Andrei Sinyavsky [“Abram Tertz”]: Strolls with Pushkin. Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy translation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Originally published in The Rumson Reporter, August 1994.

 

Andrei Sinyavsky rivals Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as Russia’s most eminent living writer, although Solzhenitsyn is far better known in the United States. Like Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavksy spent time in a Soviet jail (for “anti-Soviet agitation”) and in exile. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, he is that rare bird, a Russian liberal democrat. He often uses the pen name “Abram Tertz”—camouflage he assumed under the Soviet regime.

Aleksandr Pushkin, more or less unanimously acclaimed as the Russian poet of the nineteenth century, had his own run-ins with the political authorities of the day, suffering the humiliating semi-protection of Czar Nicholas. Pushkin died in a duel wherein he had the good fortune to be shot by a foreigner, thereby arousing strong patriotic passions in his countrymen, passions that have attached themselves to his name ever since. From the Christian Czarist Fyodor Dostoevsky to propagandists in the pay of the Comintern, Russians routinely appropriate Pushkin for their (cross-)purposes.

In writing on Pushkin, Sinyavsky continues this tradition and addresses two principal themes, relevant both to Pushkin’s circumstance and his own. What constitutes freedom in Russia? What constitutes Russianness?

As Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy writes in her informative introduction, Synyavsky’s Strolls with Pushkin continues his closing speech at his 1966 trial. She notes that Pushkin, a political dissident, a probable atheist, a devotee of French culture who had an ancestor who was an Abyssinian prince, does not at first appear to be a prime candidate for First Icon of Russian Literature. But such is the freedom of artistic plasticity that he has become that, in the hands of writers who would have loathed him in life.

Sinyavsky wants to save Pushkin from the hands of self-serving political cultists. Sinyavsky doesn’t want to worship Pushkin; he wants to stroll with him, an activity Pushkin himself would have much preferred to gestures of adoration. Strolling is leisurely, convivial, free—everything Russian politics so notoriously is not. Sinyavsky’s Pushkin is “an elusive and ubiquitous No Man”—that is to say, a comic Odysseus, not a tragic Achilles. “Lightness is the first thing,” the “condition of creativity”; Pushkin “turned lolling about into a matter of principle.” (Work is the opiate of the masses: You can’t subvert Marxism-Leninism more radically than that. Hence Sinyavsky’s funny line in a 1959 essay, What Is Soviet Realism?: “There is nothing to be done”—a dig at Lenin’s famous pamphlet, What Is to Be Done?). Flighty, womanizing, frivolous, Pushkin “touched on forbidden topics and secret subjects with free and easy grace.” He is the antidote to heavy, Russian sober-sidedness, from Dostoevsky/Solzhenitsyn in literature to Lenin/Stalin/Brezhnev in politics.

Sinyavsky’s Pushkin is an anti-Machiavelli. For all his lightness of touch, Machiavelli proposed a grim project, the conquest of Fortune by means of tyrannical princes and contentious republicans unassisted by God. Villainy, Sinyavsky writes, “originates in vain attempts to correct fate arbitrarily, to impose the principle of envy on fate through blood and deception,” force and fraud. “The free man strolls,” Pushkin said, he does not seek domination. Pushkin is a Russian Epicurean.

The problem with too-serious people, Sinyavsky argues, is that they have too damn many purposes or, worse still, one overriding one. In order to free himself from the tyranny of other people’s purposes, Sinyavsky’s Pushkin advances no cause, imposes no goals and indeed proposes none. He writes about nothing or, what is the same thing, about everything that is a trifle. Life is flux, but orderly flux—the change of seasons more than the shuffling or clash of atoms. Pushkin “became a poet the way some people become tramps,” with no grand project in view, “prefer[ring] solitude under shady bows to heroic deeds,” living the life of the “parasite and renegade.” “Pushkin all his life remained a lycée student,” hanging out with the guys and chasing girls. “Parasite” and “renegade” have been standard terms of abuse under the Soviet regime, as in “social parasites” (the bourgeoisie and its sympathizers, real or alleged) and “the renegade Trotsky,” targeted for murder by agents of Joseph Stalin, Man of Steel.

