Harking back to the writings of Sun-tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes, Kaplan argues that the “pagan ethos” of old has been both misunderstood and undervalued. So far, so good. But in making what is clearly a deliberately provocative case, he largely dismisses as ineffective or, worse, as counterproductive, moral idealists from Immanuel Kant right up to Woodrow Wilson and the human-rights activists of today. And, more fundamentally, he believes that politicians who dwell on values rather than self-interest are doomed to failure. Progress, he insists, comes in abandoning the religious for the secular.
Kaplan maintains that self-interest, as explained by the early political and military theorists, was a recipe for virtue in the broadest sense. Put simply, a ruler who cares for the many while sometimes trampling on the rights of others serves his subjects well. That’s at home. Abroad, this entails projecting power; only then can values follow. Kaplan argues that Judeo-Christian morality is preoccupied with the individual–or abstract moral principles. Pagan morality, by contrast, focuses on public morality–or the morality of results. In popular shorthand, the ends justify the means. But Kaplan is convinced this shouldn’t be seen as pejorative. After all, there are practical reasons for powerful rulers to exercise restraint, since otherwise they overreach and are likely to fail.
Kaplan points to modern rulers who have displayed the cunning that he identifies with the pagan ethos. There’s Winston Churchill, the arch-colonialist who stood up to Hitler, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who deceived Congress while pulling his country into a war his countrymen didn’t want. There’s Yitzhak Rabin, who as Israel’s Defense minister ordered his troops to break the bones of Palestinian protesters, transforming himself into a peacemaker only after he had demonstrated his resolve. And there’s Ronald Reagan, who faced down the Soviet Union by escalating the arms race. Kaplan scoffs at Bill Clinton’s early posturing on human rights in China, and argues that a more powerful Western leader–like Margaret Thatcher–could have averted the bloodshed in Bosnia. (Ironically, Kaplan’s “Balkan Ghosts,” with its vivid descriptions of ethnic hatreds, reinforced Clinton’s early fears of deploying U.S. military might.) It’s easy to surmise that Kaplan approves of George W. Bush’s warrior politics in Afghanistan, and the feeling is mutual; Kaplan has been a welcome guest at the Bush White House.
Kaplan is convinced that like the Roman Empire in its day, the United States has been left with the task of defining the New World Order. And that the transformation of modern warfare, with the speedy deployments of troops to hot spots anywhere, means that American political and military leaders will make their decisions unimpeded by the time-consuming democratic process. He clearly applauds this development, warning rulers against being swayed by public opinion shaped by the pesky media that can’t or won’t distinguish between emotional human-rights issues and the national interest. What, then, is to stop leaders from going wrong–as, he admits, they did in Vietnam? His only answer is the character of the political and military leaders themselves.
Hardly a satisfying response, to put it mildly. It also overlooks the fact that the character of the leaders he admires were shaped by the Judeo-Christian values that he is so quick to dismiss. He concedes that there’s overlap between pagan and Judeo-Christian ideas, and that Christian leaders have often accepted the need for moral compromises in pursuit of higher goals. But he stridently emphasizes a dubious dichotomy, consistently downplaying the connection between values and goals.
Core beliefs matter more than Kaplan wants to admit. He praises the achievements of Western spies during the cold war, for example, but never mentions that Soviet-bloc spies often bested them. How then to account for the West’s victory? Surely it had much to do with a system that, for all its imperfections, upheld the dignity of the individual against a system that trampled on human rights. There’s a certain willful, even arrogant, self-denial that mars this otherwise fascinating intellectual exercise.
