Deconstructing Monsters

When I was growing up, I was taught that the common nickname for the devil, “Old Nick”, came from Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of The Prince.  I pictured him as red faced, with tiny hooves peeking out from beneath his robes.  After all, being called the devil is one thing; having the devil named for you something entirely beyond.  Then I came to read his works, and about him, and discovered he was actually an Italian patriot striving, vainly at that time, for the unification of Italy and independence from the domination of France.  And much of what he had to say made sense.

That sort of led me down the path of curiosity about other famous monsters – not in any way to excuse them, but to get a glimpse at what made them tick and created them in the first place.  For example, I discovered that Vlad Dracul the Impaler, aka Dracula, ruled amid constant threats of invasion from surrounding countries and chose to create his horrible reputation as a means of deterrence, and that Hitler blamed a Jewish surgeon for the death of his mother when he was an early teen, internalizing that as hatred for all Jews.  That in no way excuses Hitler, or Vlad, for their atrocities, but it does add dimension to the internal portraits of them that I carry about.

My wife and I just returned from a short visit with friends to Chautauqua, where the topic of the week was Pakistan, another monster we are busy creating these days.  Pakistan is the ally we love to hate.  We see Pakistan as just a little short of being itself a terrorist adversary, ruled by a fanatic military that shelters our enemies and threatens our military, while insisting we provide them with large foreign aid payments for their minimal and reluctant cooperation.  Little hooves beneath the robes are easy to imagine.  One of the fascinating things about Chautauqua though, is the speakers’ ability to provide insight by continually jumping beyond their topic.

Possibly the most interesting speaker that way was the last one, Karen Armstrong.  She is more known for her work on the interrelations of religion with culture than on things like foreign policy; in fact, she disclaimed any interest or expertise in the area, though she herself has visited Pakistan several times, serving at least as a sort of good will ambassador. She bounced her way through many topics, from the childhood of Buddha to the origins of modernity; on some I agreed with her and on others have my doubts.  Perhaps the strongest of her points was that we, as individuals and as nations, each have our unique history, not easily understood by others.  Pakistan, for example, was the home of Akbar the Great, roughly a contemporary with Elizabeth I of England; Akbar was the Mughal emperor who conquered most of northern and central India and ushered in a golden age.  He was famed for his tolerance, and though he himself was Muslim, his court advisors included Hindus and Jesuit representatives of the Pope.  Revered by Pakistanis as a founder of the nation, he himself struggled with pacifying Pashtu’s and with maintaining a delicate internal balance of power.  In other words, what we see as a contrary attitude on the part of Pakistan, they see as a way of life they have dealt with for centuries.  They have struggled with India through the ages. Though they have Islamic fanatics as they have had for centuries, they also have tolerant moderates, as they also have had for centuries.  Their internal priorities include maintaining a balance between them, which at times causes us to grit our teeth, and an uneasy peace with India.

The other key point Armstrong made was the importance, when thinking about the nation-state of Pakistan, of distinguishing between the nation and the state.  The nation is the repository of our national identity that stirs our patriotic passions; the state is the vehicle for the moderating rule of government that enables us to get along both with ourselves and with other nation-states without recourse to violence.  Our need in dealing with Pakistan is to strengthen the role of civilian government and to avoid creating vacuums that give chaotic outlet to national passions, in other words, to avoid abrupt departures or sudden changes in policy that destabilize their government; easier said than done.

A third point made by other Chautauqua speakers was that the real issue we are dealing with in Pakistan is our relations with China.  Any vacuum we create in the area of Pakistan and Afghanistan will be immediately filled by China, which is already seeking dominance of the area.  How content we are with that is the real determinant of our policy there.

So, we are uneasily tied to a monster.  But on closer inspection, it is a people with their own history and needs that we can partially understand and work with. There are even parts of their identity that we can appreciate and recognize as akin to our own.  That’s a starting point.