Realpolitik, and Other Highly Emotional Responses to the Brutality of War

Image of destruction from the Siege of Paris at the formal close of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71: a critical moment in myth-making around Realpolitik, and the rise of technological “might makes right” political science.

War does strange things to our emotional vocabulary.

One of the strangest is the way it marks out certain feelings as valid, and others as indicative of a less informed or acceptable mind.

You see this often in people who claim that they’re just being pragmatists, “rationally” deferring to the principles of Realpolitik whenever they process brutal acts in war. They’ll act as if there is an objective and transcendent realm of political theory that exists above and beyond the tedious empathizing impulses of everyday human beings.

You see this attitude often in people who, for whatever reason, are caught in a zero-sum mindset. Sometimes this is due to trauma (individual, generational), and sometimes this is due to a failure of the imagination—a belief that only my pain can matter; if anyone else’s pain matters, too, it will come at cost to securing redress for my own.

Zero-sum thinking can be frustrating for outsiders, but imagine living in it—always struggling to see how mutual gain could ever be achieved. How many lines in the sand one must always defend. How many critical threats exist everywhere.

Folks who affect a “rationalist” response to war also often manifest anger, frustration, and contempt toward people who express other emotions. They tend to be angry that someone cares about something they have “rationalized”; angry that someone else’s empathy has led them to different conclusions; angry that they have to share a media and political landscape with people expressing other feelings at all.

And yet, they’ll still be the first to say that they’re just thinking pragmatically about the situation. They’re simply abiding by the necessary moral flexibility of Realpolitik.

And yes, some simply want to “enjoy” the exercise of distant war, too—as if it were a football or video game. Some get a thrill out of seeing enemies crushed under superior firepower, and cheering on the soldiers who carry out heroic acts in far-off theatres. War is theatre, to some—right until other people’s horror, outrage, and grief for civilians in harm’s way puts a damper on their high. They want to be able to applaud for land reduced to rubble, and wave their banners high, and repeat “FAFO” until the acronym loses all meaning—without being criticized for it. Without someone trying to shame them for being caught up in the fervour. Without someone looking at them and thinking them the monster for being so consumed by military contest at all.

“This is war. Let us pour out our war feelings until war is done! Then everyone else can go about grieving its cost—if they must. If they aren’t finally thanking the rest of us for going so hard in the first place and getting the job done, while they were busy whingeing about the human cost of it all. History wasn’t made by the weak!”

Suffice it to say, there is no “rational”, emotionless way through conflict.

Some articulate the pain and horror of war by marching on the streets, shutting down in grief, calling for a war’s end, and/or making sure everyone sees its full human cost in medias res. They show up at vigils, they mourn and they rage, and they work on securing humanitarian protections for everyone else caught up in the terrible fray.

Others articulate the pain and horror of war by becoming avatars of its violence—on the battlefield, or as “warriors” from distant screens. They will turn the trauma of bloodshed into stats, figures, and tactical analyses, and support the front-line with back-end info-war actions as often as they can. They will assume that they always occupy a righteousness position in this conflict, and feed every doubt as it arises into the “cold equations” of war-craft, a military calculus that the common weeping fool will never be able to switch off their bleeding heart long enough to understand.

But these are all forms of the same agitated energy, released by the same deeply affecting spectacle. When something disturbs the monkeys in the monkey house, they might not all be rattled the same way, but they are all rattled—and then each one’s distinct way of being rattled stands to further rattle all the rest.

And that’s what we need to remember, even if some of us are not ready to accept that they’re being emotional, too. We all are. Part of how we heal from the psychological damage of war, then, is by recognizing that—whether someone is loudly, angrily posting about the human cost, or loudly, angrily posting about the people who keep mentioning the human cost—we are all playing out forms of the same massive wound.

War changes us. It may be difficult to prevent at all times, and it may be filled with individuals who act with exemplary courage and integrity under terrible circumstances—but it is never noble itself, and never represents a neutral phase in collective life.

Today, for paid subscribers, we reflect on some of the myth-making around Realpolitik, to further illustrate how much it, too, is bound up in emotional suppositions.

But this deep-dive really wouldn’t be necessary if we could all simply remember our shared humanity. Yes, it would be so much easier to bear up to war if we could in fact disassociate ourselves completely from our corporeal nature.

Who would we be, though, without our ability to be moved?