The Concept and Reality of “Nation-Building” — a Critique

Dr. Robert Hickson

5 April 2004

The Concept and Reality of „Nation-Building”: A Moral and Strategic Critique of a Recent Long-Range Study

A Note from the Author on 3 September, 2021: This essay was first written in Switzerland seventeen years ago. The author was then asked by several Europeans to write a commentary on this RAND study on Nation-Building in light of the earlier history of Umerziehung (Re-Education). The study variously attempts to endorse a two-fold “core doctrine” concerning both “a Global War on Terrorism” and also “Nation-Building.” With the publication of this essay, now seventeen years later, the author hopes to help enlighten, in a larger strategic context, the intended principles and the actual fruits of the U.S. historic presence in both Afghanistan and in Iraq, starting in October of 2001 and March of 2003, respectively. (It is fitting to know that the author himself stepped down from Federal Service in early 2003, just before the open invasion of Iraq began on 19 March.)

***

America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (2003) is the title of a 240-page strategic and historical study released in July 2003 by the RAND Corporation, an influential national-security Institute which originally did special research for the U.S. Air Force.^¹

An implicit premise of the RAND study – but a dangerously unexamined premise – is that the U.S. Military’s still strongly resisted, but newly proposed, “core mission” of foreign (and often – Muslim) “nation-building” can and must and should be conducted simultaneously with their already declared and very dissipating “Global War on Terrorism” (or the “GWOT,” as it is sometimes affectionately known). RAND’s strategic study, however, explicitly supports this new “core mission” of concurrent “nation-building,” even though “the GWOT” itself is already so increasingly ambiguous and elusive in definition, as well as centrifugally dispersing and over-extending in operation of the American military resources. Therefore, any such protracted and concurrent combination of two new “core missions” for the U.S. Military – “the GWOT” and foreign “Nation-Building” – will certainly produce and perilously constitute a self-inflicted and “self-sabotaging binary weapon.”

That is to say, if such a concurrent combination of exhausting military (and quasi-imperial) “core missions” were ever essentially and protractedly implemented as a U.S. policy and new grand-strategy, it would be a very self-destructive, self-defeating act – a sort of strategy and ideology of national suicide (in the words of the great James Burnham). The U.S. Military itself – as the armed and just defender of the U.S. Constitution (but not of the de-constructed – or “living” – Constitution) against all enemies foreign and domestic – would become thereby, in virtue of its dissipating dispersion, even more de-constructed and demoralized and exhausted than it now is. Were that to occur, one wonders whether the U.S. Military could then even be an effective proxy for Israel, despite that long-standing, manifest priority, or effectively compulsory requirement, as it would seem.

Under such cumulative conditions of dispersion and “overreach” and exhaustion, could the U.S. Military – or would the U.S. Military – then any longer even partially (let alone adequately) defend the State and far-sighted Grand-Strategy of Israel? And has that unconditional support for Israel not also effectively become a “core mission” of the U.S. Military? However, the RAND study omits any discussion of these momentous matters, let alone their longer-range implications for war and peace and the enrootedness of ordered life.

According to this 240-page Rand analysis, which is, I regret to say, a very presumptuous (and often superficial) study, the current “U.S.-led stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq” is, indeed, “after all, the sixth major nation-building enterprise the United States has mounted in 12 years, and the fifth such in a Muslim nation” (p. 220 – my emphasis added). (The other four Muslim nations alluded to are: Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan; Haiti is the one non-Muslim country which was made especially subject to U.S. “nation-building” over these twelve years.)

In Iraq, however, says the self-vaunting study, the U.S. now “embarks on its most ambitious program of nation-building since 1945” (p. 219), when an arguably pre-Imperial United States purportedly conducted “nation-building” in Germany and in Japan. And, indeed, both of those instances of “nation-building” were clearly, in the view of the RAND Corporation, “successful.” It should be noted, however, that the RAND Corporation’s only criterion of “success” in “nation-building” was Germany and Japan’s attainment of “democratization” and of a “vibrant economy.” (Does this not reveal a profound understanding of the formation and nature of a long-standing cultural nation?!)

However, the RAND Corporation now has certain grave concerns about the current U.S. vulnerability and unpreparedness for such a new and admittedly “ambitious program of nation-building” almost sixty years later, in Iraq, a predominantly Muslim society:

Over the past decade, the United States has made major investments in the combat efficiency of its forces. The return [sic] on investment has been evident in the dramatic improvement in warfighting demonstrated from Desert Storm [1991] to the Kosovo air campaign [1999] to Operation Iraqi Freedom [sic – March-April 2003]. [But,] there has been no comparable increase in the capacity of the U.S. armed forces or of U.S. civilian agencies to conduct postcombat stabilization and reconstruction operations (p. 220 – my emphasis added).

Furthermore, the RAND study also addresses the matter of the willingness of the U.S. Armed Forces to conduct “nation-building,” not only the matter of their capacity (or their capability) to do it:

“Nation-building” has been a controversial mission over the past decade, and the intensity of this debate has undoubtedly inhibited the investments that would be needed to do these tasks better. Institutional resistance in the departments of State and Defense, neither of which regard nation-building among their core missions, has also been an obstacle (p. 221 – my emphasis added).

It is worthwhile to consider these above words very closely. The language is characteristic of their entire study, and their style also reveals their mentality, which is so often asphyxiatingly superficial, equivocally vague, and altogether frigid and presumptuous. (I do not exaggerate.)

The above critique of the resistance to nation-building, and the implicit grand-strategic recommendations by the RAND Corporation itself, are especially significant; not only because they are to be found on the last page of their study’s main text, but also because their concluding analysis is itself so unspecific and ambiguous – so bereft of clarity and of substance.

