An Awkward Question For Patriotic Anti-Nationalists
I know I’m hugely late with this question but here we go anyhow. The archetypal “Just War” is supposed to be World War II. We were attacked, without warning, by an aggressive power bent on domination of an entire region through brute force, a power that had already launched unprovoked wars against numerous neighbors, allied with another power with a similar track record and similar ambitions who was already at war with many of our historic friends and allies, and on top of all that the enemy was really, really evil.
There is, of course, a school of thought that says we should have stayed out of World War II. But that school focuses on pre-war matters ranging from the Treaty of Versailles to Lend-Lease to America’s resource competition with the Empire of Japan, or it focuses on the danger and evil of Soviet Communism and points out how World War II ended with a victory for that evil as much as for freedom and democracy. But the general assumption is that Pearl Harbor ended the debate: whether or not we should have wound up in the position we were in, surely we had to respond to that unprovoked attack.
But, if we’re among patriots here – defined as those who defensively love and defend the land of their home, but do not subscribe to notions of national honor, are implicated in no national “project,” and are opposed to the idea of dominating or “improving” other nations and peoples – why should we have done so?
The attack, after all, was on naval installations in Hawaii. Hawaii was not a state; it was a territory. Moreover, it was a territory that was joined to the United States under circumstances of debatable legitimacy. Further, it was a territory whose annexation to the United States could only make sense in the context of either a mission to expand American territory without end (a classical imperial ambition) or a mission to dominate the Pacific Ocean and its trade (a modern imperial and nationalist ambition). And the United States Navy in the Pacific was similarly purposed. Hawaii, then, and the navy that defended it, were emphatically the sorts of things that patriots – as defined above – should have been against. And, not being nationalists, should have considered themselves uninvolved in any kind of obligation to defend on the grounds of honor or mutual involvement in the same national entity.
And so, my question: why should not the patriotic thing in 1941 have been to refuse to fight a global war to defend Hawaii?
Daniel Larison being on the way to Taiwan, someone else will have to take up pen-as-sword. I hope someone does, as this is not intended to be a snarky question; I really want to understand how patriotism, construed as Larison does, would actually function in a world of states and nations rather than small freeholds.
Okay, I’ll bite. It seems to me that the answer is that a non-nationalistic, lets-keep-our-own-house-in-order patriotism would have “functioned” in this situation by keeping us from having been bombed in the first place. Is that an acceptable response?
— John · Apr 9, 09:40 PM · #
John: Nope. That’s not an answer to the question. The question is: what do you do when other people bring your country to a position that Pearl Harbor happens to it.
— Noah Millman · Apr 9, 10:01 PM · #
Okay, then. (Though the prospect that a non-nationalist patriotism might have prevented the Pearl Harbor bombings does seem to me to count in its favor.)
Suppose I put my hand in a place where it shouldn’t be, and you stab it. Suppose further that I have good reason to think that you are really out to get me, and that your stabbing my hand was just the first step in the execution of a plan to stab me in lots of other places, and that if I don’t go after you with some sort of force then I may end up much more badly damaged than I already am. In this situation it seems reasonable to say that, the fact that my hand never should have been there notwithstanding, I have the right to defend myself by trying to incapacitate you, and perhaps also your allies, in order to thwart your efforts to maim me.
How does that sound? Where, if anywhere, is the analogy inapt?
— John · Apr 9, 10:56 PM · #
Well, what I’m asking is: do you buy the analogy? Was Japan out to stab us in lots of other places? And if not – if they would have let us alone if we’d abandoned any ambition to a role in the Pacific – should we not have responded to Pearl Harbor?
I’m open to a cogent argument that indeed we should not have. I’m interested to hear someone argue that a patriot would not have – or, conversely, that patriot should have, without stacking the deck by putting the facts on the side of massive retaliation.
This is, after all, not a debate about World War II, but a debate about the meaning of patriotism.
— Noah Millman · Apr 10, 12:30 AM · #
Noah,
If it’s a debate about the meaning of patriotism, and not about Pearl Harbor and World War II per se, then it seems to me (as it does to you, I take it) that the actual nature of the historical particulars – that is to say, the question of whether or not Japan was, in fact, “out to stab us in lots of other places” – is irrelevant: we can answer the question about meaning by asking ourselves whether, if the Japanese actually or counterfactually were so inclined, America’s entry into the war would have been justified. And I suppose I think, or at least am willing to claim for the sake of the present argument, that if it’s true that Japan had plans to attack America in the relevant sorts of ways, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor wasn’t just an attempt to get the US Navy out of a part of the world where it never should have been in the first place, then America had the right, according the sort of anti-nationalist patriotism I endorse, to go to war with Japan, and the anti-nationalist patriots among the American citizenry should have reluctantly supported their country’s entry into at least that portion of the war, while still reiterating the fact that our own imperialistic blundering and incessant provocation of the Japanese did an awful lot to make the situation what it was. This seems, anyway, to be a perfectly appropriate position for an anti-nationalist patriot to hold: no matter the extent to which American imperialism and foreign policy blunders were part of what made the Japanese want to attack us, if their plan of attack really was aimed at the American “homeland” and the situation wasn’t going to be resolved simply by closing down American outposts abroad and taking other steps to try and stop pissing off the Japanese (both of which, by the way, were things that anti-nationalists would hope for whether or not they were perceived as potentially resolving likely causes of war), then a war of self-defense was the only just option. The role that American hubris played in contributing to that homeland insecurity would be largely irrelevant in deciding what to do in response to it, as would the question of whether we were first “stabbed” in the location of the offending hand as opposed to some other place.
