Violence vs Compassion - American Foreign Policy, Genghis Khan, And The Inevitable Course Of History

Genghis Khan was a charismatic and fearsome figure.  He and his armies were known for their cruelty and barbarity, and the sight of them advancing across the battlefield in a storm of dust, the earth shaking with the thunder of 50,000 hooves, was enough to send enemies into retreat. The thought alone of this terrible, bloodthirsty, and mighty warrior was enough to rout enemy armies. Genghis Khan was a man of absolute will and power, a frightening presence of power and vengeance.  He was a horseman of the Apocalypse.

There have been many successful armies in the world.  Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Agrippa were as brilliant generals as Genghis Khan, and brought Roman organization, discipline, and management to the battle.  They won because of superior ability, armaments, and military thinking; yet it was Genghis Khan who, with an almost untamed savagery, conquered the world.  At its height the Mongol Empire extended from far eastern China to the Danube, the biggest empire the world has ever seen. 

Genghis Khan was a brilliant strategist, canny politician who through tact, intimidation, and offers of great spoils, enticed the warlike Turkic tribes to join his armies, nearly doubling their strength.  However, it was not only the might of his imposing armies, nor his ability to manage, discipline, and control such a large and diverse military force; nor even his tactical acumen and understanding of calculated risk which assured victory.  It was his indomitable, absolute, unalloyed will. 

Khan had no qualms, moral reservations, or ethical hesitancy.  Wars were for winning, civilians were complicit enemies, and total annihilation of any opposition was his modus belli. Not only would defeated populations be without the wherewithal to mount a resistance or counterattack, they would never dare to incite the bloody, murderous, savage wrath of the conqueror.

Genghis Khan's imperial conquests, and his absolute, indomitable and unalloyed will to victory, make him the perfect example of human nature expressed without reservation and without constraint. Wars have been perhaps the most common denominator of all periods of history - no era except for the two hundred years of Pax Romana - has been except from war.  The Egyptian city-state wars of 3000 BC were some of the first recorded conflicts, but human rivalries extend far earlier into prehistory. 

The Hundred Years War, the War of the Roses, the Napoleonic Wars, the Deccan Wars, The Thirty Years War and the various perennial armed civil conflicts in China are but a few modern examples.  The Twentieth Century with WWI and WWII along with the Maoist, Soviet, and Khmer revolutions and killing fields was one of the bloodiest.   The Twenty-First Century has started off in a similar vein. As of yet there have been no punishing, major, global wars with millions of deaths, but the century is still young. 

 

Pax Romana was possible because of Roman imperial hegemony.  Wars against the empire did not happen because Roman military and civil authority was so complete.  That condition - complete dominance - is very rare indeed, and most conflicts arise because of a presumption of victory. 

The Cold War of the Twentieth Century was a period of calm because of the second condition of peace - military standoff.  The Soviet Union and the United States were both so equally armed with nuclear weapons, that neither side wished to pull the trigger - 'Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)'. 

For today's American progressives war is unconscionable, a throwback to a more primitive, unevolved, prehistoric state of untamed territorialism; but one which need not be permanent.  Human nature, despite its predictable rampages throughout history, can be tamed, modified, and molded into a non-violent, compassionate, and considerate force for good. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  American military policy during the war in Vietnam was based on 'winning the hearts and minds of the people', a campaign to show villagers the benefits and rewards of liberal democracy.  In order to win the war, American military and civilian planners insisted, America must gain the support of the common man.  To do so villagers were provided food, clothing, and medicine in an attempt to show American generosity and good will and express the promise of a bright, Communist-free future. 

The Vietcong also wanted to win the hearts and minds of rural Vietnam, but did so through threat, intimidation, and unmitigated terror.  Any village even contemplating complicity with the enemy would suffer the consequences, and the Vietcong were as ruthless as Genghis Khan who left a trail of decapitated heads on spikes leading into and out of every conquered village.   

The story of how American soldiers vaccinated a hundred Vietnamese children, and how the Vietcong came into the village after the Americans left and cut off the vaccinated arms of each and every child was the apocryphal message of Vietnamese victory.

 'The horror...the horror...', Kurtz's dying words in Conrad's The Heart of Darkness expressing the tribal violence in all men, also expressed the pure, unalloyed, absolute will to victory of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. 

The US never learned the lesson of its defeat in Vietnam, and went on to apply the same losing strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Whereas the politics of post-Saddam Iraq were clear - rival militias ready to fight for supremacy - and the institution of a decade long military occupation of the country was the only way to assure a lasting democratic peace, the US withdrew.  The people of Iraq have spoken, President Bush claimed. 

Whereas annihilation of the Taliban in Afghanistan was the obvious solution to the problem of Muslim terrorism and the spread of radical Islam, the US held off, preferring to negotiate, to compromise, to 'bring to the table' opposing parties.  However just as in South Vietnam where the US installed a corrupt puppet regime, it did so in Kabul.  Negotiations were moot since the puppet regime was making millions from Taliban poppies. 

The current war between the US and Iran is a stalemate because of US reluctance to finish the job - completely destroy the theocracy and its military capacity.  Think Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some Pentagon strategists have urged - victory at all cost, or don't bother. 

There is no doubt whatsoever that Russia and China, America's two implacable adversaries, would not hesitate to use whatever means at their disposal to achieve geopolitical dominance if not hegemony; and both laugh at the moral weakness of America where talk of sexual diversity, transgenderism, and male pregnancy dominate public discourse.  

China and Russia, both former imperial powers with desires to restore their storied past, have a well-defined central ethos.  Whether nationalism, Confucianism, or imperialism, these nations are unified in a Machiavellian universe.  The US is not, nor never can be. 

There is room for compassion in foreign affairs but after victory, taking care of the dispossessed, but never before. Victory requires amoral will and absolute determination.  Israel understands this because for them every war is an existential war.  Truman understood this as well when he authorized the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

A troubled world, lament progressives.  Give peace a chance; but history's lessons are clear.  Peace is a fiction, a pipe dream, a fairy tale; and the best one can hope for is standoff, intimidating incursions, defiant defense.  It is a fantasy to conclude that the world is becoming a more peaceful place.  The recently concluded Twentieth Century was one of the most bloody in history not a peaceful one. 

So, fight wars only when they are in a nation's self interest, and pursue them until complete, unequivocal, absolute victory is achieved.  There is no problem with adversaries and there is no point in wishing them away.  They simply must be regarded as territorial, aggressive, and amoral and must be met with the same resolve.