Pessimism Abroad 

Whither thy headlong course? Thou wilt bring conflagration back with thee! How great the flames thou seekest over these waters, thou dost not know!”  

~Cassandra’s warning to Paris from Ovid, Heroides 16 

War seems to bring the American right wing together. It’s common to hear that the war with Iran caused a rift in the “MAGA coalition” (whatever that is). But polling indicates that it is primarily the online influencers who are divided. A supermajority of Republicans have supported the war throughout, and most of the Republican critics identify as “non-MAGA.” Given that the non-MAGA wing of the Republican Party tends to be neoconservative-inflected, there is reason to believe that what opposition there is may be informed more by animosity toward Trump than a principled skepticism of war.   

The broad acceptance by self-described conservatives of casual war, initiated without the approval of the clear constitutional authority of Congress, is in sharp contrast to the caution and prudence at the heart of the conservative disposition. While perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the American right, increasingly enamored with strongman rule, should accept strongman warmaking, the distinctively conservative critique of unnecessary war and aggressive foreign policy is not something that should go gently into the night. 

The conservative disposition is characterized by humility, caution, and skepticism of transformative, planned political projects. One of the best, most succinct accounts of the reasons for this is Roger Scruton’s The Uses of Pessimism, published just over fifteen years ago. Taking aim primarily at left-wing domestic politics, Scruton described several “fallacies” that contemporary rhetoric and policy tend to fall into. It is an astute diagnosis of what one might call the ideological mind virus, which prevents its victim from appreciating the lessons of history or learning from his own experience. Those fallacies include: 

The best case fallacy: “Asked to choose under conditions of uncertainty, it imagines the best outcome and assumes that it need consider no other.”  

The born free fallacy: The idea that freedom is attained merely by the removal of obstacles and does not require any institutions, traditions, or moral restraints.  

The utopian fallacy: An indifference to any refutation of one’s aims; an inclination to accept absurdly optimistic hopes not despite objections but because of them. It turns around any objections as a moral slight against those making them. Any caution or restraint is seen as a failure to live up to the moral demands of the moment. 

The zero-sum fallacy: The belief that any “losers” in society are only losing because they are being taken advantage by someone else who is winning; it overlooks the reality that there are some conditions that are beneficial for all, and that the harming of “bad guys” does not necessarily lead to any benefit for the good ones.  

The planning fallacy: The belief “that we can advance collectively to our goals by adopting a common plan, and by working towards it, under the leadership of some central authority such as the state.” It fails to “recognize that consensual solutions to collective problems are not, as a rule, imposed but discovered, and that they are discovered over time.”  

The moving spirit fallacy: The assimilation of “all that is happening in the world that you inhabit, your own projects included, into the ‘spirit of the times.’” 

The aggregation fallacy: The tendency to lump all good things together and not consider that the relationship between goods may be complicated. In particular, it means one need not think in terms of trade-offs: in pursuing one good, we can assume that others will come along with it. 

Scruton explored these tendencies mostly in the context of domestic politics, but it’s not difficult at all to see how American foreign policy—and especially the rationale and rhetoric about deciding to go to war—has consistently fallen into their traps.  

Commentaries urging war almost always present the best-case outcome, and then reason as if the only question is whether we ought to accomplish it or not. They may acknowledge that there is a moral seriousness to war—people might die, after all. But it’s always a matter of whether the best-case outcome (bringing freedom to this population, or deposing that U.S. enemy) is worth the costs in lives and treasure. Hardly ever is the issue broached: can the best-case outcome be attained? And if so, is it likely to come packaged with other, unforeseen outcomes that are not so desirable? The aggregation fallacy and the best-case fallacy thus go easily together. 

Zero-sum thinking, of course, comes naturally in foreign policy. That is an area of government action where it is easiest to erase the complicated social fabric from one’s mind, thinking instead of unified countries colliding like billiard balls. It is also much easier to paper over unintended consequences. Those consequences of actions on the other side of the world may not show themselves immediately. Indeed, they may not ripple back to the United States for years or even decades. When George W. Bush hung the “Mission Accomplished” banner, it seemed that Iraq had been a clean victory, planned and executed. We did not know at the time what horrors were still in store, both for American servicemen and Iraqis, or the ripple effects that protracted conflict would have across the region.  

