The Return of Hobbes

“Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been, in the ages before us.” — Ecclesiastes 1:10.

A few of the things I’m reading about Iraq right now just scream Thomas Hobbes to me. Sullivan finds the description “more chaotic than civil war” from this commentary. The same part he quotes, I find most useful to quote:

“But I felt as though I was witnessing something more: the final, frenzied maturity of once-inchoate forces unleashed more than three years ago by the invasion. There was civil war-style sectarian killing, its echoes in Lebanon a generation ago. Alongside it were gangland turf battles over money, power and survival; a raft of political parties and their militias fighting a zero-sum game; a raging insurgency; the collapse of authority; social services a chimera; and no way forward for an Iraqi government ordered to act by Americans who themselves are still seen as the final arbiter and, as a result, still depriving that government of legitimacy.”

See if you can find the echoes of Thomas Hobbes. Here’s Part I, Chapter 13, paragraph 9:

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In a word: bleak. Hobbes argues in Leviathan that humans need an absolute sovereign in order to have any semblance of order and indeed to have any society whatsoever. Thus, underlying the notion of the Hobbesian sovereign is the idea that any iniquity done by the sovereign is far better than the state of nature. Now, see Jonathan Chait directly follow this line of reasoning in his piece Bring back Saddam Hussein, in which he argues for exactly what the title says. Chait concludes: “I know why restoring a brutal tyrant to power is a bad idea. Somebody explain to me why it’s worse than all the others.” But Chait, if you want someone to agree with, go brush up on Thomas Hobbes.

I want to say something really nasty about his suggestion, but I’ve been starting to have my own doubts and wondering if Thomas Hobbes was right all along. Or rather, more specifically, and way different from what Hobbes actually argued, if a dictator is better than chaos. I did not think that Saddam should be put back in power, but I will confess that recently I’ve been pondering if it’s possible to put al-Sadr on our payroll. And for a while, I’ve been thinking that we wouldn’t have the same problems if we had done this the old-fashioned way — namely, installing a puppet dictator.

Fundamentally, I still believe Hobbes is wrong because it is possible for the sovereign to initiate war with the people (after a long train of abuses). Saddam seems to me a textbook case of Locke’s right to revolt. But I digress…

The Problem with Saddam

There are two problems with re-installing Saddam. 1) I doubt he’ll really do what we say. 2) If it does work, it’s just installing Big Brother USA as the dictator. Would the people accept it? Al-Sadr sure as hell won’t, and the rest of the Shiites definitely don’t want him back in power. Many have already formed their allegiances. How many of them will join Saddam’s government? I don’t think anyone will. No, Chait’s solution won’t result in what he thinks will happen. The Sunnis won’t want to join the US-supported Saddam, or at the very least, the number of supporters will be severely lessened. Moreover, the old dictator’s structures have been destroyed. He no longer has the army or police. How the hell is he supposed to get control? To do so, he has to wield force, and how will he do that without the initial support of a great number of people? Where are all the soldiers going to come from? They’re already in gangs. Putting Saddam in power is just asking to get our asses kicked by the now-armed Shiites, or at least asking for confrontation with a Saddam-led Sunni death-squad coalition. The Kurds won’t accept Saddam and will gladly fight for autonomy.

In fact, any dictator solution (aside from possibly putting al-Sadr on our side) has the same problems. If the US had any power in the first place, it could turn power over to a dictator. But it doesn’t, and a dictator would be hard-pressed to put himself in power even with US support. A dictator is more than a person. He needs an entire infrastructure with which to execute his reign of terror. Any solution relying on the appeal of personality won’t work. Chait argues: “Restoring the expectation of order in Iraq will take some kind of large-scale psychological shock. The Iraqi elections were expected to offer that shock, but they didn’t. The return of Saddam Hussein — a man every Iraqi knows, and whom many of them fear — would do the trick.”

No, it doesn’t. You can’t make me brush my teeth through large-scale psychological shock. I brush my teeth out of habit. His idea stems from an entirely wrong mode of thinking about government. Granted, brushing my teeth isn’t the same as instituting a new government, but the counter to large-scale psychological shock is the same. Shocking people into acting in an orderly fashion makes no sense. They need the “right” (not necessarily morally correct) habits to act orderly; they need the right social infrastructure. As Hart said, “Social institutions are the habits of society.” You can’t “shock” social institutions into place.

Alright, alright… It is possible to institute new orders through force, but 1) it is very difficult to install and to make it stick, 2) this is not equivalent to psychological shock, and 3) Saddam doesn’t have that kind of force anymore.