Why "Might Makes Right" Is Wrong
The example of Iran
At the time I am writing this, the United States has bombed Iran, entering into the Iran/Israel war.1 The reason given for bombing Iran is to set back, or even prevent the Iranian regime from building a nuclear bomb. While President Trump, hours after the bombing, declared the mission a total success, the reality based inquiry has yet to conclude that Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been eliminated. There are reports that Iran moved much of its enriched Uranium prior to the strike. It will take some time for an accurate assessment to be developed. Certainly Iran has been set back if it was attempting to build a nuclear weapon, but how much it has been set back is unclear.
If the goal truly was to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, it is debatable whether Trump’s actions were the best way to further that goal. Recall, that the Obama administration used a diplomatic approach with Iran. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was able to gain widespread support for crippling economic and political sanctions against Iran. Her successor, John Kerry then used the leverage created by those sanctions to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was signed by China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and of course Iran.
It is worth stepping back for a moment and noting that it wasn’t so long ago that we actually came to a diplomatic solution for an extremely dangerous and difficult issue, and that solution included China and Russia, as well as our European allies. Hard to imagine that happening today, isn’t it?
The JCPOA set up a robust verification system, including inspectors based in Iran, and electronic sensors, to ensure that Iran was complying with the treaty. If Iran didn’t comply, the signatories of the agreement committed to reimplementing the sanctions that brought Iran to the bargaining table.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu vehemently opposed the JCPOA, and because it was negotiated by a Democratic administration, so did nearly every elected Republican. Israel, the Republicans, and right leaning media all attacked the JCPOA as naive, badly negotiated, and weak. They falsely characterized releases of Iranian assets which had been impounded due to the sanctions (including cash) as payments to a state sponsor of terrorism.
Their position, I think, reflects politics for sure, but also a preference for unilateral solutions to problems based on the use of force. They see force based solutions as strong, and diplomacy based solutions as weak. They want to be strong.
There is no question that the JCPOA delayed (perhaps paused) Iran’s efforts to build a bomb. Early in his first term, Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, and reinstituted sanctions against Iran. The rest of the signatories did not pull out of the JCPOA, but at this point, Iran stepped up its active efforts to hide activities from the inspectors and started to increase its violations of the treaty. Prior to the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, the intelligence assessment was that they were largely complying.
The Biden administration chose not to spend the political capital to reinstate the JCPOA. Republicans in Congress, and Democrats sympathetic to the Israeli government, were opposed to this action. And so for four years of Trump I, and four years of Biden, Iran took deliberate steps to further its nuclear weapons ambitions.
It is again worth stepping back and noting that Iran did not rush to build a bomb, like North Korea did. They could have. Instead they moved deliberately to expand their capability to build a bomb. Iran was treading a fine line. They used potential nuclear capabilities to bring us to the table and negotiate an end to the sanctions, but tried not to cross the line where having a nuclear weapon was imminent enough that Israel or other nations might attack. When the US pulled out of the JCPOA and put the sanctions back in place, Iran’s obvious next step was to return to work on building a bomb to try to bring us back to the table. It worked once, why not again?
Apart from negotiating leverage, there is of course a logical case for Iran to want to be a nuclear power. Ukraine was once a nuclear power. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was in possession of a nuclear arsenal. In 1994 it agreed to transfer all of those weapons to Russia in exchange for security assurances from Russia, and support from the US and the UK. How did that work out?
North Korea is a rogue state, doing its best to create havoc in the world. But it is also a nuclear power. Nobody is bombing or invading North Korea.
Sure, the pretense that Iran is developing nuclear technology to generate electricity is just that — pretense. But it is rational for Iran to want to secure its sovereignty by being, or at least threatening to be, a nuclear power.
This is one of the core defects in the “might makes right” approach. If everything is decided by force, then every nation is incentivized to maximize its force potential. I am sure Poland is looking at what is happening to Ukraine and discussing whether it should develop nuclear capabilities. I would expect that the Saudis are having similar discussions. And Taiwan. And South Korea. And… you get my point. In a might makes right world, everyone wants to be mighty, and weapons of mass destruction proliferate. And the more WMDs and the more countries with WMDS, the more likely they will be used. America has the highest per capita gun ownership (more than one gun per person) and the highest rate of gun violence. This is not a coincidence.
Back to Iran. Had we not pulled out of the JCPOA, it is quite likely that Iran would be further away from building the bomb. Of course Israel and Trump may still have attacked Iran, as both Netanyahu and Trump have indicated that regime change is another goal of this war. Apparently regime change is bad when other leaders do it, but ok when Trump does it. In fact so ok, that after the Vice President goes public saying we are opposed to regime change, Trump messages that we shouldn’t be so “politically correct,” and that regime change is on the table. I am sure JD loved that!
The core premise behind democratic government is that we can all lead more prosperous lives if we work together through a rules based system. We give government a monopoly on violence, but we check that monopoly by establishing and following rules of law, and through regular consent in the form of free and fair elections. In this system, someone who is not born into wealth, or strength, or power, can still prosper.
Unsurprisingly, people who have wealth, or power, find ways to justify a might makes right approach. They think of themselves as exceptional or superior and so they should get what they want. This applies to countries too. There are a lot of problems with this attitude.
As noted above, it encourages resources to be devoted to weapons and/or security, regardless of whether doing so optimizes social good.
It concentrates power and resources in the hands of the strong, creating greater potential for abuse and corruption.
It creates potential political instability, at some point the peasants rise up against the lords.
If resources are allocated based largely on strength, we will fail to optimize the impact of those resources, stifling growth and innovation.
There is a profound moral dimension at play here. Is it ok for power and resources to be located in so few, when many others are desperately needy?2
I for one, don’t want to live in a dog eat dog world. I think we can do better than that. But that, ultimately is where might makes right takes us. I think Trump believes we already live in a dog eat dog world (literally), that anyone who thinks otherwise is a sucker, and that he wants to be the biggest dog.
The example of Iran is telling. We tend to look at these things in the short run and not see the impact of actions taken today on actions that occur years later. I think when all the dust settles, and all of the bodies have been counted, today and in the future, we will find that the JCPOA would have left the US and the world more secure than what we will reap from this war. I hope I am wrong.
Iran has sent missiles at a US base in Qatar. But reports are it was a “measured” response. The President says he has negotiated a cease fire, and that both Israel and Iran have violated it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you reallocate evenly across a population, like Communist nations first tried, you run the risk of stifling ambition, and dangerously empowering those responsible for the reallocation. There must be some middle ground.