1 Boring Old Man

Machiavelli’s rules rest upon a clear-eyed view of human nature. If you think that people are basically good and, left to their own devices, will create loving communities and good governments, you’ve learned nothing from him. Machiavelli’s world is populated by people more inclined to do evil than good, whose instincts are distinctly antisocial. These are your followers and bosses, colleagues and employees, and, above all, your competitors and enemies. The only way to dominate your foes and get your friends and allies to work together is to use power effectively.

Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Michael Ledeen

But it’s not Michael Ledeen I want to talk about, it’s the view of human nature he wants to sell as an effective view for good leaders, a view he finds in his reading of Niccolo Machiavelli, the 13th century political theorist who wrote The Prince. Machiavelli had nothing much to say about ideology or system of government. He was a pragmatist who was primarily focused on methods to retain and consolidate power. He was the author of the "ends justify the means." While he was not quite so perverse as he’s usually presented [since the "ends" were to be what was good for the State], he was, nonetheless, advocating manipulation in many forms. Machiavelli talked about how the Prince should appear to be – his public image. His view of human nature was grim [as above] and the currency of leadership was always power – in large doses.

More than most Neoconservatives, Ledeen is a straight talker. There’s no over-riding principle involved, no ideology, just whatever it takes to amass and wield power. And he is a vocal representative of the force that set the climate in the American Enterprise Institute, which in turn seeded or current Republican Administration. I think they had multiple motives. One was clearly oil, the vast oil reserves under Iraq and Iran. Another was power, big time power. With the fall of the Soviet Union, they saw an opportunity for the U.S. to become the "sole superpower," and wanted to jump at the chance to grab that role. I think they see the world always at war, and are dead set on winning. There is a strong pro-Israeli pull too, and Ledeen is no exception, being as active in the Israeli cause as he is in matters American.

So the things we might see as aggregious, like the Iran-Contra Affair, or the jury-rigged intelligence used to get us into the War on Iraq, are just the everyday application of pragmatic principles, the "rules" of Machiavelli. And the ins and outs of politics are not part of the process of governing within the constraints of a set of rules – like the Constitution. Politics is all there is.

It’s easy to see how someone like Cheney would think in this context. American Businesses can’t get any inroads to Middle Eastern Oil except through OPEC. America needs oil. That’s the "end." It’s good for the State. Ergo, we’ll go to war with a hostile regime [Saddam Hussein], and set up a government that will allow us to have more direct access to the oil ["the means"]. Nevermind that we have to make up a bogus excuse for the war. Nevermind that we have to spend a few hundred billion dollars. Nevermind that a few hundred thousand people die in the process. Ergo, the "ends justify the means."