The key belief of illiberalism is that the world is abuse or be abused and that's never going to change. The key belief of liberalism is that humans are capable of inventing ways (democracy, human rights, the rule of law) to create a space where it doesn't have to be like that.
It's more than that. I would add that liberals want a system where people can flourish. And that is not the domestic order we have now. That is why I am a New Dealer, a variant of liberal that is mighty thin on the ground these days. :(
Early in adulthood I recognized anecdotally that a primary component vector in being a conservative or a liberal was how you felt loved and supported by your family and community as a child. If the world is a scary place as a child it probably results statistically in the person being conservative as an adult. Fear of changes in the environment in which a species lives are not limited to humans, although combined with our brain we not only survived but prospered by effectively reducing risks from predators by planning and organization. But that fear of changes is universal across what we know of living species. Take pronghorn in Wyoming as an example. Fishing season they will come within 20ft of you, and it's in small groups 3-6. Rifle season they will bolt if you get within 250yds of them and the groups are 20-80 in size. The "political structure" of the pronghorn goes from the liberalism of small groups being close to humans to the illiberalism of the large group headed by the dominant buck. So absolutely for any species to survive it must have both individual and group fear that improves survivability. To progress as a species we have to recognize this inherent limitation to organized change will always exist and so change must be done pragmatically and not ideologically.
Sep 12, 2022·edited Sep 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith
I suppose that's a fair argument; the ideas of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law have also been bent and knotted into various shapes by our societies.
Socialism is not really liberal, per se. It is very old, the Apostles practiced it according to Acts. They were culturally/psychologically more similar to populations whence come jihadists. A psychology that is ill-suited to liberalism.
That said, Western intellectuals (e.g. Marx) did extract insights from these historical examples (probably also medieval monasteries, some of which practiced communism) and rolled them in his own philosophical and economic analysis of the social ills of his day, becoming a revolutionary in the process.
There's another element of Liberalism & war that's frequently overlooked or underrated.
Bismarck famously said that 'People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election', and while courage and strength of will are obviously key to winning, so to is being able to separate and prioritise fact from fiction (particularly unwelcome facts over comforting fictions), in order to make the right decisions.
Anti-liberal societies are exceptionally bad at this, and prosecuting a war with false info and inflexible world-view is about a sure -fire way of losing it as you can get.
Thank you, Noah, for keeping this world situation in the forefront. As I have commented in the past, I was in Poland, Hungary, and Czechia in May. What I saw and heard there has made me feel strongly about this issue. I worry that people so geographically removed from the events will forget.
I just returned from Ireland which, though militarily neutral, has taken in about 50,000 Ukrainian refugees. And I saw a few Ukrainian flags.
The most important message that I take away from the Ukrainian victories is that US defense contractors make some really awesome weaponry, and that John McCain's dismissal of Russia as a "gas station with nukes" was eerily accurate. There's a good reason why the keynote speaker at the US defense contractors' conference is Volodymyr Zelensky.
It also helps to have ones eyes wide open about the kind of polity Ukraine has.
Before the war, they were ranked as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. After Russia has been defeated (soon, one hopes!), and once America, the EU and others rush in with billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, we should fully expect that obscene amounts of money will get siphoned away by several corrupt oligarch/politicians.
Zelensky may wind up like Yeltsin, a bumbler who turned out to be a hero when the moment demanded it; and completely at sea, buffeted around by more savvy and corrupt politicians once peace has broken out and the place is awash with money. Ukraine may - ironically - wind up electing a Putin or Orban who is purportedly there to "clean" up the mess and put the oligarchs in their place, leaving us to occasionally wonder if the joke is on us.
My big takeaway from this war is that the Ukrainians were willing to fight to the death for their country and their elected leader did not cut and run, but turned into a true leader. It remains to be seen how Zelensky is in peace time, but he has turned out to be one of the all time great civilian war leaders. Any ambivalence in the Ukrainian population about Russia's good intentions, even towards Russian speakers, appears to have largely vanished.
If Ukrainians can reject the corruption that would try to return after the war, they have a chance of creating a real country after more than a century of being under the thumb of various imperialist regimes.
The US military has propped up too many fake, corrupt regimes over the past 70 years, usually needing to abandon them after years of expenditure and casualties. This is one that doesn't require US boots on the ground, just supplies, support, and our best wishes.