Sinyavsky’s book is delightful (although, predictably and perhaps even designedly, it gives Solzhenitsyn indigestion). It also poses a (pardon the word) serious problem with respect to Russian liberalism.

“Pushkin was the first civilian to attract attention to himself in Russian literature. A civilian in the fullest sense of the word, not a diplomat, not a secretary, a nobody. A goldbricker. A deadbeat. But he made more noise than any military man.” True, but a private noisemaker is likely to be heard and thus no longer private. Nor is he yet a citizen. A poet produces forms, makes something, and therefore implicates himself in the practice of ruling—if only indirectly, by influencing the cultural atmosphere—whether he wants to or not. “The poet is a czar,” Sinyavsky’s Pushkin recognizes. Poetry is a “despot.” It ordains. Religion traditional serves as a frame for governments, a subject for poetry; in a secularized society art becomes a substitute for religion.

Yet Sinyavsky doesn’t want art to rule. He wants it to stroll, he wants it as an expression of freedom. He needs to set Pushkin free of all his cultists, but also needs to set him free of Sinyavsky. He wants freedom from the tyranny of all purposes. His policy amounts to a comprehensive détente or relaxation, in the hope that vigilant despots will also relax, loosen their Machiavellian grip on their subjects. His kind of declaration of independence might not provoke a war for independence in which his side would be defenseless against the Soviet regime.

This may be possible for Rousseau, in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker, precisely because he is solitary, outside of civil society. But take a convivial stroll with someone, even so free a spirit as Pushkin, and a destination will creep in, rules of engagement will be formulated. Solitary freedom will inevitably give way to civil liberty.

Without an idea of civil liberty, Russian liberalism does not know how to govern. Which is why Russian liberals will always be an endangered species.

It may be that Sinyavsky wants first to help Russians recover the experience of freedom simply, before going on to think about civil liberty and republican government. It is not easy to see, however, that he can get there from here.

Kirk Emmert: Winston S. Churchill on Empire. Durham: Carolina Academic Press and the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, 1989.

 

Winston Churchill claimed, “There is no halfway house for Britain between greatness and ruin” (3). In fact there is; its current proprietor is Margaret Thatcher. Britain has lost and gained: markets replaced colonies; Englishness replaced ‘civilization’; corporations replaced viceroys. If household management or economics has not quite replaced politics, the mold that shaped Churchill has broken. There is no halfway house for a Churchill between greatness and ruin.

Americans think of Churchill as a wartime ally against rightist tyranny and a peacetime ally against leftist tyranny—as a courageous prophet of liberty honored, finally, in his native land. Churchill’s defense of the British Empire strikes Americans as contradictory to this spirit, something to be deplored or at best apologized for. Professor Emmert’s study has the merit of recognizing that Churchill’s “commitment to empire was central” to his political career (xi). Emmert shows that Churchill commitment arose not from mere traditionalism or even from ambition, simply, but from an “aristocratic or Aristotelian” understanding of the demands and responsibilities of political life (xvi).

“True” imperialism develops both “manhood” and commerce in the imperial nation (1)—two qualities not easy to combine. By renouncing its Continental ambitions and building the strongest navy in the world, Britain increased its own security and encouraged limited government in England while freeing the army for overseas conquests. Continental nations expended substantial public revenues on self-defense; the British navy defended the island nation inexpensively, leaving money available for private investment and international commerce. The navy protected British shipping and forcibly opened new markets. Military ‘necessity’ refocused, from national defense to imperial defense. Imperial defense requires expansion, as increased territory increases the scope of security needs. “[W]ar and change, not peace and permanence, are the constant companions of empire” (8). A moderate, civilized empire must “pursue a policy which is difficult to distinguish from that of an aggressive, intentionally expansive nation.” Even a civilized empire “must act in much the same manner as a tyrant” (9). Nor did Churchill try to hide under the cloak of ‘necessity’; he freely observed that the natural desire “to be predominant” fans imperialist ambitions. Civilization “restrains and rechannels these instincts into more pacific activities, but it cannot eliminate or fully control them” (10).

