Belligerism

A man enters a bar and saddles up next to a big guy. The big guy turns to him and says, "stop staring at my girlfriend!"

The man is looking at an empty row of seats and says, "what girlfriend? There's noone there."

"Yeah, you're staring at her right now! Quit staring at my girl!" the big guy says.

"I don't know what you're talking about: there's nobody there!"

"If you don't quit looking at my girl I'm going to have to smash your face in." says the big guy.

On and on it goes. We would describe the big guy's behavior as belligerent wouldn't we?

Belligerent behavior induces conflict, it creates it out of nothing.

In the post-Bush era we can now look back with owl of minerva hindsight and see clearly the regnant political philosophy of that administration now that we are at the close of the age. That philosophy can only be described as belligerent: feigning injury in order to invade and depose the leadership of a country; the treatment of war prisoners at Guantanamo; etc. This philosophy--a philosophy which, I might add, also formed the groundwork of our foreign policy in the Bush years--is rightly described under the rubric of Belligerism. By 'Belligerism', I mean to describe a political ideology that is aggressive and acquisitive, one which is built to produce conflict; a further criterion of Belligerism is that it derive its authority from something other than the will of the public, either actual or theoretical.


The Bush regime, in its communications with the public and Congress, exhibited all or most of the following actions:

1. Assuming a posture of mutual competition and, by the by, affirming the idea of aggressive war. In other words, rewriting the theory of just war to favor pre-emption.
2. Assuming also a certain American Exceptionalism: ours is the correct moral and economic world order. The Roman Empire thought of itself as exceptionalist in a similar way.
3. Foment a distortion or lie about a foreign threat in order to generate a war.
4. In tone, demeanor, and content never accept blame.
5. Act with apparent public authority but not with actual public reason.
6. Make up your own reality; train through propaganda the listening audience in the reality of your fantasy.
7. Using normative concepts like 'Human Rights' as a figleaf for corporate-capitalist extraction of the natural resources of a region and the bubble in the military industrial complex.
8. Exempting itself from public scrutiny through an asserted "executive privilege".

These events are actions brought about by a prior reasoning. That reasoning, exhibited in the bullying tone of Bush Administration rhetoric, not to mention the still unjustified war in Iraq warrant an identification of the Bush philosophy as a paradigm instance of what I have been calling 'Belligerism'.

I should also add that Belligerism here emerges from a democratic social form, which is surprising, since one wants to think only of ruthless authoritarian regimes as belligerent, and they are. For in the case of all Belligeristic regimes, they exercise decision making authority apart from public consent. But because a belligeristic regime need not be an authoritarian one, there is often in belligeristic but democratic regimes a concerted attempt to manipulate and distort that support in the form of "free elections". The government that believes in Belligerism justifies the use of force to coerce consent and may supply it, argumentum ad baculum, to generate support through "democratic" procedures.

Suppose that we evaluate Belligerism on its philosophical merits. What then?

First criticism of it is that it is a recipe for a war without end. It provides other actors in the global public arena with a similar grounds of exclusion from law, inviting endless challenges to international peace.

Second criticism is that it fails the most basic tests of consistency, coherence, and reciprocity one would expect from a fair and trustworthy political philosophy.

Third criticism is that it lacks a self correction mechanism and operates once loose like a runaway train.

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