Summary: The world is wracked by a clash of civilizations. America is the aggressor. The rest of the world is on the defensive. Today we discuss why America is winning, with eventual victory almost certain: western culture will crush our foes, as it did in the Cold War. That means empathy for our foes should be part of our grand strategy.
“In War: resolution. In Defeat: defiance. In Victory: magnanimity. In Peace: good will.”
— Good advice from Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)
Contents of this series
(a) How I learned to stop worrying and love Fourth Generation War. We can win at this game.
(b) We are the attackers in the Clash of Civilizations. We’re winning.
- A spectre haunts the world
- Islam vs. America
(c) Today’s post:
- Who is playing offense? defense?
- Can they win against our culture?
- Who is at fault? Us or them?
- The military dimension
- Recommendations
- For more information
.
(3) Who is playing offense? Who is playing defense?
From one perspective, we see that Islamic jihadis have suddenly decided to retake their lost lands, such as Spain, and declare war on the Great Satan (i.e., America, or perhaps western civilization). But why attack now? Why attack the USA, rather than (for example) Israel? Such questions have been the subject of fascinating and often fevered speculation, mostly without much evidence or even logic. Here’s one of the better answers:
Ideologically, Salafism is to Jihadism what Marxism is to Leninism, even though psychologically, the jihadist disease appears closer to Nazism (i.e., pathological fear of, rather than faith in, modernity, along with virulent anti-Semitism). Just as the communist project of yesterday was summed up by the proverbial slogan “the Soviets, plus electricity,” the jihadist project today is best captured by “the sha’ria, plus WMD.” Like the Communist International, the Salafist International has its Bolsheviks and its Mensheviks, its Bernsteins and its Kautskys, and even its Leninesque What Is to Be Done? (Qutb’s Milestones).
As for the debates over what priority to give to the “far enemy” vs. the “near enemy,” they are but the equivalent of yesterday’s clashes between Trotskyite partisans of “permanent revolution” and Stalinist supporters of “socialism in one country.”
— Tony Corn, “World War IV as Fourth-Generation Warfare“, Policy Review, January 2006
Another and simpler explanation is that the jihadists are defending themselves. American culture threatens to wash away some key values of Islamic societies, as it is doing to so many other societies. The difference between their values and ours — and hence the danger — is greater for them than, for example, our western cousins (e.g., the French). So they seek self-preservation, an instinct both ubiquitous in practice and enshrined in the law of nations. Whether America’s cultural “aggression” is deliberate or inadvertent is not relevant. We don’t care, nor do they.
Let’s check this conclusion by another line of logic. One objective of modern war (i.e., of the past few centuries) is to gain the moral high ground, usually by portraying the other side as the aggressor, a decisive advantage in wars from the American Revolution to the USSR-Afghanistan War. In today’s global community what nation consistently appears among the most likely to disturb the global peace? America.
(4) Can they successfully defend against American culture?
Probably not.
- Ideas and technology have always spread irresistibly. Cultures that have walled themselves off, such as China did for centuries, suffered as a result.
- Globalization makes borders porous. Travel and trade allow cultural contagions to spread rapidly across the globe.
- Modern communications technology allows the first two factors to change cultures in years instead of over generations.
(5) Who is at fault for this conflict? America or them?
Please consult a priest or philosopher for answers to such questions. The FM website discusses what was, what is, and what might be.
In any case, neither Mother Nature nor Mistress Cleo (the muse of history) cares. Rather than bother with such a pointless exercise, we should practice empathy for those whose cultures we threaten — and probably will irrevocably change. No matter if we disagree with their values, we can understand and sympathize with their anguish and lost traditions.
“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”
— Said by John Bradford while imprisoned in the Tower of London (as a Protestant) when he saw others led toward their execution. He burned at the stake on 1 July 1555 (See Wikipedia)
(6) The military dimension of this conflict
We couple an offensive cultural strategy with an aggressive military strategy. Although we call our military a “defense”, our actions speak louder than our words. We maintain a chain of approximately 700+ bases encircling the world plus a massive military force — that frequently intervenes in foreign lands. Those nations not on friendly terms with us might reasonably find this threatening.
