Pence, Putin, deterrence, and the irrational rhetor

Image from here: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/trump-attempts-fix-his-putin-problem-n1291815

Several people have asked what I think about what is happening with Putin, and Ukraine, and Putin’s rhetoric, and whether Putin will start a nuclear war. I have no more expertise about military theory than my dog Delbert, so I will stick to talking about rhetoric. But the rhetoric here is interesting, because much of what is happening is the playing out of the rhetoric of deterrence. Deterrence is often described as a strategy in international relations, but it’s all about rhetoric—about persuading people to act as you want by threatening them with violence.

Mike Pence’s recent comments exemplify what can only be called simplistic deterrence theory. He said that it’s no wonder that Putin chose to invade Ukraine in 2022, because “weakness arouses evil.”

Pence thereby exemplified how not to think about deterrence. Looking strong doesn’t necessarily stop evil, and he should know that, because the US has had a lot of foreign policy disasters grounded in the kind of simplistic deterrence theory he’s advocating. In other words, he’s either sincerely advocating a version of deterrence that is incredibly flawed, in which case he’s far too ignorant about foreign policy to be in a position to determine it, or he’s shamelessly and cynically using this moment to hurt Biden by advocating a model of foreign policy even he knows is wrong.

Either way is irresponsible.

In a realm of toxic masculinity, and both Trump and Pence are deep in that world, people either submit or dominate. People who are submitting can pretend they aren’t by submitting to the leaders, although they are, by framing their submission as joining in a group that dominates others. It’s domination by proxy. (Erich Fromm made this argument a long time ago about Nazis.)

More important, I think the most plausible reading is that Putin invaded the Ukraine when he did because he didn’t think the US was weak, and he certainly didn’t think Biden was—he thought Trump, pro-Trump media, and the GOP would step in line (as they generally have) and support him. He took a gamble that the GOP would submit to his domination of Ukraine. It wasn’t a bad gamble.

He probably thought he could also reliably count on a lot of media and pundits on other places on the political spectrum, and therefore probably believed that Biden would have been hamstrung in responding effectively. Again, he wasn’t entirely wrong, and how various groups, including parts of the GOP but not just the GOP, have responded remains extremely troubling. That’s the first part of this post. The second part is about Putin’s invocation of the irrational actor, also a rhetorical choice.

I. Pro-Putin rhetoric.

The most charitable interpretation of what he was doing is that he was endorsing a very simplistic version of the larger category of foreign policy called “deterrence theory,” which, even in its more subtle versions is vexed. The most charitable version is that he is completely ignorant about how deterrence works. (The less charitable version is either that he thought Trump took a strong line in regard to Russia, or that he cares more about hurting Biden than furthering intelligent deliberation about a very fraught situation.) In its crudest form (e.g., Pence’s), it says that looking like the kind of person or nation who will respond with maximum aggression will deter anyone from acting in ways we don’t want.

The deterrence model has a long history, and it isn’t particular to any one culture. Sun Tzu (fifth century BCE) writes about it, as does Thucydides (also in the fifth century BCE, in the character of Cleon, who is a demagogue). That the deterrence model is problematic isn’t news; a major point in Thucydides’ history is that adopting Cleon’s notion of responding with maximum aggression was a bad choice, and played out with moral catastrophes like the extermination of neutral city-states, and the practical consequence of pushing neutral or potentially allied city-states into enemies. Threatening aggression and deciding to look strong has often galvanized groups (as happened with both the French and American Revolutions). Even people highly supportive of the “War on Terror” agree that how it was done benefitted terrorists (for a good summary of that argument, see Richard English’s Modern War). Pence’s simplistic deterrence model has been the basis of much US foreign policy post-WWII, and therefore also the object of much criticism since then. After all, a model of foreign affairs that got us Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Soviet meddling in the US “sphere of influence,” 9/11, and various other failures is pretty clearly not a guaranteed success.

