Reputation and Terror

Bill Petti of Duck of Minerva writes the post on reputation that I’ve been planning to write for some time. In short, the Norm Podhoretz justification for the War on Iraq (we needed to fight it in order to demonstrate resolve, because terrorists respect resolve) depends heavily on a deeply compromised theory of reputation. It assumes that other will understand our actions in the same way that we do and will react to them in the ways that we would. I also wrote about it here.

The first big problem with fighting a war for a reputation is that actions do not speak for themselves, and do not always tell the same story. Consider, for example, the reputational impact of the Vietnam War. Did our involvement there indicate to our friends and enemies that we were weak, irresolute, and could be defeated given sufficient investment? Did it indicate that we were tough, bullheaded, and willing to expend massive blood and treasure for a strategically useless patch of ground? Or did it indicate that we were dumb enough to be lured into stupid wars that would cost lots of money and kill lots of people?

The answer, of course, is all three. Like the Gulf War, or the US experiences in Somalia or Lebanon, the Vietnam War does not offer clear, unambiguous lessons. Different people learn different things, and they most often learn what they want to believe. Fighting a war for reputation, to the extent that Iraq fits this mold, is pointless because we cannot control how others understand our actions.

The second big problem is that, even if you buy that our reputation is under our control, the reputational argument justifies all wars at all times. A theory of warfighting or of intervention only works if it discriminates. That is, some wars must be a good idea at some times, and other wars must be unwise. This is why pacifism fails as a theory of intervention; all wars are bad all the time. The reputational argument tells us that all of our commitments are interconnected (somebody is always watching, trying to tell whether our resolution is flagging), and thus that perceived weakness in one area will lead to real weakness in other areas. It follows that appearing weak in any circumstance could be disastrous. This leads to a situation in which the actual issues at stake in a conflict (oil, democracy, human rights) are secondary to the forthright conduct of the conflict itself. Perversely, conflicts that involve virtually no vital interests become the most critical, because they most clearly demonstrate our resolve (if we can show the enemy that we’ll fight for worthless territory occupied by people we don’t like, then they’ll know we REALLY mean business).

The best that can be said for Podhoretz, Cheney, and their ilk is that they at least have a theory about how the other side thinks and why the other side acts. Were we to listen to Chris Hitchens, we would discard even these limited efforts at understanding the enemy. For Hitch, asking why terrorists do what they do is akin to excusing their actions. Hitch would discard even the old “terrorists only understand force” line in his effort to track down suspect leftists.