Churchill parted from Machiavelli in upholding an “eternal standard of right and wrong independent of and superior to climate, custom, and caprice” (11), a standard beckoning citizens to honor. Honor is a mean between “narrow self-interest and moralistic excess” (12). “Churchill proposed civilizing empire as the cure to the disease of tyrannizing empire” (13), of which he saw three kinds during his career: the “scientific barbarism” of the Kaiser’s Germany; the “animal form of barbarism” of Bolshevik Russia; and the racist barbarism of Nazi Germany (15). Barbarism begins with human life itself. A pre-political war of “all against all” reflects mankind’s “strong aboriginal propensity to kill” (16). Primitive peoples lack shame and moral indignation, engage in treachery and violence, and cannot reason. They emerge from the most primitive barbarism when, tiring of perpetual insecurity, they establish tyrannies In their credulity, primitive men also give way to “religious fanaticism grounded in a claim of prophetic revelation” (17); this religion impedes civilization’s development by encouraging “degraded sensualism” and by retarding the mental faculties (17). As civilization develops, however, intelligence usually outruns morality, leading once again to barbarism.

Churchill considers courage to be the foundation of civilized or fully human life. Courage is “the first of all human qualities” because it “guarantees all the others” (19). The courage of barbarians is reckless or “wild courage”—passionate, unruly, rash (20). Civilized courage is calm, a sign of self-mastery and endurance. “In the civilized man, Churchill suggests, reason rules the bodily desires and man’s spiritedness. Thus, under stress, the civilized man is persevering, serene, deliberate, self-controlled and proudly self-sufficient” (22). Habituation forms civilized courage; the force of discipline and of circumstances supplement habit. Habit should be reinforced by vanity, the desire to establish a good reputation, but this must not be overemphasized, as it will promote timidity in the face of public disapproval. The sentiment of nobility, whereby “vanity is transformed into justifiable pride” (25), best anchors habitual courage. The moral importance of habituation figures largely in Aristotle, as does the definition of virtue as the mean between two extremes, two vices; and of course the distinction between civilization and barbarism runs through ancient Greece generally.

Churchill recognized that the increasing egalitarianism of modern civilization threatened these Aristotelian virtues. He therefore “stressed increasingly in his speeches and more popular writings the kinship of civilization and freedom or self-government” (25). Attempting to preserve as much of the older moral order as possible, he traced British rights, liberties, and constitutional safeguards to “ancient Greece and Rome” (26); he represented the Roman Empire in Britain as “a golden age for Britain” (9), a time when the British themselves benefited morally and politically from rule by civilized imperialists. The virtues of justice, prudence, moderation or self-government, and goodwill or toleration, along with civilized courage, make individual and political freedom possible; most of these are classical virtues. Christianity too has its place, because “philosophy”—these are Churchill’s words—”cannot convince the bullet” (129, n. 81). Praying and belief in providence may not convince the bullet, either, but they serve as helps to steady the man facing the bullet. “Churchill understood that the morality that guided the [British] Empire and the rest of the civilized West had both classical and Christian roots” (29); although the statesman will conduct himself according to the classical standard of gentlemanly honor, he will also nourish Christianity as “the most politically salutary religion available to modern civilized statesmen” (30). Modern science also needs cultivation; even more it needs restraint. “The first civilization that has indissolvably married human excellence and physical power rather than leaving them to come together occasionally and by chance” (31) must take care that scientific or intellectual development does not overwhelm moral virtues, destroying the conditions of its own existence.”