I hope, by the way, that my responses haven’t seemed snarky. (And I apologize for the length of my sentences.) I find this debate really interesting and important, and I’m grateful that you’ve brought it up.
— John · Apr 10, 01:52 AM · #
American patriotism, defined as rigorously as we have defined it in this ongoing discussion, might be slipping into oxymoronic impossibility. There may just be no such thing as American patriotism under these terms — only nationalism. I’m still trying to figure out if the problem lies in our terms or in our country.
— Matt Frost · Apr 10, 02:50 AM · #
Patriotism is typically defined as love of one’s country – nothing more, nothing less. But American nationalism is unique in all the world because our nation is “dedicated to a proposition”. If you believe we have inalienable rights then you cannot believe that those rights belong only to Americans. America is not just a nation. America is an idea. When you say you love America you are saying you love not just our country and it’s culture, but also our principles. Those principles largely explain why we are probably the most benign imperial power in world history. We had an empire after WW2 if we had wanted one. But we gave it all back. Our empire – if you want to call it that – is, more than anything else, an empire of freedom. We are The Anti-Imperial Empire. When you speak about American imperialism or nationalism, you are actually speaking not about imperialism per se, but rather about the spread of democracy, free markets, and American culture around the world.
— Hayekian · Apr 10, 07:58 AM · #
It seems to me that if an anti-nationalist Patriot would have concluded that by withdrawing from the Pacific and negotiating with Japan, we could avoid the blood and treasure spent in the Pacific War, then WWII was an inappropriate response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Assuming that we weren’t involved in WWII, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the Japanese actually invaded California in the foreseeable future — there was a lot of world to conquer, and only so many Japanese.
— J Mann · Apr 10, 01:32 PM · #
For the record, I agree with J Mann. That’s the other half of the conditional that I was trying to spell out.
— John · Apr 10, 02:05 PM · #
J Mann: That’s the answer I was looking for. In other words: in these terms, a patriot’s conclusion as to whether to respond to an unprovoked attack depends on the practical consequences of such. If his home – defined however narrowly – would be reasonably safe without responding, the patriotic thing would be to withdraw in the face of attack.
I think that is the practical implication of the definition of patriotism as laid out by Larison. I also it is sufficiently at variance with the common usage of the term that we might want to come up with another word for what he’s talking about. But I’m going to write another post on this subject that hopefully will better clarify my thoughts on this subject.
— Noah Millman · Apr 10, 02:19 PM · #
But we gave it all back.
You can argue, and I do, that what America does is almost as pernicious, which is to define a very narrow set of parameters that nations in the Western hemisphere can follow or face the wrath of our power, both soft and hard. The history of 20th century Latin America is a history of American interference; that’s undeniable, even by the most conservative historians. No, I wouldn’t prefer actual imperialism, of course. But imperial privilege, the assumption that you can muck around in these countries at your will and at your leisure, is almost as bad, and drives an anti-Americanism that is prevalent in Latin America. I guess there’s just an honesty to old-fashioned imperialism that’s lacking in our “benevolent paternalism.”
— Freddie · Apr 10, 02:24 PM · #
When international humanism supplants nationalistic machismo
One thing we provincially and parochially are neglectful about is that with our economic and military ties, the President of the United States is the Plenipotentiary of the World. We can negatively effect the lives of people more easily-even by omission- than we could positively do with a most altruistic intention.
The President is more than the hormonal metaphor of the eagle of the Great Seal of the United States. He is not the jealously possessed icon for within the territorial limits of our borders. The President is the thumb on the scales of judgement. Justice in the world is not blind, it is subservient to the all-seeing eye of American politics. Being the proponent of All(exclusive)-American mythic ideals is being near-sighted about the thumb we have on the scales of life and death for so many in the world.
To that ends the President should be as fierce a humanist as he is a nationalist patriot. The energy and vitality for the condition of humanity and its affects on the world should be as boldy uncompromising as it would be as an insult to national pride would be to a jingo-nationalists.
Those who’d use jingo-nationalism can be trumped by a humanitarian-internationalist that see globalism is humanistic more an imperative than the benefits of economic or parochial and self-centered provincialism.
Barack, as a child of the world, can be the the metaphorical shield of peace of the eagle of our Great Seal of the United States. Being that strong shield protecting the truths of our connection of humanity that depends on the justice we bias by our presence.
— De Merlin · Apr 10, 11:44 PM · #