We face Threats not Enemies
This results in disastrous policies as well as enflaming our domestic politics.
There is an important difference between a threat and an enemy. Failing to make this distinction results in bad public policy.
While an effective way to win partisan votes, enemy bashing is an ineffective and dangerous approach to policy choices. It views the national interest as doing harm to an external foe. It grows out of the 19th century view that reducing the power of other States and building up one’s own, increases one’s security. It was Henry Kissinger’s view of global power politics.
It carries a “balance of powers” framework into a modern world where a zero-sum view of national power is both inoperable and self-defeating.
Instead, we need to see our national interests as threat prevention, or more appropriately as threat management. Tom Newcomb recently made this distinction clear to me with reference to the fighting in Gaza.
‘Threat” is multifaceted. It is contingent upon events. It can involve intentional group action or the unintentional consequences of unrelated actions. Threat prevention does not see the world as monolithic wholes, highly integrated political forces that pursue single-minded unlimited goals. Threat management does not see the world as a zero-sum battle to weaken or destroy an enemy.
What we are tempted to call “enemies” are actually social forces composed of many shifting alliances, interests and aspirations. They may converge on a military objective and then act as if they are a “State,” a society acting as a whole. But they are not a whole. To see Hamas or China as a “thing,” as a singular agent of constant purpose is to treat an abstraction as reality. They are multiplicities of incompletely integrated groups and individuals with each having their own often conflicting interests and aspirations that are subject to change as they are overtaken by events.
So why do we characterize threats as enemies? Leaving aside the obvious fact that many prefer certainty to ambiguity, and “revenge is sweet,” there is also the fact that domestic politics has an appetite for villainous scenarios. Already viewing their own country as an entity, and identifying with its power and performance, many partisans rally to battle cries on the field of good versus evil.
Thus, a focus on “enemies” weaponizes partisan politics and extends the definition of enemy to those partisan opponents who oppose the militant stance taken by the “patriot.”
That is, the supporters of a political party who have mobilized to “fight” an enemy rather than deal with a threat, see members of the other party who have not joined the crusade also as enemies.
Even as a non-combatant (or fellow traveler), you become an enemy and cease being a true American.