For example, the RAND study only mentions the “intensity,” but no substance, of the purported interior “debate” (i.e., either within both the U.S. Defense and State Departments, or disputatiously between them? – it is not clear!) concerning the putative “mission” of “nation-building.” And RAND does not even say wherefrom this purported nation-building “mission” comes, nor on what grounds, nor by what authority! (This is really a trustworthy, professional analytical study, isn’t it?!)

And what about the deeper substance of this purported debate, which is much more important than its ostensible “intensity”? What about the essential content of this policy and strategic debate? And who, specifically, are the key proponents and antagonists in this debate? The reader will search in vain, however, for RAND’s presentation of any such substantive evidence or argumentation.

lt is also significant, I think, that the RAND study does not even mention the key arguments for “nation-building” or the key arguments against such a protracted and deeply consequential, arguably neo-imperial, mission. Such omissions of important and indispensable substance are altogether unprofessional and deplorable – as well as sophistical. For, like the ancient Greek Sophists, the RAND authors “make the worse seem better and the better seem worse.” (It is clear, however, that the RAND Nomenclatura tendentiously favors an expanded neo-imperial (or neo-colonial) mission of U.S.-led “nation-building.”

Nevertheless, the RAND study does not even give a “working-definition” of “nation-building,” much less an adequate and properly strict definition of nation-building, although that concept is the key-concept of their entire study. Nor do they give any reasonable critique of “nation-building,” as such. No deep and searching objections are ever presented, much less refuted. They do not even suggest that nation-building could be, at least, a potentially utopian (and self-sabotaging) “operation,” or even an intrinsically unfulfillable “project” full of hubris. Thus, their study is, once again, evasive as well as superficial and vague. It is also embarrassingly chimerical and arrogantly wrong!

Furthermore, why should “nation-building” ever constitute a “core mission” for any military institution, for any deeper military culture in the world, let alone for the U.S. Military, which is already centrifugally over-extended, linguistically unprepared, culturally and religiously under-educated, and exhausted by the tempo of its multifarious “global” operations – such as their “Global War on Terrorism” (“the GWOT”)?! Even “the GWOT” is making war against a method of warfare, and not against a clearly specific enemy, nor a consistent “image of the enemy (a Feindbild)”! (Will anyone ever defeat “psychological warfare,” for example, as a method of warfare – or “terrorism,” either?)

And why does the RAND Corporation so disapprovingly call the U.S. Military’s firm “resistance” to “nation-building” (as a “core mission”) an “obstacle”? – an obstacle to what? Is this rational and moral military resistance to an „utopian deformation” an obstacle to the U.S. Military’s further de-construction as a military force? Or, is it, rather, an obstacle to the U.S. Military’s further transformation into an imperial police force? – or to a neo-colonial “gendarmerie” and “constabulary”?

In its important “Executive Summary,” the RAND study says the following (and without, it would appear, any intentional sarcasm or irony!):

The current [G. W. Bush] administration’s efforts to reverse the trend [in America] toward ever larger and more ambitious U.S.-led nation-building operations have proven short-lived, however. (p. xv – my emphasis added).

Indeed, in seeming contrast to President Clinton, “President Bush,” according to RAND, “adopted a more modest set of objectives when faced with a comparable challenge in Afghanistan [as in Kosovo?]” (p. xv – my emphasis added). However, the RAND study never tells us what, specifically, this “more modest” set of objectives was! (Name 5!). Once again, no specificity!

But now, their study continues:

In Iraq, the United States has taken on a task with a scope comparable to the transformational attempts [from what, to what?] still under way in Bosnia and Kosovo and [on] a scale comparable only to the earlier U.S. occupations of Germany and Japan. Nation-building, it appears, is the inescapable responsibility of the world’s only superpower (p. xv – my emphasis added). [N.B. Some might even consider these words to be somewhat presumptuous, not to say malodorously self-vaunting!]

Moreover, the first paragraph of their Executive Summary will further focus – and perhaps even provoke – the attentive mind of the reader:

The goal of the work documented here was to analyze and extract the best-practices in nation-building from the post-World War II experiences of the United States. To do this, we examined U.S. and international [?] military, political and economic activities in postconflict situations [sic] since World War II, identified the key determinants of the success of these operations in terms of democratization and the creation of vibrant economies, and drew implications for future U.S. nation-building operations (p. xiii – my emphasis added).

And, it is clear that Iraq is the strategic focus. In fact, after the preceeding Chapter 9 on “Lessons Learned” from history, the study’s concluding chapter (Chapter 10 – pp. 167-222) is a lengthy and very sobering consideration of Iraq itself and its vulnerable geography, and the barriers to any U.S. mission of “nation-building” there. Nevertheless, the study’s consideration of the deeper religious factors is very poor, indeed, and even dangerously shallow.^²

The Executive Summary itself later concludes with a slightly more unambiguous set of statements and an often-repeated emphasis, except, perhaps, for their “softening” last sentence, which is itself all too characteristically vague and equivocal as well as evasive and so timorously optimistic:

The current administration [of President G. W. Bush], despite a strong disinclination [even by the strategically influential “Neo-Conservatives”?] to engage U.S. armed forces in such activities [i.e., “nation-building”] has launched two major nation-building enterprises within 18 months [both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as part of its “Global War an Terrorism”]. lt now seems clear that nation-building is the inescapable responsibility of the world’s only superpower [and its “Messianic Democracy”]. Once that recognition [of the U.S.’s “superpower-responsibility”] is more widely accepted [but, by whom, specifically?], there is much the United States can do to better prepare itself to lead such missions [i.e., the new multi-national “nation-building” missions!] (p. xxix – my emphasis added).

All things considered, the RAND’s Study strongly implies that the current, internal U.S. military resistance to the “mission of nation-building” constitutes an “obstacle to success” – like the purported success that the U.S. Military had with their nation-building in Germany and Japan after the military defeat and “unconditional surrender” of the “Axis-Powers” in 1945^³. Once again, it should be emphatically noted, RAND’s only measure of “success” was the degree to which Germany and Japan underwent “democratization” and attained to a “vibrant economy”!

