Al-Q Honcho Hit

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 6 08:14:33 PST 2002


Both of you miss Hobbes' point, which I take to be valid. W thinks civilized man is a caged beast, waiting to kill as soon as the constraint of fear is removed. M think we are really very nice outside of civulization. Both views treat "human nature" as an independent variable. Hobbes' didn't. He thought that how people behave is a function of the circumstances, of the incentives with which they are confronted. Without law, it becomes rational to strive for power after power, even if you don't want it for its own sake, to prevent someone who does from taking from you what you care about. But with law things are quite otherwise and different behavior is rational.

Hobbes thought that whether you had the rule of law was so important that it didn't much matter what sort of of RoL or how it was set up. You might get some assent to that from Somalis or Sudanese. We might differ, or put more emphasis on the how and the what, given that domestically, whether is settled. Internationally, things are more, well, as peiole say, Hobbesean, and Hobbes would not object to empire, however attained. But we might object, and we might care, even if we have to accept the fact of Empire, how it is exercised.

In this connection, we might also note a few things: (1) al Qaida is not and never has been a threat to the existence of any international order or the survival of any state; it is a criminal gang; (2) lawless behavior tends to encourage the same, particularly if it is perceived as being unnecessary and arbitrary; we might want the Empire to observe norms of due process where possible.

So, let's be Hobbesean, and strive for a set of incentives in the domestic and international environment that encourages desirable behavior--not only preventing retail terrorism of the al Qaida sort, but also wholesale terrorism of the sort demonstrated by the US ans NATO--I'd say in Afghanistan and Serbia/Kosovo, but these examples are controversial, so let's say the last Gulf War.

ANd also to prevent lawlessless by both nonstate _and state_ actors. Lawless state action is more disturbing. Al Qaida can hijack a few planes and get hold of suicide boats. The US has access to Hellfire missiles, Apache attack helicopters, F-16 fighter-bombers, B-52s, and nuclear weapons, and a penchant for using them on the defenseless. Let's just recall that before we issue it a blank check to kill anyone that tees it off.

jks


>
> On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> > I come from a more Hobbesian perspective and
> assume that war of all
> > against all is the natural state, so the question
> I ask "howcome some
> > people do not engage in acts of such a war, but
> instead show some
> > restraint or even cooperation?" That question
> also implies a certain
> > range of answers that imply that behavior showing
> any restraint or
> > cooperation is essentially good - the only issue
> is - to what degree?
> >
>
> There is no empirical basis for this dark view of
> human nature. Are
> people capable of nasty behavior (e.g., blowing up
> their enemies)? Sure.
> But is this the "natural" state of humans, once we
> peel away the
> veneer of civilization? No way. Think about it for
> just a second:
> if humans were incessantly brutal to each other, how
> could the species
> have survived for so long? In order to survive in a
> difficult world,
> humans have the capacity to cooperate and help one
> another. There's
> no way humans could have survived on this planet if
> they were
> Hobbesian malevolent brutes.
>
> --And consistent with this argument, we find
> relatively low levels
> of aggressive and malevolent behavior in most
> hunting & gathering
> societies. Thus Woj presents a nice example of
> presentism and
> ethnocentrism here ("we're like this, so that must
> be how it's always
> been").
>
> Miles
>
>

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