Review: Realism We Can Agree On

Third Quarter 2002

Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

by William Inboden

Robert Kaplan's latest book constructs a straw man, which the author easily dismembers. Kaplan casts "Christian virtue" as the nemesis of his argument. The provocative subtitle, Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, hints at his broader agenda. The "pagan ethos" he describes and defends turns out to be a firm, realistic view of the world unencumbered by sentiment or delusion, and which he finds most fully embodied in the writings of classical authors such as Livy, Thucydides, and Sun Tzu, as well as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Malthus. He could have called for a "classical ethos" instead of a "pagan ethos," but he seems to have chosen the latter in order to draw a sharper contrast with Christianity. He variously caricatures "Christian virtue" as feckless, moralistic, and at its worst, perilous to international order. As depicted by Kaplan, "Christian virtue" has no place in determining a nation's foreign policy and deserves the torch he applies to it. Straw burns easily, of course, and Kaplan's "Christian virtue" serves only as a convenient foil that enables him to avoid the richer, more robust tradition of Christian faith and thought.

Nevertheless, Kaplan writes well and knows well much of what he writes. He has spent his professional life visiting troubled spots and conflicts in the earth's far-flung corners, all the while voraciously reading in an array of fields. His convictions about how Americans should act in the world are as firm as they are informed. Calling for a new "nontraditional America-led empire" that places "power politics in the service of patriotic virtue," he does not shrink from the need for an assertive American foreign policy to preserve order in the world. Kaplan warns against the seductive appeal of globalization and democratic capitalism as panaceas for all that ails the world, pointing out incessantly how every such proposed solution carries with it a new set of problems. His warnings should be taken seriously, if for no other reason than that his past prophecies have rung true time and again concerning the rise of Islamic terrorism, the breakdown in various civil societies, the link between "technological acceleration and barbarism." He justifies his focus on "the dark side of every development not because the future will necessarily be bad, but because that is what foreign policy crises have always been about."

Kaplan would have done better to confine his argument to advocating a reinvigorated, foreign-policy realism. Despite a central thesis that purports to be inimical to Christianity, this book is really quite good. He winsomely and clearly relates the wisdom of the past to modern dilemmas. Kaplan does not name "original sin" but he describes its effects with chilling accuracy. In a fallen world populated by flawed people, maintenance of order must come before pursuit of grander ideals, and a willingness to employ force is necessary to preserve the outlines of civilization. In God's common grace, Christians can stand alongside Kaplan in affirming such insights of the pagan ancients.

We can go further, however. Perhaps Kaplan prefers pagan virtue to Christian virtue because he is unable or unwilling to consider the fullness of Christian political reflection. Ours is a faith rooted in history, unlike the ahistorical idealism that draws Kaplan's ire. Thoughtful Christians can draw on the resources of God's revelation in Scripture and His sovereign work in history as well as in the wisdom of Christian thinkers through the ages. We take our insights from the Old Testament diagnosis that "in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." We affirm the clear and simple New Testament mandates for government to "bear the sword" for "the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right." And we find hope in the words of Hebrews that "we desire a better city, that is a heavenly one"—brilliantly elaborated by Augustine's distinction between the "city of God" and the "city of man"—as a strong corrective against utopian schemes here on earth.

Kaplan's bracing dose of realism should be welcomed by Christians. Taken together, the Christian doctrines of creation and the fall into sin lead us most naturally and most appropriately to a chastened, realistic understanding of ourselves and our world. Likewise we can affirm in part Kaplan's argument that "international relations are governed by different moral principles than domestic politics." Many Christians draw a similar distinction from Romans 12-13 between private and public use of force. But Kaplan's caricature of Christianity as seeking "the moral conquest of the world" should be rejected for the distortion that it is. We do not seek a "moral" or any other type of "conquest" of this world, for we know that we seek a better world to come. Instead we are called to be faithful in cultivating this world and pursuing proximate justice while we await God's final redemptive justice.

—William Inboden is a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and is completing his doctorate in history at Yale University.