The Porcupine Principle
Victor Davis Hanson writes:
It is generally known that Americans want it both ways — green giddiness and plenty of oil and gas for their cars and homes; lots of government services and low taxes; a big military but spasms of isolationism.
But it’s perfectly consistent to favor a big military that safeguards America against all foreign threats, and an isolationist foreign policy that makes use of that military might only when the defense of the country requires it. Call it the Swiss model, as explained by John McPhee:
The Swiss have not fought a war for nearly five hundred years, and are determined to know how so as not to.
…Switzerland is two times the size of New Jersey. New Jersey, by far, has the larger population. Nonetheless, there are six hundred and fifty thousand people in the Swiss Army. At any given time, most of them are walking around in street clothes or in blue from the collar down. They are a civilian army, a trained and practiced militia, ever ready to mobilize. They serve for thirty years. All six hundred and fifty thousand are prepared to be present at mobilization points and battle stations in considerably less than forty-eight hours.
…In the First World War, General Ulrich Wille led the Swiss to victory. Victory consisted of successfully avoiding the conflict. As someone put it, “We won by having no war.” In the Second World War, the victorious Swiss general was Henri Guisan, of the Canton de Vaud. There is a General Guisan Quai in Zurich, a Quai General Guisan in Geneva. In every part of Switzerland, there are streets and plazas and equestrian statues—there are busts on plinths overhung with banners and flags—doing honor to the general of an army that did not fight. Switzerland defends itself on what it calls the Porcupine Principle. You roll up into a ball and brandish your quills. In the words of Divisionnaire Tschumy, “The foremost battle is to prevent war with a price of entry that is too high. You must understand that there is no difference between the Swiss people and the Swiss Army. There is no difference in will. Economic, military—it’s the same thing. For seven hundred years, freedom has been the fundamental story of Switzerland, and we are not prepared to give it up now. We want to defend ourselves, which is not the same as fighting abroad. We want peace, but not under someone else’s condition.
I find a lot to admire in that approach. Though I cannot countenance neutrality in the Second World War, it is nevertheless demonstrable that the strategy redounded to the benefit of the Swiss, and the fact that they’ve prospered for 500 years, despite being adjacent to great powers that warred incessantly, suggests that isolationism can work far better than its critics imagine.
Though I’d stop short of advocating the Swiss model for the United States, I nevertheless favor a large army and high defense spending mostly because I want to avoid wars, not because I want the ability to start more of them. I am troubled by Mr. Hanson’s apparent belief that once one possesses a large army, it follows logically that it must be used. Indeed, were his belief sufficiently widespread I’d feel compelled to agitate for a smaller army.
A delegate at the constitutional convention noted that “A standing army is like a standing member – it promotes domestic tranquility but is likely to lead to foreign adventures.”
My seat-of-the-pants feeling is that large military establishments are correlated with military adventurism, and that the Swiss are a rare but glorious exception. Certainly for both Vietnam and Iraq a large military led to a certain hubris that led us to ignore the many complexities and difficulties of a military solution.
— peterg · May 20, 11:14 PM · #
Favoring “a large army” requires some qualification. A defensive army like Switzerland is prepared to field is a very different thing than the arsenal of power projection that we currently fund.
— forestwalker · May 20, 11:19 PM · #
Following up on Forestwalker, there’s a substantial difference between an army with substantial manpower and one with substantial capital. Both might theoretically increase hawkishness on the basis of the well established “If you have a hammer” principle.
However, there’s good reason to think a high rate of conscription in a democracy might actually lead to greater reticence to enter conflict. I’ve often seen the rise in public opposition to Vietnam tied to the removal of some deferments for college students. Increased military capital does not place such a democratic check and indeed means a good number of salaries depend on maintaining a war footing.
— Greg Sanders · May 21, 12:07 AM · #
“I am troubled by Mr. Hanson’s apparent belief that once one possesses a large army, it follows logically that it must be used.”
Well, yes, it would be troubling if Mr. Hanson had actually said it.
And then there’s the ridiculousness of comparing the might of Switzerland to the might of the United States. Conor, you have a problem with proportionality.
Incidentally, your isolationism makes you sound like a libertarian. Nah, you can’t be. You hate those stupid tea parties.
— jd · May 21, 02:11 AM · #
Switzerland has an army designed to defend its country from invasion, while the US has an army designed to invade other countries. That’s why, while Switzerland has many citizens in its reserves, we spend billions upon billions on transports and foreign bases, and Switzerland doesn’t. Hanson has a point here: it would be very difficult to keep our current spending just on a defensive army. After all, Switzerland spends about $350 per capita on its military, while we spend almost $2000 per capita on ours.
