The Age of the Unthinkable Read Online Free PDF

it, this idea of “negative transparency” may not be all that surprising. Democracies are extremely chaotic
     and messy. This isn’t a judgment about whether they are good or bad, but a reflection of the fact that democracies have been
     defined as the most unpredictable form of government in the world. And certainly the process of
becoming
truly democratic, as we’ve seen in places as different as Russia and Taiwan and Iraq, never follows a smooth path. Without
     a basis of economic development, without a culture of politics that fits democratic discourse, becoming democratic was often
     a guarantee of instability. Democratizing Arab countries, for instance, might not make them less militant — particularly given
     cultures that tended to thrive on violent conflict.
    And even if countries could manage the transition to democracy, national policy in an elected government can change dramatically,
     even unrecognizably, from one month to the next. This ebb and flow of open politics might create so much unpredictability
     that any sane enemy would decide that the safest thing to do is to assume the worst. This is probably the best way to explain
     why the United States, worried that its interests were at risk, decided to manipulate democratic processes in Iran, Guatemala,
     Indonesia, British Guiana, Brazil (twice), Chile, and Nicaragua over a period of about forty years. Even if some of these
     interventions were vitally important to American national interests in the face of Cold War dangers, the record hardly suggests
     that democracy alone created a stable basis for trust and cooperation. This isn’t simply a historical matter: elections in
     Gaza, Russia, and Iran in recent years all challenge the notion that a democratic process delivers a reliable ally.
    Finel and Lord also found numerous examples of “good” traits of democracies that often accelerated conflict instead of easing
     it. A free press? A magnificent feature of open systems but given at times to war-speeding jingoism. The transparency of democratic
     systems? An essential part of what makes democracy great — but makes it difficult to conduct secret negotiations that can
     forestall or shorten conflicts. Responsive democracies, when you begin to look at the tensions and problems that animate national
     life, at the many-sided virtues that come with a vote, might make the globe more confusing rather than less.
4. The Naturalist of Power
    If there was one man who had worked hardest and with the most inventive spirit on the problem of making global power into
     something more scientific it was Morgenthau, and it is worth understanding the nature of his genius, not only because of his
     huge influence but also because he represented a very particular way of thinking, one that put states first, assumed countries
     were rational, and made the bet that pure power was the solution to any problem. Morgenthau was trying to shuffle all the
     quirks of the global system into some sensible order, to explain wars with the precision that Darwin, say, had brought to
     biology or Newton to physics.
    The idea that international relations could be thought of in such a scientific way had roots in some of the oldest concepts
     of Western thought, and particularly in the beautifully architected ideas of men like Kant, Hobbes, and Machiavelli, whose
     voices echo in Morgenthau’s work. All were men who prided themselves on developing systems and guidelines. On paper, Morgenthau’s
     ideas looked very similar to that other historical work. But Morgenthau was also very much a man of his turbulent times. You
     can still feel, on every page of his books, the slow ticking of his psychology: the refugee’s demand for pragmatism over daydreams,
     an inescapable belief in the logic of might and right — and the hope that this sort of brutal calculus could defend against
     chaos of the sort that had demolished his German childhood. When he sat down to write his