Arguing like an asshole: the fantasy that history has obvious lessons

The first mistake that people make about politics (and people all over the political spectrum make this mistake, albeit not equally) is to think that our world of policy disagreement is actually a fight between two identities: people who are good, and people who are various degrees of evil.

In the previous post, I criticized Chomsky (and I will in this one too). But, Chomsky has made some good arguments—and, as a scholar of rhetoric, I want to be clear that there is a difference between a “good argument” and “an argument with which I agree.” Democracy requires that we make that distinction. Not all arguments with which we agree are good arguments, and we should have a world of arguments that are good enough[1], many of which we think are wrong.

There are two weak arguments at play in regard to Ukraine: first, that Clinton “provoked” Putin by threatening to expand NATO (and Chomsky isn’t the only one making that argument); second, that Obama was at fault for not responding more aggressively to what Putin did in regard to Crimea. Oddly enough, I’ve seen people make both arguments. They’re contradictory. Appealing to contradictory premises, or making contradictory claims, is a sign that we’re not making a rational argument—we’re just saying whatever will enable us not to think about the problems with our position.

They’re also arguments that can’t be supported by history. They’re both claims that the example of appeasing Hitler shows are deeply flawed.

A lot of people like to quote Santayana who said, “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” Ironically enough, they thereby show they don’t know the history of that quote. He wasn’t talking about global, but personal history. He didn’t think that history was a set of facts that anyone could know, but that’s a different post. In fact, in the section of that same book where he talks about history, he doesn’t present it as something easy to know.

It’s common to say that the political figures who appeased Hitler were fools, and should have responded more aggressively. They posit counter-factuals: he would have backed down [if people had responded aggressively here or there], or there would have been a military coup [at this or that moment].

One of the important counter-factuals is the remilitarization of the Rhine. People argue that an aggressive response then would have forced Hitler to back down, and…at this point the counterfactuals get a little vexed. Some people argue that there would have been a military coup. I think those counterfactuals are all contradicted by what happened when France and Belgium responded aggressively to Germany’s defaulting on reparation payments. They occupied the Ruhr.

The French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr radicalized many Germans (it comes up a lot in narratives about why people became Nazis, in both Abel and Merkl); had France, Belgium, and the UK responded aggressively to the remilitarization of the Rhine, that action might well have had the same consequence as the occupation of the Ruhr. It might well have radicalized even more Germans. Hitler thought France might respond aggressively, and he was prepared for that outcome. It’s therefore dubious that a coup would have been successful.

It definitely wouldn’t have kept him from his goal of another world war—nothing would.

But, had the UK or French governments responded aggressively to the remilitarization of the Rhine, they would have been condemned, not just as war mongers, but as people repeating what was seen as the error of WWI—responding with excessive aggression to an incident that didn’t directly threaten any nation. Any government that did so would have lost the next election.

Neither the UK nor France could have gone to war to prevent the annexation of German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia without losing the next election. Going to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia would have been both politically and militarily implausible. Given the difficulties of getting supportive troops there, it’s hard to imagine it would have worked any better than the invasion of France. It might have—my whole point is that counter-factuals are various degrees of guesses–but from a rhetorical perspective, it’s clear that it would have been a difficult case to make. Even Churchill had to persuade his cabinet not to make a treaty with Hitler. It would have been much, much harder in 1939 to get support for a war. Should people have supported going to war over Czechoslovakia? Yes. Absolutely. Should people have supported more aggressive responses to Hitler? Yes. Absolutely. But they didn’t, and had Britain effectively stopped Hitler through aggressive action, the political figures would have been condemned as warmongers.

This post isn’t about military consequences, but rhetorical. Had they prevented Hitler from invading other nations, then their aggression would have seemed unnecessary.

Is Putin trying to get back the USSR boundaries because of security concerns? Maybe. He probably thinks so. But that doesn’t mean his concerns are reasonable, nor that they should be honored by other nations. Everyone striving for regional or world hegemony does so out of “security concerns.” Hitler was trying to get Nazi hegemony for all of central and eastern Europe, and exterminate or subjugate various “races,” out of sincerely held security concerns. The US invaded Iraq and got into Vietnam out of sincerely held security concerns. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor out of security concerns. Britain refused to capitulate to Hitler out of security concerns, and the US declared war on Germany for the same reasons. Ukraine is at war with Russia because of security concerns.

Having security concerns—whether or not sincerely held—doesn’t guarantee that what a nation does is right, necessary, or rational. Sometimes it is, but not always. That a country or leader is acting out of security concerns doesn’t necessarily mean they can be appeased, that they were provoked, or that their concerns should be assumed, without argument, to be reasonable positions in policy negotiation.

Had any President responded more aggressively to Russian violations of sovereignty, such as in 2014, voters would have punished him, just as voters would have responded (and, in the case of France, did respond) to aggressive attempts to constrain Hitler.[2] Am I saying that Putin is Hitler? No, arguments that situations are analogous in specific ways are not claims that the situations are identical in every way. [3]

I’m making three claims: first, that appeasing Putin means granting that Russia can have all the territory the USSR had (exactly what appeasing Hitler meant in terms of “German” lands); second, that a more aggressive response earlier might have been ineffective, but would definitely have been politically disastrous; third, that the argument that Putin was provoked is non-falsifiable because it’s grounded in a post hoc ergo propter hoc motivism.

Here’s what I mean about the third. One could argue, just as plausibly, that Clinton moved to include more nations in NATO because he knew Putin was planning on annexation. Both arguments appeal to similar levels of speculation, deflection, and motivism.

It’s interesting that even this defense of Putin assumes him to be trigger-happy and irrational. That’s hardly a defense. And it certainly doesn’t excuse his invasion of Crimea, let alone war crimes.

But, and this is the point of this post. Had Clinton done nothing, or had Obama responded more aggressively, anti-Dem media—and Chomsky and followers, as well as Republicans, are in that category—would have flung themselves around in outrage. It’s failing to learn from history–from our own personal history–if we condemn a political figure for taking the course of action we advocated at the time, but now think was a mistake.

That’s the problem with anyone who condemns Obama for not having responded more aggressively. It’s the problem with anyone who condemns a political figure for behaving as we wanted them to at the time.

People argued for appeasing Hitler because aerial warfare would be, they believed, unbelievably destructive. Let him have Czechoslovakia. Many said, let him have Poland. But he was always going to take France, all of central Europe, and do his best to take the world. Aerial warfare was unbelievably destructive. For Germany.




[1] This is going to get technical, but the short version is: rhetors cite sources, admit when they’re wrong, and do unto others as they would have done unto them—that is hold others to the same standards by which they’re willing to be judged. Here’s the slightly more technical explanation. Rhetors implicitly and explicitly apply criteria that are externally and internally consistent (i.e., if we think that kind of evidence or way of arguing proves our point, then that kind of evidence or way of arguing can also disprove our point—if being able to cite Scripture proves I’m right, then an out-group member being able to cite Scripture proves I’m wrong); if challenged, rhetors cite their sources; if we are proven to have said something false, we take responsibility for having made a bad argument. In other words, behaving responsibly in public discourse means holding everyone to the same standards, and being able to engage in metacognition.

[2] And, in fact, Chomsky criticized Obama at the time for being too hawkish in regard to Crimea.

[3] Why is this so hard for people to understand?