Machiavelli and the Moral Dilemma of Statecraft

The liberal ideal of Locke, and the basis of morality for Kant, is the individual. The moral basis of the government of the United States is set out in the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson affirms the existence of natural, individual rights and then says, "That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed..." Thus, the state is not an end in itself but merely the means to "secure these Rights." If a government fails to do that, Jefferson says, as Locke said earlier, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Nothing could be further from the statism, and state worship, of Hegel, let alone Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.

"Necessity" is itself written into the Constitution of the United States, since Article I, Section 8 says that "The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper to carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States..." Now, this "necessary and proper clause" was viewed with suspicion by the Anti-Federalists, and reasonably so, since it was suspected as a device for improperly expanding the power of the federal government. Indeed, I do not think that any law has ever been voided for not being "proper." The greatest damage, however, was effected by the word "necessary" itself being misconstrued by John Marshall, who denied that it meant "without which not," the proper logical meaning of necessity, and decided that a "necessary" means is "any means calculated to produce the end." The sophistry and dishonesty of this has been examined elsewhere. The danger then became, not that the federal government would do what was necessary, but that it could do anything "calculated to produce the end." That is a prescription, not for preserving the life and freedom of the nation, but for implementing the kind of tyrannies that we see now.

In addition to these legal and institutional usurpations of liberty, the attacks on individualism itself by socialism and communism have continued under the guise of "communitarianism," and trendy thinkers now like to say that only as much freedom as "possible" should be allowed given the fundamental priority of the state, of "society as a collective unit" (they know that they will sound like Nazis if they start talking about "the state," so they say "society" instead). It is not, indeed, that freedom must never be abridged, but it is a very different matter to see this as a choice by necessity in a moral dilemma rather than as an unproblematic pursuit of a fundamental "collective" good. If the abstract entity (the "state," "society," or the "collective") has the moral priority, then the even permanent abridgment of any amount of freedom is no moral wrong. What the state giveth, the state taketh away.

What about Machiavelli? He lived prior to when the debate between statism and individualism started and so does not articulate its terms, though the idea of the subordination of the individual to the state already existed in Classical political thought (the sort of thing we find in Plato's Crito). Machiavelli could have insensibly gone along with that, or he may have given more thought to what even a Classical state was supposed to accomplish for its citizens. Although not clearly delineated, Machiavelli often does speak as though the worthy and glorious state is the one, not only of secure and substantial dominion, but one where the lives, property, and prosperity of its citizens are secured.


Still it cannot be called virtue to slay one's fellow citizens, to betray one's friends, to act without faith, without pity, without religion. By such methods one may win dominion but not glory. [The Prince, op.cit., p.36]
Thus, although Cesare Borgia is often thought of as the archetype of the amoral opportunist, Machiavelli's praise of him (The Prince, Chapter VII) in great measure depends on his judgment that he had secured "the good will of all the inhabitants of Romagna, who were beginning to get a taste of good government" [ibid., p.31]. Borgia is contrasted with the previous rulers of Romagna, who were "impotent lords who had been more inclined to despoil than to govern their subjects" [ibid.].

Machiavelli's advice on the treatment of one's citizens is the most revealing:


A prince...ought to encourage his citizens peaceably to pursue their affairs, whether in trade, in agriculture, or in any other human acitivity, so that no one will hesitate to improve his possessions for fear that they will be taken from him, and no one will hesitate to open a new avenue of trade for fear of taxes. [ibid., p.79]
Even in America, much investment is daunted by the fear of taxes. Elsewhere it is altogether halted. Indeed, it is the hallmark of tyranny in the 20th century that the property, let alone the persons, of citizens is not secure. But a ruler who is basically a robber, or who uses his power to take women, will come to be hated. Hatred and contempt, says Machiavelli, are the worst things that can happen to a ruler, the former because nothing else be needed to motivate opposition, even assassination, while the latter means that few will fear to act in opposition. Machiavelli is famous for claiming that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved by the people (cf. ibid., Chapter XVII), but this is for the very sensible reason that in times of crisis, it is essential that a ruler be obeyed. A ruler who is loved but not feared may not be obeyed in need, which could spell disaster for all. A ruler need not be loved to rule well, but he must be feared to the extent that he will be obeyed.


