Special Section: At War - Peace, False and True: The necessity of war

National Review, Oct 1, 2001 by Richard Lowry

The phrase echoes "the spirit of Locarno," the era of good feeling that was supposed to accompany the 1925 agreements-between, primarily, Britain, France, and Germany-purporting to cement the post-World War I peace once and for all. British foreign minister Austen Chamberlain, half-brother of Neville, told the House of Commons that the agreements were "yet more valuable for the spirit that produced them." In cold strategic terms, as Donald Kagan points out, Locarno was a victory for Germany because it effectively detached Poland and Czechoslovakia (excluded from the agreements) from their natural ally France, and prevented France from responding militarily to any German provocation. But because it made everyone feel good, none of that was thought to matter.

Later, when Neville Chamberlain continued-against all reason-to pursue a policy of appeasement, he seemed driven by personal pride. And why not? He had been vouchsafed a shining vision of humanity's future, a future that he could guarantee with his sparkling mind and intentions. "British leaders easily were persuaded by the liberal and radical intellectuals of the day who rejected traditional ideas of power balances and military strength as devices for keeping the peace," Kagan writes. "They thought they had a new vision, different from and superior to all previous ones, and often these views were oddly combined with a self-righteous religiosity that believed that sin and evil could be overcome successfully by the example of unilateral virtue, trust, and good will."

Who else does that sound like? Bill Clinton deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, if for nothing else, for so thoroughly soaking up the attitudes of peace-process liberalism. There was seldom a treaty he didn't pant to sign. He was tone-deaf to the considerations of national interest and honor that might prompt nations to act in unexpected ways, and so was baffled, for instance, when India set off a nuclear bomb and its people danced in the streets out of sheer joy. And finally, there was the pride: in his own peaceful vision, in his warmheartedness and intelligence that would charm away the furies in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. George W. Bush, with his humbler view of both government's capacities and his own, doesn't take so naturally to the idea of the peace process, although the foreign-policy establishment has tried to bully him into it.

If pride characterizes many believers in peace-making, cowardice often does as well. If not an active cowardice, at least an unwillingness to face facts squarely, to act decisively to deter an adversary or force a war before he has become too powerful. Indeed, it is the unquestioned capability and political willingness to wage war that can achieve peace most assuredly. This means giving up the comfortable pretensions of the peace-talker and the equivocations of the careful diplomat, and making a choice. It requires moral courage.

And this leads us to probably the worst mistake of peace-process liberalism-the way it tends to ignore the morality of war-making (in the right circumstances, of course). Were there any other developments that did so much to advance the cause of human happiness and freedom in the 20th century as the Western victories in World War II and then the Cold War? War is a force for good, so long, of course, as the right side wins.