by individuals who perhaps make decisions irrespective of ethics, but does that mean that their actions, as individuals, should not be analyzed from the perspective of ethics? Surely you do not believe that Hitler’s decisions to invade Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, etc., and his decision to engage in the mass extermination of the Jewish populations of these countries to advance what he regarded as Germany’s national interests, should not be evaluated as to whether he acted ethically simply because he determined form the perspective of spheres of influence that these unprovoked invasions, and the Jewish extemination, were in Germany’s best interests. If Hitler’s actions can appropriately be evaluated from the standpoint of ethics, why not Putin’s?

LFC said...

With all due respect (I've said this before here, I'll just repeat it here briefly), this is a distortion of what Morgenthau thought. Morgenthau's early and continued opposition to the Vietnam War clearly had a moral component, even if sometimes it only lurked beneath the surface. Morgenthau recognized that moral and ethical considerations played a role in international relations, as a large body of scholarship on his work now makes clear, even if sometimes he seemed to portray intl politics as an amoral realm. There is a large body of scholarly work on the "classical" realists, of whom Morgenthau was one of the best known, and this post is a caricature and a distortion of what they thought and wrote. (Look at Kennan on nuclear weapons in the last part of his life, for ex, and tell me that morality had nothing to do w what he wrote.)

The actual silliness and delusion is in pretending that decision makers in this area don't care about moral considerations at all. To take one example, when Truman gave his famous speech in 1947 that inaugurated the Truman Doctrine and talked about two "alternative ways of life" and the struggle between them, he was concerned w US power and capitalism and all that, but also w democracy v totalitarianism, which is partly a moral opposition. (This runs through every President's speeches since pretty much, including Biden. Some of it is just rhetoric, but the ideological and moral component is not just surplusage.)

Prof Wolff would never sit still for someone distorting and misrepresenting the thought of Kant or Marx, so why he persists in blatantly misrepresenting Morgenthau is something of a mystery.

For those who want a pretty good, readable, not too long study of Morgenthau, I'd recommend W.E. Scheuerman, _Hans Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond_. The Wikipedia entry on Morgenthau carries a long bibliography under the heading 'Further Reading,' and even that list is far from exhaustive.

Barney Wolff said...

Perhaps this will out me as hopelessly naive, but I reject the notion that all great powers are equivalently and narrowly self-interested with no regard for any moral considerations. One can be fully aware of all the evil that the US has done without believing that we and Russia are equally and irredeemably evil, and the only thing that matters is avoidance of nuclear war.

Even from a strictly realist perspective, it seems obvious to me that how a country behaves, both internally and externally, does have consequences. People around the world do still want to come to the US, legally or otherwise. I have never seen a report of immigrants flocking to Russia, or China. Do we really believe that's only because we are, for now, richer?

Ed Barreras said...

I came across this quote from an interview with Richard Rorty, which seems appropriate here. Rorty says:

“I think the main impact of the liberation of Eastern Europe [has been] to permit American intellectuals to look back on the Cold War and think of it s as good, successful war. If one adopts the point of view of people in Guatemala, Vietnam, or Chile, by contrast, it is very difficult to see the long struggle against the Soviet Union as a good, much less an heroic one. But people in Eastern Europe do seem grateful to the US for having kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union for all those decades, and this makes Americans feel that what their country was doing between 1949 and 1989 had some redeeming features, despite the tragedy of Vietnam and the guilt they feel over replacing Allende with Pinochet.”

I think this is exactly right. The US is pitched exactly half-way between Evil Empire and benign hegemon, depending on which part of the world you look. During the second half of the 20th century, the record in Latin America and SE Asia was very bad, while in Europe and Japan it was, on the balance, good.

A month ago, when I was much more naive, I perhaps would have nodded along with any random leftist impugning NATO as an instrument of US imperialism that should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Now, my view has changed. The US did not impose NATO on, for example, the Baltic states, turning them into colonial military bases from which it could point nukes at Russia — though if you listened only to a certain strain of leftist discourse, that would be your impression. The fact is that the Baltic states themselves were eager to join NATO for the *express purpose* of protecting themselves from Russian aggression, and given what we’re seeing today, letting them join was probably the better part of wisdom.

