When Isms go to War

Those following the Stratblog posts know that we’ve been looking at sixteenth century grand strategy for a few weeks this spring.  Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada and Machiavelli’s The Prince both address the politics of that eventful period, but the worlds the two books describe can seem radically different.  Understanding the underlying similarities between Machiavelli’s apparent universe of amoral cynicism and the intense religious conflicts that swept Europe later in the century is a key to ‘getting’ what grand strategy is all about.

Machiavelli, despite his own idealistic political goals, describes a political world in which ideas and convictions don’t much seem to matter.  The differences in Italian politics aren’t about how society should be organized; they are differences over who should rule what.  Cesare Borgia and his enemies don’t disagree about the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated elements on the altar; they disagree over how large and how powerful Cesare’s territories should be.

Two generations later, the world of Philip II and Elizabeth I is torn by religious conflicts.  Fervent Catholics will happily betray their own king and country to advance their religion.  Protestants take money from foreign rulers to support rebellions against Catholic rulers.  Philip II, ruler of the greatest power of the day, believes that the advance of the Catholic religion should be the driving political goal of his international grand strategy.

This oscillation between a time of intense ideological conflict and a time of naked power-seeking isn’t just something we find in the 16th century.  In the middle of the 18th century, Frederick the Great was a Protestant and Maria Theresa of Austria was Catholic, but they fought over Silesia, not religion.  Frederick would have attacked Maria Theresa if she had been a Lutheran or a Calvinist; her sin was being weak, not being wrong.  This war was very much a piece of the European political scene in its era; the wars of that time were largely (though never quite wholly) free of any ideological implications.

That changed after 1789, when the French Revolution broke out.  Ideology once more became a major force in world politics and right up through the Cold War clashes between conservative, liberal and socialist political forces and governments helped shape the power struggles between states.

Today the picture is mixed.  The fault lines in the international politics of our times are sometimes ideological, sometimes not.  The threat of ‘religious extremism’ as the more mealy-mouthed commentators describe it is clearly a major factor around the world.  NATO warplanes are currently bombing Libya because of a widely-shared view that there are some things even rulers shouldn’t be able to do.

A cynic would say that humanity oscillates between fanaticism and greed, but is bloodthirsty and cruel whether driven by zeal for God or love of gold.  Said cynic would not be entirely wrong; the ‘idealists’ have shed as much blood as the ‘pragmatists’ over the centuries.

For the student of strategy and power, the implication is clear.  One cannot be dogmatically ‘realist’ and discount the power of ideals in political life.  Suicide bombers exist; people are sometimes willing to kill and die for beliefs and ideals and it would be unrealistic in the extreme to ignore this.  The political and religious ideals of other people are as real and as important as any other facts in this world, and the wise strategist must understand the nature and the strength of the convictions that instruct, inspire and energize the opposition.

At times, the religious and cultural convictions of others have been important targets to attack.  The Romans would sometimes deliberately destroy and despoil the religious shrines of their enemies as a way to demonstrate the impotence of foreign gods when faced with the overwhelming power of Rome.  The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (and the depiction of the sacred items being carried in a Roman triumph which can still be seen on Titus’ arch in the ruins of the Forum today) is the most famous example of Roman violence against the holy sites of a people Rome wanted to humble.  When Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, he converted the holiest shrine of the Byzantine Empire into a mosque as a way to demonstrate the power and permanence of the new dispensation.  Similarly, Turkish secularists in the twentieth century converted the mosque into a museum.

The most unrealistic of ‘realists’ are the cynics who argue that ideas don’t matter in actual politics.  If the US intervenes in some country, say cynics, it can’t be about democracy or human rights — it must always be because we are trying to control the zinc mines or whatever.  Philip II’s Catholicism was just a mask for his secular ambitions; Osama bin Laden is mad for power rather than a fanatical adherent of a diseased and distorted understanding of Islam.

The cynics are not completely wrong; hypocrisy exists.  It is even widespread.  One should never take professions of idealism and faith at face value, but it is equally foolish to insist dogmatically that such professions are always hollow.  (And keeping the examples of people like Osama bin Laden and Torquemada in mind, we should not be too quick to conclude that the ‘idealist’ is good and the ‘pragmatist’ evil.)

Mattingly’s depiction of the interplay of zealotry and conventional ambition is one of the most brilliant features of his remarkable book.  The King of Navarre (later Henri IV of France) and Elizabeth I are both presented as indifferent on some matters of religion.  Both however had to deal with followers and enemies who were strongly and even fanatically religious.  Religion was a kind of fate for them: the way they stood on religion determined how other individuals and states related to them.  They themselves may not have believed very strongly in the “Protestant cause”, but the Protestant cause believed in them, and the loyalty of their followers depended on the perception that they were credible and effective leaders of that cause.  That dependency in turn created enemies, as Catholic partisans were bound to oppose Protestant leaders with all their might and wealth.

Good strategy involves, among other things, the ability to figure out how religion and ideology affects the expectations and behavior of other people.  That understanding then needs to be integrated into planning.

Machiavelli is not blind to this reality.  Remember that The Prince is not a manual on statecraft in general; it is a book intended to advise someone seeking to unify Italy.  That was not a war of isms; support for Italian unification was a literary idea rather than a political force in Machiavelli’s day. Machiavelli believed that Italian patriotism would follow unification not precede it.  His unifying Prince would have to appeal to force and the balance of power, not a popular hunger for Italian unity, and Machiavelli accordingly set out to teach his longed-for Prince the lessons he would need to play that game.  But The Prince is full of concepts that presuppose the importance of ideas in the politics of the real world.  His advice to rulers who have overthrown a previous dynasty is informed by an appreciation for legitimacy in governance.  His famous discussion of armed and unarmed prophets rests on the power of ideas to make political changes.  His reverence for lawgivers and state builders (who rank much higher in his hierarchy of values than mere office-holding dukes) reflects the political idealism and humanism at the core of Machiavelli’s worldview.

As both Mattingly and Machiavelli teach us, the strength of regimes and policies derives in part from their relationship to the values and ideals of their own and surrounding societies.  All political societies have their own ideas about what is legitimate and right.  A government that does not appear legitimate is weaker than one which people genuinely accept.  A policy that feels immoral will face greater opposition than one that people instinctively think is appropriate and right.

But right does not always triumph over might.  Machiavelli is a font of advice for princes whose interests and policies run roughshod over the sensibilities of their subjects.  And nothing could be clearer than Machiavelli’s warnings about the fate of unarmed prophets.

The world of today has a foot in both eras.  The nameless COFKATGWOT (Conflict Formerly Known As The Global War On Terror) is largely a religious and ideological war like the wars of the Counter Reformation.  Geopolitical and economic tensions between the US and China, on the other hand, may have an ideological dimension, but the core clash at present has more to do with realpolitik than with the differences between our political systems.  China is not trying to impose a model on the US, and the US has no (current) plans to attack China’s domestic system of government.

Strategists today will have to imitate Elizabeth and Henri; they must understand their Machiavelli, and they must know how to pray — or at least understand why others do.