Emmert discusses Churchill’s view of civilizing empire’s effect on rulers and the ruled. “[A]ll human  beings have an obligation to improve themselves which takes precedence over any rights they might claim to liberty or self-government” (33); primitive contentment is no more fully human than is primitive strife, and both prevent or retard the development of civilization. “The precariousness of [the] natural way to civilization, its long duration, and the likelihood it might miscarry led Churchill to reject it in principle as an alternative to imperial rule” (34). Empire as it were assists nature by “rapidly increasing capital wealth and by expanding human desires” (36), first by encouraging small entrepreneurs, then larger scale commercial projects. At the same time modern civilization’s technology goes beyond assistance to the subjugation of nature for use by man. Capital investment should be limited to avoid exploitation; Churchill preferred a limited state socialism, limited because an excessively powerful local government would overawe the native population and demand independence from the Empire—break the civilizational bonds that alone justify empire. Christian missionaries posed an especially difficult problem; Churchill applauded them only in such places as Uganda, where they cooperated fully with the imperial government.

Altruism and philanthropy should not move imperial rulers. Nor should selfishness. “At its best, empire is not a burden to be endured,” or a tyranny to be exploited, “but an opportunity for individual and national self-improvement” (53). Barbarians have no intrinsic rights; rather, civilized nations owe it to themselves to treat barbarians justly. In this, Churchill found himself opposed by the democrats and state socialists who gained power after the First World War. Democrats reduced politics to economics, “denied that man was a political animal” (55). Socialists sought to politicize the private. Churchill defined politics in two distinct, complementary ways: as a means of collective action to satisfy the individual’s need for security and well-being; as an effort to realize the distinctively human potential for reasoning and reasoned speech. Imperialism satisfied man’s political nature in both senses, immediately for the rulers and ruled with respect to ‘low’ politics, and immediately for rulers, eventually for the ruled with respect to ‘high’ politics. Empire “calls forth certain virtues, and ths a specific type of human being” (63). Its ordinary citizens strengthen their self-respect; its extraordinary citizens fulfill their magnanimity, their great-souledness in the Aristotelian sense. Empire counterbalanced the leveling effects of mass democracy. “[S]ince the maintenance [of Empire] necessitated a considerably greater degree of moral and political virtue from the nation’s foremost citizens, in looking up to these leaders the British citizenry was taught to admire the considerable virtue they embodied” (64). For the foremost citizens themselves, “ruling imperially” afforded the chance to achieve the fullest humanity by engaging in “the fully civilizing activity” (64).

“By the late 1920s, Churchill had concluded that the coming of mass democracy had transformed and degraded British politics” (70). Majoritarianism replaced deliberation and consent, and “the advent of political equality undermined [the] conventional acknowledgements of political authority which in the best cases were indications of natural preeminence and in most cases made mediocrity more serviceable” (71). As technology purveyed mass tastes, politics itself became more ‘technical’ or technocrat; middle and lower classes improved their standard of living but declined in the exercise of civic liberty, prudence, and initiative. In Churchill’s metaphor, the British political system liquefied. Institutions, hierarchy, structure weakened against the ebb and flow of public passions. Churchill attempted to use imperialism as a bulwark against this tide, but as the spirit of party triumphed over the spirit of Parliament, the Empire itself became a bone of political contention. A politics of individual rights and self-interest overcame the politics of honor and “noble self-regard” (81). “[I]t was not possible for long to rule according to ‘new principles’ at home but ‘old principles’ abroad” (85). Churchill gradually came to hope for a British Empire of self-governing dominions, a “voluntary association of like-minded nations” or “English-speaking peoples” (99)—less a political than a cultural empire modeled on Demosthenes’ pan-Hellenism.