Sometimes it provokes, rather than prevents, war. It does so even when the opponent believes that the threats of an aggressive response are sincere. If they believe that war is inevitable, and this is their best chance to get what they believe they need, then “deterrence” is actually provocation. This is called the “closing window of opportunity” motive for going to war, and deterrence can persuade people they’re facing a closing window. Times that “deterrence” has plausibly caused war include the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, WWI (as far as the Russian mobilization), how the French reacted to the Duke of Brunswick’s threats, the Peloponnesian Wars, and so many other cases.

This isn’t news to scholars of rhetoric. If I say that I’ll fire you next week for stealing if you keep doing it, I haven’t necessarily deterred you from stealing. If you’re stealing because you have no way to get your family food, you’ll just steal more immediately. I’ve created a window of opportunity for you.

If I communicate effectively that I am rigidly committed to holding on to dominating you, you don’t necessarily decide that your best choice is to submit. I’ve motivated you to take risky strategies to avoid my domination. In 427 BCE, that’s what Diodotus (in Thucydides) told Cleon (an advocate of Pence’s kind of deterrence theory) said would happen if Athens adopted Cleon’s policy. Eleven years later, Athens had adopted Cleon’s strategy, and Melos behaved as Diodotus said city-states would.

Deterrence works as long as it persuades a potential aggressor that they will not be allowed to get what they want through military action. It doesn’t work if they believe that they have no choice other than aggression, the threats of counter-aggression are bullshit, they can win even if there is an aggressive response, God is on their side so rational assessments of military strength don’t matter, they are in an apocalyptic battle, anything is better than submitting, and various other scenarios.

Clausewitz famously said that people engage in war for political goals. If political leaders are persuaded they can achieve their political goal without war, they won’t engage in it. If they think they can get it by threatening war, they’ll threaten it. If they are persuaded that they can get that goal only through war, then they’re likely to go to war; the more that they are persuaded that other countries will allow them to get what they want through war, the more extreme their demands; if they are persuaded that the war has gotten what they want, they’ll negotiate an end to the war; if they are persuaded that their existence as a political leader depends on their winning the war, then they’re likely to take outrageously risky gambles. If there is something a leader wants, and it can be attained through war, but only if they move faster than their opponents can mobilize support, then deterrence provokes rather than deters war.

None of what I’ve said in the previous paragraph is news to anyone even passingly familiar with the scholarship in deterrence theory—looking strong doesn’t guarantee a good outcome, aggressors don’t act because they think the others are weak. Either Pence is completely ignorant of what scholarship says, and he has no advisors passingly familiar with that scholarship, or else he does, and he knowingly lied in order to take a swipe at Biden. He put factional politics above everything else. Neither of those explanations makes him someone who should be involved in determining foreign policy.

Putin invaded Ukraine because he believed that he could present the world with a fait accompli, and because, I think, he believed that the US would be unable to stop him. Not because Biden is “weak,” but because Trump and pro-Trump media would support Russia’s aggression shamelessly, and so Biden would be unable to mobilize the support for Ukraine. Putin may have believed that invading while Biden was President would help Trump get reelected, and then he’d have a loyal supporter back in the White House.

Once again, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

Right up to and even after the moment of invasion, Putin has been able to count on people all over the political spectrum being willing to repeat Russian propaganda. But, particularly important would be his sense that he could get the GOP to support him. Given how supportive Trump was of Putin (I keep thinking about their unprecedented private meetings), how much large swaths of the GOP admired Putin, how much Putin openly worked for Trump, Trump’s hostility to Ukraine (which helped Putin), how much Trump undermined NATO (which Putin liked), Trump never doing anything Putin didn’t like, coupled with the tendency for Trump’s base and supportive media to flip positions when Trump signals, Putin might have believed that Trump could get the GOP to support the invasion. Putin could count on pro-Russian mouthpieces like Carlson, Greenwald, Chomsky, QAnon, and so many others. And, if so, Putin wasn’t entirely wrong—look at how long it took Tucker Carlson to change his position, what Carlson and Greenwald are still saying, and how Trump initially responded, and who even now has only muted criticism. Even Pence’s comment and what Hannity said recently shows that GOP pundits and political leaders are thinking about this situation more in terms of how they might damage Biden than what is the long-term right thing to do.

