F.A. Voigt argued that both Communism and National Socialism were revolutionary secular religions that sought to render unto Caesar that which is God’s — that is, to transform religious promises into worldly reality — and that Britain had to act, within realistic constraints, to save the Commonwealth:
The greatest extension of international, social, and religious peace ever achieved has been achieved within the British Commonwealth. Throughout a quarter of the world the satanic forces that engender war and revolution are curbed, thanks to the Pax Britannica, with which a benevolent Providence has associated the Pax Americana and the Pax Gallica.
The Pax Europaica is one of these ideals that transcend practical statesmanship, which is necessarily short-sighted and bent on the fulfillment of immediate tasks. Excessively far-sighted statesmanship may be very dangerous, and to pursue an international ideal by political means is to invite a general catastrophe.
The Pax Europaica would certainly be in the interest of the British Commonwealth, but to enforce it is beyond the power of the Commonwealth (we often forget that the greatest power — even the power of the Commonwealth — is limited). England is under the absolute necessity of defending western Europe because that defense is self-defense. That necessity imposes a terrible burden and is attended by fearful dangers. The burden and the dangers must be borne, but to augment them in the pursuit of an ideal that is, in any case, unattainable in so short a time as one generation, would be madness. The Pax Britannica would be shaken and, perhaps, fall to pieces, British vital interests would suffer profound and perhaps irretrievable injury, and the ideal would certainly not be achieved but would, in all likelihood, be buried forever in the irretrievable ruin.
This passage, in Mencius Moldbus’s opinion, approaches greatness:
The true lover of peace will be more concerned with peace in the concrete than peace in the abstract; with defending his and his country’s peace, rather than with chimerical schemes for extending peace beyond the limits of the possible. He will always reflect whether its extension beyond the frontiers of his own country will be an extension not of peace, but of war. Even a seemingly small extension of peace may be dangerous, as the extension of the Pax Britannica to western Europe is. Inherent in universal peace is the menace of universal war — “indivisible peace” is “indivisible war.”
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The modern effort to establish universal peace is perhaps for this reason mainly an English effort. After the armistice, the English experienced a prodigious revulsion against war. But they also felt an island security which could no longer be menaced, seeing that the German fleet had been destroyed. Their pacifism acquired a messianic character — they were less concerned with saving their fellow-countrymen than with saving all mankind from war. Their own security made them more accessible than any other nations to utopian dreams of universal peace — and blinder to the danger inherent in such utopian dreams.
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Monstrous proposals, like the proposal to create an international air force that would emerge — from some Alpine stronghold, presumably — and bomb the cities of the alleged aggressor, found a considerable following in the post-war years. Such inhuman phantasmagoria had an affinity with the secular religions of the European continent. Indeed, English militant pacifism had something in common with the Marxian dreams of a universal realm of peace, justice and well-being. As we have seen, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth is inseparable from its own opposite. It can only come about by violence.The threat of universal war as a means of establishing universal peace is a peculiarly English conception that has crystallized in the doctrine of “sanctions.” This doctrine is analogous to the doctrine of the proletarian dictatorship which would establish social peace by making class-war permanent and universal. “Sanctions” are the counterpart of the revolutionary terror — the purpose of either is peace, but the effect of both is the consolidation, through war or the threat of war (whether between classes or nations), of power in the hands of those hold it.
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To erect the “punishment of the aggressor” into a general system would be to concentrate immense power into a few hands and establish an abominable and universal tyranny. In nothing is the evil inherent in universal systems of enforced morality more evident than in the doctrine of “sanctions.”
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There is no reason to suppose that a universal system of “sanctions” would abolish war even for a time. One evil would be replaced by a greater evil. Private wars would be abolished — only world wars would be allowed.
England, Voigt emphasizes, is the only Great Power exposed to the permanent danger of total and permanent defeat in war:
The United States have absolute security. They are exposed neither to blockade, nor invasion, nor attack from the air. Not one of their vital interests can be menaced. Unless their whole fleet engages in some rash enterprise far from its bases, they are safe from major defeat. And even major defeat would not expose them to conquest by a foreign foe. The United States can never be less than a Great Power.
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Of all the Great Powers, England is the most vulnerable. On her armed strength depends her own existence — and the existence of others. She can never share the enviable state of the small countries on the north-western fringe of Europe. Without her, these countries would be threatened with extinction. If it were not for the British command of the sea, Holland would be absorbed by Germany, and her colonial empire would be at the mercy of Japan. It is very doubtful whether Denmark would exist at all if she were not situated on the fringe of the Pax Britannica. Norway and Sweden have a certain security in their remoteness — but the security of Norway, at least, is made doubly secure because England could not tolerate an alien conquest or penetration that would give a foreign navy the use of the Norwegian coast.