However, did the United States really build the German nation? Did the United States really build the Japanese nation? Are such deeply formed cultural nations of long history ever to be “built” by “outsiders”? Can a slowly growing, well-rooted and fruitful nation ever be “engineered,” even by “insiders”? lt would seem not!

And, with reference to Iraq, what, indeed, is the substance of the historic culture of this purported “Iraqi nation,” which is now also to be reformed? Was there ever such a thing as “the Iraqi nation,” and is it in any way comparable to the coherent (and unified) German or Japanese cultural nations? What cultural substance is the United States now to draw upon, so as to conduct (or inflict) its new “nation-building operations” there? What is the nature of the evidence for an historic Iraqi nation (as was the case in Germany and Japan)? What are we really talking about? “Democratization” and “vibrant economy,” once again? Is that it?

And how many years would it take for the U.S. to build even a slightly deeper “democratic (non-autocratic) political culture” in Iraq? And, what, in truth, are the real linguistic capacities and working skills of the current (or future) resident American “reformers” and “nation-builders”? What are the facts, not only about the language problem, for example, but also about the deeper issues of mutually alien and incommensurate religious cultures?

For, it is true, that both the Arabic Shi’ite and the Arabic Sunni religious cultures of Iraq are not so easily compatible with increasingly secularized (and formless) U.S. religious traditions, nor even with each other! Nor are they made easily compatible even with Iraq’s significant Kurdish, Turkoman and Assyrian religious and cultural traditions! Nor with the Christian minority of the Oriental Chaldean Rite. Therefore, this question of the interaction of religious cultures, not to mention the “re-building” of often incommensurate (or immiscible) religious cultures, will be an especially challenging factor for the U.S. “occupational” and “democratizing” forces. The combination is likely to be a “time bomb” – especially if the U.S. will regard Iraq, effectively, as a “Satrapy.”

And, in this context, let us return once again to the concept and reality of “nation-building.” What, after all, is this process or this thing called “nation-building”? A nation is not an artifact nor a product to be engineered. Nor does a nation have a “modular” structure capable of being “changed” and “re-arranged” in various artificial “permutations.”

What does it really mean to “build” a nation, or even to “re-construct” and “reform” a militarily defeated nation? From the evidence of history, a cultural nation grows slowly over time in and through its deeply shared experiences and vivid, living memories, even (and sometimes especially) memories of intimately shared sorrow, and of tragic, but heroic military defeats. Remember the Serbian military defeat against the Turks in the 14^th century (on the current territory of Kosovo) and its unifying effects still today upon the broken Serbian people. Remember the Hungarian military defeat at Mohacs in 1526, an heroic and turning-point battle near the Danube River, against the advancing Ottoman Turks, whose own very costly “Pyrrhic victory” there caused them to withdraw from their more ambitious plans of domination for almost 150 years thereafter.

More generally, how does any foreign culture – especially an increasingly intrusive and very secularized culture like the USA – “build a nation” during its own military occupation of a religiously Muslim society? After an openly pre-emptive, supposedly “preventive,” “war of aggression” (against current and long-traditional International Law, as well), can any foreign “interventionist” armed forces really build a nation, even if they were both linguistically competent and culturally sensitive, as well as religiously respectful? In any case, what should be our realistic expectations about the United States, i.e., our realistic expectations of how the impatient and largely technocratic Americans are likely to try “to build a nation,” even if they were to be very generous and sincerely acting “according to their own lights” and best wisdom for the common good of Iraq? For, it is important to remember that the United States of 2004 is not at all the United States of 1945. The U.S. is now, moreover, also “culturally Balkanized” and even “religiously Lebanonized.” And, morally (ethically), even under the so-called “neo-conservative” Bush Administration, the United States itself is still “Clinton’s America,” as well as a “proxy force” for the intelligently advancing grand-strategy of Israel.

Those who would want to know much more about the deeper nature and meaning of this thing called “Clinton’s America” should read Joe Sobran’s eloquent and discerning book, entitled HUSTLER, on “the Clinton Legacy.” For, it is this very “legacy,” at least in part, which the U.S. is now presuming to inflict upon other countries, often under the deceptive guise of progressive “globalism” or of “economies (and finance) without borders.” And, this includes the whole ideology of unrooted and restless neo-Liberal (and neo-Mandevillean) Capitalism (along with its oligarchical “chaos managers”).

In the longer light of history, how might (or how would) the Ancient Greeks have thought about this whole matter of “nation-building”? For example, after their unexpected victory over the arrogant Persian Empire (c. 490 B.C.) – after Marathon and Salamis – to what extent might the Athenian Democracy have then considered as a wise strategic policy their subsequent “nation-building” of the defeated Persians? Would the “vibrant” Athenian Democracy have believed that their own aggressive energy and love of freedom could have sufficiently (or at all) transformed the autocratic political culture of Persia? It would seem not. The “temptations of Empire” would come a little later, nonetheless, especially for the Athenians.

For, the Ancient Greeks, learning from their own grave mistakes, have also taught us so much about true tragedy and about “the tragic view of life,” to include the Athenian tragedy which resulted from their hubris in the Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 B.C.), as was so memorably depicted by Thucydides. (Perhaps, the greatest tragedy occurs – as in Sophocles’ Antigone – when a lesser good tramples out a greater good without ever knowing it, until it is too late !)