Like Rorty (and unlike Professor Wolf?) I am certain that liberal democracies are morally superior to any other kind of government that has yet been devised. Of course, Rorty was convinced that morals couldn’t be derived from distinctly philosophical arguments (a la Kant), but had to be cashed out in pragmatic/utilitarian terms such as “more conducive to human happiness and flourishing.” Ultimately all you can do is ask yourself: Would I rather be living in Estonia or Russia? The United State or China?

The problem for many leftists, I think, is that they perceive a rottenness and hollowness at the heart of liberal democracy — something like what’s described in T.S. Eliot’s poetry. So when you tell them that Estonia is becoming more like the United States, they get nauseous chills. I am more optimistic. I think if both Estonia and the United States can become more like Finland and Norway, the world will be in better shape. Yes, the coming climate crises may force all of us to become more socialist, and certainly that could be a good thing; but in any case, when that moment arrives I would much rather be living in a society where democracy, equality, and respect for human rights are firmly entrenched.

LFC said...

W.r.t. the "classical" realists (Morgenthau, Kennan, Niebuhr et al), the "strictly realist" perspective supposedly excluding all reference to ethics and morality is, in important respects, a myth.

One gets closer to a so-called strictly realist perspective in, say, a work like Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power Politics, but if you listen to M's commentary on current events over the yrs, it often smuggles moral considerations in through the back door, so to speak.

It's possible to look at countries as just billiard balls or mindless imperialist juggernauts, but once you look under the hood and see what's actually going on, this perspective often is inadequate. If there weren't some notion that wars of aggression are both illegal and immoral, then the UNGA would not have voted 141 to 35 to condemn the Russian invasion.

What possible self-interest did Burkina Faso have in voting to condemn the Russian invasion? Well, it had some, but probably the more important consideration was the belief of Burkina Faso's govt that wars of aggression violate intl law and morality.

s. wallerstein said...

I agree with Professor Wolff above.

I will also answer criticisms directed to me by David Zimmerman in the previous thread.

My constant criticisms of U.S. foreign policy are a "not in my name" thing. I have a U.S. passport and pay U.S. taxes or at least file a U.S. tax return. I am personally ashamed of how the U.S. behaves in the world.

I'm not an Amnesty International type of person. I don't go around giving out awards of good behavior or Boy Scout merit badges to countries I know little about.

I'm not a Kantian. I don't believe in some kind of universal moral code. I have my own personal ethical code which guides my actions and I don't expect anyone else to live up to it or to even be interested in it. I don't believe that morality is objective. As I said, my ethical code is my way of living.

I know that you, David Zimmerman, resisted the draft during the Vietnam War and I admire your courage. I'm not going to psychoanalyze my motives for being opposed to that war, but the fact that I am a U.S. citizen (besides the fear of being drafted myself) were important there.

Maybe you, David Zimmerman, have some kind of universal moral code and that's great for you, but don't expect all others to follow suit. As a matter of fact, when anyone expects everyone else to follow their moral lead, it gets a bit preachy, doesn't it?

Marco Aurelio Denegri said...

The question is not whether moral judgements play a role in American foreign policy but what is the weight that they contribute as compared to other considerations. It also clear that these weight values vary greatly depending on the nations involved in the conflict. I think it is fair to conclude that moral considerations are greatly increased when US interests are aligned with them and vice-versa.

Michael said...

(Several comments came in while I was typing this, so it's probably redundant.)

I'm not at all knowledgeable about international relations or its theory - but I suppose I'm still allowed to share my impressions of the commentary here, without deciding who's correct.

