The answer to those first two questions is another one
\n‘Are you kidding me?’<\/p>\n
Prudence Is a Virtue<\/a> Joe Biden has me thinking about Aristotle.<\/p>\n If that seems odd\u2014and I understand that it does\u2014consider Biden\u2019s much publicized remarks last week at a Democratic fundraiser about \u201cArmageddon.\u201d Referring to Vladimir Putin\u2019s veiled but increasingly strident\u00a0threats<\/a>\u00a0to use \u201call the means at our disposal\u201d to defend Russian territorial integrity, Biden went full-Cuban missile crisis on the assembled members of the great Democratic ATM: \u201cWe have not,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a>, \u201cfaced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Hmm.<\/p>\n Granted, the idea is preposterous in about 87 different ways. But perhaps Biden\u2019s speechwriters wanted to plant a seed. Anyway, we are probably meant to keep JFK in the back of our minds.<\/p>\n Biden did not actually cite the\u00a0Book of Revelation<\/i>, which\u00a0identifies Armageddon<\/a>\u00a0as the site of the final battle between good and evil at the end of the world, but I have no doubt that the word \u201cArmageddon\u201d was echoing loudly down the corridors of the Kremlin. That, I am pretty sure, was by design. Did it have Putin polishing the launch apparatus on some of his 6000 nukes? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Probably, though, Putin\u2019s lips were pursed when he heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president and celebrated T-shirt model, call upon NATO to conduct \u201cpreventative action<\/a>\u201d against Russian targets to prevent their use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.<\/p>\n I thought it was cute that Zelenskyy\u2019s translator first said \u201cpreventative strikes\u201d before correcting himself and substituting \u201cpreventative action.\u201d<\/p>\n Another seed planted. Was it deliberate? You tell me.<\/p>\n This is the first of two places that this little\u00a0pas de deux<\/i>\u00a0(or is it\u00a0trois<\/i>?) reminded me of Aristotle.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to know much about ye olde Stagirite to know that he had some interesting things to say about the idea of causation. When we ask about the cause of something, he noted, there are several things we might mean. I won\u2019t go into that\u00a0interesting discussion<\/a>\u00a0here but will note that in common parlance, when we ask what causes X, we are asking what brings X about.<\/p>\n Often, the answer to that question involves several things, some less obvious than others. What caused World War I? German aggression? Unwise alliances and security guarantees in the West? The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand? All of those and more?<\/p>\n In this sense, when we are thinking about what is happening\u2014and what might happen\u2014in Ukraine, we have an abundance of what Aristotle called \u201cefficient causes.\u201d First of all, there is Vladimir Putin. After all, he invaded Ukraine last winter and so brought about the conflict that is raging there now.<\/p>\n But as the war has unfolded, we see that there are many other causative agents at work in perpetuating and escalating the conflict. Zelenskyy has contributed his bit. So has NATO by suggesting that anyone, except Russia, might be a good candidate for that boy\u2019s club. And so has the Biden Administration by supplying arms and intelligence to Ukraine to carry on the fight.<\/p>\n What if that hot war gets hotter? What if Putin continues to suffer setbacks and, taking on board the belligerent rhetoric emanating from the Biden Administration, decides to use nuclear weapons? What if we intervene ourselves with nukes? Who or what will have caused that horrific eventuality<\/p>\n The answer, I think, is not as simple or straightforward as you might think. Sure, if Putin uses nukes, he can be said to have caused the conflagration. But what about statements designed to push Putin to the wall? What role will they have played?<\/p>\n Consider, to take just one example, the\u00a0recent column<\/a>\u00a0by John Bolton, unhappy chest-beating former national security advisor to Donald Trump and one of the most belligerent senior neocons on the scene today. Bolton said that \u201cThere is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia.\u201d\u00a0Regime change<\/i>. And he made it crystal clear that he would be happy for America to go to war to achieve said regime change, i.e., removal of Putin from power.<\/p>\n Like almost all leaders, Vladimir Putin will strenuously resist such efforts. Which is why Scott McKay, in an intelligent column for the\u00a0American Spectator<\/i><\/a>\u00a0about Bolton\u2019s saber-rattling effusion, included some sage advice from the venerable Sun Tzu: \u201cBuild your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across,\u201d Sun Tzu advised. That is, give Putin an attractive off-ramp. As McKay put it, \u201cA wise American leadership would be building that golden bridge for Putin, not openly plotting his downfall.\u201d Because, as Sun Tzu warned, \u201can opponent with his feet in the river will fight to the death.\u201d Often, it is worth remembering, to the death of\u00a0both<\/i>\u00a0parties.<\/p>\n \u201cA wise American leadership.\u201d Is that what we have now?<\/p>\n That question brings me to my second page from Aristotle.<\/p>\n At the center of Aristotle\u2019s ethics is the concept of \u201cprudence.\u201d The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon when his relevant audience was not a bunch of Democratic moneybags but an increasingly isolated and jumpy Russian dictator?<\/p>\n This was something that worried Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. \u201cWe must,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in response to Biden\u2019s talk of Armageddon, \u201cspeak with prudence\u201d when we speak of such matters. \u201cI have always refused to engage in political fiction,\u201d Macron continued, \u201cespecially . . . when speaking of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the time, I am not part of the French president\u2019s fan club. But I do think that he is 100 percent right in this case. It is good, peace-loving advice. It is a pity that Biden and his handlers seem less and less willing to follow it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The answer to those first two questions is another one ‘Are you kidding me?’ Prudence Is a Virtue The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon? Joe Biden has me thinking about Aristotle. If that seems odd\u2014and I understand that it … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86541,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86539\/revisions\/86541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon?<\/em><\/p>\n