I think you’re missing some sort of “the latter” clause in this sentence:
“The former is all about outward fierceness and savagery, while the inner ability to endure hardship and pain and fear and still keep fighting effectively.”
Presumably, if we should avoid theorizing about the current war in terms of the last war, we should avoid theorizing about the next war in terms of the current war (or battle).
Iraq is different in that the Iraq got no assistance from other Great Powers and its army rapidly collapsed, while Ukraine's army has not. A somewhat better (and ironic) analogy is 1980's Afghanistan. Here the invading force was Russia and the defenders backed by the US.
I don't think the US has abandoned empire. If we had done so, I would think the US would be looking to achieve a settlement in which Russia agrees to end the war, and that Ukraine's borders return to their pre-2014 values. In exchange the US will withdraw from Europe, ended the NATO alliance, which would be replaced with a European security alliance in which Ukraine is a member.
A long-term goal of Putin has been to get rid of NATO--here he can achieve it. Fiscal pressures will ensure this European alliance will be too weak to threaten Russia, unlike NATO, which is backed by the leading imperial power.
My guess is one US objective in this war is to show (to China) how difficult it is to prosecute a modern war against determined resistance backed by a superpower with recent war experience.
It's a good reason to fight this proxy war because Russia is declining and its power (because of this war) will be limited likely. China on the other hand is ascendant (until recently) and will need to learn there are deep costs for many of its desired outcomes.
>we should work equally hard to restore the U.S.’ moral commitment to liberalism both inside and outside its borders.
What self-imagined "realists" seem to miss:
If power is the ability to convince your friends and coerce your enemies (and sometimes the reverse), then moral superiority is real geopolitical power.
That is true, assuming all sides have the same conceptions of morality. This is likely the case for Ukraine, but I am not so sure it held for the Afghan wars.
Both the Russian and American invaders had valid pretexts for war, and the defenders are the Taliban or fundamentalists like them. So moral superiority is harder to assign, I should think.
Great post! But I am afraid that might is the only thing making right possible to survive here. Ukraine is succeeding because of its brave soldiers (might), and the backing of the most mighty military alliance, providing the mightiest most modern weaponry. If none of these happened, if the US and NATO did not back Ukraine, and if Kyiv was to rely on effeminate soldiers in need of talk therapy, then it would matter not how right Ukraine was to begin with.
Liberalism is resilient in spite of some limited decadence, and whether or not the system protects the dignity of all its citizens (including gay rights etc) does not matter much (at least directly). Liberalism is the best system out there - and it so because free markets, limited and accountable government checked by an independent judiciary and (at least relatively) free media, is still the best way of governance to ensure prosperity for citizens, state power and wealth, and ultimately enable the creation and sustenance of superior military might.
Not disagreeing with any of this but personally I'm more worried about illiberalism here at home than abroad. Sure, they are related tangentially but lets not let fisa courts, raiding lawyers offices, unwarranted wire taps and ex-judicial murder by drone of aid workers go unnoticed. Get rid of the FISA courts and the patriot act and fire the murderous Gina Haskle and then we'll talk.
Great piece, Noah. This is exactly why I subscribe. And on another note, I know you don’t care for his writings, but your post parallels the Culture series by Iain Banks.
HiMARS wasn't invented by meatheads; and the strategies in Kherson and Izium weren't concocted by testosterone driven orcs. The Orcs have one strategy: Flatten civilian targets. The best military minds are what wins wars. And if you ever get a chance to talk to a colonel or general - do it. You'll find some of the most insightful people, who are true professionals at what they do.
...autocratic states don't produce either very good weapons, nor very clever generals; and they aren't very good at recognizing the reality on the ground and adapting as needed. It is the brittle nature of autocracies which is why they fail. Democracies may have many faults, but they are able to adapt and recover.
The key belief of illiberalism is that the world is abuse or be abused and that's never going to change. The key belief of liberalism is that humans are capable of inventing ways (democracy, human rights, the rule of law) to create a space where it doesn't have to be like that.
Well said.
Thank you. And may I remind you of the words of Steve Brody: "Everybody's a rabbit."
The key belief of illiberalism is that people need to be controlled for the good of society.
The key belief of liberalism is that people must be free for a society to be good.