Americans have also long been enamored with the idea that History marches along with their armies—that “a fiery gospel” is “writ in burnished rows of steel”—and that their accomplishments around the world will usher in an end of history or a golden age. This is often accompanied by the born free fallacy: one thing our armies do particularly well is defeat the armies of dictatorial governments. So we tend to believe that toppling statues equates to the spread of liberty.   

But perhaps the most on-the-nose connection between Scruton’s fallacies and American foreign policy discussion is the utopian fallacy: there is a pervasive tendency to dismiss practical objections to war by turning them into moral failings on the part of those making them. Anyone raising concerns about war outcomes becomes Neville Chamberlain selling his soul to the Nazi devil. Every warning that “unpatriotic” critics raise about the pitfalls of war only enhances the sense of “moral courage” a war’s boosters feel, knowing that they will not “shrink from the moment.”   

Recognition of these fallacies should caution against arrogance when it comes to assessing our own knowledge and ability to manipulate the world with military force, just as the conservative disposition cautions against arrogance in domestic policy undertakings. 

That we fall into these inclinations so often when deciding whether to go to war is all the more unfortunate, given that war itself only amplifies them. “The fallacies that I have diagnosed in this book,” wrote Scruton, “come about not because the thinking that they exemplify is absurd, but because it involves applying in times of peace and social cooperation the attitude of war.”  

By this, of course, Scruton didn’t mean that a state of war magically makes fallacies reasonable. Rather, war (at least as traditionally understood) requires a simplified way of thinking. A state of war demands a nearly single-minded focus on one identifiable goal. The disasters entailed in defeat require that most of the normal goals of a civil society be put on hold or subordinated to that of victory. Planning becomes more possible when it need consider no interests but one; zero-sum thinking comes closer to the truth when there is a life-and-death struggle with an identifiable rival.  

The distinction Scruton and other conservatives drew between the state of peace and the state of war suggests two entirely different contexts in which decisions are made. The former is a civil context, aimed at mutual accommodation; the latter a context of antagonism in which victory over an opponent is of paramount importance. This is why war is so dangerous for a free society and such a foolish choice if undertaken voluntarily, outside of the compulsion of necessity: it encourages a way of thinking about government and political power antithetical to the ways of civil peace.  

A wrinkle in our contemporary context, however, is the transformation of war into a casual policy choice. Lately, thanks in part to America’s military dominance in the world, wars have not been pitched as existential crises that demand our full attention and commitment. We can pretend that the choice to go to war is no different from the choice to send out stimulus checks or initiate infrastructure projects. But the farce only goes so far: the same politicians that say their wars are merely minor “military operations” that need not be carefully deliberated in public or declared by Congress still demand the kind of deference and prerogative powers associated with full-scale war. (It is not a coincidence that, as we have allowed presidents to wage voluntary war on their own, they have also approached routine domestic policy matters with the same mindset as in war.)  

Casual war gives politicians (today, mainly presidents) the best of all worlds—they don’t have to make a careful and deliberate case that war is necessary and justified; they can gain all the deference and unrestricted power that comes from wartime, even though the immediate stakes are not existential; and they can continue to use all the logical shortcuts Scruton identified to justify whatever impulse crosses their minds.  

The losers are plentiful: the American soldiers sent to fight and potentially to die; American political life that further accommodates itself to autocratic presidentialism; and the future generations that will have to reap the potential whirlwinds, at home and abroad, that capricious war may sow today.   

Cassandra warned her brother Paris as he sailed off to steal Helen and antagonize the Greeks, “How great the flames thou seekest over these waters, thou dost not know!” Nor do we. We don’t know that we can attain the best-case outcome. We don’t know that toppling a regime won’t result in some worse condition or further conflagration. We don’t know what unintended effects our well-laid plans may have, either abroad or at home, now or in the future. We do know the value of American lives, treasure, and reputation. Aware of these limits and the errors in thinking that persuade us to ignore our limits, the conservative disposition ought to be a bulwark against such folly. The American right, however, is all too often a cheerleader. 

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