Still a prince should make himself feared in such a way that, though he does not gain love, he escapes hatred; for being feared but not hated go readily together. Such a condition he may always attain if he will not touch the property of his citizens and subjects, nor their women. [ibid., p. 60]
A ruler who is both feared and hated may be successful -- as Machiavelli says, "one may win dominion" -- but the foundations of success will be unsound: Shihuangdi died unchallenged in power and dominion, but his son reigned only two years before universal rebellion overthrew the Qin Dynasty. Stalin had achieved similar status, but three years after his death he was denounced by Khrushchev for his crimes (the "secret" speech of 1956), and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime was shaken in the minds of many who had been true believers. Many Russians now remember Stalin fondly because it is easy to forget the murders and tortures but comforting to remember his strength, making him fearful in Machiavelli's sense but not hateful.

One way in which a ruler can avoid hatred is for him to give the citizens some sense that he respects and depends on them. There is no clearer way that this can be done than to trust them with arms.

This is an issue that has become increasingly important in modern democracies, where the forms of police state authority that have been increasingly put into place are inherently hostile to armed citizens. Large segments of the population, not just in European democracies but now even in America, are deceived by this tyrannical program, under the influence of a press and intelligentsia that has long been dominated by statists, who have always sought to deny to citizens the means of resisting the state. In this case, Machiavelli's observations and recommendations are the most revealing for the nature of government and the purpose of the state. There is nothing more necessary for the preservation of the state than the military, which is why Machiavelli says:


A prince must have no other objective, no other thought, not take up any profession but that of war, its methods and its discipline, for that is the only art expected of a ruler. [ibid., pp. 53-54]
So what is the proper relation of a citizen to the military power of his country? a power that can be used to oppress him, as well as to effect the necessary and proper defense of the nation? This may even be the very essence of the dilemma of statecraft, wherein the existence of the state may contradict the freedom of the individual. How are "necessity" and freedom to be reconciled? This must be examined in some detail, beginning with Machiavelli's advice to a prince:


For by arming your subjects, you make their arms your own. Those among them who are suspicious become loyal, while those who are already loyal remain so, and from subjects they are transformed into partisans. [ibid., p. 73]
There is no more telling hallmark of tyranny and malevolence than a ruler or a government that sets about to disarm the citizens. In Germany and Russia, the policy was to put the people at the mercy of the government. And when the Nazis wanted to massacre the Jews, or the Soviets their "class enemies," resistance was no longer possible. Nor were totalitarian governments alone in this. The democracies of Europe and America now pursue their project of dependent and helpless citizens with relentless attacks on the right of citizens to bear arms or defend themselves.


When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that, either from cowardliness or from lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conlcusion will induce them to hate you. [ibid., p. 73]
Democratic governments get away with this by telling the public "you are the government" and buying them off with "benefits," even while people are systematically looted and subjugated for the sake of rent-seeking political and bureaucratic interest groups. As Jefferson wisely said, "they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price." Although the Founders of the country were on the watch for this, people are now dumbed-down and indoctrinated by "public education" not to notice. Stupified with their "benefits," people now do not appreciate this "Machiavellian" principle:


There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not... [ibid., p. 54]
But even dictatorial governments have gotten away with disarming citizens through a sufficiently dense ideological smokescreen.

What Machiavelli wanted, like the Founding Fathers of the United States, for the defense of the state was a citizen militia. The alternative in the Italy of Machiavelli's day was an army of mercenaries, which he recognized as worthless.


