Go to Hegel
Lewis, Saul
GO TO HEGEL At the end of World War II, when our ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, advised Secretary of State Cordell Hull to try to influence the Soviets on the Polish issue, Hull...
...We would have threatened Saddam Hussein with grave consequences should he invade his tiny neighbor...
...But the possibility of Iraq's invading Kuwait seems to have occurred to no one...
...Everyone knew that Saddam Hussein is ruthless, ambitious, and daring...
...Unfortunately, most of them assume that their approach is the only way of thinking strategically...
...The only question is: Should we save the weaker pirate from the stronger pirate...
...Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has been much in the news lately...
...Editorial writers have invoked the need to stand up to international piracy...
...Thus, no issue of principle is involved...
...Not that Secretary of State James Baker is uninterested in the Middle Fast...
...This, of course, is just as Kuwait would have wanted it...
...We, on the other hand, are law-abiding members of the international community...
...It is not...
...Next, Czech President Vaclav Havel used Hegel's terminology in a speech to Congress that explained why "consciousness" precedes "being" (or is it the other way around...
...Middle East policy on the eve of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait suggested that his spirit lives on...
...and its allies, unwilling to act against the "conservative" sheikdoms of Araby but horrified at the prospect of the "Hitlerite" Saddam gaining control over their oil supply, finally do what they should have done in 1973 —invade the Gulf, topple Saddam, and—as Hegel's most famous disciple put it—"expropriate the expropriators...
...There is another, more fruitful way of approaching the Persian Gulf crisis —the Hegelian way...
...Hegel would immediately grasp that, just as Napoleon had been designated by History to sweep away the old order in Europe, so is Saddam History's chosen instrument to remake the Persian Gulf...
...But why don't you simply take the oil away from these outrageous pirates...
...It cannot be our aim to guarantee the Houses of Sabah and Saud in perpetuity...
...If this entails the threat—and reality—of U.S...
...A new age requires new thinking...
...But surely the Kuwaitis, who played their part in the "oil-shocks" of 1974 and 1979, who caused massive economic dislocations in the industrial world and tremendous suffering in the Third World—surely the Kuwaitis are no less piratical than the Iraqis...
...Another thing he would surely note is the respect and deference accorded these feudal potentates by the rest of mankind...
...No doubt the first thing that would strike this historically minded philosopher is the anachronistic character of the Gulf regimes...
...It is in our interest that it not succeed...
...That such action could lead to considerable loss in American lives was no concern of his...
...And so, by a roundabout and totally unexpected route, the West would regain control of its economic destiny, the feudal era would draw to a close in the Gulf, and Hegel's faith in the "cunning of History" would stand vindicated...
...was openly calling for American military action...
...Why should Americans agree to such a bargain...
...in fact, he seems, obsessed with it...
...he would ask...
...everyone knew that he had acquired little from his invasion of Iran beyond a ruined economy and a vast external debt...
...everyone knew—or should have known—of Iraq's longstanding territorial claims against Kuwait...
...But even that British Dinkelspiel, John Stuart Mill, had the sense to observe that the norms of international morality do not apply between civilized nations and barbarians," Hegel would counter...
...The balance-of-power approach has many able advocates in this country and abroad...
...But is it any more fanciful for democratic America to commit lives and treasure to defend a handful of wretched Arab regimes—regimes, moreover, which then use their American-guaranteed security to threaten and despoil the West...
...Because that is contrary to international law, we would respond...
...Consider what probably would have happened had we assessed the Iraqi threat correctly...
...Ah, my old friend Napoleon, reincarnated as a Semite...
...military intervention, so be it...
...But, like his predecessor, Secretary Baker had no time for "piddling little issues" like Iraq's claims against Kuwait...
...At this point, shaking his head in disbelief, Hegel would notice Saddam Hussein...
...Saul Lewis THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1990 21...
...Yet in this most recent crisis, the absence of a strategic approach could have served our longterm national interests rather well...
...Because the Arabs own the oil, we would tell him...
...Those who answer yes make their argument in balance-of-power terms...
...In the Gulf, as elsewhere, we must define our objectives carefully, and devise the means to attain them...
...If Hegel were, as they say, around today, what would he make of the Persian Gulf...
...Having taken Kuwait, Iraq must be deterred from further conquest...
...Even the US., the most powerful democratic nation in the world, appears to hold these corrupt despots in special awe...
...First, former State Department official Francis Fukuyama cited Hegel in defense of his "end of history" thesis...
...Even after Iraq's armed forces had effectively dispatched his nation, Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S...
...Hegel would recognize the dialectical nature of the historical process: First, Saddam extends his sway over Kuwait, the Gulf Emirates, and Saudi Arabia...
...Hence, the United States would in all likelihood have gone to war for the sake of Kuwait's territorial integrity...
...Iraq seeks hegemony in the Persian Gulf...
...On the contrary, it no doubt seemed just and proper to this distinguished member of the Al-Sabah dynasty that Americans should pay a blood tax so that his fellow clansmen might continue to levy an oil tax on America and the world...
...Compared to issues of this magnitude, the matter of Soviet policy in Eastern Europe—which triggered the Cold War—was small potatoes, indeed...
...I suppose one should join scholars like George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and the late Hans Morgenthau in deploring this "legalistic" tradition in American foreign policy—a tradition which, in any crisis, goes unerringly for the capillary...
...But Mill was undoubtedly an imperialist and a racist, we would reply...
...How has this absurd situation come about...
...Elsewhere the world is groping, slowly but inexorably, toward democracy, but in the Gulf, tribal clans like the Al-Sabahs and the Saudis rule in feudal splendor...
...We must deal with the main issues...
...The main issues, in Hull's view, were the voting procedures in the United Nations...
...All this may be fanciful...
...Then the U.S...
...Had Saddam ignored our threats, we would surely have felt that a failure to respond militarily would undermine the credibility of our alliances around the world...
...We would have offered firm assurances to the Emir of Kuwait of our steadfastness and resolve to save his kingdom...
...He was after bigger game—the Middle East "peace process"—and he was too preoccupied adjudicating such thorny issues as whether Palestinian Arabs residing in East Jerusalem might participate in the Cairo negotiations if they maintained a second residence in Nablus to focus on less weighty matters...
...GO TO HEGEL At the end of World War II, when our ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, advised Secretary of State Cordell Hull to try to influence the Soviets on the Polish issue, Hull replied, "I don't want to deal with piddling little issues...
...While it is easy to laugh at the obtuseness of Cordell Hull, U.S...
Vol. 23 • October 1990 • No. 10