I also just have to say that a party that claims to be the Christian party that consists entirely of people who do and say things they fling themselves around like over-tired toddlers if done to them makes me alternately angry and despairing. When Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he neither mumbled nor said, “Unless they’re Democrats.” A party that claims to be Christian could start by behaving as Jesus said very clearly we should behave.

And Pence fails that standard.

If Pence is right about weakness, then he’s wrong about which President signalled weakness. After all, Putin, who has wanted to invade Ukraine for some time, said he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.

And Pence is the reason we still have a democracy.

I believe that we need a world in which many points of view are represented and are assessed by the same standards of argumentation. We need people who want small government, big government, state control, federal control, support for small businesses, policies that help international trade, and so much so on. I’m not advocating a world in which all points of view are considered equally valid; I’m advocating a world in which all policy agenda are held to the same standards of argumentation.

And Pence’s comment about “weakness” would sink like a rock. And he is among the best that the GOP has to offer, and Trump was hoping the insurrectionists would stop him.

We’re in a culture of demagoguery in which someone like Pence, who has principles, is still willing to engage in the kind of rabid partisanship that ends democracy. Pence helped Putin by trying to use this moment to undermine Biden.

II. The rhetoric of the irrational actor

When I was working on proslavery rhetoric, it became clear that there is a lot of political capital that can be gained by looking irrationally committed to the in-group (and stupid in-group policies). If you treat interactions as domination/submission, and you look as though you will do anything other than submit, you can get your interlocutors to go to ridiculous lengths to appease you. (This is why we have a cat whose vet makes house calls.) I thought this was an important insight.

Turns out that scholars in International Relations figured that out in the 60s, and that much of what both LBJ and Nixon did was in service of acting out that position. The idea was that, if they communicated that the US was willing to go to irrational extremes to punish the North Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese would come to the table willing to negotiate. Simplistic deterrence theory says that one way you can make people submit is by looking so irrational that others will submit. Look at how well that worked for LBJ and Nixon (and note that Nixon adopted it even after it hadn’t worked for the French or LBJ).)

What simplistic deterrence theory ignores is what one of the basic theorists of war (Thucydides) says very clearly.

Thucydides says that, for reasons relevant to its war with Sparta, Athens approached Melos and said, you can either become a vassal state of ours (i.e., cease to exist) or we will exterminate you. So, they presented two kinds of extermination. Were the simplistic version of deterrence theory correct, then the Melians would have submitted. They didn’t. They were exterminated. The Poles fought Hitler, knowing they would lose. Ukrainians are fighting Russia. Vietnamese fought France and the US. People fight even when they think have no chance of winning. Putin didn’t expect that.

Putin is adopting the stance of the irrational rhetor who has to be appeased. He flirts with appearing just irrational enough that he might start a nuclear war to get his way. That he’s flirting with it so strategically suggests to me that he isn’t all that irrational. Again, I know nothing about military theory, but I do know about the posture of the irrational rhetor, and that is what Putin is adopting. He isn’t completely irrational, in that he doesn’t have a personal history of behaving irrationally, but abusively. I suspect that the people who believe that he will win in Ukraine, and he will reduce it to rubble, are right. He will do so because, like Pence, he believes in simplistic deterrence theory. Whether Ukraine can hold him off long enough for him to sue for peace is not something about which I have an even remotely informed opinion, but, if they can–with world support–that would be good. But, even if he wins, the world needs to say this is his last win.