Anyone searching for the first cause of the ruin of the Roman Empire will find that it began with the hiring of mercenaries. From that point the strength of the Roman Empire started to decline, and all the valor it lost was transferred to the Goths. [ibid., p. 53]
Although Machiavelli was quite right about mercenaries, militias have often not worked out well, since they tend to be insufficiently disciplined or hardened as fighting forces. That was the case when the citizens of Renaissance Italian cities attempted to resist foreign armies (French and Spanish), and it was the case in American history, mainly in the War of 1812, when Militia forces often performed badly. By the time of the Civil War, units were raised and trained specifically for the war. Although the Militia Act of 1792 made every "free able-bodied white male citizen" of 18 a member of the Militia, in time, the idea lapsed that the Militia should be the actual body of the citizenry, especially when the Southern States did not want new color-blind Federal civil rights principles, enforced by the Fourteenth Amendment, arming the mass of freed slaves. So in 1903 the Dick Act established the National Guard as a volunteer organization on a much more restricted basis than the old Militia. Indeed, it must be emphasized and remembered that the motivation for this was, in great measure, racism: an extension of the Segregationist regime that intended to crush the means of resistance among Southern blacks.

Those who now prefer to see the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" of the Second Amendment as discharged by the National Guard, however, must overlook (or explain away) the circumstance that National Guardsmen are in fact not allowed to "keep" their arms. Weapons are kept in National Guard Armories, and Guardsmen bear them only in service, under military discipline. Nor are officers elected, as they usually were in Militias, or even in many Civil War regiments. The National Guard, like the Regular Army, is now part of the establishment of a Standing Army, which the Founders feared as a threat to freedom (they would have called it merely a "select militia"). Even worse, the lapse of the Militia has meant that armed citizens are no longer available for the posse comitatus, where ordinary citizens become deputy sheriffs of their county to enforce the law. This means that increasingly para-military police departments (which orginally were prohibited from carrying arms) have become virtual armies of occupation in American cities, vulnerable to many of the abuses practiced by any such armies.

This is where the dilemma of statecraft emerges in a fundamental way. Militias are too weak for the security of the state, while standing armies are dangerous temptations to tyranny and foreign adventures -- Americans will have noticed that several undeclared wars have been fought since the United States began to maintain a large standing army and that recent involvements -- Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the continuous bombing of Iraq -- have been undertaken without any clear idea of how the involvement was to be wrapped up. This is a degree of foolishness that the Founders thought they were preventing by giving Congress the power to declare war. A President, as Commander-in-Chief, with an army already in existence, can send it into battle without a declaration of war.

Clearly, a regular army is necessary for the security of a state; but it cannot be so big as to represent a temptation to foreign adventures or internal repression. Indeed, after the Civil War, Congress prohibited the use of the regular army for internal police matters. A militia, however, cannot provide a ready or reliable enough back-up for the regular army in case of emergencies. Reserves of some form, whether as adjuncts of the regular army or as national guard units, or both, are essential. But there still must be a militia, which would stand to the national guard in the same sense that Army Reserves stand to the regular army. The "weekend warriors," a derisive term for National Guardsmen, would be just a rather more organized and trained fraction of an armed citizenry, which also means that they would keep their own basic military weapon with them. More basic members of the militia would be more like "vacation warriors."

Nothing is so essential to the legitimate purpose of the state than the protection of its citizens, both from conquest and from tyranny. The dilemma is how we maintain an effective military force, which must be as disciplined and hardened as possible, that will consist of free citizens and not pose a danger to a free civil society. These seem like incompatible purposes, though they are simply of a piece with having a state whose purpose is the protection of individual rights but whose requirements are often, of necessity, abridgement of those rights and the sacrifice of some individuals. This incompatibility seems nowhere clearer than when it comes to conscription, by which "involuntary servitude" is imposed on citizens in order to use them, in the judgment of generals and politicians, for the preservation of the state. Although many people fled Europe for the United States in order to avoid conscription, it has now been put in force several times in America on the principal that it is "necessary" for the preservation of the individual freedom that would otherwise be permanently endangered by foreign conquest. It can even be argued that a conscript army, full of men resentful of their loss of freedom, will constantly remind the generals and politicians that there are limits to what the men will tolerate, both in terms of their treatment and in terms of the use to which they are put.