It's more than that. I would add that liberals want a system where people can flourish. And that is not the domestic order we have now. That is why I am a New Dealer, a variant of liberal that is mighty thin on the ground these days. :(
Early in adulthood I recognized anecdotally that a primary component vector in being a conservative or a liberal was how you felt loved and supported by your family and community as a child. If the world is a scary place as a child it probably results statistically in the person being conservative as an adult. Fear of changes in the environment in which a species lives are not limited to humans, although combined with our brain we not only survived but prospered by effectively reducing risks from predators by planning and organization. But that fear of changes is universal across what we know of living species. Take pronghorn in Wyoming as an example. Fishing season they will come within 20ft of you, and it's in small groups 3-6. Rifle season they will bolt if you get within 250yds of them and the groups are 20-80 in size. The "political structure" of the pronghorn goes from the liberalism of small groups being close to humans to the illiberalism of the large group headed by the dominant buck. So absolutely for any species to survive it must have both individual and group fear that improves survivability. To progress as a species we have to recognize this inherent limitation to organized change will always exist and so change must be done pragmatically and not ideologically.
> (democracy, human rights, the rule of law)
You forgot socialism!
Capitalism modified by ideas that originally came from socialists has given people better lives than either straight capitalism or actual socialism.
I suppose that's a fair argument; the ideas of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law have also been bent and knotted into various shapes by our societies.
Exactly, that is how cultural evolution works.
Socialism is not really liberal, per se. It is very old, the Apostles practiced it according to Acts. They were culturally/psychologically more similar to populations whence come jihadists. A psychology that is ill-suited to liberalism.
That said, Western intellectuals (e.g. Marx) did extract insights from these historical examples (probably also medieval monasteries, some of which practiced communism) and rolled them in his own philosophical and economic analysis of the social ills of his day, becoming a revolutionary in the process.
There's another element of Liberalism & war that's frequently overlooked or underrated.
Bismarck famously said that 'People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election', and while courage and strength of will are obviously key to winning, so to is being able to separate and prioritise fact from fiction (particularly unwelcome facts over comforting fictions), in order to make the right decisions.
Anti-liberal societies are exceptionally bad at this, and prosecuting a war with false info and inflexible world-view is about a sure -fire way of losing it as you can get.
"In other words, there is a clear difference between acting tough and actually being tough."
"Any man that must say 'I am the king' is no king at all"
-Tywin Lannister
Thank you, Noah, for keeping this world situation in the forefront. As I have commented in the past, I was in Poland, Hungary, and Czechia in May. What I saw and heard there has made me feel strongly about this issue. I worry that people so geographically removed from the events will forget.
I just returned from Ireland which, though militarily neutral, has taken in about 50,000 Ukrainian refugees. And I saw a few Ukrainian flags.
The most important message that I take away from the Ukrainian victories is that US defense contractors make some really awesome weaponry, and that John McCain's dismissal of Russia as a "gas station with nukes" was eerily accurate. There's a good reason why the keynote speaker at the US defense contractors' conference is Volodymyr Zelensky.
It also helps to have ones eyes wide open about the kind of polity Ukraine has.
Before the war, they were ranked as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. After Russia has been defeated (soon, one hopes!), and once America, the EU and others rush in with billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, we should fully expect that obscene amounts of money will get siphoned away by several corrupt oligarch/politicians.
Zelensky may wind up like Yeltsin, a bumbler who turned out to be a hero when the moment demanded it; and completely at sea, buffeted around by more savvy and corrupt politicians once peace has broken out and the place is awash with money. Ukraine may - ironically - wind up electing a Putin or Orban who is purportedly there to "clean" up the mess and put the oligarchs in their place, leaving us to occasionally wonder if the joke is on us.
Yes, Slava Ukraini and Putin Delenda Est.
But don't get carried away ...
My big takeaway from this war is that the Ukrainians were willing to fight to the death for their country and their elected leader did not cut and run, but turned into a true leader. It remains to be seen how Zelensky is in peace time, but he has turned out to be one of the all time great civilian war leaders. Any ambivalence in the Ukrainian population about Russia's good intentions, even towards Russian speakers, appears to have largely vanished.
If Ukrainians can reject the corruption that would try to return after the war, they have a chance of creating a real country after more than a century of being under the thumb of various imperialist regimes.
The US military has propped up too many fake, corrupt regimes over the past 70 years, usually needing to abandon them after years of expenditure and casualties. This is one that doesn't require US boots on the ground, just supplies, support, and our best wishes.
Love this post, thank you.
