Fuzzy left

The more engaging question, it seems to me, is how one can justify that hunch: how can it be so that pursuing this mission could actually be producing more good than quitting? A necessary condition, obviously, is to disagree with the radically pacifist concept that violence can only be increased, never diminished, through violence in whatever way. I do disagree with this idea, as I don’t believe it is at all rigorous, when taken to its ultimate consequences. Then the crux of the argument must lie in the proper calculations of gains and losses, including consideration of the uncertainty which comes with the complexities of world politics. Remember that it is always this uncertainty that makes these decisions so difficult, relying in effect on precisely just that, hunches. If we were sure of the outcome of this mission, and knew its total costs in advance, we could just hold a vote reflecting our subjective evaluation of their relative importance, and be done with it one way or the other. But things are not that simple: we disagree just as much, if not more, on the probabilities of different scenarios, and on what affects these probabilities and how much, than we do on the relative weights of most costs and benefits.

In this perspective, my main concern has to do with credible multilateralism: how it can be sustained, and how useful it actually is. It seems obvious to me that winning this war, if it is possible that is, and at an acceptable cost, would strengthen the incentives for large powers to be a lot more careful before taking unilateral actions in the future, given the Iraki mess - a mess that was apparently predictable only by those of us who had the right hunch as well, five years ago. Defending a truly multilateral approach in Afghanistan however, could very well require to ask for more implication of other important stakeholders, in and out of NATO, including Iran, Russia and China, and yes, even calling for negotiations with Taliban factions willing to lay down arms in exchange for participation in a democratic setting, conditional that is on accepting equal basic rights for both Afghani men and women. Indeed I would have liked my own Liberal party to take its own criticism in this direction. Yet surely, defending multilateral action credibly is pretty hard to do while you’re also asking to pull out unilaterally from the one collective effort which is available at this time. I’m not saying that an alternative would not materialize in the event of our retreat, although I am quite skeptical, but I wonder how we can ever push for multilateralism in the future with any credibility, when we could not even go the distance ourselves when push came to shove.

Now, the argument can go the other way, clearly enough. If this is in fact a lost cause already, or if its cost is already unbearable, then every additional injury, every death and every bit of suffering is in vain, and multilateralism will just be weaker for every extra day that we stay there. Fair enough. But let’s be clear as to what this means: we do admit in this way, don’t we, that no collective action, even with full international legitimacy and with all other means at the disposal of the human species circa 2007, no such action can really help a peaceful majority in resisting efficiently a minority that is willing and able to impose its rule on a significant piece of territory. Wouldn’t it be ironic in the end that Canada, of all places, could actually be the one country to claim to all, louder through its action than ever before with all its lofty principles, that the UN has no clothes? It would not fall on deaf ears, may I add, in isolationist America. This one is a pretty safe hunch, ain’t it?