Dear Readers:

Before you are the first results of a new experiment: The Provocation. Once a month, subscribers may pester, goad, torment one of our writers. We’ll send out a notice (like this one) designating the given individual, and then it’s a free-for-all in the comments. Post your provocation — a bothersome prompt,…

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Our raucous debate with the socialist thinker elicited a flurry of reactions and comments. We're not surprised. It's what we hope to do more of at Wisdom of Crowds. Instead of "winning" arguments, we want to interrogate the source of deep difference and understand why we believe what we believe. In that spirit, subscriber and friend of the pod Aaron Ir…

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In this Q&A, readers and members of Wisdom of Crowds pose some tough questions to Shadi and Damir. We hope you enjoy it!

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In this special subscribers-only Q&A, Shadi and Damir talk… free will. We really enjoyed this one. We hope you do too.

The Subjectivity of Morality

Shadi mentions that Americans are destined to be moral but moral in what sense? Morality is inherently subjective to cultures and societies. Doesn't claiming that America is a moralizing power fall into the trap of being a missionary moral power (imperialistic)? Isn’t it better to look at America as primus inter pares in terms of the liberal international order? –Christina Grigoraki

Shadi: It’s not so much that Americans themselves are destined to be moral, but rather that they are destined to be more moral than citizens of autocratic nations. It’s not so much that America is special, although I think America is, but rather that the nature of regime type—in this case, the fact that we’re a democracy, however flawed—contains within it this moralizing power. It’s not necessarily inherent to the idea of America itself, though. For example, if Donald Trump staged a coup and it was successful, then none of this would really matter all that much, although presumably the distorting effects of living under autocracy would take some years to register.

As for the risk of the United States becoming a “missionary” or imperialistic power, there’s certainly that risk, which is why I often caution that power without idealism amplifies the negative effects of the former. Our power is a heavy, weighty thing, so my hope would be for that power to be constrained—to the extent possible—by an explicitly moral, and even at times moralistic, foreign policy. To take the Middle East as an example, we’ve had all this power but no real sense of moral purpose and therefore no real sense of moral constraint. This, to me, is a tragedy. In this sense, America is moral not so much for what it has done in the past, but for what it still can do in the future. That possibility is always latent in a democracy, because democracy provides the means for self-correction, if a critical mass of policymakers and citizens come to believe that a self-correction is necessary.

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Damir: Unlike Shadi, I’m much less concerned with “imperialism”. I’m not sure exactly how one defines the term. To echo Orwell, it seems like the word “imperialism” has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. I tend to take a much less moral tone and approach than Shadi, and end up concluding that:

1. America is a big and wealthy country with a big military, and it will do coercive things in the world. There’s nothing more human than to “do” things, and that usually comes at the (perceived) expense of others.

2. America, like to a similar extent Britain before it, has a particular missionary strand to its self-conception. So that will inform (to a lesser extent than we’d like to think) what it does, but also (more importantly) how it justifies what it does.

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In this subscriber-only discussion with readers, Shadi and Damir do a number of things, not least of which imagining a counterfactual history featuring a President John McCain. Enjoy.

Russians' Moral Responsibility In Wartime

A reader asks:

A former US ambassador recently said something to the effect that “there are no neutral Russians anymore,” meaning you either support or oppose Putin, it’s not allowed to just be alive and try to stay out of it. This reminds me of other absolutist dichotomous thinking of our times, and for example we’ve seen Russians living in the West lose their jobs for failure to denounce Putin. What do Shadi and Damir think is the obligation of the individual in the face of this crisis?  Should Russians living abroad be obliged to denounce Putin at the risk of their jobs, or does this just demand meaningless virtue signaling?  Are Americans ethically obliged to stop doing business with western companies that still operate there, or does that accomplish nothing other than harming the US workers of those companies?  My question isn’t whether the individual is allowed to do such things, but what is required morally from individuals at this time? — Matthew Benham

Damir: I’m not that wound up about this on the level of the individual. I turn this question around in my head: I’m not as fond as Shadi is of making huge distinctions between “regime” and “people”. For all intents and purposes, Trump represented America for four years, no matter how much we didn’t like it. In a democracy and a free society, people can and do protest leaders they do not like, and can and do change out the leaders at the next election. That we have done so, however, does not somehow show that the American people somehow transcended Trump and Trumpism, that they are “better” than that “evil” man. All it means is our society is able to contest leadership more easily than a more authoritarian system. Trump is still a wholly authentic American phenomenon.

