Opinion

Political madness and the sward

By Douglas Lummis

At the beginning of Plato's "Republic," Socrates asks old Cephalus if he can say what justice is. Cephalus replies that justice means to tell the truth and to give back what you have borrowed. Socrates then asks, what if someone loaned you a sword, then went mad and asked for it back. would it be "just" in this situation to return the sword?

In the context of the book, it is clear that Socrates doesn't mean ordinary madness, but political madness, the kind of madness that despots often fall victim to.

When a person has too much power, he (rarely she) begins to have the illusion that his power is absolute, that nothing in the world can oppose it. The despot begins to imagine that there is no longer any reason for him to follow the rules and laws that others must follow. Rules and laws are for the weak; to the despot, everything is permitted.

In the final stage of his disintegration, the rules and laws inside the despot's own mind - those that govern his thinking - begin to fall apart. He eventually loses all power of judgment. Is it right, Socrates asks, to hand a sword (i.e., political/military power) to a person in such a state of political madness?

One could ask a similar question in the context of international politics. Suppose Country A signs a treaty with Country B, and then Country B a while later undergoes a radical change of character. Suppose, for example, your country signs a military treaty with Germany's Weimar Republic, and the Weimar Republic becomes the Nazi Reich. Of course, under the rules of international law the treaty would still be binding. But as a matter of justice, would your country really be obligated to support the Nazi Reich in military adventures that were not part of the policy of the Weimar Republic at the time the treaty was signed?

By now the reader will have guessed what I am driving at. At the time the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty was signed, the strategy of U.S. foreign policy was containment. Containment meant using military power to prevent "enemy" countries from expanding their power, but not to attack them directly.

Under that policy the United States involved itself in some terrible, unjustifiable wars. But at least in its official policy, the United States agreed that the sovereignty of other states should be respected, and that pre-emptive attacks were (as the U.N. Charter says) illegal. Japanese who supported the Security Treaty did so on the assumption that the United States would continue to follow those principles.

But U.S. foreign policy has radically changed. As I have written in this column before, the U.S. government now says it has the right (which no other government has) to make pre-emptive attacks on other countries, to force regime changes in other countries, and to arrest foreign nationals in foreign countries.

So the meaning of the Security Treaty for Japan has also radically changed. Isn't it time for supporters of this treaty to start rethinking their position?

Shukan ST: July 11, 2003

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