What Putin’s rhetoric should tell us about ours

Trump and Putin

This post is only partly about Hitler; it’s really about Putin, and it’s mostly about us.[1]

I write about train wrecks in public deliberation, so it was just a question of time till I got around to the question of appeasing Hitler. That UK politicians chose to appease Hitler (and the US decided to do nothing) is not just a famously bad decision, but a consequential one. Jeffrey Record says it nicely:

No historical event has exerted more influence on post-World War II U.S. presidential use-of-force decisions than the Anglo-French appeasement of Nazi Germany that led to the outbreak of World War II. The great lesson drawn from appeasement—namely, that capitulating to the demands of territorially aggressive dictatorships simply makes inevitable a later, larger war on less favorable terms—has informed most major U.S. uses of force since the surrender of Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. From the Truman’s Administration’s 1950 decision to fight in Korea to the George W. Bush’s administration’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq, presidents repeatedly have relied on the Munich analogy to determine what to do in a perceived security crisis. They have also employed that analogy as a tool for mobilizing public opinion for military action. (1)

When I started researching the issue, I approached it with the popular story about what happened. That is, Hitler was obviously a genocidal aggressor who couldn’t possibly be prevented from trying to be hegemon of all Europe—he had laid all that out in Mein Kampf, after all. Leaders who chose to appease him were wishful thinkers who deluded themselves; other countries should have responded aggressively much earlier, at the remilitarization of the Rhineland, ideally, or, at least, when he was threatening war with Czechoslovakia over what he called “the Sudetenland.”

Turns out it’s way more complicated than that. Way more complicated. To be clear, I still think various countries made terrible decisions regarding Hitler and Germany, but the leaders were constrained by voters. It was voters who got it wrong. I’ll get to that at the end.

Hitler took over from the Weimar democracy, which had its problems. It also had its critics. It liberalized laws about sexuality and gender identity, reduced the presence of religious proselytizing in public schools, opened up opportunities for women, included a lot of a demonized group in its power (Jews), relied on democratic processes that included Marxists and democratic socialists, had a reduced military, encouraged avant garde art.

Here’s what is generally left out of popular narratives about WWII. Conservatives in all the countries that went to war against Nazis hated everything the Weimar Republic had done, including its tolerance of Jews, and so many didn’t think the Nazis were all that wrong–better than the USSR, and better than Weimar. Popular between-the-wars UK literature is filled with anti-semitic and anti-Slav rhetoric. Even during the war, a US anti-Nazi pamphlet that condemned Nazi racial ideology was severely criticized because it was attacking the “science” used to defend US segregation. As late as 1967 (in the lower court rulings on Loving v. Virginia) theories of race integral to Nazism were cited as authorities.

Hitler had a lot of apologists among conservatives, including the owner of the very popular Daily Mail in the UK. And, as George Orwell describes in the book that conservatives who quote him never read (haha, they never read anything he wrote–they just quote him), many UK media were knee-jerk anti-communist in their coverage of events—so knee-jerk anti-communist that they failed to distinguish between various kinds of leftist movements. So, a lot of UK media liked what Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler were doing.

Hitler’s first move after being granted dictatorship powers in 1933 (which he did with no particular outrage on the part of major media in other countries, including the US) was to criminalize membership in unions, the democratic socialist party, the communist party, or any other party that advocated democratic deliberation. His second act was to kill all the socialists in the Nazis, which, weirdly enough, was used by his defenders as proof that he was more moderate than they. And from that point on it’s hard to get things in chronological order. The important point, thought, is that by 1939, when there were still major media and figures defending him, he had criminalized not just dissent but any criticism of him, begun engaging in mass killing, criminalized various identities, begun a process of fleecing emigrants, openly reduced Jews to constant humiliation and abuse, put into law the racialization of Germany. He had also remilitarized the Rhineland, incorporated the Saar, violently appropriated Austria, and then appropriated the “German” part of Czechoslovakia. He then took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, and he still had defenders.

Then, when he invaded Poland, some (not all) said, oh, wait, he’s a bad guy. So, why didn’t they do anything earlier? Because his rhetoric was pretty clever.

He had two kinds of rhetoric. For his internal audience, it was exactly what the rhetoric scholar Kenneth Burke described in 1939. Unification through a common enemy, scapegoating/projection, rebirth, bastardization of religious forms of thought, toxic masculinity (not Burke’s term, of course—he talks about the feminization of the masses). All of this was about the rebirth of Germany into a “strong” nation set on domination of weak groups. But he also always made a point of the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, especially the guilt clause.