Belgium cannot exist as an independent nation without Britain and France. It is not even sure that Swiss independence would survive if the Swiss had not the French for neighbors and the French had not the English for allies.
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England’s general interest is in the national independence of existing States within their present frontiers and therefore, in the European status quo. But that interest is not so vital that she can make every change in that status a casus belli. Indeed no change in the territorial status anywhere in Europe, except in the west and in the Mediterranean area, can be a casus belli for England. But so delicate is the European equilibrium and so far-reaching may the consequences be if it is upset, that any territorial change anywhere in Europe may, by involving other Powers (especially France), lead to a situation so full of danger that she must always reserve to herself the possibility of intervening in defense of her vital interests.
Nor is the question purely political. The triumph of the militant, imperialistic Powers would promote the spread of protection and of tied economies. German expansion in central and eastern Europe would extend the area of German “self-sufficiency.” Whether Germany achieves political domination, or even a decisive political and commercial influence, tariffs and systems of quotas, subsidies and import and export licenses are promoted to the advantage of Germany and to the exclusion of other countries.
Loss of trade in an area so extensive as the prospective Pan-German Empire and the zones of German ascendancy beyond the borders of that Empire would be a very serious matter for England.
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While avoiding direct intervention in the affairs of central and eastern Europe, [England] must always be able to impinge on the central and eastern European situation, using her influences and her good offices to preserve the status quo. A general anti-German policy would be excessively dangerous and costly. Any general coercive system would be fatal to England if it were to dominate her policy. Isolation would be no less fatal. Her path must run clear of a utopian universalism and an equally utopian isolationism.
This passage, Moldbug says, demonstrates the tragedy of Voigt’s liberal realism:
The principal antithesis in the world today is not between Berlin and Moscow, London or Rome, but between London and Berlin. Without this antithesis, a Pax Europaica or a United Europe would be possible.
The greatest — and perhaps unattainable — political need of Europe today is that a relationship, such as exists between London and Washington, should also exist between London, Paris and Berlin. If England, France and Germany are united, not in any federation or any centrally directed system, or indeed any system of any kind, but by virtue of a certain fundamental identity of outlook and by a common civilization (no other unity can be real), then Europe is united, and the dream of all “good Europeans,” the Pax Europaica, will have come true.
The Pax Europaica cannot be achieved by protocols or treaties, by pacts, by alliances, by mutual assistance or by the League of Nations. It can only come about through a spiritual change — in Germany, but also in France and England.
Moldbug’s reaction:
Here we see the tragedy of the British “appeasers” of the late ’30s. Between the Congress of Vienna and the rise of Germany, Britain had enjoyed effective world supremacy, as the US does now. Liberal Imperialism foundered on this rock; it could not let Germany become a world power equal to the British, for Germany was not liberal.
Yet, by opposing Germany and denying it Westphalian parity, Britain made Germany hateful and paranoid, for Germans saw themselves being treated as an inferior in a world system in which it was not just formally an equal, but economically and militarily an equal. Thus the harder Britain worked to deny Germany equality, the less deserving of that equality Germany became.
The appeasers of the ’30s inherited the final dilemma of this epic conflict. From the perspective of British interests, the right decision was clearly to abandon the Little Entente-type states created after World War I, whose adherence to democratic principles was anyway quite a bit less than stellar, and allow Germany to create her empire in the East. Yet this decision was both a release of power, which is always difficult for the powerful, and an empowerment of dangerous and illiberal forces beyond the control of Britain or anyone. Unlimited national sovereignty!
Another decision, of course, would have been to support Poland and Czechoslovakia to the hilt. This might not have restrained all future Hitlers; it probably would have restrained Hitler. But ultimately, it would have been necessary to back this bluff with actual war. Hence the course of universal peace, later followed.
But, through the natural tensions in her political system, Britain wound up following a course between these two poles, and one which was clearly worse than both. Seeking to avoid war and preserve her Empire — excuse me, “Commonwealth” — she got war, and lost her Empire. And lo, did Edgar Mowrer inherit the earth. Along with Moscow, for a time.
Here, again, is the tragedy of Voigt’s liberal realism. He dabbles with actual, real realism — and rejects it. He ends up, with Mowrer, trying to convert Germany to “good thinking.” That this can only be done with bombs, and that it can only end in the death of the British Empire, he at some level knows; but he cannot reject his geopolitics, his commercial advantage, his trade routes, all the cant of late Imperialism. Hence the war sucks him and his country in.