"Because,
therefore, we are defending a way of life, we must be respectful of that way of
life as we proceed to the solution of our problem. We must not violate its
principles and its precepts, and we must not destroy from within what we are
trying to defend from without." – Eisenhower
1951
There is no weekend reading this weekend. Instead, here is
some weekend thinking, as if the two are not related. Nevertheless, this
morning I was listening to Dan Carlin’s
recent Common Sense podcast. Despite
whatever tilted views the program host might have, Dan raised some very
profound questions. In the pursuit of national interests, do the ends justify
the means? Or do the means justify the ends? When do these two paradigms
matter?
In the context of national security, should we think about
the end with respect to the threat and pursue means to deal with that threat.
If so, to what extent do those means then have an effect on our national values?
More importantly, how do they affect our reputation in the society of states? Conversely,
do we instead emphasize the means with which we pursue national security as a
representative demonstration of a broader normative end – our national values?
Dan’s commentary encourages us to take these philosophical
questions one step further by looking at a contemporary challenge to peremptory
norms – terrorism. As we consider how to deal with the challenge of terrorism, the
manner in which we deal with it has implications for the nature and character
of our society and our society’s reputation. Dan asks us to consider this. On
the one hand, is terrorism scarring a generation that will be shaped by that
scar? Think about previous periods of time in which a generation was scarred by
the Great Depression, or fascism? On the other hand, is terrorism changing
generations of who we are? Consider the decades-long ideological struggle
between capitalism and communism – the Cold War. These are questions
fundamental to the differences between realism and liberalism international
relations theory. They describe the differences between the cyclic fluctuations of our nation’s interaction with the world.
