"As a Man of Peace..."

 The eeriest thing about the return of isolationism on the American right is seeing one's own former anti-interventionist policy positions come back to haunt one, except now in nightmare form. After all, the idea of the U.S. pulling out of NATO is the sort of thing I might have floated as a far-out "wouldn't it be cool if..." scenario in progressive and pacifist circles ten years ago. It comports with the sort of knee-jerk dovishness I once took for granted. "Surely NATO has outlived its usefulness," we would have argued. "We should be working through peaceful international institutions, not militaristic ones."

And in fairness to us, the argument was actually more plausible a few decades ago than it is now. After the Cold War nominally ended (or at least, went dormant), it wasn't particularly clear what purpose the alliance could serve. Who was it now defending us against? And maybe it was true then that keeping the defensive pact in place was just an excuse to shovel more money toward military contractors, and needlessly escalate tensions with one-time adversaries, instead of making overtures of friendship. 

Yet, whatever truth there may have been to all this at one point, Putin's invasion of Ukraine should have altered our calculus. Putin himself has made the strongest possible argument for the continued relevance of NATO—because he seems to have a habit of invading all his neighbors, except for the ones currently in the alliance. First, Putin hives off territory from various former Soviet-bloc countries around him. Then, he invades Ukraine outright. And then, with a straight face, he dares ask: how could any of you think that you need a defensive pact against me? 

But, frighteningly enough, it is just at the moment that the argument for maintaining NATO has become stronger than ever, that a plausible contender for the White House is openly threatening to pull us out of it. 

Trump's position on NATO resembles what would have been a progressive pipe dream a few decades back, as I say (except justified in far more crudely nationalistic and self-interested terminology than we would ever have deployed). But I only felt safe indulging in this sort of pipe-dreaming once upon a time, because I assumed the adults were ultimately in charge and would never act on our recommendations. We could float the idea of "maybe we don't need NATO anymore," because we all knew, of course, the U.S. is never actually going to leave NATO.

But now, Trump is telling us he just might. People who know him well say he really means it. Oh dear, we should all be thinking. No one should ever actually listen to people like me! I thought I could safely make the argument for divesting from defense, for unilateral disarmament, because the bias of our political system would always weigh so heavily in the opposite direction. I thought: we can call for dismantling NATO, because we all know it will never actually happen. 

And now here comes Trump threatening to take us at our word. Yeah, he says, you're right; who needs NATO? And since he has taken all of the American right with him, this leaves almost no one left who is able to articulate the case for preserving the alliance. 

Certainly, the left can try—but it's not like it will come easily to us. We don't know how to be hawks. We always assumed the other side had that covered. And so now—unless the whole country is going to follow Trump and J.D. Vance down the path to becoming a client state of Vladimir Putin's world-spanning regime, we are going to have to learn a whole new policy language—one we are not used to, and tend not to like: the language of defense, containment, and deterrence. I guess liberals are going to have to become Cold War liberals again. 

Is this hypocritical on my part? Was I for some reason more open to the idea of unilateral disarmament at one point just because progressives were making the case for it, and now I've soured on it just because right-wingers support it—even if the underlying policy position amounts to the same thing either way? Maybe—but perhaps this in itself is justifiable. After all, it does matter why people are making the argument they are, and what values are guiding their decision. 

When a Quaker advocacy group, say, declares that we should abandon NATO, I may think they are misguided—I may think they are wholly misunderstanding and underestimating the threat posed by Putin—but I don't actually worry that their heart is in the wrong place. I assume they are just trying to be consistent pacifists. And I assume, as consistent pacifists, they oppose Putin's invasion of Ukraine as much as I do; they just think that funding military defense is not the appropriate answer in response. 

But when we deal with the Trumpist right, I really don't know what to attribute their newfound loathing of NATO to apart from a weird affinity for Putin's regime. Just like the "America First" movement of the 1930s, today's "America Firsters" really just seem to admire our country's antidemocratic adversaries more than they do our own democratic values. And I think this difference in motivation is reason enough in itself to be more suspicious of the right's anti-NATO stance, than of the left's. 

I was thinking about all of this last night after I watched a recording of Penderecki's opera, The Devils of Loudun. The libretto of the piece appears to follow pretty closely the John Whiting dramatization that Ken Russell used for his great film The Devils (which also shares in common the same ultimate source material—namely, Aldous Huxley's book on the subject). I haven't read the dramatic version, but the opera and the film have enough dialogue in common that I imagine they must both have been drawing from Whiting's play pretty heavily. 

One line in the libretto of Penderecki's opera stood out to me, though, and I don't recall hearing it in Ken Russell's film—though perhaps it too comes from Whiting's play. 

Recall that the plot of the opera (and the other renditions of this tale) is that France's absolutist monarchy is seeking to remove the historic fortifications of the town of Loudun, in order to move against Protestants and dissidents who might shelter and organize behind them. When the priest Urbain Grandier opposes their designs, they manage to find a convenient way to oust him, when a local convent begins reporting cases of demonic "possession," and the deranged abbess accuses Grandier of involvement. Grandier's unjust persecution—a literal "witch hunt"—for his opposition to the monarchy's power-grabs becomes the emotional center of the tale from that point on. 

Before the king's minions oust Grandier, however, they first try to win him over to their cause. They seek to convince him of the wisdom of their proposal to tear down the city's fortifications. Surely, they say, as a "man of peace," he would agree with them. What need is there for further defense of the city now, when the wars of religion have ended, and the monarchy desires only healing and reconciliation? 

Grandier, however, is not convinced. He sees through the motives of his questioners. As a "man of peace," he admits, he might support their proposal—but, he adds, "as a man of principle, I cannot."

So it must be with us. The isolationists and "America-Firsters" may try to hurl our former dovishness in our face. They may say: "I thought you were always against Pentagon spending; I thought you opposed NATO and were a good little dove. So won't you join us, as a man of peace? Won't you help us bring down the fortifications? Who needs them?" And to them I say: as a man of peace I might agree with you; but as a man of principle I cannot.

Because I know why Trump wants to raze the fortifications of NATO. And it's not in the interests of peace. It's for the same reason the monarchy of France wanted to tear down the fortifications surrounding Loudun. It's because then, authoritarianism will have a free hand. A right-wing dictatorship in Russia can gobble up as much of Europe as it wants. As Trump said this past week, Putin would then be empowered to do "whatever the hell he wants" to our allies—and the America Firsters would sit back and let him, because it serves their interests to see authoritarianism win. 

I will never support them in such a project. Even if they use wheedling language and try to appeal to supposed pacifist principles. Even if they urge me to act as a "man of peace," I will not be taken in. What do they take me for? As Edna St. Vincent Millay once queried, "Am I a spy in the land of the living/That I should deliver men to Death?" Never. I say to our democratic allies in Europe, the Pacific, and everywhere else, as Millay did: "Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me/ Shall you be overcome."