The tension in Churchill’s thought between “his acceptance of human equality” and “his admiration for excellence and for the accomplishments of the unequal few” would have disappeared had he “fully embraced on principle or the other.” “This Churchill would not do, probably because he thought that neither in itself reflected the full truth about human nature” (107). The limitations of imperial rule reflect the contradictions of politics itself, limitations and contradiction of politics itself, limitations and contradictions suggesting that political life is not the human life, at least not simply or comprehensively. For Churchill this truth led to an appreciation of the powers of observation and memory called for by painting. Churchill also “noted a certain similarity between a philosopher and the uncivilized” man (37)—both of whom enjoy their leisure and want few things. He called the uncivilized man an “unconscious philosopher” (37). Philosophers might well be grateful to Churchill, and in their own way return his admiration. In opposing tyrannies masquerading as final knowledge about human things, Churchill protected philosophy from lapsing into a state of unconsciousness, that is to say barbarism, perhaps even from a death that would have killed the soul instead of liberating it from the body. And there may be more. Professor Harry V. Jaffa, who contributes an illuminating Foreword to this volume, has spoken of the way the example of Churchill’s statesmanship could inspirit a philosopher’s soul in dark times, leading the philosopher to reconsider the classical philosophers who distinguish political from philosophic life without segregating them. Professor Emmert’s thoughtful scholarship, so profoundly at odds with current academic passions and prejudices, brings Churchill’s example to view, not vividly and partially as his own writings did, but wholly or essentially, delivered from the partisan distortions of his time and ours.

By the end of 1989, reunification of the two German regimes—the Federal Republic of Germany (‘West Germany’) and the German Democratic Republic (‘East Germany’) had become both highly probable and controversial. At the end of World War II, Soviet-occupied East Germany was ruled by Stalin, through an especially brutal and efficient local Communist Party, whereas West Germany became a commercial republic, albeit with a strong presence of American, French, and British military forces on the ground—the nucleus of the NATO alliance. Although the former capital city, Berlin, was located entirely within the East German sector, it was itself divided between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ section; eventually, the Communist regime built the Berlin Wall as a means of preventing their subjects from escaping to the West.

As the Soviet empire began to collapse in 1989, it became clear that divided Germany was no longer tenable. However, memories of the Nazi tyranny and two world wars died hard, and several heads of state opposed reunification. These included Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir, who raised fears of another Holocaust, and, more realistically, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterand, who could not bring themselves to relish the prospect of a newly-empowered Germany in the heart of Europe. Thatcher and Mitterand also worried that German reunification would damage Russian political support for Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom they had established a comfortable working relationship. This proved not at all unrealistic, as the loss of the Soviet empire did indeed tend to undermine Gorbachev, who would not survive German reunification for very long.

In December 1989, I wrote the following essay on reunification, which was distributed by Dawn Publishing Company, a firm in Quebec, Canada, to a network of readers interested in international politics.

 

With respect to German reunification, whatever our opinions may be, things will proceed regardless of what non-Germans think. If the Germans want reunification, they will have it. The only power on earth that can stop them is the Soviet Union.. German reunification, at the price of German neutrality in the Cold War, has been a Soviet goal all along. Why should the Kremlin intervene now? I expect them to bargain hard for concessions with respect not only to neutrality but NATO troops.

If he can accomplish that, Gorbachev will thereby consolidate his power. He will be able to say to his critics: ‘My honey caught more flies in a few years than your vinegar did in nearly four decades. Now, if you want to oust me and eliminate my reforms, do you really intend to reconquer eastern Europe? Because if you do not reconquer eastern Europe, reinstating the old system here at home will only serve to impoverish us still further, as we will lack colonies to exploit.’

Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir opposes German reunification. But should he?