— Bo · May 21, 03:25 AM · #
Conor:
Apart from size, here are two big salient differences between the US and Switzerland:
- The US has, from its inception, been a maritime power. You don’t have to be a hegemon because you’re a maritime power, nor do you have to become a major player in great power conflict. But you will get involved in others’ affairs. If the US were just New Jersey, and hence comparable in size and scale to Switzerland, we wouldn’t be Switzerland – we’d be Holland.
- Unlike Switzerland, the US had a realistic opportunity to pursue a policy of continental expansion against weaker neighbors – an opportunity we seized eagerly, fighting the British twice to try to take Canada, successfully seizing northern Mexico, purchasing Louisiana from France, acquiring Florida from Spain, and subsequently Puerto Rico, the Philippines and effective control of Cuba, and of course pursuing a contiuous campaign against the native American Indian nations.
One consequence of both of these differences is that American has consistently located its defensive perimeter well outside its borders. We have never been “isolationist” in the sense that Switzerland is; we have always considered a docile Canada and Latin America to be essential to our security, as we also have considered freedom of the seas to be.
America’s intervention in World War I, and our post-World-War-II arrangements in Europe and Asia, are rather anomilous in our history; we do not have a long history of collective security arrangements or of alliances with other great powers. That’s really what we need the big army for. But with a much smaller army, and a robust navy and well-trained marines, we could perfectly well pursue classic foreign policy objectives of the sort that we’ve pursued all through our history – things like protecting shipping and defending the oil states of the Gulf from their stronger neighbors. We couldn’t run the world. We’d be very unlikely to stop mucking about in it.
The interesting question about Switzerland is whether the financial crisis will do what no foreign army has: force the country to surrender some of its sovereignty. It’s a real possibility, as Switzerland’s major financial institutions are now arguably too big for Switzerland to be able to save, and Switzerland’s economy is dominated by finance.
— Noah Millman · May 21, 10:47 AM · #
Here is the other difference: the US highschool dropout rate is around 20%. Give those left behind rifles, you say? Can’t we be safe without spending four times as much as China on military (16X more per capita)? This strikes me as a real problem.
— wfrost · May 21, 12:54 PM · #
VDH’s formulation isn’t “we have an army: we’d better start punching.” It’s “circumstances call for punching: it’d be silly not to use this large army we have lying about.”
You can argue that, no, circumstances do not call for punching, but you can do that without calling VDH an indiscriminate warmonger.
— Blar · May 21, 01:07 PM · #
I dunno, Noah, given that our policy of alliances, foreign bases, etc. has been around for, oh, about 60 years now, it’s hard to call it an anomaly any more.
It’s hard to see a robust isolationism being politically plausible in any case. Whether it’s bleeding-heart libs who want the military to intervene in humanitarian situations or demo-crusading neocons, the American population (for better and for worse) has a sense that we’re somehow responsible for what goes on in the rest of the world. It may not always be intellectually coherent and it may lead to rather bad outcomes, but we aren’t the Swiss, and there’s very little reason to think we’re about to be.
Moreover, even if we could be the Swiss, it seems to me that those in favor of isolationism (or something similar) miss the ways in which the extended American military presence preserves stability in crucial parts of the globe. What would Northeast Asia look like if we pulled out, for example? Hard to say for sure, but I’m guessing there would be a lot more nuclear-armed countries. And it’s precisely the presence of young American men and women that makes our security guarantees plausible. North Korea would be much more likely to head south if South Korea were merely “promised” American Marines in case of invasion, as opposed to the situation now, where at least several thousand young Americans would be killed in the initial stages of an invasion, ensuring a swift and conclusive response.
— Bryan · May 21, 02:17 PM · #
Since VDH was disappointed we didn’t go to war with Russia over Georgia, it’s pretty obvious he is an indiscriminate warmonger. It’s surely more helpful to consider that ‘a priori’ when reading him than to argue whether this particular utterance proves it for the thousandth time or not.
As for Korea, if we phased out our support, they probably would have to raise a larger army. But, realistically, they’re a wealthy, technologically advanced country with one of the lowest tax burdens in the developed world, and they’ve got twice the population of their northern neighbor to boot. If they had to, they’d be as capable of defending themselves against North Korea as we are of defending against Mexico. And given the uneasy relationship between their citizenry and the US military presence, they probably should already.
