silk road diplomacy

"the very immortals can be moved; their virtue and honor and strength are greater than ours are, / and yet with sacrifices and offerings for endearment, / with libations and with savor men turn back even the immortals / in supplication, when any man does wrong and transgresses” (Iliad, IX 497-501)

You have to admit it stands to reason that the gods would indeed be moved in this version of Homeric destiny-- so guided by the human prayers and curses that forever bound together Troy, Rome and Carthage.

And knowing that their prayers had wings, the ancients also knew that to be truly great one must be able to defeat a great enemy-- so the Greeks praised Troy's strengths to high heaven-- as did Polybius, the Carthiginians'. This is not to argue that war itself was somehow more noble in ancient times, but rather that there is a possibility that how you understand your enemies in the end matters. That is to say that there are more or less noble ways of both going to war but also more or less noble ways of creating and "spinning" battle narratives-- and that these differences could be significant.

As my dear Caesar says, those who seek to promote war often ignore history.

And how much easier to do so in a world where you can go about life forgetting your country is even at war in the first place. To me, this is connected to having a very dfferent kind of concept over destiny; a concept which does not seem to include the Homeric notion of ordinary human influence. We still go to war but that idea of going up against a respected opponent is missing completely as the other side is dehumanized. Perhaps the ultimate symbol of this kind of modern prayerless destiny are the unmanned, robotic bombings which are remotely carried out by staff in an office building somewhere outside of Las Vegas and Langley. This is a policy which not only does Obama embrace but something with which he "virtually" kicked off his reign. (For the moral aspect of the policy, see the transcripts of this philosopher's zone program on political violence; and for a quick overview on the historical back ground, see the comment by the always brilliant, Patrick S O'Donnell here; also highly recommended is the Jane Mayer article from the New Yorker linked below).

It is a far cry from the days of Troy, when the Kings and elite oftentimes at least actually went into battle.

Along these lines classicist Mary Beard remarked recently as well that,

The bigger problem here is how we understand Virtue and Evil. It suits the cheaper side of political debate and media hype to imagine that somehow all the virtues (or vices) come together, as a package: a good person will be good across the board, a bad one similarly bad. It's a view with a long pedigree (and Aristotle has got a lot to answer for), but it crudifies political culture, is almost always a gross oversimplification and it undermines our capacity to deal with racism, terrorism, discrimination or whatever.

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So if historical memory and the promotion of war are on one side of the coin, don't you think that communication and diplomacy are on the other?

I am a great fan of the writing of William Dalrymple. Not all that long ago he had another great article in the Guardian about the future of travel writing. One paragraph in particular caught my attention:

"It's no accident that the mess inflicted on the world by the last US administration was done by a group of men who had hardly travelled, and relied for information on policy documents and the reports of journalists sitting interviewing middle-class contacts in capital cities. A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people's existence that are rarely reflected in journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. Despite the internet and the revolution in communications, there is still no substitute."

Indeed, reading this I thought that with the further and further cutting back ("outsourcing") of the old diplomatic corps really US policy is probably being decided mainly by a cabal of monoglots and cultural provincials. Whereas in contrast, the more I read about silk road history, the more I have been amazed by the way kings and leaders seemed to surround themselves with polyglot and multicultural advisors, spouses and elite. From al-Andalus to Chang'an, there were stunningly cosmopolitan and polyglot rulers.

The thing is, people quite simply do not always universally behave the same way and you cannot know this unless you go and see it! Or at the very least, you need people with such first-hand experience and language skills to advise you.... To wit: Vietnam.

This is why I appreciate Parag Khanna's work so much (though I don't agree with all his conclusions). A polylingual, the man has traveled pretty much everywhere on the planet. Hence, when he speaks, real experience talking to people informs his opinions. I am greatly looking forward to his upcoming book, the Future of Diplomacy.

Yes, two-way communication in the relevant languages really does matter.

Here is the other side from a war (Israel-Palestine Conflict) that very much has been played out-- for better or worse-- according to the old rules of the Game (though it seems drones are much used in that conflict as well; indeed, my friend Tina tells me that they were probably used in the incident named by the Slate.com author thereby confusing his argument?).

Some may say, there will always be warfare and it is in our benefit to make what is a necessary evil as efficient as possible. Others will counter that one needs to take the long view when it comes to political violence (and that includes the ethical implications).

Afterall, "historical provincialism" applies forward in time as well-- right into a short-sightedness.

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Here is a link to the Jane Mayer article on predator drones and Pakistan.

And this on the  historical background of Asymetric Warfare and China.