I think you’re missing some sort of “the latter” clause in this sentence:
“The former is all about outward fierceness and savagery, while the inner ability to endure hardship and pain and fear and still keep fighting effectively.”
The idea that Ukraine is an exemplar of liberalism or that the United States has abandoned its neocon delusions are two unfunny jokes.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/last-war-brain
Presumably, if we should avoid theorizing about the current war in terms of the last war, we should avoid theorizing about the next war in terms of the current war (or battle).
Whoa, dude, that's...deep
Time consistency is quite a deep concept when one digs into it.
This current one is sort of like the Iraq War, with Russia as the US. The people comparing them are just leaving out the last part.
Iraq is different in that the Iraq got no assistance from other Great Powers and its army rapidly collapsed, while Ukraine's army has not. A somewhat better (and ironic) analogy is 1980's Afghanistan. Here the invading force was Russia and the defenders backed by the US.
I don't think the US has abandoned empire. If we had done so, I would think the US would be looking to achieve a settlement in which Russia agrees to end the war, and that Ukraine's borders return to their pre-2014 values. In exchange the US will withdraw from Europe, ended the NATO alliance, which would be replaced with a European security alliance in which Ukraine is a member.
A long-term goal of Putin has been to get rid of NATO--here he can achieve it. Fiscal pressures will ensure this European alliance will be too weak to threaten Russia, unlike NATO, which is backed by the leading imperial power.
*****************************************************
My guess is one US objective in this war is to show (to China) how difficult it is to prosecute a modern war against determined resistance backed by a superpower with recent war experience.
It's a good reason to fight this proxy war because Russia is declining and its power (because of this war) will be limited likely. China on the other hand is ascendant (until recently) and will need to learn there are deep costs for many of its desired outcomes.
>we should work equally hard to restore the U.S.’ moral commitment to liberalism both inside and outside its borders.
What self-imagined "realists" seem to miss:
If power is the ability to convince your friends and coerce your enemies (and sometimes the reverse), then moral superiority is real geopolitical power.
That is true, assuming all sides have the same conceptions of morality. This is likely the case for Ukraine, but I am not so sure it held for the Afghan wars.
Both the Russian and American invaders had valid pretexts for war, and the defenders are the Taliban or fundamentalists like them. So moral superiority is harder to assign, I should think.
Thank you for the great article. Keep in mind - it ain’t over until it’s over.
I've said it before: anyone who thinks that "kids these days" are too pampered to handle adversity has never tried playing Dark Souls.
Great post! But I am afraid that might is the only thing making right possible to survive here. Ukraine is succeeding because of its brave soldiers (might), and the backing of the most mighty military alliance, providing the mightiest most modern weaponry. If none of these happened, if the US and NATO did not back Ukraine, and if Kyiv was to rely on effeminate soldiers in need of talk therapy, then it would matter not how right Ukraine was to begin with.
Liberalism is resilient in spite of some limited decadence, and whether or not the system protects the dignity of all its citizens (including gay rights etc) does not matter much (at least directly). Liberalism is the best system out there - and it so because free markets, limited and accountable government checked by an independent judiciary and (at least relatively) free media, is still the best way of governance to ensure prosperity for citizens, state power and wealth, and ultimately enable the creation and sustenance of superior military might.
An exceptional statement of the arc of history. Bravo.
Beautiful job of summing up. Go Ukraine!
Not disagreeing with any of this but personally I'm more worried about illiberalism here at home than abroad. Sure, they are related tangentially but lets not let fisa courts, raiding lawyers offices, unwarranted wire taps and ex-judicial murder by drone of aid workers go unnoticed. Get rid of the FISA courts and the patriot act and fire the murderous Gina Haskle and then we'll talk.
Great piece, Noah. This is exactly why I subscribe. And on another note, I know you don’t care for his writings, but your post parallels the Culture series by Iain Banks.
HiMARS wasn't invented by meatheads; and the strategies in Kherson and Izium weren't concocted by testosterone driven orcs. The Orcs have one strategy: Flatten civilian targets. The best military minds are what wins wars. And if you ever get a chance to talk to a colonel or general - do it. You'll find some of the most insightful people, who are true professionals at what they do.
...autocratic states don't produce either very good weapons, nor very clever generals; and they aren't very good at recognizing the reality on the ground and adapting as needed. It is the brittle nature of autocracies which is why they fail. Democracies may have many faults, but they are able to adapt and recover.