[lit-ideas] Fear
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 09:43:13 -0800
I watched Hew Strachan being interviewed on CSPAN -- actually it was an
interview that took place several years ago, about one of his books on the
First World War. He disagreed with Niall Ferguson's thesis from The Pity
of War that the British could have prevented that war. He believed that
nothing could have prevented it, that every nation involved was fearful
about something they were willing to fight to prevent. And these fears, he
shows, were not imaginary. The things the nations feared probably would
have occurred, but of course as we now know what happened: the horrendous
"Great War" was far worse than anything any nation feared. But no one
imagined that.
Turning back to the Peloponnesian War, we see that the same sort of thing
was true, that is, the various city states involved were all afraid of
something. Fear was so palpable that Hanson in A War Like No Other
entitles his first chapter "Fear."
Sparta was ignorant about Athens' true power. Had it been better informed
(to use a Ferguson "counterfactual" - something Strachan disapproves of) it
probably wouldn't have started that war. It did though and would have lost
(to use another counterfactual) had not Athens been hit by a devastating
plague that killed a critical number of its fighting men.
Are there lessons in this for us? I don't think so. We can look back at
the First World War and further back to the Peloponnesian War and see that
various of the participants weren't prepared. Sparta had no navy and
couldn't have defeated Athens without one; so it had to start from scratch
and build one - with money it didn't have. Britain didn't have as large an
army as it needed to fight against the Germans and so it had to borrow one
from the U.S. But today the U.S. is well prepared to fight against the
Islamists. It has an adequate army and navy and its fears seem genuine -
that is, the Islamists do indeed hope to attack Western peoples using
terrorist tactics until their ends are achieved.
We are getting into the anti-Islamist war slowly. The water is cold so we
are inching into it. We aren't giving up as much freedom as some more
security-minded people think we should - for our own protection. There are
too many cracks and crevices for the Islamists to sneak through; and yet no
one can prove we are entering this cold sea of trouble too slowly since the
Islamists haven't attacked us as some have feared. They are settling for
the easier targets of our allies. Were it not for those attacks some might
argue (actually some argue this despite these facts) that this fear is
over-rated.
Some now say that the fear of the Soviet Union was over-rated because look
at what happened to them. And yet no one could have predicted that, its
fall, that is. The Soviet Union banged its shoe at the West and promised to
bury it - especially the U.S. - and thought it could. And thinking it
could, it gave it a try. And perhaps they could have succeeded had we
opposed them less than we did.
Now we are faced with an Islamist force that thinks it can and is giving it
a try. We need to oppose it so it can't, but how much opposition shall we
mount? We are quibbling our way toward a policy. Whichever party is
elected isn't likely to abandon either Afghanistan or Iraq. Neither party
now seems likely to use military means in either Iran or Pakistan - at least
not in the near term because nations present a different threat than the
paramilitary Islamist organizations that are accountable to no nation
(except for Hezbollah which is somewhat accountable to Iran).
Some argue that we are not fearful enough, but I tend to think that will
take care of itself. If the Islamists become more successful in their
attacks against us and not just against our allies, we will learn to fear
them more than we do.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
Other related posts:
