On September 20,2021 Angelo Codevilla died as the result of an automobile accident. A well respected historian, I had the privilege of reviewing one of his books for the October, 2014 issue of the Sturbridge Magazine.
His thoughts were and still are worth sharing and the review is below.
All he is saying is give peace a chance
To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations
By Angelo M. Codevilla
Since 2001 our country has been involved in a struggle with a huge chunk of the world. So how goes the battle? Despite that banner, Mission Accomplished in 2003, few would admit things are getting better for us on the world stage. We are probably going back into Iraq. The Taliban is alive and kicking and anticipating our departure.
We facilitated the overthrow of the Libyan dictator and that has gone foul. Our mindless support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has also come a cropper. A vanishingly tiny coterie of “moderate” rebels had our largesse against Assad in Syria. It turns out we must tacitly ally with that government we sought to destroy. The agitation against Putin in The Ukraine is not a success and courts war against a nuclear state.
Maybe it is time for a national reality check? Former Boston University Professor Angelo Codevilla set himself to the task. With his book, To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations, he has provided a historical primer on American foreign policy as well as addressing how our the country can find a genuine peace.
At BU, he taught International Relations. Codevilla is known as a conservative scholar. He is associated with the Claremont Institute and the Hoover Institution. Claremont has a neocon reputation. If Professor Codevilla was a neocon, it appears he is now off the reservation. Good for him!
The man’s name is not a household word. Nevertheless, he garnered notice a few years back for his article, America’s Ruling Class-and the Perils of Revolution. The piece would be extended into a book. The basic idea is that there is an overparty ruling the rest of us. Evidence for this was that everyone but the people at large supported bailing out the banks. As a man with ties to elite institutions, this seems heresy.
His current book is no less blasphemous. With all the leadership from left to right clamoring for intervention against ISIS, calling for a rethink is radical apostasy.
Then again, maybe asking if we can afford to be the world policeman forever might be sweet reason. According to the author, our eternal war for eternal peace regime leads to conflict abroad and no peace at home.
Codevilla’s survey is full of detail despite its size. Most relevant to us, however is where our troubles really start. As the author would have it, it is in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, near mid-point in the book.
At that time, progressives, most notably Woodrow Wilson, not only wanted to uplift America, but bring peace to the world. They thought about establishing mechanisms of peace, so mankind’s natural desire for it would blossom on all continents.
Though it was the thought of the most learned men of the era, after two world wars and numerous dead end international involvements, it should seem naïve in retrospect. As Codevilla notes on Page 96, “By the time the Great War struck, America’s public discourse was dominated by a concept of peace impossible to realize, the corruption of which yet pollutes American statecraft in our time.”
The failed nation building of our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan would seem to prove his point. Maybe Grenada worked out well.
According to Professor Codevilla, the war abroad harms peace at home, thus the “Among Ourselves” part of the title. This would be especially true in wars that are part of our country’s desire to improve the world.
Though it is not a new phenomenon, it has reached its reductio ad absurdum in the War on Terror, or whatever it is being called this week. On Page 154, the author notes that after 911 President Bush “personally declared war: sort of but not really, on no one in particular.”
What this has led to domestically is a policy that sees anyone and everyone in the country as a possible terrorist. No one should think anyone more likely to be a malefactor than anyone else. We all have to go through the scanner or be groped at the airport.
Political correctness demands, however, we show special favor to certain classes. Thus no one really investigated Major Nidal Hassan and he was approved in all his security clearances. This in spite of a business card that read, “Soldier of Allah.” A card that Codevilla writes was “an advertisement rather than a secret.” The result of such foolishness was 13 fellow soldiers whom he killed.
So what is to be done to get us out of our forever sort of war? Well the author does write many sensible things, such as “America needs a new generation of statesmen, who regard minding America’s business – acting as the American people’s fiduciary agents, minding America’s peace and winning America’s wars – not as a demotion but as a calling that absorbs the highest human talent and confers the highest honors.” (Page 189) Lovely stuff, and we should all be nice to each other, but little chance of it happening at this point.
His thoughts on a policy that matches ends and means is also a good idea. It will happen maybe when we get serious about balancing budgets. Don’t hold your breath.
Codevilla knows we have to stop what we are doing, but he wants to do it gradually, “Whether it is possible or not for twenty-first-century to transcend accumulated resentments, returning America to international relations based on arms-length reciprocal respect would require statesman to be mindful of Pericles warning to war weary Athenians against dreaming that they could just turn their backs on the foreign policy that they had followed for a generation.” (Page 189)
That did not work out well for the Athens; one might doubt it will for us.
Actually, we had the best peace we have had in recent memory when we cut and ran from Viet Nam. The gradualism he proposes would be a good idea if we could trust our betters to keep to the plan. Unfortunately, in government and politics, one second is not connected to the next. Some event occurs overseas and from Hillary to Bomber McCain there will go the call for air strikes or “boots on the ground.”
Codevilla’s book is important and in less than 200 pages of text, plus notes, he packs more thought than almost all that you will read on foreign policy. His prescriptions are thoughtful and would work in a perfect world.
Unfortunately, we are not there. As Irish statesman Connor Cruise O’Brien noted, “Conflicts don’t have solutions, they have outcomes.” We shall not give up our course until there is an undeniable and complete defeat, or we go completely broke. Both are simultaneously possible.