The Power Of Values--And the Value Of Power

In his speech to parliament in Westminster last week, President Obama made much of the values shared between the US and the UK.  Leaving aside his total--and, hopefully, intentional--misstatements regarding the history of the Anglo-American relationship, his remarks did constitute a fair evaluation of the importance of shared values, norms of behavior, understandings of the nature of government and its relationship to the citizenry, as well as the ties of history and tradition.  His remarks were both accurate and long overdue.

The fine words were also in large measure irrelevant.

There is a very real and easily demonstrated potency resident in the core defining values and norms of both American and British origin.  The particular features of both make each quite attractive in the estimate of many people around the world.  While the greatest gravity well pulling people to American shores has been and is economic, the magnetic attraction of the values and norms, the world views, the understanding of the dignity and worth of the individual which provide the foundation of economic success must not be underestimated.  Even those who come to the US--or the UK--due to the potential of personal prosperity do not undervalue the benefits of those intangibles which constitute a definable "way of life."

The value of the cultural, social, and political aspects of a country's life is enshrined in the unfortunate phrase, "soft power."  What makes this phrase uniquely unsatisfying is the implication that "soft" aspects of a state's potency are somehow inferior to those of more kinetic sort, such as the size of the navy or the number of deployable battalions.  It is always necessary to keep in mind that it is the "soft" aspects of a country which provide the basis for the "hard" features of economic and military power.

Mr Obama was right to pay proper attention to and give appropriate credit to the shared values and imperatives which have served to bring the UK and US closer together, to provide a broad set of coinciding national interests which allow for expansion or particular expression by normal diplomatic means.  In a very real sense the root of the "special relationship" is the ease with which "vanilla" diplomacy can be employed.

However, it is necessary to point out that the operative word is "special."  In this context special implies unique.  The relative absence of any need for any coercion.  The same applies to American relations with other English speaking, UK descended states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  While there are differences between Washington and the capitals of these states as has also been the case with the UK, these can and have been resolved quickly and with very little stress or pain by working from the extensive base of common values and shared interests.

What Mr Obama overlooked in his paean to the Magna Carta, etc. is the same does not apply with most other countries on Earth.  The US may have a wide set of common values with Western Europe.  Once that area is left behind, the number of shared values, norms, customs, imperatives and world views shared between the US and We the People on the one hand and the governments or citizens of other countries shrinks--often starkly.

Mr Obama implied that the West has been very successful in exporting its common values and imperatives.  This has been a recurrent theme in many of his recent statements.  It is also a something of a cliched meme within the elites of the West.  Like all cliches, this one contains a germ of truth.  But it is a truth which must not be taken too far, exaggerated too much.

The events of the "Arab Spring" provide a perfect context in which to see the potent temptation to believe entirely too much in the power of such made in the West values as democracy.  To Westerners in general and Americans in particular living in an environment in which all the hard, bitter but necessary preparatory work has been done, the inherent value of democracy is too self-evident to require parsing.  We run on the comfortable but hallucinatory belief that the voice of the people expressed in an election constitutes a sovereign remedy for all that ails a nation.

Our belief in the self-evident righteousness of human rights as we define such is similar.  If allowed to do so any people, all people, everywhere without regard to the larger cultural context or history will subscribe to the same understanding of human rights as we do.  Indeed, if one runs down the list of American values, norms, customs, and imperatives the same dynamic is seen.  If it works here, it will work everywhere.  If we believe in it so also will everyone everywhere.

This set of self-imposed delusions is particularly striking in its impact on the elites of the West, including that of the US.  It resides at the root of the two "multis" which so often confounds effective foreign and national security policy and manufactures social tensions which otherwise need not exist.  The first of these "multis" is "multiculturalism.  The second is "multilateralism."

The basis of multi-culturalism is the specious and pernicious notion that all cultures are equal in all respects.  No one culture may see itself as ethically superior to others.  No culture may be seen as legitimately dominate--even if its members constitute the defining majority of a population and have largely created that society's values, norms, and imperatives.

There is an irony here.  It is an irony which evidently escapes both Mr Obama and fellow members of the American elite.  On the one hand they celebrate the "soft" power strengths of Western and American culture.  On the other they maintain that it is wrong, even offensively arrogant, to maintain that the culture of the US and the rest of the West is superior to those extant elsewhere in the world.

Duh?

The second of the "multis," multilateralism, denies that the US or any country can act without the approval of others, the OK of the "international community."  On one level there is nothing objectionable about the concept of seeking allies in a common effort to a collectively defined goal.  That has long been at the heart of diplomacy.  It has long been at the center of effective warfighting.

The problem comes when the concept is taken too far.  This point comes when international structures are given priority over national sovereignty.  Mr Obama and his "team" crossed this point, at least as regards the UK, when he and they exalted the Lisbon Treaty and the new, improved European Union at the expense of the national sovereignty of the UK.

Mr Obama, again in common with the academics, journalists, politicians, and others of the elite, sees the supra-national as inherently superior to the national.  He and they view nationalism and national interest with the utmost of suspicion if not total hatred.  Collective fictions such as the mythical beast, "the international community," as well as supra-national entities such as the EU and UN are viewed by Mr Obama and his ilk as morally superior to individual sovereign states.  These people sincerely believe that supra-national bodies are both disinterested enough and broadly constituted enough to be trusted with solving any and all problems which might beset not only the world, or a region, but an individual state.

It is this understanding of the moral authority and disinterested nature of the supra-national entity as compared with the individual nation-state which has given rise to the new form of intervention in the affairs of a state.  The specific manifestations of this belief have been and are being seen around the world.  From the former Yugoslavia during the mid-nineties to the application of R2P in Libya, the causes and effects of reliance upon an overextended understanding of multilateralism are highly visible.

Equally obvious are the failures of a reliance on the "international community" and supra-national entities.  There is another irony resident at the edges of multilateralism of the expansive sort.  As is so evident today, the tensions between R2P and national interest are seen in the bombers over Libya as compared with the silent sky over Syria.  The failed state of Somalia as well as the failing state of Yemen stand as monuments to the inappropriateness or uselessness of the multilateralist approach to internal failures of a state.  Enough said.

In an ideal world predicated on the successful exportation of Western values coupled with the moral suasion of the "international community," Vladimir Putin would be the tribune of open, transparent, free wheeling democracy.  In that world the Trolls of Beijing would become exemplars of human rights.  Advocates of violent political Islam would take off their suicide vests and forswear even political subversion becoming open participants in the marketplace of ideas willing to accept defeat graciously should that be the will of the people.

Mr Obama was silent on the subject of force in his speech in Westminster.  This was to be expected.  He, once more in common with the Western elite generally, finds the use of "hard"power objectionable.  Even though Western aircraft were delivering hot metal on target in Libya and the president was riding a wave of popularity generated by the killing of Osama bin Laden, military force remained a subject not fit for polite company.

In some deep recess of his mind, however, Mr Obama is undoubtedly aware that in the real world values without the force necessary to protect them and even extend them constitute no particular advantage.  Absent a competent military and the political will to use it, the US and the West would rapidly become an endangered species.  Ultimately, the position and influence of the US (and the West) rests upon its ability and will to use force effectively and decisively in support of policy.

When night falls, it is impossible to separate the power of values from the value of power, military power.  That is a ground truth.  It may be a hard truth for Mr Obama and others of the elite to accept, but that is the way the world and its human cargo operates, like it or not.

Over the long sweep of history, the values of the US, of the West, may subvert those of other, arguably inferior origin.  Until that day comes (if it ever does), there is no substitute for force--except surrender.