Even after the Greeks’ earlier exultant victory against the Persians, almost sixty years before their own tragic Peloponnesian War began, would the high leadership of the surprised and very vigorous Athenian victors have even dared to presume to re-build or transform the defeated Persian Empire? Or, would they have wisely and immediately considered this to be an act of self-destructive, overweening pride? lt is likely that they would not have been even so blind and foolish as to consider the theoretical possibility! In all likelihood, they would have practically considered such a policy or such a strategy to be an act of folly (ATË, in Greek – i.e., “blinding self-infatuation”) – or, an act of blinding self-aggrandizement (PLËONEXIA, in Greek) and a presumptuous “overreaching” (HUBRIS, in Greek).

Yet, it may have been possible, once again, that the restless Athenians would also have (even back in 490 B.C.) tragically succumbed to the seductive temptation to overreach themselves, as the conspicuously more arrogant Athenians later did in their “Sicilian Expedition” during the Peloponnesian War; especially after they had so unjustly, so cynically and self-blindingly destroyed the weak and vulnerable Melians on their little Island of Melos off the coast of Sparta; and even after General Nicias himself had later honorably and wisely tried to warn the Athenians against their over-extended and likely self-sabotaging military expedition!

What lessons might the United States learn from this Greek experience, an experience which was not at all considered by the RAND study as part of their “lessons to be learned from history”? In view of this illuminating and admonitory history from the Ancient World, where is the open and honest public debate in the United States now about America’s own potentially tragic “Sicilian Expedition” to Iraq? Or, where is the public debate about the wisdom and the justice of America’s protracted presence there amidst the Muslim society of Iraq, much less the “transformational efforts” at “nation-building”? The neo-Trotskyites and the Socialist International, as well as the “Muslim International,” among others, might be very pleased, however, – and even the Zionists! – with America’s centrifugal and presumptuous and self-sabotaging over-extension in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as its infatuated and concurrent “nation-building projects” in Afghanistan and in Iraq (as well as in the Balkans). But just-minded and far-sighted and well-rooted Americans should not! Nor should they be in complicity with any grand-strategy designed to fragment and de-stabilize the Middle East, and certainly not as a “useful idiot” or “proxy” for the Israelis and their long-range objectives as an historical cultural nation. Moreover, the moral resistance to such destructive and self-destructive conduct (and policy and strategy) should intelligently and courageously grow.

To what extent does the United States have even one general like the deeply wise (but tragically rejected) General Nicias – or a far-sighted admiral (and strategos) like Admiral Thucydides – who also, like them, may have to suffer much for speaking the truth, but who is humble enough to learn from his own (not only from his country’s) mistakes?

May they have the courage and the fuller virtue to come forth, to bear full witness to the truth – to speak out and to act and to help make a „course-correction”, also for the common good – and in the spirit of high chivalry. For, it is true, that a grand-strategic „course-correction” is needed by the United States – and leaders of virtue are needed, too, for the greater common good, and to resist the growing injustice and suffering! (The true spirit of chivalry always taught that “the more defenseless someone is, the more that one calls out for our defense”!) Hubris is always a form of blindness and self-destructivness. Pride (superbia, orgueil, Hochmut) is not a spiritual strength, but a weakness. And a “provocative weakness”! It is certainly provocative to others. Caveat Imperator.

— FINIS —

1 The early intellectual leadership of the RAND Corporation is still influential in U.S. “Neo-Conservative” circles. For example, Albert Wohlstetter and his friend, Andrew Marshall (the long-serving and founding head of the Pentagon’s “Office of Net Assessment” – a very influential “in-house Think Tank” of the Department of Defense) have been, like Professor Leo Strauss himself, deeply formative mentors – and strategic collaborators – of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, among others.

2However, the study is especially aware of the contrary national interests of the bordering countries of Iraq, to include the NATO member of Turkey, as well as the more expectedly resistant countries of Iran and Syria, all of whom could provide a serious impediment to any U.S. success in the context of Iraq’s multi-cultural and religious conflicts, and other strategic vulnerabilities.

3A second essay could be usefully written on the RAND Corporation’s two superficial „case studies” of the U.S. operations of “nation-building” in Germany and Japan after World War II – both of which RAND considers to be an impressive success. RAND’s measures (or “criteria and standards”) of the reality and essence of an historic cultural nation are, indeed, very insulting and very embarrassing, I think. “Democratizations” and “vibrant economies” just won’t do! Furthermore, all those who know the deeper history of the Occupation and “Re-Education” (UMERZIEHUNG) of Germany and Japan – and especially its distorting long-range effects on the “guilty” German nation and its youth – will be justly indignant and impatient with Rand’s perfunctory and smugly condescending treatment of this earlier “success” in “nation-building”!

“And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie” (H. Belloc) – When the Humbug Has Broken Down and the Sham Exposed (Learning from English History)

Author’s Note on 18 May 2021: Hilaire Belloc’s 1920 book, while enduring the aftermath of World War I, will be a helpful political education for us as we study the instructive British history and apply it to our own situation in the United States. Belloc’s book on Kingship and Oligarchies and Aristocracy will include the 1649 English Regicide and the gradually corrupting consequences of that act upon an oligarchic, sometimes aristocratic institution, such as (and especially) the English House of Commons of which Belloc was once himself a member. This current essay was originally completed on 16 April 2013.

