July 4, 2003                                                                          THE 21^st CENTURY POPULIST

“The Best D efense Is A Good Defense”

by Don Schellhardt

        With the declaration that serves as the title for this month’s article, I have just defied the wisdom of football coaches around the world.   

        Matters of peace and war, however, are usually less straightforward than a football game.   When waging a war, for example, the best outcome may be a negotiated settlement, or at least a victory achieved without humiliating the enemy.  

        Even when an outright victory has been won, the outcome may be maintainable over time only if the vanquished become better off in peace than they were at war.  The U.S. Marshall Plan, involving post-war financial aid, helped raise the living standards of Western Europe and Japan to new heights after World War II.   One result was NATO:  an alliance of former foes that deterred the Soviets for 40 years.

        The contrary strategy, of punishing and exploiting the losers, was practiced by post-Lincoln Union leaders during the Reconstruction occupation of Confederate States, following the American Civil War.   The results, once Reconstruction ended in 1876, included a century of white supremacy and embedded racial segregation in the South, plus more than a century of profound cultural alienation from the North.    

        Preventing a war is usually even less akin to football.   Football games, after all, are about winning and losing   …   but “building the peace”, like re-building the peace in post-Nazi Europe or post-Hussein Iraq, is more likely to be about winning and winning.    Typically, all sides (and there are often more than two) have to gain net overall benefits if the post-war status quo is to remain stable over the long term. 

       This is true in institutional and personal relationships.   Win/lose victories may be sweet, but win/win victories are longer lasting.    Ask any happily married couple. 

        These lessons from history, and life, are worth remembering as the U.S. works to heal the wounds of war, if possible, in Iraq and the rest of the world.    The lessons may be even more important in the case of East Asia , where war with North Korea and/or China hasn’t happened   --    yet   --   and might still be preventable.

        One traditional macho cliché, I submit, remains true:   “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”    Pulling U.S. troops from South Korea , and/or cutting the last links of loyalty to Taiwan , will encourage acts of military aggression.     So will remaining inactive in the face of clear vulnerabilities at home to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), as discussed in the May column, and to disruption of imported oil supplies.    Yet defensive measures are a far cry from “pre-emptive” attacks.    “Pre-emptive” actions make war inevitable, stretch societal resources unnecessarily and blur whatever moral advantages the attacking party might otherwise have.  

COPYRIGHT 2003 BY DON SCHELLHARDT

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