Let’s step back for a moment and consider what the disintegration of communism in eastern Europe may mean, in terms of political principles. By now it is clear that thinkers of the twentieth century have yet to discover a single new political principle, although some modern tyrannies have invented the institutional and technological means to enhance the power of tyranny so much as to merit a new term, ‘totalitarian,’ to describe them. (Twentieth-century political thinkers have discovered, or, more precisely, systematized one new political method: Gandhiism or nonviolent resistance, as distinguished from Christian nonresistance. But this method has been used entirely at the service of principles or ideas that predated it—e.g., nationalism in India, the extension of full citizenship to African-Americans, and so on.) This century has instead served as a sort of laboratory in which two rival sets of political hypotheses were tested. ‘Laboratory’ is a metaphor that misses the absence of any control, scientific or other, over the various experiments that have occurred, but let it stand.

The great commercial-republican political philosophers (Locke, Montesquieu, Smith) sought to end the religious strife that had wracked Christian Europe. They formulated new institutions designed to re-channel religio-military spiritedness into business affairs and representative government. The solution works, generally speaking; commercial republics still have wars, but never with one another. As a by-product, commercial republicanism diluted anti-Jewish hatred, legitimizing the financial and commercial function Jews had been more or less forced into by the Christian churches by effectually repealing strict laws against ‘usury.’ Jewish people know this; since the Enlightenment, many of them have adopted some form of ‘liberalism.’

Hegel and other nineteenth-century Germans despised this ‘philosophy of shopkeepers.’ In this they followed but also radicalized Kant, who followed Rousseau, that great modern anti-bourgeois. The German ideologies of nationalism, communism, and racism are little more than vulgarized versions of Hegelianism. Sometimes they compete with one another, accusing each other of ‘bourgeois reaction’ (Bolshevism’s critique of fascism) or ‘Jewishness’ (Nazism’s counter-charge against Bolshevism). At least as often, they cooperate, as in the Soviet Union, where Jew-hatred and anti-‘capitalism’ mix quite easily, as indeed they also do in Marx’s essay, “On the Jewish Question.” According to the Germans and their disciples worldwide, the concept of ‘History’—said to be profound, comprehensive, and dynamic—must replace the concept of modern natural right—based upon the ‘state of nature,’ which ideologists of the ‘German’ schools condemn as ‘ahistorical’ in two senses: it is fiction, and it is static, unable to account for change.

Historicists have looked forward to the confirmation of their hypothesis (where else?) in history. This is precisely what history has denied them. Real history, that is, experience, vindicates the allegedly superficial ‘eighteenth-century thought’ and proves the deep-thinking ‘nineteenth-century’ profoundly wrong. Experience, not theory, shows that there really is a state of nature, a place of war and scarcity which reappears whenever tyrants seize power in the name of some grand idea-scheme. Experience, not theory, shows that real economic dynamism comes from commercial republicanism, not from the destructive dynamics of the Nazis or the Byzantine immobility of the very ‘progressive’ U. S. S. R., whose only capacity to effect change has been as midwife to subversion in poverty-stricken despotisms. ‘Midwife’ again is the wrong metaphor; after all, the offspring bears the genetic traits of the Soviet system as much as the less indecent traits of the unfortunate mother country.

A united, commercial-republican Germany, surrounded by other commercial republics, signifies the practical refutation of ‘Germanism.’ Friends of freedom should work to ensure that ‘Germans’ the world over understand this, and do not forget it. Commercial-republic Europe will face to potential threats, one external, the other internal. Gorbachev recently reaffirmed his adherence to communism. His giant empire may rest its ambitions; it will not abandon them until it ceases to be an empire. Unless and until the Soviets become commercial republicans, Europe will be at hazard. In the meantime, if NATO and the Warsaw Pact both dissolve, the Soviets will increase their relative power, given their obvious geopolitical advantage over the United States: access to Europe by land.