I doubt it'd be anything but extremely uncharitable to the realist position (as I gather it's called) to say that it views the actions of Russia/Putin, or Nazi Germany for that matter, with indifference, as if it'd be foolish sentimentality to be moved by the destruction of human life. But I do find their general position a little confusing, and have a hard time trying to paraphrase it so that it's coherent. But here's how it looks from my vantage point:

(1) It was "pretty much" inevitable that Putin would invade the Ukraine; likewise, the events leading up to Putin becoming president and being placed in the position to make this decision were "pretty much" inevitable. This goes for "pretty much" any event in global politics.

("Pretty much" is obviously a weasely way of putting it, but I don't want to get sidetracked with the metaphysics of free will and determinism and such. The gist is, there were enormous external political pressures at work, independent of Putin's will as an ethical agent, and it was either very unlikely or "pretty much" impossible that these forces wouldn't incline/necessitate the course he pursued.)

(2) Putin's actions, as with those of many others, are extremely tragic or regrettable or unfortunate (or whatever similar word is appropriate), in that they cause enormous destruction and human suffering, and threaten to do so on an enormous, perhaps global scale into the future. They may also be immoral - see (3).

(3) Insofar as it's appropriate to "condemn" (or at minimum be moved to deeply disapprove of) anyone who causes human suffering, it's appropriate to condemn Putin. Philosophically, it's debatable whether this makes him (or anyone) "genuinely immoral," and what this might even mean - but whatever the outcome of this debate may be, it remains true that Putin's choices are heavily influenced/determined by destructive but amoral forces which are "pretty much" necessary and inherent to global politics; and for this reason, it's impertinent and unproductive to engage in the analysis of Putin's moral character.

I think this position in a nutshell has it that it's hardly unnatural or incomprehensible to be appalled by Putin's actions, and to be moved (as a fellow human being with a stake in the matter) by the massive human suffering they cause; but in a way, it's a basic mistake to suppose that any ethical critique of the situation and the actors involved could be capable of averting or alleviating this suffering - in this sense, ethics is irrelevant. I guess the upshot is, global politics is a violent but thoroughly natural "whirlpool of egoism" (I think Nietzsche used that expression somewhere) that we're all caught up in, and although it's terrible, there's pretty much nothing to be done from our standpoint, but to hope for the best and suffer the consequences with everyone else.

I'm not sure if I'm on the right track here. It seemed necessary to invoke something akin to the "irresistible forces of nature" in order to make sense of this position, without denying that we're still "allowed" to care about Putin's victims and to despise Putin himself. (Perhaps those attitudes would be equally natural!)

LFC said...

In 1965, Hans Morgenthau wrote (in NY Rev Bks) that "[t]hese officials [of the Johnson administration] are under a compulsion to protect their imaginary world at all costs, intellectual and moral, from contact with the real one." (emphasis added)

Does that sound like someone who thought that morality had nothing whatsoever to do with international relations?

LFC said...

correction:

on the UNGA vote, it was 141 to 5. The 35 figure was abstentions, not "no" votes.

Michael said...

While I was typing, I didn't see the comments between AA's and my own (and I didn't see Prof. Wolff's latest blog entry, either, which just came in a few minutes ago). Just take my comment as evidence that these issues are confusing to sort through - probably should've just scrapped it, sorry.

LFC said...

@ Michael

These issues *are* sometimes difficult to sort through, and I don't think you should have scrapped the comment.

One of the problems here is that students who take Intl Relations 101 are likely to be told by their textbook, and perhaps their professor also, that this perspective called "realism" is skeptical about moral considerations and views intl politics as an amoral realm where power and interest govern action and morality is window dressing.

There is "the realist tradition," students learn, that goes from Thucydides, Hobbes, and Machiavelli through the 20th cent realists.

Now it is certainly true that some realists have written that morality is out of place in discussions of intl politics, so there is a kernel of truth in the textbook picture. But when the 20th cent. realists commented on the current events of their day, it's pretty clear that their values, i.e. moral judgments, did come into play, even if their theoretical writing suggested or argued that values should be kept out. So if the realists themselves couldn't keep values out when they moved from the realm of theory to, for lack of a better word, practice, then those theoretical pronouncements become suspect.