“And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie” (H. Belloc)—

When the Humbug Has Broken Down and the Sham Exposed

Dr. Robert Hickson

16 April 2013

Saint Bernadette Soubirous

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre

Epigraphs:

“But the answer to all this [“sort of hopeless feeling”] is that these growing evils (and they have almost reached that limit after which the State breaks down) are not inevitable and are not necessary—save [i.e., except, unless] under an anonymous system.” (Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons and Monarchy, p. 181—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

***

“It is [in this context] far more important for us to see and admit what has happened than to discuss why it has happened. It is much more important to find out that your rudder has dropped off in the deep sea than to discover how it dropped off. Yet it may be of service to mention causes briefly before we proceed to the chances of the future.” (Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons and Monarchy, p. 115—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

***

In 1920, ten years after Hilaire Belloc had stepped down from his four maturing years of publicly elected service in the House of Commons, he published a lucid book-length essay, entitled The House of Commons and Monarchy.^¹ It is a forthright and equitably proportioned work with a clearly stated thesis; and the development of Belloc’s presented evidence and argumentation will help us still better understand—even in the United States—many timely and timeless things of political and moral moment. For example, the reality of power, especially the formation, sustained moral authority, and gradual decay of a “new governing class” (39): indeed, a wealthy Oligarchy that had indispensably become a well-rooted Aristocracy, “after a sufficient tradition has confirmed them,” (47) even so as to become “a sacramental thing.”(39) Regrettably then, but truly, Belloc says, “one of the causes of the decline of Aristocracy” (179) is “the accumulation of…corruptions.” (179) Thus, Trust is broken; the earlier “general respect” (47) and the “ reverence upon which Aristocracy reposed,” vanish.

For it is so, he says, that

The characters [those enduring qualities] which keep an Aristocratic body in the saddle are easily recognized, though difficult to define. The first, undoubtedly, is dignity. The second, closely related to dignity, is a readiness in the individual to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole. The Aristocratic spirit demands in those who govern a readiness to suffer personal injury and loss for the sake not only of the State…but [for the sake] of the Aristocratic quality of the State, and in particular of the special Aristocratic organism [i.e., the House of Commons] to which the individual belongs. (85-86—my emphasis added)

However, when then later speaking of the growing “ineptitude” (88) of a governing class, and its selfish, even “ardent passion” to serve “personal safety” (89) rather than the larger Common Good (Bonum Commune), Belloc, by way of sharp contrast, also says:

When a governing clique ceases to be Aristocratic you feel it not only in specific indignities and particular buffooneries, or petty thefts; you feel it in a sort of insecurity [as well as an insufficiency]. The frantic efforts to conceal, the silly blushing denials, the haste to get away with the swag—all of these are the symptoms: and worst of all is the incapacity for sacrifice. (88-89—my emphasis added)

Furthermore, in Belloc’s words:

Lastly, from two most powerful sources, the Aristocratic State tends to suffer from Illusion, especially in its old age—and illusion is the most dangerous of all things. The two sources whence Illusion insinuates itself into the mood [or “atmosphere” (82)] of an Aristocratic State are, first, its internal security; and second, the legendary nature of the moral authority which the governing class exercises. (55—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

Belloc also came to believe that, in the House of Commons, there is “a lack of machinery for recuperation” (57) and, so: “They nourish Illusion to protect their decay.” (58—emphasis added) However, although it is so that “Parliaments must be Oligarchies;” (63) likewise “it is universally true of oligarchies that they cannot govern unless they are Aristocratic.” (64) Moreover, an “Aristocratic State demands Aristocratic Action and Temper both in those who govern and in those who are governed.” (63—my emphasis added) Such must be, in good times, the reciprocally nourishing political culture.

Belloc’s main thesis, in the light of earlier English history (especially since the Regicide of 1649) is, as follows: “The House of Commons was formed by, and is essentially part of, an Aristocratic State. England having ceased to be an Aristocratic State the House of Commons is ceasing to function.” (This clear formulation is repeated three times at the outset of his argument, i.e., on pages 4, 7, and 9.)

For, “the central institution of that Aristocratic England which the Reformation had made was [and still is] the House of Commons.” (63—my emphasis added) Speaking of the mid-seventeenth century in England and the contention between the newly strengthened vested interests and the Stuart King, he says:

The rising quarrel (confused in its eddies but clear in its main stream) produced the Civil Wars and the destruction of English kingship. The new Oligarchy [with the help of the martial Calvinist, Oliver Cromwell] put to death the last true Monarch in 1649 [Charles I]. His son [Charles II] came back eleven years later, but only as a salaried official…. But why was all this? Why should the supplanting after civil war of one form of government by another, of Monarchy by Oligarchy, have produced so large an effect and one of such advantage to national greatness and glory?….The masses grew more dependent, the rich more powerful and even immune; but of the external growth and wealth and dominion, and all that of which patriotic men are proud, there can be no doubt. (37-38—my emphasis added)

Belloc considers his own terse answer to the question (“And why?”) to be so important to his overarching argument that he puts his brevity in emphatic italics:

Essentially because the Oligarchy, which had thus seated itself firmly in the saddle after the destruction of the Monarchy, was growing (through the national sentiment and through the new religion on which that sentiment was based) into an Aristocracy. That is the point. That is the whole understanding of modern English history. As an ultimate result of the Reformation the Kings were broken and replaced by a Governing Class, of which the House of Commons was the [“sovereign”] organ. But that new governing class was not a mere clique, not a small minority merely seizing power. Men have never tolerated such usurpation. They have never allowed an irresponsible few to rule without moral sanction. It would be an insupportable rule….What had come, in the place of kingship, was an Aristocratic State, a State governed by an Oligarchy indeed, but by an Oligarchy which received the permanent and carefully preserved respect of its fellow-citizens. (38-39—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

Throughout the later parts of his book, Belloc shows how and why that indispensable and cherished respect gradually (and very consequentially) decayed—while emphasizing the stark fact that it had indeed happened!

