T. Greer on Ibn Khaldun’s Asabiyah
There are several reasons why it is difficult to see the hand of asabiyah in the rise and decline of modern great powers. Military science has progressed in the centuries since Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah; the drills and training seen in the militaries of our day are capable of creating a strong sense of solidarity and cohesion even when such feelings are absent in the populace at large. In that populace the nationalist fervor that accompanies mass politics has eclipsed (or perhaps, if we take asabiyah as the nucleus of nationalist feeling, perfected) asabiyah as the moving force of modern conflict. This sort of nationalism, dependent as it is on mass media and technologies unknown to Ibn Khaldun, has a dynamic of its own that he could not have foreseen.
The most important difference between Ibn Khaldun’s world and our own, however, concern the fundamental structure of the societies in which we live. Ibn Khaldun’s was a static age where wealth was easier to seize than make. This is not the case today. For the past two centuries military power has been intertwined with economic growth and industrial capacity. No more can poor ‘Bedouins’ living beyond the pale of civilized society dethrone kings and reshape empires. In the more developed nations of the earth there is so little fear of war that both asabiyah and nationalism are sloughed off with few misgivings.
Despite all these differences, Ibn Khaldun did articulate principles that remain relevant despite their age. The first and most important of these is that social cohesion should be understood as a vital element of national power. Wars are rarely won and strategies rarely made without it. A nation need not be engaged in existential conflict to benefit from strong asabiyah. Absent solidarity, internal controversies absorb the attention of statesmen and internal divisions derail all attempts to craft coherent policy. Strategic malaise is one byproduct of a community deficient in asabiyah.
Agreed. In particular, it is difficult for foreigners to provide another society with an asabiyah that it lacks in order to fight and win counterinsurgency wars. You go to war with the asabiyah that you have and that has been a problem for Americans in places like South Vietnam and Afghanistan.
I’m not sure though that it is impossible to regenerate decaying or dying asabiyah if it can be built upon new myths that are harmonious with old ones, disguising innovations as fidelity to cherished values. The Meiji Restoration is the classic successful example of national revolution being presented as a reactionary movement to return to tradition, toppling the worn-out Shogunate and”restoring” a High Priest- Emperor whose ceremonial figurehead predecessors had not ruled Japan in eight hundred years, if ever at all. There are also darker historical examples and we are seeing one play out now in the Mideast in the form of the ISIS “Caliphate”.
This kind of attempt to breathe new life into an eroding asabiyah operates at the moral level above strategy that John Boyd termed a “Theme of Vitality and Growth” and it can unlock atavistic passions and be extremely attractive. Simultaneously creative and destructive, society is suddenly remade – not as a plowshare, but as a sword in a strong hand.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Lexington Green:
May 5th, 2015 at 7:34 pm
“Grand strategy should guide policy formulation because it is not just a set of concrete structural ends, or a laundry list of “vital interests” but a constructive, values-laden, attractive, motivating, civilizational narrative.” This is your language from the post citing Boyd’s slide “Theme of Vitality and Growth.”
Is Grand Strategy the right term here? This is more of an assertion of “why” to do something, where any kind of strategy is about “how” to do something.
Or are you saying that the grandest of grand strategies is for leaders to articulate a motivating narrative. But, is that the role of the state and its leaders?
I agree any society has to tell itself a story about itself, and all inevitably do. What that story is, how much relation it bears to reality, past and present, and whether there is matter in that story to motivate positive action, vary from time to time and place to place. The USA is telling itself a story about American guilt for all kinds of awful things, with little to mitigate it. This is at best seriously incomplete as a matter of fact. It is also the opposite of a basis for inspiring positive action.
The occasional claim that modern political correctness originated from a KGB-initiated conspiracy is not plausible. But if the Soviets wanted to destroy us, they could not have done better, short of physical annihilation with nuclear weapons.
A picture of America before its self-respect and pride crumpled into the current self-hatred and triviality is depicted in the video in this post, about, of all places, Rockford, Illinois. Worth watching to see what America used to be like, especially how America thought of itself.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/48353.html
zen:
May 6th, 2015 at 2:57 am
Hi Lex,
.
As the post was built on the idea of co-evolution, I think I was re-phrasing Boyd’s rationale for A Theme of Vitality and Growth which he posited above Grand Strategy and even national goals as the construction of a center of gravity which he explained on the previous slide to the Theme:
.
“Moreover, such a unifying notion should be so compelling that it acts as a catalyst or beacon around which to evolve those qualities that permit a collective entity or organic whole to improve its stature in the scheme of things. Put another way, we are suggesting a need for a
supra-orientation or center-of-gravity that permits leaders, and other authorities, to inspire their followers and members to enthusiastically take action toward confronting and conquering all obstacles that stand in the way”
.
I agree with you that the counter-narrative of America the Evil, which comes directly from the 60’s New Left, is dug in and deeply believed by at least a third of the population with baleful influence on the rest – the opposite of positive attraction and it is working (which was the intent of the New Left activists in doing their Gramiscian “long march” through the institutions). Conservatives and moderates have not done a good job of discrediting and replacing this message so much as playing to our own side who already reject it.
.
I think leaders sell and shorthand the narrative but it comes more from intellectuals or philosophers of unusual brilliance. Occasionally, you get a Pericles, Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison etc. who can think deeply, calculate strategically and act politically with equal expertise but that’s exceedingly rare. Usually these capacities come from a small number of contemporaries or near contemporaries who can build upon each other’s efforts
larrydunbar:
May 8th, 2015 at 1:15 am
“I agree with you that the counter-narrative of America the Evil, which comes directly from the 60’s New Left, is dug in and deeply believed by at least a third of the population with baleful influence on the rest”
But the 1/3 is only on one side of the nearly 50% division in the politics of the US.
Being a Christian nation, my guess is that most of the people on the other side of the division believe coevolution is pure evil.
So are you saying if you believe in coevolution, there is a strong chance you also believe in America the Evil?
Some strange bedfellows.
carl:
May 12th, 2015 at 11:56 pm
Mark:
.
“You go to war with the asabiyah that you have and that has been a problem for Americans in places like South Vietnam and Afghanistan.”
That is a very popular view but one I think grossly unfair and inaccurate. South Vietnam was, at the end, facing North Vietnam, the USSR, Red China and various other communist countries all alone. No money, no ammunition, no fuel, no prospect of American airplanes coming back, all things they had been led to believe they would be provided with.
.
I’ll wager we will leave the Afghans in exactly the same kind of lurch in the next few years. Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, will face a Taliban & Co. sponsored and supported by the Pak Army/ISI and Gulf Arab money. And all of this being directed at them from an inviolable sanctuary; a sanctuary deemed inviolable by us, their worthy ally. As we dictated way back when that all the countries whence the NVA came at South Vietnam were mostly inviolable. The only difference between then and now is then, no country in the world gave a hoot for South Vietnam. Now, there are a lot of countries that give a hoot about Afghanistan.
.
Asabiyah doesn’t fill fuel tanks nor does it buy ammunition. Anybody who is thinking of accepting our support should think very hard about whether American asabiyah is equal to the asabiyah of the people backing their opponents.