His external rhetoric had a lot of overlap with that. For instance, a lot of UK media—specifically “conservative”—endorsed and openly admired Hitler’s ‘strong man’ crushing of liberal democratic practices and leftist policies, since they hated those policies and practices. They were also anti-Semitic, anti-Slav, and believed in the Aryan bullshit behind Nazi policies, as were many people in the US. In both the UK and US, many major political figures were sympathetic to thinking of Jews as “a problem” who should be denied immigration.

To go back to the UK, these “conservative” media were thereby writing approvingly of very new practices, ones that traditional conservative voices (such as Edmund Burke) would have found horrifying. “Conservatives” were now writing approvingly of what had until recently been seen as the enemy of the UK. In other words, people often claim to be “conservative” when all they’re conserving in their loyalty to their party, and it has nothing to do with conserving principles.

Here’s the part I didn’t know about appeasement. Many people, all over the political spectrum, were willing to say that the Versailles Treaty was unjust. Hitler’s foreign policy was defended through the rhetoric of the Versailles Treaty, which emphasized self-determination. He didn’t believe in self-determination, of course, but he could use that rhetoric. And he did.

And, as scholars have argued, his use of that rhetoric made it hard for advocates of the treaty to say he was wrong in what he was doing. They certainly couldn’t go to war over it, since the Great War, as it was called, was almost unanimously understood everywhere other than Germany as a colossal mistake. To go to war over the remilitarization of the Rhineland would have seemed to most UK voters a bizarre compulsion to repeat the errors of 1914, when a minor political issue could have been resolved without war.

Hitler adopted the rhetoric that his enemies had recently used—the rhetoric of self-determination—to scoop up territories. He claimed that “the people” of a region wanted Germany to invade because they were being oppressed by [Jews/liberals/Slavs], and so his appropriation was actually liberation. When it came to Poland, he couldn’t plausibly argue that, so he shifted his rhetoric to self-defense—Poland, France, and the UK were intent on attacking Germany (he claimed they had), and so all Germany was doing was justifiable self-defense.

And that’s what Putin did. He adopted the rhetoric his enemies had used, which made it hard for them to call him out.

The rhetoric for a preventive war against Iraq—an unprecedented kind of war for the US—was that it was preventive self-defense. In fact, it was motivated by the desire to make Iraq a reliable ally in US foreign policy.

The rhetoric was that Iraq was supporting a global war against the US in the form of Al Qaida (Bush later admitted they knew it wasn’t), the site of anti-American terrorism, and various other lies. The Bush Administration, and its fanatically supportive media, told a lot of lies, that they knew were lies, because they wanted to put in place a government that would be an supportive of US policy or because they loyally and irrationally supported whatever a GOP President did. I happen to think Bush meant well. I think he believed a very simplistic version of the extremely controversial (and circular) “democratic peace” model, one he didn’t think most Americans would find compelling enough for war, and he so he lied to get what he thought was a good outcome.

The problem is that rhetoric has its own consequences, regardless of intention. By arguing that the US was justified in invading Iraq and putting in a new leader because 1) that state was fostering terrorism, 2) part of an anti-US conspiracy, and 3) presented an existential threat to the US, Bush legitimated a certain set of arguments (what rhetoricians call “topoi”). Just as the Versailles Treaty was grounded in topoi of self-determination, the Iraq invasion was grounded in topoi about terrorism and existential threat. There was a long history of that kind of rhetoric in the Cold War, especially about crushing any kind of political movements in the areas that the US considered its sphere of influence, such as Nicaragua, that might threaten US control. Throughout the Cold War, the US persistently crushed local popular movements of self-determination on the grounds of “sphere of influence”–we would not let any government exist in those areas if it wasn’t loyal to the US.

Putin used US Cold War rhetoric to justify his scooping up of areas, such as Chechnya. It would have been rhetorically and politically impossible for the US and NATO to go to war over that region, given how factionalized US politics is. Look at how the GOP—which had far less power in those days—was critical of US intervention in Serbia. Had Clinton advocated going to war, or even threatening war, over Chechnya, the GOP would have gone to town, and very few Dems would have supported it.