— Bo · May 21, 03:13 PM · #
Was VDH disappointed that a Russo-American war never transpired? I don’t recall that he said anything different from Obama or McCain; i.e., Russia invading Georgia is intolerable, Russia must be shown that it cannot bully Eastern Europe. If that’s all VDH said, then I would have agreed with him, yet I would not have supported an invasion.
If you can show we where VDH wrote or said “Let the tanks roll,” then I could be persuaded.
— Blar · May 21, 05:55 PM · #
You are free to look up his writings on this (e.g. a piece called ‘Moscow’s Sinister Brilliance’ where he specifically bemoans that military action is not being considered) if you’re interested. I had assumed that VDH’s reputation for incessant warmongering preceded him, and it’s tough to tell on the internet if people are merely playing the dullard or actually dull.
— Bo · May 21, 06:59 PM · #
Porcupines don’t fair well against rifles, and rifles don’t fair well against MOABs. Nothing beats being at the top of that particular food chain.
Also, armies atrophy when they are not employed (see, e.g., Ariel Siegelman). Decisionmaking becomes sclerotic. Discipline falters, bodies soften, equipment ages. Our procurement priorities becomes unfocused, irrational. Yes-men get promoted to command positions. Nothing selects for winners.
Then again, we are tucked between two oceans on the other side of the world. And every time we “shock and awe” somebody, it causes someone else to modify and accelerate their own preparations. And, as we’ve seen recently, unwise wars tend to disturb our allies, harden our enemies, and erode our credibility to pursue peace.
Maybe we should uncomplicate everything and build a doomsday machine. We’d better make sure to publicize it, though.
— Sargent · May 21, 10:34 PM · #
fare, dammit — homophones are the enemy.
— Sargent · May 21, 11:20 PM · #
@Bo: I read the article, and see nothing to support your assertion that VDH “specifically bemoans that military action is not being considered.” The closest I see is where he rues that
Except that he is not regretting that military intervention is not a possibility on its own. Rather, he regrets the package situation: that a military solution is not possible, AND that Europe is too spineless for an economic or diplomatic solution. Or to put it in a different context: according to VDH, a military solution was possible in Iraq, so it didn’t matter whether Europe was on board for further sanctions, for all the good they might have done. Since military action was unfeasible in Russia, according to VDH, it would be great if the EU, say, agreed to stop importing energy from Russia, so he regrets that EU won’t even consider indirect measures.
As for calling me a dullard, disingenuous or otherwise, let’s say that your incivility doesn’t advance your argument, especially when you are playing with an empty hand.
— Blar · May 22, 03:58 PM · #
Ships have no defences against ballistic missiles. So I wonder how much use navies now are in modern warfare.
— Ali Choudhury · May 22, 06:36 PM · #
Look, Blar, based on how you misinterpreted Conor’s post, I didn’t doubt that you could also misinterpret VDH’s writing. Just to state the obvious, the fact that VDH also expressed disappointment in other things doesn’t mean that he wasn’t disappointed at the lack of military action. Quite the opposite is true when one is writing a litany.
But really, who cares? You took an interesting point (if incomplete) point by Conor, that militaries should be large to avoid wars not to have them, and completely misinterpreted it in the most petty possible way, to claim that Conor was insulting VDH. Frankly, Conor’s actual point is fairly important, while your argument is fantastically trivial. If you’re going to be wrong, at least try to be wrong about something that actually matters.
— Bo · May 23, 02:49 AM · #
Thanks.
One other thing to keep in mind about Switzerland is that a foreign policy of neutrality has been intended to preserve domestic tranquility. Since the Swiss speak German, French, or Italian as their native language, getting involved in a European war could lead to a Swiss civil war. (There was a Swiss civil war along class lines in the middle of the 19th century, and they don’t want to do anything like that again.) Hence, neutrality. Moreover, putting men through recurrent military training is intended to build Swiss patriotism.
— Steve Sailer · May 23, 10:58 PM · #
@Bryan-
North Korea is unlikely to head South no matter what. This isn’t 1950: South Korea’s military looks a lot more impressive than North Korea’s if one does a realistic analysis. People are very impressed by the stated numbers of the North Korean forces, overlooking the near certainty that those numbers are inflated, the weakness of their logistics, the antiquity of a lot of their weaponry, and the very poor training most of them receive.
@Ali Choudhury
Ships have a defense against ballistic missiles. It’s called “moving.” It is dependent on warning of launch, but that kind of warning is pretty easy to get nowadays.
— Nemo Ignotus · May 25, 10:53 AM · #