In the remainder of this essay, I propose to give special accent to Hilaire Belloc’s articulate insights about general moral matters, to include the importance of virtuous, as well as vicious (or subtly degraded), moral character in members of a ruling Elite. For moral character also has social consequences, and, as Belloc has incisively written: “The statement that Parliaments are, or can be, democratic is a lie; and you cannot build build upon a lie.” (177—my emphasis added) Reform of a long-traditional Governing Class must come from deeper sources, from within and from without. In any case, it must be based on reality, on truth presented fully and in its proper proportions—even though, as Belloc knows well, there are always “critics of too much truth-telling,” (82) in spite of a “known internal breakdown” (82) of an “existing organ of government,” (82) such as the House of Commons. For, he had said: “It is always so when an institution breaks down. The crust survives by a few years the rotten interior.” (81)

Despite its special strengths, an Aristocratic State—in Belloc’s view—has its own special vulnerabilities:

An Aristocratic State is less able to reform itself than any other, and if its essential principle [deserved mutual respect, and even reverence] grows weak, it has the utmost difficulty in finding a remedy for its disease…. An Aristocratic State attacked in its vital principle has no medicinal rules, no formulae upon which to fall back for its healing. Its diseases [in the face of “civil dissension” and distrustful disrespect] are profoundly organic, never mechanical; for the whole action [and “temper”] of an Aristocracy is less conscious and less defined than that of a Democracy or Monarchy. (55)

There is “another element” in this matter of the “old age” of an Aristocratic State: the factor of “weariness” (97):

The weakening of contempt [for moral baseness, and for coarse and cunning “adventurers and rapscallions” (97)], this new intimate companionship with financial powers, not only ephemeral but base, comes in part from fatigue. And this we see in a process everywhere observable: which is the admixture of apology and impudence…. [For example,] to find a man or woman of the governing type (they no longer possess the governing power) apologizing for their frequentation of such and such a [plutocrat’s] house, for their acceptation of such and such an insult, and accompanying the apology with a phrase which admits their incapacity to stand firm. It is an attitude of drift and of lassitude in luxury: of a tired need for money. It is the very contrary of that atmosphere of discipline which all governing organs, Monarchic, Democratic, or Aristocratic, must maintain under peril of extinction. Next to this abandonment of principle, this loss of a stiffening standard round which the governing body could rally, and to which it could conform, we note [now, indeed, as of 1920] the disintegration of the governing body. That process has not yet gone very far, but it is going very fast. (97-98—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

As to another important quality of Elites, Belloc piquantly observed that, “at the time when the Aristocratic spirit was most vigorous,” (99) “we have seen, not only in our own, but in every other country,” that a “ ‘Representative’ Assembly” itself “does only work” (98-99) when it is

A body slowly renewed, and renewed largely by its own volition; that is largely co-opting [selecting and recruiting] its own membership as elder members drop out through age, glut of loot, fatigue, tedium, disgrace, or pension. But an organism of this kind, an instrument of government of this kind, a body comparatively small, in the main permanent, and continuous in action, is an Oligarchy by every definition of that term. (68—my bold emphasis added, italics in the original)

As such an Oligarchy itself develops slowly into a more “rooted” Aristocracy, “there is an aristocratic way of doing it and an unaristocratic way of doing it” (87), thus properly without any “undignified mountebank tricks” (85):

For instance, it is in the Aristocratic spirit that a member of the Government caught taking a bribe, or telling a public lie, should resign: and until quite lately such resignations were the rule. Another subtle character, and one very little recognized because it is so difficult to seize (yet its presence is powerfully felt), is the representative character of the Aristocrat properly so called…. A living Aristocracy is always very careful to be in communion with, actually mixed with, the mass of which it is itself the chief. It has an unfailing flair for national tradition, national custom, and the real national will. It has, therefore, as a correlative, an active suspicion of mere numerical and mechanical tests [and even mere financial tests?!] for arriving at that will. To take a practical example: an English governing class, which in the middle of the nineteenth century had given up riding horses or playing cricket, would have ceased to govern; but the extent of the franchise was indifferent to it. (86-87—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

On the premise that contrast clarifies the mind, we may see how our Belloc will first have us appreciate the earlier composite of Aristocratic qualities and dispositions, so as to enhance his insights about the drab or monochromatic sequels:

Under the old order the governing class maintained a certain hierarchy, and had a regular process of digestion and support [i.e., of incorporating recruitment and as patrons of a richer artistic culture]. The best example of this function in the old Aristocratic organism, the gentry, is its old attitude toward intelligence and creative power (intelligence and creative power are between them the mark of the arts)…. In an Aristocracy, while it still has its vigour, the Aristocratic organism recognizes and selects (though itself is not for the most part creative) true creative power around it. It recognizes above all proportion and order in creative power. It has an instinct against chaos in the arts. When what remains of a governing class seeks only novelty and even absurdity, or, what is worse still, a mere label, in its appraisal of creative power, it is a proof that the Aristocratic spirit has declined. The disintegration of the class that should govern is to be seen in another fashion: the substitution of simple, crude, obvious, and few passions for a subtle congeries of appetites. (98-99, 101-102—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original).

Acutely aware as he is of the (seductively specious, but deeply corrupt) Vitality of Mammon in the Decline of a State—as some of his richly differentiated essays also confirm—Belloc exemplifies in this 1920 book what these crude and coarse passions, or isolated and inordinate desires, actually mean:

Consider the passion for money. The necessity for wealth, position through wealth, the digestion of new wealth, all these are indeed native to the governing class of an Aristocracy. But they are native only as part of a much larger whole. Wealth thus sought in a strong governing class is subject to many qualifications, the desire is balanced against many other desires. When the attitude towards wealth becomes at once a principal thing and an isolated thing it is a proof, and a cause, of disintegration in a governing class; for instance, when wealth is divorced from manners, or is accepted or sought for at the expense of a grave loss of dignity. And what is true of the appetite for wealth is true of many other things, the appetite for physical enjoyment, the appetite for change, the appetite for new sensation (an appetite born of fatigue and accompanying not strength, but weakness). (102-103—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original).

