It is suggested that the good President Biden called off one air strike in Syria after being told in extremis that a woman and a couple of children were near the planned impact (Gordon Lubold et al., “Biden Called Off Strike on a Second Military Target in Syria Last Week,” Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2021), just the opposite of what happened in the movie Eye in the Sky. I suspect that Joe Biden is, in private life, a decent human being. But he has some potential, prefigured in his previous politician’s life, to be a monster in politics. Jason Brennan argues in Against Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2016) that “politics makes us worse.”
But there are two related lessons of the aborted Syria strike that are perhaps less immediately obvious.
The first one is that simple people like to think that their ruler is good. “If only the king (or the Party) knew what’s happening, he would stop it.” Biden didn’t let it happen because he is a good ruler. That may bring to mind—or at least to the mind of a critical Frenchman—the French nursery rhyme “Le bon roi Dagobert” (The Good King Dagobert), in reference to the 7th-century monarch. Interestingly enough, though, the song was composed to mock royalty a few decades before the French Revolution of 1789, that is, before the French replaced a weak king with a series of strong dictators—what frequently happens in revolutions.
Trusting the rulers is an old habit of mankind, probably deeply embedded in our brains by evolution just like, according to Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek, tribal instincts are. In this perspective, the “Great Society” (to use Hayek’s formula) requires that we reject our tribal instincts in favor of an abstract and impersonal order based on individual liberty.
Despite the glitch of 1789, we can view the Enlightenment—including the Scottish Enlightenment of David Hume and Adam Smith—as a major step towards Hayek’s Great Society. The American Revolution was another step. But can mankind stop trusting its supposedly benevolent rulers? This is a crucial question, especially pressing in our troubled times. James Buchanan, the Nobel economist whose work in “constitutional political economy” was devoted to the liberal ideal although in another perspective than Hayek’s, ended up sharing the latter’s pessimism. In a Public Choice article published a few years before his death, Buchanan wrote:
The thirst or desire for freedom, and responsibility, is perhaps not nearly so universal as so many post-Enlightenment philosophers have assumed.
Perhaps many people do want their security guaranteed and their lives ruled by a good king Dagobert?
The second lesson illustrated by the cancelled strike is that it is in the state’s interest to have its subjects believe that the king or democratic ruler is good and benevolent. (In a state that is not perfectly autocratic, “the state’s interest” means the result of the interactions between politicians, courtiers, and government bureaucrats.) It is thus in the state’s interest to reveal, embellish, or leak instances of the rulers’ goodness. Isn’t there a good chance that the Syria incident was leaked under orders from our good king Dagobert?
Even under a constitutional—that is, limited—government, the belief in a good ruler is dangerous because it can disarm essential mistrust. As often, Anthony de Jasay found the way to put a related but more general problem in a few unforgettable words:
Self-imposed limits on sovereign power can disarm mistrust, but provide no guarantee of liberty and property beyond those afforded by the balance between state and private force.
This suggests many other questions. Stay tuned.
P.S.: To make sure that my words above are not misinterpreted, let me emphasize that I am not arguing that Biden was wrong to do what he did (if the event was as reported in the Wall Street Journal). On the contrary, I believe he did the right thing, from both a moral viewpoint and an economic viewpoint. The economic viewpoint relates to the long-run efficiency in defending Americans in the Hobbesian world. Other things being equal, it is better to have a good king Dagovert than a bad king Dagobert. His subjects should still keep their guard up. See also my Econlog post “Attacking Civilians in War.”
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Mar 5 2021 at 4:17pm
Clinton of course put a cruise missile down the chimney of the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. Oops, mistake made, right? Similar to Biden, Trump also unleashed, I think 50 cruise missiles on Syria.
On the one hand, yes, we can defend both Trump and Biden in the sense that both are utilizing military force in a manner consistent with decades long precedent. Essentially the post War Powers Act paradigm. For better or worse it exists and it would be unfair to acknowledge this when discussing the present circumstance.
“Self-imposed limits on sovereign power can disarm mistrust”
Well the war-making power was delegated to Congress.
Of course the basic problem is the War Powers Act delegates authority to the Executive Branch to engage in such behavior and the Supreme Court has been remiss to rule otherwise.
Indeed I would suggest there are two basic problems at play here. The first is the nondelegation concept where Congress has delegated authority to the Executive Branch of a power it should, constitutionally, not be able to delegate. And two, the basic flaw in this ‘limited government of enumerated powers’ is that the federal government is the sole arbiter of the extent of its own powers.
Put all of that together and we can see Reagan invading Grenada, Bush invading Panama and messing around in Somalia, Clinton throwing cruise missiles around in places like the Sudan or further intervention in Iraq with Operation Desert Fox. With respect to Iraq, at least Bush II got an AUMF from Congress though with respect to Afghanistan he got an AUMF that is so broad that that alone seems to be the statutory basis for intervention in Syria — at least in theory. I mean you will have to forgive my memory it has been a full generation and I was merely in my infancy at that time.
WAR……is peace.
Derka derka
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