Comments

[hotaruSTAR16]

Indeed, history manifests itself into the present. We are supposed to learn from our predecessors' mistakes, but all too often, we make the same mistakes. It is true that war nowadays is made easier with technological weapons, but hasn't war been present throughout history? There is no era of the past that I can think of that didn't have some sort of battle going on. It's just now we use different weapons and tactics. Have you read Asia Chronicle? The site provides in-depth analyses on the conflicts occuring in and among Asian nations. It presents logically how conflicts arise. Worth a read I think. www.asiachroniclenews.com

[Peony]

Hi Hotaru,

Thank you so much for reading. I've received several very interesting comments to this post in emails. And, the comments mostly seem concerned with the practical issues. That is, if you have accurate intelligence (in this case provided by the Pakistani government) and if there really was no way to bring the terrorist in alive, the limited use of such drones should be kept on the table as one option.

The practical problems, as well as the propaganda fallback have been written about extensively in Mayer's article for the New Yorker (she also have an interview here).

Another friend pointed me to Michael Walzer's concerns-- which are mainly concerned with legal issues and questions about transparency.

Your question, however, is the only one that to my mind is significant. Are these drones just the logical next step in weapons?

I think when it comes to war and killing, before tackling the
practical, legal or realpolitik issues, I would think that one would want to first think about the ethical implications. Are these just the latest weapons in the history of warfare? Or is their use a significant break?

In Mayer's article she noted that a foreign British Air chief marshall in Iraq called this a "virtueless war" and I guess that is my question.

Ironically the US was itself opposed to the Israeli drone program because it stated it was against targeted assassinated killings by a government (ie, extra-judiciary assassination). This is Walzer's issue-- he wants a public list of who is being targeted for assaaintion.

There are two aspects of the US program which are of concern to me. The first is that the use of unmanned predator drones perhaps is the first time in military history that the the military/civilian and the combatat/noncombatant distinction has been completely blurred. Not only are non--military personnel doing the "button pressing" but sometimes these personnel are not even in the government! As they are employees working at subcontracted corporations. So, there is an entire economic side to the issue (US tax payers paying private corporations --who operate for profit--to assassinate enemies).

There is a book called Bombing Civilians and I suppose as soon as humans started using airplanes to deliver bombs the impact on civilians was exponentially increased (compare noncombatant deaths from WWI to WWII, for example) But I think-- even just removing the pilot-- so blurs the combatant-noncombatant distinction as to be at the very least worthy of public debate (after all Osama bin Laden was famous for blurring this very distinction, saying that God would make sure innocent martyred would end up in Paradise).

The author who wrote the recent book Wired for War also was concerned by how this change makes war beome invisible to the public. Mary Dudziak, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law notes, “Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on …endless war.” Drones widen an already gaping chasm between Americans and the realities of war.

Oh, by the way, I looked at Asia Chronical-- it looks great! Is it HK-based? When I lived in HK, I really enjoyed the media there, subscribed to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asiaweek, SCMP. Japan has nothing like it in terms of English-language media.

If you are interested I wrote this post about Hong Kong Cheers.

[Peony]

Recommended from Patrick O:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1501144##

Within days of his inauguration as president, Barack Obama ordered the CIA to continue President Bush’s policy of attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones in Western Pakistan. By October of 2009, the CIA had launched around 80 drone attacks. These attacks cannot be justified under international law for a number of reasons. First drones launch missiles or drop bombs, the kind of weapons that may only be used lawfully in an armed conflict. Until the spring of 2009, there was no armed conflict on the territory of Pakistan because there was no intense armed fighting between organized armed groups. International law does not recognize the right to kill without warning outside an actual armed conflict. Killing without warning is only tolerated during the hostilities of an armed conflict, and, then, only lawful combatants may lawfully carry out such killing. Members of the CIA are not lawful combatants and their participation in killing persons—even in an armed conflict—is a crime. Members of the United States armed forces could be lawful combatants in Pakistan if Pakistan expressly requested United States assistance in a civil war to end a challenge to Pakistan’s civilian government. No express request of this nature has been made. Even if it were made, drone attacks are the wrong tactic in the context of Western Pakistan. The CIA’s intention in using drones is to target and kill individual leaders of al-Qaeda or Taliban militant groups. Drones have rarely, if ever, killed just the intended target. By October 2009, the ratio has been about 20 leaders killed for 750-1000 unintended victims. Drones are having a counter-productive impact in Pakistan’s attempt to repress militancy and violence. The use of the drone is, therefore, violating the war-fighting principles of distinction, necessity, proportionality and humanity.