Among “the Governed,” (107) there has also been “a portentous change” (118), as a result of the Industrial and French Revolutions:

These masses [of the Governed] have been born and have lived their lives utterly divorced from the remnants and even the tradition of the old Aristocratic organism….The new wealthy classes which might have imitated the [landed] squires of an older time, and which at first were largely assimilated into the governing class, do not live with their workmen. They fled the towns. They established colonies, as it were,…of luxurious houses [not yet “gated communities”] standing miles away from the workshops…., and the proletariat lived, grew, formed (or half formed) its political desires, nourished its bitterness, apart. No social condition more directly contrary to that of aristocracy can be imagined. And this is the immediate as well as the major cause of the phenomenon we are studying. This it is, the substitution of the new great towns for the old country sides as the determining body of society which has transformed the political [form] of England and of the Lowlands of Scotland. (118-119—my bold emphasis added; italics in the original)

Belloc, very importantly, then says that it was “not, indeed, anything material,” but “it was a spirit; the religion and philosophy of Industrial Capitalism” and “the outward effects of that religion acted as I have said.” (119) One stark result was that:

The great mass of the populace was left with no bands [no bonds] attaching it any longer to the form of the Aristocratic State….There you have the final condemnation to death of Aristocracy as a principle in this country, and with it a corresponding condemnation to death of the House of Commons. Side by side with the loss of the Aristocratic spirit in those who should have governed there has gone the loss of any desire for, and even the mere knowledge of, Aristocratic government in the mass who are governed. (119—my emphasis added)

Another result of this “binary” combination is that it “has left the House [of Commons] to-day bereft of moral authority.” For it is fundamentally true, as the Catholic Church well knows (and as Belloc himself often elsewhere quotes) that “without authority there is no life” (“sine auctoritate nulla vita”). Furthermore, says Belloc with a sense of irreversibility and even of a sort of tragic finality:

Even though the House of Commons were to become as clean as it is now corrupt, as nice as it is now nasty, as noble as it is now mean and petty, or as dignified as it is now vulgar and contemptible, this factor alone, the loss of the popular desire to be ruled by a few, would be fatal to its continued power. (120)

Even if the House of Commons “might (in part) revive its moral authority,” (132) “who on earth believes that such things will ever be done by the authority of the culprits themselves?” (132) For,

Though miracles certainly happen, yet the rarest of all miracles is a moral miracle of this kind. A rotten institution reforming itself, and not only reforming itself but being aided in its reformation by all its own corrupt members, servants, parasites, and masters [or “paymasters”], is a thing that history has never seen. History has seen plenty of men raised into the air, many walking on the water, and a few raised from the dead. But it has never seen an institution in the last stages of decay and still possessing nominal power, using that power to chastise and to reform itself. (132-133—my emphasis added)

Without having any utopian expectations, and knowing well the problems with historic or actual kingship, Belloc does nevertheless believe that a substantive improvement could be attained amidst this cumulatively grim state of affairs if a strong, virtuous, and intimately personal Monarchy were to be restored and again to control the Money Power, inasmuch as

The leading function of the Monarch is to protect the weak man against the strong, and therefore to prevent the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, the corruption of the Courts of Justice and [the corruption] of the sources of public opinion [ thus, the full range of “the Media”]. (178—my emphasis added)

As a counterpoint to this monarchical preference, Belloc admits that

A Democracy also, where it is active and real, can do all these things.^² You may see every one of these functions at work in a Swiss Canton, for instance. There you may see [legal] tribunals which dread public opinion, judges who are afraid of giving false judgments, laws which forbid too great an inequality of wealth, and the absence of any vast or sudden profits acquired through the cunning of one against the simplicity of many. But where very great numbers are concerned [as in a “numerous democracy”] all these functions are atrophied if you attempt to make them Democratic in their working; and in the absence of an Aristocratic spirit there is nothing but a Monarch to exercise them [the essential “functions” of just and equitable Governance]….He [the Monarch] knows that he is responsible. He cannot shift the burden to some anonymous or intangible culprit. (179-180—my emphasis added)

Earlier in the book, Belloc had especially noted, as one of the potential weaknesses of an Aristocratic country (even in its commendable vigor) is to see “how strangely deep in such a country is the worship of powerful men, and how rooted is the distaste in the masses for the responsibilities of government.” (79—my emphasis) He later adds a complementary reinforcement to his earlier wise insight:

Out of citizens who have always been passive of their nature [especially about the burdensome responsibilities of governance], and whose passivity was the very cause of Aristocracy among them, you will never get the Democratic spirit of corporate initiative, and of what is essential to Democratic institutions, a permanent, individual interest in public affairs. (176—my emphasis added)

After then returning to the matter of monarchy and briefly considering some of the prominent Kings (or Emperors) of history, our Belloc then tries to imagine any of these men in action today, if they were to be “placed at the head of the modern State,” (182)—and yet “not through their [virtuous] character, but [only] through the powers granted them by the constitutions of their times.” (181-182) Asking and happily (or impishly) answering his own question, he says:

What do you think would happen to the corrupt judges, to the politicians who take bribes, to the great trusts that destroy a man’s livelihood, to the secret financiers boasting that they control the State [“Le pouvoir sur le pouvoir”—in the oft-quoted words of Jacques Attali]? Their blood would turn to water. (182—my emphasis added)

Belloc often accents the danger of unaccountable finance and its corrupting Oligarchical power, especially to mislead “the remaining inheritors of the old Aristocratic position” (103) in “their now irretrievable mixture with international finance and consequent degradation of blood.” (104—my emphasis added) A few pages later, Belloc even says that, for the governed populace, as of 1920, “the [old] gentry no longer means anything to them,” (112) and even the idea of “one governing class is no longer within the vision of the governed” (112)—and “What may be left of such a class they merge in a general vision of excessive, unjust, and indeed malignant wealth.” (112—my emphasis added) That is to say, they are seen as if they were all merely detached and frigid Plutocrats or selfishly Squalid Oligarchs—inaccessible and also still immune from any just accountability in this world.