Even more to the point, the realists' "theoretical" writing is often more nuanced on this point than it's portrayed as being. E.H. Carr's _The Twenty Years' Crisis_, for ex, one of the major works in the realist canon, talks about the dialectic of power and morality (not about how power is everything and morality nothing, but about their dialectical push-and-pull relation). The subtitle of Morgenthau's famous textbook Politics Among Nations is "the struggle for power *and peace*". Morgenthau was trained as a young scholar/academic mostly in international law. The caricature of the realist view is that international law is either trivial or meaningless or irrelevant, because intl politics is the war of all against all, it's a Hobbesian state of nature etc and that's that. But that was not Morgenthau's view of intl law. I'll stop there, but I hope I've conveyed that the actual realists, either self-identified or labeled by others, don't always match the textbook IR 101 version of realism. (Morgenthau btw was a German Jewish immigrant to the U.S., came in the late 1930s. Arnold Wolfers, another sometimes labeled a realist, also a European emigre. The list cd go on and on. It's implausible that those w this background wd conclude that morality is completely irrelevant to intl affairs. Kissinger is a separate case, and he was much younger when he came to the U.S. w his family.)

Michael said...

Thanks, LFC. That makes sense to me.

Again, IR is not my thing, but philosophically, I do get the sense that the position I outlined in my comment suffers from a certain internal tension that'd make it hard to maintain, without acknowledging some role for ethics after all; the position I outlined may even be incoherent. In general, whenever someone proposes to set aside ethics as irrelevant to some sphere of human activity, I suspect they're proposing something conceptually impossible. The only considerations that occur to me in favor of suspending or suppressing the ethical viewpoint, are themselves ethical in some way or another; ethics seems inescapable.

For example: Why should "we" (or whoever makes decisions on behalf of the parties involved in the world drama) "set aside" ethics in dealing with someone like Putin? What would be the rationale for that? The only rationales I can think of - without necessarily ascribing them to anyone mentioned here - boil down to: (A) "Ethical considerations don't help us achieve what we want, and may even impede us"; or (B) "We're actually dealing with someone outside the realm of ethics."

But each of these involves assumptions which it's the business of ethical theory to identify and examine.

(B) implies an understanding of the proper business and limits of ethics; if we say, "Ethics doesn't apply to international relations," then we're already engaged in ethical theory, by applying some criteria to distinguish between the ethical and non-ethical. (If we say, e.g., "It's out of place to apply moral judgments to amoral collectives," then we're already thinking about ethics.) Admittedly this is kind of a trivial point.

And as for (A), it, too, is already engaged in ethics, and at a less theoretical level. It involves the concept of desired ends, and implies that certain of these ends have such weight as to require us to "set aside" even ethical considerations. Less abstractly, it might say, "The priorities of nation-states are what ultimately determine our course of action" - but this implies that there might be other, competing priorities which happen to have less obligatory force in the final analysis; and this is an ethical judgment. "Don't waste your time theorizing about who's right or wrong while your neighbors are being slaughtered en masse" - this, if you press it, involves ethical reasoning, as to what's worth caring about, what constitutes the best use of time and resources.

Alternatively, someone might insist that (A) is descriptive rather than prescriptive; it only indicates what the parties involved will in fact do, as distinct from what anyone supposedly "should" do. But as with (B), this would imply a distinction between amoral "happenings" on the one hand, and ethically significant human choices on the other. And I'm not sure what would ground this distinction apart from the contention that the outcomes are determined (or heavily influenced) by brute natural (or quasi-natural) forces which will "have their way" regardless of anyone's moral judgments. At that point, however, we get into metaphysics, which is probably the last thing anyone wants to do under the circumstances. (Plus it has an initial appearance of gross implausibility, as if world affairs in no significant way involves human beings exerting their autonomous agency - which of course would be the business of ethics to evaluate.)

Thanks again for the clarification. As before, this comment is just me trying to sort things out at a pretty inexperienced and elementary level - I don't claim to have any knowledge or opinions as to what this or that school or figure in IR has actually argued.