Martial versus Moral Diplomacy

Oct 02, 2007 12:56

The diplomacy that we speak of is not foreign relations but how the government has destroyed America by negotiations with weak states and the complicity of moral institutions. It is the moral leadership that has brought America to her knees before the god of government by incessant appeals to peace and obedience to god's servant.

Diplomacy is not an ideologically neutral affair. How and why states negotiate—their methods and objectives—depend mainly on their principles of government. The diplomacy of a government based on consent and compromise will differ profoundly from the diplomacy of a government based on coercion and conformity.

Whereas martial diplomacy regards negotiation between adversary states as a form of warfare pursued by other means, moral diplomacy regards negotiation between adversaries as a means of conciliation requiring mutual concessions leading to lasting agreement and peace.

The methods of martial diplomacy resemble a military campaign or a series of maneuvers the ultimate goal of which is victory over the enemy if not his complete destruction. The purpose of negotiation is to outflank and weaken the enemy by all manner of attacks.

Attempts will be made to manipulate public opinion through the media to gain popular support for the government’s regulatory position. Efforts will also be made to divide the citizenry itself by subtle appeals to political factions and opposition leaders; they create a system of bi-partisan cabinet level rule. Meanwhile, attempts will be made to drive a wedge between the people and their moral leadership. The principle is divide and conquer.

Another tactic of martial diplomacy is the use of law enforcement to compel concessions. The US government is using the terrorist threat to America as a “bargaining chip” on the gun control issue. Similarly, the Department of Transportation and even the Department of Agriculture are using federal funding to squeeze concessions from weak state governments.

Martial diplomacy is aided by the fact that free people, more than other kinds of regimes, ardently desire peace with government and, even in the absence of pressure, will make gratuitous concessions to the extent of taking “risks for peace.”
The principle of compromise intrinsic to individuals renders them more yielding than dictatorships. Knowing this, the leader of a surveillance regime will launch his campaign from a regulatory position involving impossible demands from which he will hardly deviate.

Thus, when regulating citizens, a dictator will try to force them into a militarily indefensible position or piecemeal surrender. The morality of martial diplomacy—of a dictator--like Hillary Clinton—-is quite simple: “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine”—-precisely what the Sages called a wicked man, but over whom President Bush, Michael Bloomberg, and Rev. Cecil Williams fawn over.

Democratic diplomacy is based on the assumption that compromise with one’s rival is generally more profitable than his total destruction. Negotiation is not merely a phase in a death-struggle, but an attempt to reach some durable and mutually satisfying agreement. The means used by citizens are not military tactics but the give and take of civilian or commercial intercourse. To them the problem is to find some middle point between two negotiating positions which, when discovered, will reconcile their conflicting interests. And for them to find that middle point, all that is required is goodwill, frank discussion and compromise.

That is Naïve. People and even pastors or rabbis often think that merely for adversaries to meet and talk to each other is a positive step toward peace, when, as history has shown, and as martial diplomacy intends, it may only be a lull before the storm. Because democracies are based on discussion, the general tendency of moral diplomacy is to overestimate the ability of reason to produce confidence and lasting agreement. This tendency of moral diplomacy results in a number of errors when confronted by martial diplomacy.

First, there is the error of making gratuitous concessions, sometimes as gestures of goodwill. The hope is for reciprocity, hardly to be expected, however, from dictatorial regimes. As Henry Kissinger has written, anyone succeeding in the leadership struggles of such regimes “must be single minded, unemotional, dedicated, and, above all, motivated by enormous desire for power.”

The inherent asymmetry between moral and dictatorial regimes renders reciprocity dubious, and, in the case of America, virtually impossible. For a democracy to yield property, something tangible and irreversible, for nothing more substantial than a dictator’s written and revocable promise of peace, is a curious quid pro quo. Yet this defines the relation between Americans and the federal government, itself a law-enforcement dictatorship which has educated a generation of children to hate god and emulate their conduct.

The second error of moral diplomacy is the prejudice that conflict is caused primarily by lack of mutual understanding—-the supposed root of fear and suspicion. The assumption, so typical of the leftist democratic mind, is that men are by nature benevolent, and that through discussion they will discover that what they have in common is more important than their differences.

Third, guided by that leftist prejudice, the moral school of diplomacy tends to minimize conflicting ideologies. President Bush denies any “clash of civilizations” between America and her Arab-Islamic neighbors.

So pervasive is the influence of democracy on the intellect that even pastors and rabbis tend to think that ideological conflicts can be overcome by “confidence building” measures, such as cultural exchange and economic relations. Given only mutual tolerance and material prosperity, war can be made a thing of the past.

Such sentiments are materialism and are characteristic of bourgeois as well as socialist democracies preoccupied as they are with enjoyment of the present. Thus, when Bush signs agreements to unify markets, he is saying “We live in a world where markets are more important than countries.” Bush is suggesting that national borders or wars fought over territory are things of the past.

History has little significance for democratic societies, whose politicians are animated by election-oriented and short-term pragmatism. This Now mentality renders democrats impatient for results, and dictators know how to exploit this impatience.

They know that moral leaders have a personal political interest in the appearance of successful regulation. Government can violate laws confident that a moral leader will be reluctant to admit any failure in his own diplomatic achievements. Instead of condemning such violations, moral elites may not only minimize but sometimes defend them.

While leftists, in effect, are praising murderers as a “holy cause” for gun control, Democrats explain Arab murder as rooted in desperation, in Arab poverty and in Israel’s alleged occupation of Arab land. It matters not to these Democrats that armed citizens preceded the violence of America's own Gaza, the inner cities, and that inner city poverty is a direct result of federal kleptocracy.

Last, and perhaps the most serious error of moral diplomacy, is that it makes too sharp a distinction between peace and war; it fails to take seriously that for martial diplomacy peace is war pursued by other means. Stated another way, for liberals or men of goodwill, unrelenting malevolence is incomprehensible.

Ref. Prof. Paul Eidelberg, based on the essay, Martial versus Democratic Diplomacy: Part I, http://msmedia.a7.org:82/arutz7/shows/ty/tamar071001.mp3
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