Hilaire Belloc always combated “an anonymous system,” and its evasive diffusion of personal responsibility and accountability, and he argued, instead, for the return of a Popular Monarchy as was known in historic Christendom, but now, as is just, in prudent view of unique modern conditions and technologies.

The House of Commons and Monarchy, by way of summary, began by showing how Kingship in England was first weakened by the monarchs themselves, to include Henry VII’s sly usurpation of the throne, and then especially the spiritual and temporal actions of Henry VIII, who more or less unwittingly helped create a new and powerful Oligarchy which materially profited from the general loot of the monasteries and monastery lands. That new landed Oligarchy gradually incorporated the merchant and professional elements—the lawyers and the financiers, for instance—and that Oligarchical power increasingly worked to weaken (and have leverage over) the Sovereign King, culminating in the Regicide of 1649: the execution of the Stuart King, Charles I. As the new Oligarchy—or somewhat differentiated, and rival, oligarchies—grew in power and influence, they also became more rooted and stable and continuous, until the Oligarchy became an Aristocracy and the Parliament effectively became the Sovereign, Aristocratic House of Commons. The gradual decay of that House of Commons showed once again the coarser qualities of an Oligarchy, now also containing various alien elements from the outside, as it were—to include the leverage and power of “the Money Power” (as Belloc elsewhere calls it): the Elements and Organs of Finance, to include International Finance—and the Power of the Public Media of Communications (the Press, as it was then known). Then came the further (often anonymous) Oligarchic Manipulations of what was increasingly (but misleadingly) called Democracy—a coarsening and deceptive and drifting development, for sure, which thereby called out, once again, for a restoration in principle, and establishment in actuality, of a sound and strong Personal Monarchy which was attentive to, and finally responsible for, the whole Bonum Commune—as a good Father would care and sacrifice for the common good of his whole family, for which he will finally be held strictly accountable, coram Deo. Before God, in the Final Verdict of Truth—at least in the Faith of a Catholic. And not only Belloc’s. “To whom much has been given, much will be required; to whom much has been entrusted, more [even more!] will be required.” (Luke 12:48)

In any case, Belloc saw the humbug and sham of so much of Modern Democracy, as did the honest French intellectual historian, François Furet, who also (like Belloc) wrote books on the French Revolution, one of which contained an important chapter, near the end of his text, on Augustin Cochin (1876-1916), the young French Catholic historian of the French Revolution who was killed on the battlefield of World War I. In that chapter, Furet said with unexpected candor: “Modern Democracy is based on [depends upon] a hidden oligarchy [“oligarchie cachée”], which is contrary to its principles, but indispensable to its functioning.”^³ That is to say, though in even more trenchant words: “Modern Democracy is based upon a Deception.”

Moreover, since there are always “civil wars within the Revolution itself,” as the French Catholic scholar, Léon de Poncins, often noted, François Furet’s insight would be rendered even more perfectly if we put his singular “oligarchie cachée” into the plural, “oligarchies cachées.” For, there are, indeed, rivalries among the variously manifold and active oligarchies in their quests for advantage and power (as was so, historically, between the Girondins and the Jacobins and their respective Financiers), especially when it is for “Power without Grace.” (An acute phrase said more than once by Saint Helena in her candid, cautionary guidance to her own beset and perplexed (and as yet unbaptized) son, Emperor Constantine, amidst the deficiencies and delusions of his burdensome Rule, as so eloquently presented by Evelyn Waugh in his highly differentiated historical novel, Helena (1950). )

When we also recall the title of this essay, we may now appreciate a further nuance of meaning. To the extent that Modern Democracy itself is based upon Deception—indeed a deliberate deception of rival and often anonymous oligarchies—it is based upon a Lie. (And the greatest social effect of a Lie is that it breaks Trust, even the deepest Trust—as in an intimate Perfidy—and that deeply shattered trust is so hard to rebuild. Even with mercy and grace and “forgiveness from the heart,” wholehearted forgiveness.)

When the Humbug has broken down and the Sham exposed—whether about Democracy or Oligarchy or an Ecclesiastical Sophistry—we must still remember, in our sustained and faithful efforts at reconstruction, Hilaire Belloc’s own recurrent words: “And you cannot build upon a lie.” (177)

“The Moral is, it is forsooth: You mustn’t monkey with the Truth.”^⁴

—Finis—

1Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons and Monarchy (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD.,1920), 188 pages. References to this text will henceforth be in parentheses in the main body of this essay. See also H. Belloc’s “The Decline of a State”( in First and Last, 1912); and “A Few Kind Words to Mammon”( in On, 1923).

2In an earlier footnote, on page 113, Belloc himself says: “The test of the Democratic temper is a popular craving to possess public initiative, and the test of Democratic government is the exercise of that initiative. Chance consultation by vote has nothing to do with Democracy.” The American Founding Fathers, in The Federalist Papers, also disapprovingly spoke of the instability and irresponsibility of mere “numerous democracy.” A rule by mere number and quantity, that is.

3François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), Part II, Chapter 3 (Augustin Cochin: la théorie du jacobinisme), p. 241. Another rendition of the French original is: “There is in all democratic power, a fortiori in all pure democratic power, a hidden oligarchy, which is at the same time contrary to its principles and yet indispensable to its functioning.” Augustin Cochin himself especially, and famously, studied those active leavens of the Revolution: the so-called associations or societies of thought (Sociétés de Pensée). These intellectually and operationally active groupings would also be properly considered as networks of little, though disproportionately influential, “oligarchies.”

4This is a close paraphrase of the two concluding lines from one of Hilaire Belloc’s own buoyant verses, entitled “The Example.” See, for example, Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Verses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), pp. 402-407. The last two lines of that sprightly, cautionary verse are: “The Moral is (it is indeed!)/ You mustn’t monkey with the Creed.”