Conscription, however, is a device that is meaningful only in the absence of a militia. By the Militia Act of 1792, the male citizens of the era (or at least the white ones), were already in the military. If that is the case, then it cannot happen that individual civilians are drafted into the military. 1 Regular Army Federal
2 Army Reserve
3 National Guard State
4 County Militia
5 Unorganized Militia
Instead, in need, it is the Reserve, the National Guard, and the Militia units that are called up, in turn, as the gravity of a situation increases [note]. This gives us a system of checks and balances, by which here, as elsewhere, alone there is a hope of restraining the power of government in any form. It is a system based on the natural right of self-defense and then degrees of voluntary association with government; for every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms as part of the "unorganized" militia, but any citizen also, with a minimum of commitment and training, can formally join an organized militia at the County level. That should also make them reserve sheriff's deputies, as an official part of the posse comitatus, the only armed police force that should be allowed, and reserve members of the National Guard, which of course is organized at the State level. Such a system keeps in place a small but professional, volunteer regular army (and professional sheriff's deputies) but has behind it a very broad citizen's army, trained to varying degrees in case of national need. It also keeps in place the means of resistance for ordinary citizens against the usurpations of tyranny and statism. A few years ago, when the officials of Nye County, Nevada, wanted to enforce the Tenth Amendment against the Federal Government, which of course unconstitutionally owns most of the land in Nevada and now all but ignores the Tenth Amendment, they backed down simply when threatened by a Federal judge. This goes to show how far what Jefferson called the "spirit of resistance" has been broken among us. If they had the armed body of their own citizens behind them, in the reasonably organized and official form of the County Militia, they might have had more leverage and more courage.

There is no more sobering a corrective for the false path upon which the democracies have entered than to realize that the replacement of the Militia by the National Guard in America was probably motivated in part by racism and the desire to oppress freed slaves, and that the advice that Machiavelli himself gives even to autocrats is to arm their own citizens. The tyrannical, statist purposes behind the "gun control" movement are thus revealed, as are the principles of Machiavelli's viewpoint, where the most successful rulers must be those who achieve good government, while good government is that which fosters the liberty, security, and prosperity of the citizens.


...nor is it reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not, or that the latter will feel secure among servants who are armed. [ibid., p. 54]
Thus, Machiavelli expects disarmed citizens to be vulnerable and insecure, which is precisely what statists and tyrants wish.

These reflections began above with one man who, out of his responsibility for the many, thought it necessary to sacrifice another innocent man for their sake -- a sacrifice, ironically, that Christianity interprets as willingly accepted by the victim in order to morally and religiously redeem all of humanity. By an examination of Machiavelli's theory about this, we have come to the theory of such institutional arragements as would preserve the proper purpose of the state, to serve the liberty of its citizens, and to protect citizens who might be targeted, either by unjust rulers or by the tyranny of the majority, for oppression and unnecessary, improper sacrifice. If the only force that a ruler, or any government, can muster is the voluntary mass of the citizens, then no policy can be pursued to which the mass of the citizens does not consent. Thus, the military adventures, and social enginnering within the military, of the Clinton Presidency have resulted in poor retention and recruitment rates. In the voluntary military, this indicates that something is wrong. The fear that it endangers national security leads many to think that conscription should be reintroduced. This, however, treats one evil with another evil. The truth is that the regular military is too large anyway, but that even so it could be easily maintained without the discouraging actions into which the military has been sent and the oppressive social policies for which the military was made a laboratory.