When it came to Ukraine, Putin adopted a rhetoric that cleverly blended Hitler’s rhetoric about Poland, US Cold War rhetoric, and Bush’s rhetoric about Iraq. It was a gamble, but not an unreasonable one (a different post) given the rhetorical conditions of US politics. You could take Hitler’s speech about invading Poland and just do a few “find and replace” to get his speech, and blend it with a speech of Bush’s advocating invading Iraq.[1]

My point is that adopting a rhetoric to get what you want—Cold War rhetoric to justify propping up corrupt and vicious regimes in Central and South American, lying about terrorism to get a war desired for other reasons—has consequences. Rhetoric has consequences in terms of legitimating certain kinds of arguments.

And here is the point about appeasing Hitler. I’m writing a book with a chapter about the rhetoric of appeasement. My argument is that it was a bad choice in terms of what was in the long-term interest of the UK (and the world). However, and this is what most people don’t know, or won’t acknowledge, politicians made the choices they did because appeasing Hitler was the obvious choice to make for any political figure (or party) who wanted to get (or remain) elected. If they advocated responding aggressively to Hitler they would have been excoriated by the most powerful media. Had Clinton advocated responding aggressively to Putin’s treatment of Chechnya, it would have gone nowhere. Had a GOP President advocated responding aggressively to Putin’s expansionism, the Dems would have thrown fits.

I’m not saying that we should have responded aggressively when Putin took over Austria, I mean Chechnya, but that we should have deliberated what Putin was doing. And we couldn’t. Because we are in a culture that demonized deliberation. We are in a culture in which engaging in politics means standing in a stadium chanting, having no political opinion more complicated than what can be put on a bumper sticker, loyally repeating, retweeting, or sharing whatever is the latest in-group talking point, and hating the other side is proof of objectivity.

And here I’ll go back to appeasing Hitler. I don’t really blame the politicians for appeasing Hitler, but that’s largely for the same reason I don’t blame my dog Delbert for eating cat shit. Delbert will do whatever he can to get to cat shit, and politicians will do whatever they can to get elected.

Politicians appeased Hitler because the voters wanted Hitler appeased. We need to stop asking why politicians did what they did in regard to Hitler and instead ask why voters voted the way that they did. FDR and Chamberlain don’t bear the blame for why the US and UK responded as we did to Hitler; voters do. The lesson of appeasement, and the lesson of Putin, is not that leaders make bad decisions, but that voters make bad decisions, and then blame leaders.

After the tremendously popular Sicilian Expedition ended in disaster, the very people who had voted for it claimed that they had been misled, and politicians were at fault.

They voted for it.

George Lakoff pointed out that “liberals” and “conservatives” both adopt the metaphor of family for government in that the government is a parent to the citizens who are children. What if, instead of imagining voters as tools in the hands of political leaders, we acknowledge what Socrates says: even tyrants are tools in the hands of citizens.

So, how do we counter Putin’s kind of rhetoric?

We accept the responsibility of voters, citizens, commenters, sharers, likers. We are all rhetors, and we try to behave responsibly, whether it’s about how awful cyclists are or whether Putin is right.

We stop remaining within our informational enclave. And we feel no shame about pointing out how unfair and irresponsible people are being.

We read the best arguments against our positions; we hold others to the same rhetorical standards as ourselves; we stop engaging in rhetorical Machiavellianism; we argue, well and fairly and vehemently. And we shame others who argue badly. We might do so vehemently, kindly, gently, or harshly, but we do so because we want others to do that to us.

[1] Normally, I link to citations, but that would have delayed this post by a week, since there are a lot of links. If folks want links and cites, let me know.
[2] For the people who have trouble with logic, and reason associatively, I’m not saying Bush was Hitler. I’m saying we shouldn’t judge rhetoric by whether we like its outcome or its advocates—it has its own consequences. Bad rhetoric in favor of a cause we like is, I’m saying, still bad rhetoric in that it legitimates what others might do with it.