Stephen Walt on practical realities and moral considerations for the US in the Russia-Ukraine War
Über-Realist Stephen Walt just published a new column on the Russia-Ukraine War which Foreign Policy assigned a title sure to irritate New Cold Warriors, “The Morality of Ukraine's War Is Very Murky.”1
Realists like Walt and his colleague and sometime co-author John Mearsheimer tend to emphasize structural features like balance of power considerations, nearby military rivals, and protecting strategic trade routes. With a heavy pragmatic orientation, the realists don’t ignore the effects of internal politics and the influence of lobby groups, but they tend to neglect or downplay questions of morality, international law, forms of government and political ideologies. Even though those often loom large in political discussions, news analysis, and war propaganda on all sides.
Photo: Stephen Walt
Walt is perhaps more willing to address international law and questions of morality than some other prominent realists. And this column is an example. His basic perspective here is that war means killing people and that has to figure heavily into evaluation of when to enter into wars and how long to sustain them. As he puts it, we have to consider:
… that the morality of a given policy also depends on the potential costs of different courses of action and the likelihoods of success of each one. If we are talking about human lives, we must look beyond abstract principles and consider the real-world consequences of different choices. It’s not enough to proclaim that the good guys must win; one must also think seriously about what it will cost to produce that outcome and whether it can in fact be achieved. Although there is no way to be 100-percent certain about either the likely costs or the probability of success, refusing even to consider these features is an abdication of moral responsibility. [my emphasis]
This is not a novel concept. It has been central to Christian and other concepts of Just War for centuries. Soldiers and their families would generally really prefer that the cause in which they are fighting to be about something more than the ambitions and psychological complexes of politicians and generals.
Walt uses the example of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan:
Although a few observers hoped the Taliban might have moderated its views over time, nearly everyone understood that a Taliban victory would be a moral calamity for most Afghans, and especially for Afghan women. Those of us who favored a U.S. withdrawal did so not because we were indifferent to Afghan suffering, but because we believed that staying longer would not alter the eventual outcome in any significant way. Those who wanted to stay the course kept insisting that NATO and its Afghan government partners were “turning the corner” and that another year or two or three would eventually yield a victory; but they never identified a plausible strategy for achieving that aim (and internal assessments were much more pessimistic). Whatever the United States’ original intentions may have been, the lives of Afghans who died while Washington was busily kicking the can down the road were lost to no good purpose. [my emphasis]
Carefully calculated practical considerations also have moral implications.
A lesson from Robert E. Lee?
In the folklore of the neo-Confederate Lost Cause version of American history, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee stands a a kind of Christ-figure. His Lost Cause admirers considered it a special personal virtue of his that he eventually recognized that the Confederate cause was hopeless but he kept on fighting anyway. Way back in my early blogging days, I related the analysis of this particular theme of Robert E. Lee idolatry made by Alan Nolan in his book Lee Considered (1991).2
In celebrating the Confederate rebellion as a noble but doomed cause, Lost Cause advocates admire Robert E. Lee for his courage and fortitude and dedication in carrying on, even after he recognized irrevocably that the Confederacy would lose the war militarily. For Douglas Southall Freeman and other Lee admirers, this aspect of his leadership showed more of his greatness. Because he was such a preeminent figure in the Confederacy - in the Lost Cause retelling at least - Lee's willingness to continue on was a great and inspirational factor in persuading the Confederate army and the public to continue on with the war effort.
Nolan makes a very good point about this aspect of Lee's conduct, with careful consideration of various possible reasons for his actions. If Lee knew the war had become a clearly doomed effort, was it not his responsibility as a commander and as a human being to surrender long before he did? As commander of the Army of Virginia, he had the authority to do so. And, in fact it was just that authority that he exercised at Appomatox on April 9, 1865.
Real people were dying on both sides in those last months of the war. And major destruction to the South was continuing. (The battles took place mostly in the South.) Nolan directs his analysis in Lee Considered at the question of Lee's responsibility for surrender, not on giving a definitive answer to the factual question of exactly which point in time Lee recognized that the cause was militarily truly lost. He comments on the maudlin, foolish and ethically bizarre celebration of Lee's actions in Lost Cause mythology:
Readers may form their own opinion as to the time - twenty, fifteen, ten, or five months before the end - when Lee's personal responsibility became an imperative. That responsibility was not in fact assumed by Lee until April 9, 1865. The issue of Lee's personal responsibility cannot be escaped by romanticizing his continuation of the war. As a responsible actor in the events of the war, Lee must be fully subject to history's gaze and must be accountable for his acts. [my emphasis]
Nolan's framing of this particular issue is valuable:
In reality, military leadership is not just a private or personal activity. Nor is a military leader's sense of honor and duty simply a private and personal impulse. Military leadership and the leader's sense of duty are of concern not only to the leader but also to the followers and to the enemy, ordinary people, many of whom die, are maimed, or otherwise suffer. In short, military leadership involves responsibility for what happens to other persons. There is, therefore, no matter how sincerely a leader may believe in the justice of a cause, a difference between undertaking or continuing military leadership in a cause that the leader feels can succeed and undertaking or continuing such leadership in a cause that the leader feels is hopeless. In the latter circumstance, the leader knows that his order "once more into the breach" will kill and injure many of his soldiers as well as the enemy's and also realizes that his order and these deaths and injuries are without, in [Clifford] Dowdey's phrase, "any military purpose." Lacking a military purpose, they also have no political purpose. Thus they are without any rational purpose. [my emphasis]
In the context of expressing his view of the moral considerations involved, Walt also cautious against the temptations of policymakers framing wars as Good-vs.-Evil or some variation like Democracies-vs.-Autocracies: “Ever since the war began, those who favor giving Ukraine ‘whatever it takes’ for as long as it takes have sought to portray the war in the usual U.S. fashion: as a straightforward contest between good and evil.” (my emphasis)
That tendency has more than once led to US policy that was neither practical in terms of optimizing US national interests nor notable for its actual morality.
Walt recommends a RAND analysis from earlier this year as a useful approach to the relevant considerations in the case of the Russia-Ukraine War.3
Walt, Stephen (2023): The Morality of Ukraine's War Is Very Murky. Foreign Policy 09/22/2023. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/22/ukraine-war-ethics-morality-murky/> Accessed: 2023-22-09).
Miller, Bruce (2005): Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 21: Robert E. Lee and the war. AOL Journals 1st Old Hickory's Weblog 04/21/2005. <https://bruce-miller.blogspot.com/2005/04/confederate-month-april-21-robert-e-lee.html> (Accessed: 2023-22-09).
Charap, Samuel & Priebe, Miranda (2023): Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. RAND Corporation, January 2023. <https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html> (Accessed: 2023-05-08).