Reason and conflict

A week in office, and Obama has already achieved some miraculous things. He’s reversed Bush’s ban on funding family planning institutions that practice abortions, loosened FOIA rules, instructed the joint chiefs to begin plans for a rapid draw-down of troops in Iraq, suspended the military tribunal system of terror suspects pending a full review, and insisted that Guantánamo will be closed within a year. Each of these decisions suggests that the promises he made in his campaign are not going to be backed away from, and that he’s not afraid to start with the big, tough things: which in truth is the only way to proceed (since political capital naturally declines over the course of a presidency).

Like most people, I am confident that we have a man in charge of the United States who knows what he’s doing, whose instincts are sound, and who has a much deeper affinity for different races, creeds and cultures than the vast majority of historical occupants of that esteemed office. I am confident that we may be witnessing the emergence of a truly first rate president.

However, in my last post I talked about a potential political challenge to Obamamania on the ‘culture wars’ front, and referenced Barney Frank’s criticism that Obama was too reluctant to face down ideological opposition. I suggested that the decision to invite Rick Warren might indicate he might “try and duck these issues”, though other comments – especially in his acceptance speech on election night – suggested the opposite.

I was then taken to task (thanks guys!) for implying that Warren’s invitation might be cynical, rather than a sincere attempt by Obama to respect his opponents and persuade them of the rightness of his ideas. (Though I hasten to add that I only said might...!) Very wisely, Peter said that we should assume Obama “believes he can persuade people such as Warren to his views through rational argument and civilized discourse.” And DB thinks that “that he isn't necessarily ‘pandering’ to social conservatives, rather opening their eyes to his point of view and perhaps seeking a concrete middle ground that we can all build on.”

It’s an interesting question, of course, how far we can be cynical about the politics of rhetoric. (Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this post after watching Frost/Nixon last night!) But, certainly, evidence from week one suggests that Obama isn’t afraid of picking fights when he feels he needs to; and more generally there’s nothing to suggest he has misrepresented what he stands for (even if, like all politicians, he stressed different aspects of his character to different groups during the campaign). My critics are probably right, therefore, that we should assume the best of him until he gives us reason not to.

Meanwhile, we see Obama taking the decision to give his first presidential interview to Al-Arabiya. This gives further evidence that Obama is committed to engaging with people of different views and looking for progress through rational discourse; but it also shows he's not afraid of annoying the domestic networks and the American right by appearing at this point to give priority to the Muslim world.

So: don’t get me wrong, rational persuasion and faith in the possibility of reasoned discussion are exciting characteristics, some of the best bits of the Obama package for me. After all, reason’s what my job is all about – at least in theory! And Frank surely can just as easily be criticised for being too eager to turn issues towards conflict as Obama could for looking for compromise. Instinctively, politically, I’m with Obama on this one.

But any virtue taken too far can become a vice. Clearly a politician who puts too much faith in persuasion runs the risk of obscuring realities of antagonism. I offer two examples to mull over, from two former presidents considered of the top grade (where Obama wants to end up): not, I hasten to add, to present any firm or fixed argument or deterministically to suggest that Obama will repeat these mistakes so much as to raise more questions about this complex and intriguing question of the line between persuasion and conflict...

1. President Wilson, certain of the wisdom of his rationality and rightness of his cause – the cause being democracy – took the decision to invade Mexico in 1914, occupy the port of Veracruz, and in so doing help defeat General Victoriano Huerta (the dictator of Mexico who had usurped power in collusion with the US ambassador appointed by the previous, Republican, administration of William Howard Taft). All the anti-Huerta (‘constitutionalist’) leaders in Mexico warned him not to, telling him that an American intervention, even one designed to promote democracy, would be seen as an invasion and would only strengthen Huerta’s image as a defender of the Mexican nation again the imperialist might of the yanquis. But Wilson believed that he could appeal over the heads of the constitutionalist leadership to the Mexican people themselves, and that they would recognise the sincerity of his intentions when they heard his words. What happened? The invasion was resisted by Mexicans from the highest to the lowest level of society. The whole nation of Mexico was outraged. Huerta gained some support; even some constitutionalists considered the possibility of uniting with him in a wider war against the United States; and Wilson was written down permanently in the histories in Mexico as one of the great imperial demons. (A similar pattern was to haunt Wilson’s attempts to go over the heads of the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Russia.)

2. In 1933, as one of his first acts in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed in meetings with Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov to end the sixteen year American policy of non-recognition towards Soviet Russia. The major stumbling block to recognition was the influence of communists within the United States. Roosevelt persuaded Litvinov to sign an agreement that Soviet Russia would refrain from interfering in American domestic politics. Roosevelt was so confident of his ability to persuade Litvinov to agree with him that even remarked at one point that he thought he had got the Soviet Foreign Minister to doubt his atheism! What happened? The Soviets continued to behave exactly as anyone – supportive or not – would have expected them to behave towards a bourgeois, capitalist government; rightly or wrongly, they continued to use their links to the American Communist Party to benefit themselves if and when they needed to. And over the course of the next decade the American right came to believe that the New Deal had betrayed the country by refusing to stand up to communism. (The same argument was to haunt FDR’s legacy at Yalta.)

Now I don’t mean to imply that either of these situations have direct parallels to today. Neither do I mean to imply that a more confrontational position would necessarily be any better; no-one who's lived through the past eight years can believe that (hence the contrary examples chosen of one intervention and one agreement). And perhaps you can paint both examples as actually being as much about a failure of communication as an excess of faith in it. Wilson’s failure in the first example was a refusal to listen; FDR’s in the second was an unwillingness to tell the truth to the American people (the truth being that the communist party was likely to remain in the orbit of Soviet influence, but that America in the midst of a depression had much bigger fish to fry).

But I nevertheless think that both examples also suggest that we have to be careful not to assume that persuasion can cure all ills and end all conflicts. Some clashes are there, and they're real. Some people will always have different values and interests. Not everyone can agree on everything. And sometimes trying to deny this fact can turn out to be more damaging for the cause of progress than a mature recognition of difference.

Leave a Comment