Same goes for Putin in Russia. Yes, he’s set up a particularly repressive, thieving regime. The people can’t remove him even if they wanted to. And these things matter. But it’s simply not very helpful to assume that he is somehow “alien” to Russia, that his views are abhorrent to the Russian people. They’re not. Putin is a wholly authentic Russian phenomenon, and the imperialist policy he’s pursuing in Ukraine is too.

Obviously, on balance, it’s better that states can make changes of leadership more easily, as it lets them correct errors quicker. And free societies are more prosperous societies. It’s of course also useful to try to make the public distinction between regime and people at time of war, to try to encourage regime overthrow. But should Putin’s end come soon, I’ll be very surprised if the Russian people show themselves to be that different on issues of foreign policy than the regime they’re under now.

Shadi: I do make more of a distinction between regimes and the individuals who live under them. I’m not sure it’s quite right to say that Putin is an authentic expression of the Russian people. We simply don’t know what individual Russians would choose, want—or become—if they had been socialized in a free, open democracy, and not a dictatorship where fear and paranoia governs everything. So it may be true that a majority of Russians still support Putin, despite everything, as some surveys have suggested. But they are products of their environment. As I argued in our episode with Sam Kimbriel, authoritarianism twists the soul, distorts our sense of moral purpose, and therefore renders us less morally culpable. You can only be fully morally culpable if you are free to choose between right and wrong. And that choice becomes much harder in a dictatorship. Not everyone can be courageous and sacrifice life and livelihood to do the “right thing.”

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In this subscribers-only Q&A, Shadi and Damir (and particularly Shadi) venture into some controversial territory on the legacy of the Iraq war. We really enjoyed this one. We hope you do too.

Idealism, Intent, and the Iraq War

Shadi, I know you were a big opponent against the Iraq war, but looking back in hindsight, did you believe that Bush was guided by faulty intelligence and actually did believe in democracy promotion—or do you believe that the motives were actually nefarious? —Lucille

Shadi: It's an interesting question: what would constitute a "nefarious" motive in this context? I suppose a desire to take control of Iraq's oil would be one example, but I don't think there's much evidence for that interpretation. Were some in the Bush administration driven by some inchoate instinct for vengeance after 9/11? Probably. That might be bad and dumb, but I'm not sure I'd call it nefarious. Bush himself was a true believer.

I don't know if it is controversial to say so, but I do believe Bush was a good man. He really did think that Arabs deserved better, and you could sense sometimes that he felt it an injustice that they were granted much less. Which goes to show, "good" men are capable of terrible policies. Meanwhile, Trump—perhaps the Platonic ideal of a corrupted heart—didn't do anything that quite compares to the Iraq war. In this narrow sense, if we put aside matters of intent, Trump's Middle East policy was "better" than Bush's.

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But I digress. Bush was a neocon. And the neocons were the true believers. Cheney and Rumsfeld were not neocons—they didn't particularly care about democracy promotion; they were much more concerned with hard power—so I have in mind officials like Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz. Knowing Abrams, who was deputy national security advisor, and having spoken to him recently about this period, I believe his motives during Bush's "Freedom Agenda" were genuinely about wanting the Middle East to be different than it had been, that it could, in fact, be democratic and remove itself from a sort of historic and geographical exceptionalism. I think he saw the Iraq War as, at least in part, serving that overall ambition. I've often joked, although there's a kernel of truth in it, that my ideal Middle East policy would look something like Bush's "Freedom Agenda" (but more aggressive and confrontational with allies like Saudi Arabia) minus the Iraq war. Of course, the tragedy of it is that you probably couldn't have one without the other.