As is so often the case in history, the conflict between the West and the rest is structural. We will not change ourselves to suit others. It’s our culture and their problem. What strategy will work best for us? Should we play offense or defense?
Both. And neither. The terms are meaningless except as generalities. Worse, they imply that we compete against everyone else. If so, what is the prize? Who cares? What does it mean to “win” the clash of civilizations”? The Soviet Union was a global menace for several generations, spreading communism and revolution over the globe – until it collapsed. What did their aggressiveness accomplish?
Disciple Caine: Master, do we seek victory in contention?
Master Kan: Seek rather not to contend.
Disciple Caine: But shall we not then be defeated?
Master Kan: We know that where there is no contention, there is neither defeat nor victory. The supple willow does not contend against the storm, yet it survives.— From episode #1 of the television show “Kung Fu” (1972)
Our goal should be to build the best possible America. There is no perfect security in this world, only in the next. But we can make more friends than enemies, with empathy a powerful tool in our arsenal — in addition to the bombs.
Most importantly, patience and restraint make time our ally. Rather than our bombs, make our economic strength and vibrant culture the our cutting edges in this conflict, so that our enemies look with fear on the coming of each new year — as events slowly force them to evolve.
Or we can continue our bold warlike ways, and risk blowing our advantages. History provides many examples of ways to to this. Athens held a winning position similar to ours, and threw it away in an imprudent war. Lots of lessons for America in this passage.
Actually, we do know one important, big thing about the Classical Greek world that Thucydides did not know … There is a deep, powerful sense in which time was on the side of Athens and its empire. Each decade that the war between Sparta and Athens remained cold rather than hot was a decade for metics and immigrants to the Geek world to think whether they wanted to live in Spartan-allied oligarchies dominated by a closed guild of landowners, or in Athenian-allied places where the (male, citizen) demos ruled and where there was much more growth, commerce, trade, and opportunity.
Each decade that the war between Sparta and Athens remained cold rather than hot was a decade for rich Spartiates to marry the daughters of other rich Spartiates, and for poor Spartiates to find that they could no longer afford the Spartan lifestyle and so drop out of the citizen body — and of the main line of battle. By 350 Sparta could — this is a guess — put only one-fifth as many professional hoplite soldiers into the line of battle as it could have two centuries before. A policy of postponing the showdown — even if one of “apparently limitless forbearance” — was a policy of greatly increasing the relative strength of the Athenian side.
— “History as Tragedy: The Peloponnesian War“, Brad DeLong, Professor of Economic at Berkeley
The US government borrows vast sums each year (often from foreign governments) to sustain our trillion-dollar military apparatus, our foreign bases, and many wars. A great nation’s wealth, thoughtlessly thrown away without considering alternative strategies, which might achieve security at a cost we can afford. And allow time for the world to change so that this clash of civilizations passes, as have those in the past, leaving a better world in its wake.
(7) Recommendations
For details about a defensive grand strategy:
- The Myth of Grand Strategy, 31 January 2006
- One step beyond Lind: What is America’s geopolitical strategy?, 28 October 2007
- How I learned to stop worrying and love Fourth Generation War. We can win at this game., 18 September 2013
(8) For More Information
(a) To read other posts about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar: posts about Military and strategic theory.
(b) Posts about the Long War:
- The Fight for Islamic Hearts and Minds, 20 February 2012
- A look at al Qaeda, the long war — and us, 7 August 2013
- How I learned to stop worrying and love Fourth Generation War. We can win at this game., 18 September 2013
(c) Posts about Islam
- Are islamic extremists like the anarchists?, 14 December 2009
- Hatred and fear of Islam – of Moslems – is understandable. But are there hidden forces at work?, 3 August 2010
- Should we fear that religion whose believers have killed so many people?, 4 August 2010
- Hard (and disturbing) information about schools in Pakistan – the madāris, 1 May 2011
- The Fight for Islamic Hearts and Minds, 20 February 2012
We have been here before
