The "Or Else" Doctrine

The Bush administration has been called many things: aggressive, tyrannical, heavy-handed, brash, arrogant and just about every other synonym in the thesaurus for "doesn't play well with others." There is an ideological principle which seems explain much of the administration's tendency to muscle its way through problems, and it's not what you would expect. Problematically, the administration adheres to a sole method of motivation: consequence.

Public policies aimed at motivation (motivation here defined as causing someone to take an action you desire) fall into three categories: Catering to people's respect for a norm, offering an incentive and threatening a consequence. Thus, you shouldn't go through a red light even when no other cars are around because a) you respect the rule of law, b) a perfect driving record causes your insurance rates to decline and c) there might be a cop around to give you a ticket. Each part of the trinity affects different people to different degrees, but the end result is that the majority of folks don't run a red light even when there are no other cars around.

The Bush administration overwhelmingly, and often to the exclusion of the other means, utilizes consequence -- or, in other words, coercion by threat. Two items from Monday's Washington Post are instructive examples. One states that, "The Bush administration is planning new measures that would target the U.S. assets of anyone conducting business with a handful of Iranian, North Korean and Syrian companies believed by Washington to be involved in weapons programs, U.S. officials said yesterday." The other reports, "Under pressure from the Bush administration, Israel has agreed to cancel an arms deal with China and allow U.S. officials to review its future weapons transactions in an effort to resolve tension between Jerusalem and Washington...[prior to the cancellation,] the Pentagon ended cooperation with Israel on at least one joint weapons project and ceased contact with a senior official in the Israeli Defense Ministry."

In both of these examples, the administration's strategy is decidedly oriented in the negative. It is legalistic, legislative and punitive. There is no appeal to social regulation, no effort for compromise or compensation, and no incentives for compliance. These characteristics can be seen dominating both the administration's domestic and, even more noticeably, foreign policy. It's the Or Else theory of governance.

But why is consequence-based influence necessarily bad? After all, Israel did reverse their policy. And we all know from everyday experience that threatening people -- especially with force -- often causes them to capitulate. The answer is that consequence is not necessarily bad -- but consequence as the only motivator is terrible. Pyschology tells us that when you do something because you have to, not because you want to, it breeds resentment and does not imprint the lesson. Think about when you had to clean your room as a child. The room got clean, no doubt (who wanted to be grounded?), but it caused angst and the next time your room was dirty, you were no more likely to take the initiative to clean it. On the other hand, if there is positive incentive for cleaning, your household implicitly respects the fact that everyone has certain chores to do and the threat of grounding is looming far away just in case you're feeling particularly lazy, you accomplish the same result with far less pain.

Much of this may seem a roundabout way of demonstrating the value of the "carrot and stick" idea, but it runs deeper than that. Because the administration is so convinced they are correct (a result, at least partially, of a deeply religious President who holds a black-and-white Protestant wordview) that they do not see the value in wasting a perfectly good carrot. Utilizing the other, less invasive methods of motivation would seem to be compromising, and compromising requires the belief that you need to shift your footing. Everything the administration does shouts its conviction that the benefits of taking a nuanced approach to motivation is far outweighed by the cost of yielding the moral certitude of Or Else.

What was most striking about Karl Rove's recent inflammatory comments was not his suggestion that liberals were reluctant to lash back after 9/11, but rather his suggestion that saying "we must understand the enemy" is a deplorable sentiment. No matter that history is monolithic in its assertion that understanding the enemy is in fact a necessary step in defeating him -- consequence requires no understanding. Consequence laughs in the face of understanding. Think Jean val Jean and Javier, and the fundamental dichotomy they represent: You stole a loaf of bread from a rich man to feed your family, but you broke the law, so you have to face the consequences. That story didn't end so well for Javier, if you'll recall.

Aggressive, tyrannical, heavy-handed, brash, arrogant. They aren't qualities reflective of some sinister demeanor of the men and women behind them; they are qualities reflective of the blind adherence to a doctrine of coercive consequence. That doctrine needs to change -- or else.

-Elliot
- posted by Elliot H. @ 1:16 PM