Damir: Intriguing, Shadi. Can't wait to read the parts of the book on the Bush years.

For me, it's particularly damning that such awful policies came from the best of intentions. It has always suggested to me that the best of intentions, unmoored from broader considerations, often lead to tears. Obviously, this is an ongoing debate between us, and I admit that Bush's failed policies do not disqualify a more idealistic agenda, they just disqualify the Bush team's implementation of their boss's idealistic policies.

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In this subscribers-only Q&A, Shadi and Damir talk delve into interesting territory—including about Al Pacino.

The Problem with Pivots and Pacino

A reader has a question for us, which allows Damir to share his film knowledge.

Given America's pivot to Asia, and its apparent deemphasis of European interests, how do you see American national security interests progressing, and what kind of roles do the political machine and the public play here? —Andreas Kaju @andreaskaju

Damir: I always think back to that overwrought Al Pacino scene in Godfather Part III...

Obama was right when he complained that steering the ship of state to a completely different course is very difficult. His own "Pivot to Asia" was a notable failure, even though he, too, sought to de-emphasize Europe. Had Hillary Clinton won, she probably would have redoubled her commitments to the pivot, just as the Biden Administration has, after the undisciplined Trump interregnum.

But just because one wants to pivot doesn't mean one gets to pivot. What we're seeing in Ukraine is proof of that. Russia has sensed an opportunity and is pushing its advantage. As long as we remain committed to European security, we will get pulled back into European affairs if the Russians demand it.

As for the political machine and the public, I don't know. I don't think voters much care about the details. But politically, it's never a good look to be losing, especially against telegenic peer competitors like Russia and China. From a purely opportunistic standpoint, I fully expect Republicans to make much hay over Biden being a weak foreign policy president, capitulating on Afghanistan. If major concessions are made to Russia in Europe, expect that to be added to the list of failures.

Empty Promises and NATO Expansion

Thinking about the Ukraine issue, what should be the criteria be for NATO expansion? Should NATO only expand to countries that would not elevate tensions with Russia? Was it a mistake to promise Ukraine membership in 2008? If so, was NATO's expansion into the Balkans and the Baltic states also a mistake? —Aakash

Shadi: Damir's the expert here, but my own two cents is that if you're going to promise something, you should have a plan for meeting that promise. Empty rhetoric is the worst of both worlds. If you don't want to do something and you have no intention of doing it, then don't say you're going to do it. It almost sounds too obvious. There's a big (and inconclusive) debate in the academic literature about credibility. But some of this is surely intuitive and observable. When Russia pushes hard and sees that Western powers don't have the courage of their convictions, presumably they take note. How could they not? In this regard, the George W. Bush administration's failure to respond to Russia's aggression against Georgia in 2008 set a precedent.

As for NATO expansion, if it can only expand to countries that wouldn't elevate tensions with Russia, then there would be no NATO expansion. That may be fine, as an outcome, but it does no one any favors to pretend that NATO expansion is a real thing in that case.

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Question 1: From Aakash

Why is it that septuagenarians still hold significant sway within the Democratic Party, while the same doesn’t seem to be as true for the Republican Party?

Damir: Before I let Shadi loose on this one from the Democratic side, let me just note that whatever “youth” there is kicking around the Republican Party these days, the ideological shots are being called by the most energetic old man I’ve ever encountered: the Donald himself. It’s striking the extent to which this individual has completely and lastingly transformed his party. I suspect his pungent legacy will linger on well after he’s dead—Trumpism may stay in the lexicon longer than Reaganism. It will be tweaked by rising generations, but the kind of rightwing populism that Trump pioneered in America has a lock on young Republicans’ minds.

Shadi: First of all, professional Democratic politics is much more organized and regimented. It’s also less ideologically diverse. In a way that the Republican party hasn’t been (and can’t be in cultural terms), the Democratic Party is an establishment party, since Democrats dominate in national government, in culture, in media, in technology, in the largest corporations, and in state and federal bureaucracies. This makes it more of a slow-moving elephant, risk-averse, cautious, and more interested in preserving gains, now that it has quite a lot to preserve.

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