The voluntary military is therefore a check and a balance against foolish government. At the same time, good government sometimes requires that the people be led rather than just followed. When Neville Chamberlain decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to Hitler, ridiculously hoping to satisfy all his desires, public opinion, equally foolish, was behind him completely. But the appeasement of Hitler violated one of Machiavelli's wisest precepts:


...one should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for war is not avoided thereby but merely deferred to one's own disadvantage. [ibid., p. 20]
The disadvantage of deferring war against Hitler was bitter and substantial. But, although we could blame this case on the sentiment of the people, rather than just on Chamberlain, Machiavelli himself said, "Government by the populace is better than government by princes" [Discourses, op.cit., p. 256]. One reason for this is stated thus:


For a licentious and turbulent populace, when a good man can obtain a hearing, can easily be brought to behave itself; but there is no one to talk to a bad prince, nor is there any remedy except the sword. [ibid., p. 256].
In the same way that a misbehaving crowd can be calmed, a foolish and ill advised populace can be directed towards wisdom by the proper leadership. This, to be sure, calls for great gifts. A Churchill or a Reagan who can rally a nation to the wise and prudent path is rare, while a demagogue who can urge the people down a foolish and improper path by pandering, like a Roosevelt or a Clinton, is more common. Which kind of leader becomes available is unfortunately left to the happenstance of history, where demagogues definitely are in greater supply.

Machiavelli's own explanation for why the righteous do not succeed as rulers is of interest.


...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. [The Prince, op.cit., p. 56]
Similarly,


It follows, then, that a wise prince cannot and should not keep his pledge when it is against his interest to do so and when his reasons for making the pledge are no longer operative. If all men were good, this would be a bad precept, but since they are evil and would not keep a pledge to you, then you need not keep yours to them. [ibid., p. 62]
Now, if a prince knew that an ally was not evil, but good and faithful, it would certainly be foolish to break faith and estrange such a one, except in extraordinary circumstances. The assumption that most princes, and men, however, will simply act out of self-interest is not likely to lead one too far astray. Interestingly, a determination to break faith with those who break faith sounds very much like the "tit for tat" strategy in game theory, where good faith is rewarded with good faith, and bad faith with bad faith. That approach makes for a prince, or a leader, who is neither treacherous nor a sucker, who is faithful to the faithful but on guard and prepared against the unfaithful. It was one of the most painful aspects of Neville Chamberlain's naivety that he actually perceived Adolf Hitler as a man of good faith. His disillusionment came far too late to catch Hitler before he had acquired such advantages as made the war as desperate a business as it proved to be.

There is nothing easy or happy about the dilemmas of statecraft. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but it often demands uncommon wisdom to recognize a desperate situation and to know what actually is necessary. Caiaphas cannot be expected to have believed that Jesus was the Son of God. What he can be expected to appreciate is the overwhelming force of Roman power and the danger of the rebellion that was always simmering just below the surface in Judea, urged on by many Messianic figures much like Jesus. His reasons and actions in that respect are not open to serious reproach. Nor can the comparable actions of any political figure. Churchill was right that Bolshevism should have been "strangled in its cradle." That the means and will were not available for that is one thing, that the Soviet Union was accepted by Roosevelt as a progressive and democratic regime, which could be trusted to occupy Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, is another thing -- a foolish and idiotic thing, which condemned thousands to hopeless torture and death and many more to poverty and tyranny for decades. Only Truman awakened to the danger, to the continuing disgust of the Left. Similarly disillusioned, somewhat too late again, was Jimmy Carter.

The hardest thing to accept may be that there are moral dilemmas and that often choices must be made between good ends and what otherwise would be the dictates of justice and righteousness. A naive gullibility, like that of Wilson, Roosevelt, or Carter, is ultimately of no benefit to justice, when those who are treacherous by preference triumph over those who would rather lose than respond in kind. Machiavelli is still supreme as the sage and theorist of what is required in such real, unforgiving historical situations.