Internally, the religious toleration commercial republicanism enforces often leads to a flaccid toleration of anti-republican political movements; moral relativism and spirited nihilism unwittingly collaborate. To some extent, ‘Germanism’ arose because commercial republicanism could not offer the intense spiritual satisfactions found in the religiously-buttressed despotisms and constitutional monarchies it replaced. These satisfactions were perverted or ‘secularized’ by the anti-religious ideologies that partially replaced Christianity and Judaism in the West. To a certain degree, this is inevitable. The United States houses all manner of bizarre cults; the best that can be said is, none of them gets very far. Therefore, strong religious institutions will remain indispensable as shields against both moral indifferentism and fanaticism. Easter Europe, as in the United States of 1787, has seen churches that fight for commercial republicanism, in the knowledge that it will lead them in peace. They must also learn better to guard themselves against the temptations inherent in the commercial-republican way of life.

The fear associated with German reunification is that Christian religious revival can include Jew-hatred. This is where Israel can seize what Herr Hegel would call a world-historical opportunity. As the only commercial republic in the Mideast with unique historical links to Germany, to Eastern Europe, and to Russia, Israel should reverse Shamir’s position and endorse German reunification. In doing so, however, it must make clear that Jews and Christians can flourish within commercial-republican regimes. ‘Never again’ must Jews or Christians entertain ideologies that subvert this regime. Such ideologies cause holocausts.

As it happens, Muslims do not seem nearly so ‘compatible’ with commercial republicanism. The only other commercial republic in the Mideast was Lebanon, ruled by a Christian minority; it disintegrated under pressure from Muslims. This raises questions about the capacity of the PLO to bring genuine self-government anywhere. What, exactly, does the PLO intend to establish in ‘Palestine’? A ‘democratic,’ secular state, they say, but given the abuses the word ‘democracy’ suffers (as in ‘German Democratic Republic’), it is impossible to view this rhetorical smoke with anything other than suspicion. The intifada, which is nothing less than an attempt to ‘Lebanonize’ Israel, can and must be suppressed as part of a comprehensive plan to defend not merely ‘the Jewish state’ (a concept many non-Jews will quite understandably view with indifference) but commercial republicanism, and therefore peace, in the Mideast.

A strong statement of support for German national aspirations under a commercial-republican regime can win friends in Germany and the United States, so long as that statement intelligently clarifies the character of those aspirations. Far more important, it would provide a chance to set forth a standard or a framework for a genuine political settlement, by establishing the point that Israel is the model for Mideast politics. Israeli officials never say what would need to happen in the surrounding states in order to establish a just and lasting peace. The lesson of North America, the lesson of Europe, is, ‘If you want peace, surround yourself with commercial republics.’ This puts the pressure on the Muslim regimes, where it belongs. It enables statesmen, journalists, clergy, and other interested persons to ask the Muslims, ‘What are you doing, concretely, to promote peace in the one proven and lasting way, the way of commercial republicanism?’ In such an atmosphere, an Israeli proposal to partition both Lebanon and Jordan so as to produce four commercial republics in those two countries, would be quite reasonable. Realistic? Of course not. But why not? Because too many Muslims want theocracy more than they want peace. Indeed, the define ‘peace,’ Islam, as theocracy. The world does not yet sufficiently appreciate this. But now that the world does finally acknowledge the benefits of commercial republicanism, it can begin to appreciate it.

Unfortunately, Israel’s social-democratic founders were themselves too ‘German,’ and many of its leading politicians continue to be. Socialism and/or nationalism has preoccupied them. For this reason, Israelis today tend to obscure the issues in their own minds. They worry about a reunified Germany on nationalist grounds, instead of seeing the opportunities it presents politically. They tend to think more in terms of ‘Germans-versus-Jews’ than in terms of tyranny versus commercial republicanism. The example of the Weimar Republic—the ill-conceived product of a punitive war settlement—should not be taken as decisive. When Israelis do appeal to ‘fellow democrats’ around the world they are too sentimental, too vulnerable to the claim that they contradict themselves by opposing a ‘Palestinian’ state. Luckily for them, Muslims are even more muddled, and send even more violently mixed signals.