Reflections on Zinn

Reflections on Howard Zinn's "Machiavellian Realism and US Foreign Policy" in his book Passionate Declarations:

Wow. The Machiavellian model points to so many pieces of what is wrong with the way we do business. First, the notion of the Lion and the Fox. Zinn's interpretation reads that in order to achieve the desired ends, governments (Machiavelli's Prince) have to use force, like the lion. In order to keep the people in line for such force, the people have to be deceived, like the fox. His chief example comes in form of the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. Until a few minutes ago, I was still under the impression that we used the bomb to hasten the end of World War II which was looking inevitable but wouldn't come without an invasion of the Japanese mainland, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. It turns out, according to Zinn, that Japanese generals testified after the war that Japan was ready to surrender regardless. In fact, a cable was intercepted from Japan to the ambassador in Moscow to ask the Soviet Union to intercede to bring about a conditional surrender, the chief condition of which would be the perpetuation of the emperor, a critical cultural link.

We dropped the bomb on the Japanese in order to inspire an unconditional surrender rather than a conditional one (and, oh, by the way, the emperor still exists), and in order to set the United States up as the leading force as we head in to the post-war world order.

This of course, leads to the second and more widely-known element, the idea that "ends justify means." Since the ends, according to Machiavelli's The Prince, is always more power to those above you, the dropping of the bomb was perfectly legitimate. We maimed, burned, and turtured hundreds of thousands of people because we wanted to position ourselves to be the dominant power in the world after the dust settled.

Of course, the United States has been following this rule since the beginning of time. The Vietnam War was supposedly to stop the red dominos from falling. The Iran-Contra scandal was to keep leftist, democratically elected regimes from taking charge of Latin America. The Iraq War was to eliminate Saddam Hussein (at least by one of countless rationales). In each of these cases, force was perptrated in the names of the American people only because deception was employed in order to either keep people in the dark and to do what those in charge wanted when they probably wouldn't get the response they wanted from the people.

The third Machiavellian element Zinn discusses is the notion that in order for your "Prince" to maintain and grow power, underlings must fall in line. You must put aside your personal feelings in order to do what you are called to do by the Prince. If the parallels to W aren't obvious, you're not paying attention. Anybody who steps out of line is smeared until there is nothing left of their reputation. See: John McCain (pre-recent ass kissing), Max Cleland, Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, Valerie and Joe Wilson, and countless others. It is fascinating to see some brave form Iraq commanders stepping out of their ultimately Machiavellian roles in the US military to say that Emperor Rumsfeld has no clothes. Apparently, the same thing happened in Vietnam, people just didn't hear as much about it as we are hearing now.

Gads. I need to get out of the house and take a walk. I'm going nuts. Have a good one.


Edit: A question for you all: Who is the anti-Machiavelli? Western Civ students (I know there's at least one out there!), is Rousseau the counter example? Where Machiavelli believes humans are bad and can only be led when the prince learns to be bad, does Rousseau believe humans are inherently good, therefor the social contract is based on humans fulfilling that goodness?