YouSaid · the spoken record

Samuel Moyn

lines on the record: 50
first: 2022-09-26
most recent: 2022-09-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Apply to the weak, which is what we have now most of the time in law in general, but very graphically when it comes to war and peace, and so I'm not sure, you know, I think the question is very well founded. There's always room for skepticism. And of course, I'm not claiming war is humane yet, just that it's more humane. What I can't understand is why we would then do nothing. I would assume that we want better regulation, that more attempts, you know, it's like Samuel Beckett try again, fail.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brutal or that we shouldn't treat humane war as an oxymoron, which it still is, but they're more humane in their fighting because of new pressure to obey certain rules. The harder question, I think, is whether we can have rules that require great power peace. Because as you probably know, the United Nations Charter, which Carl invoked a while ago, requires restraint, except for in the case of five countries, including yours and mine and Russia, which never can be branded aggressors in the international system because they have a veto on the United Nations Security Council. But I think to the extent that's true, it requires better rules since we don't want legal systems that let the powerful off scot-free and only”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's the ultimate question, and I think Sarah is on firm ground imposing it. I would think that, you know, I could ask, can you regulate anything? And if you think you can regulate some things, you do it through politics and law. You get a movement together and you make politicians take heed and laws are passed. Now, that never means that they're obeyed perfectly. And it's clear to me that while war is incredibly hard to regulate, we have a new legal environment, not just a new moral one, in which some armies fight differently than they did. Now, that doesn't mean they're”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Represent it. But that kind of far right and far left view that these endless wars need to end. I think now seems, you know, like it's kind of been pushed back to the margins where it had been for the Cold War and for much of the post-9-11 period. Because Ukraine has shown, I think, to most observers that war is necessary, if not direct conflict yet, than through proxy assistance. And that, I think, means, I think regretfully from my own perspective, that this moment of opportunity in which it was possible for a president to end certain wars, even as he was pivoting to a Chinese Cold War has Past and I'm just not sure what that pretends, but it's a great question.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From Afghanistan, I think shows that there's some pressure from below, let's say, to contain or even end these wars. However, there's also pressure from other directions to continue them. And we've already mentioned the continuation of counterterrorist capacities. Above all, I think Putin's move into Ukraine has reactivated the sense that Western powers need to be vigilant about what despots do and maybe engage in war against them, you know, which is a very familiar stance from the Cold War and after and was, let's say, challenged because of its consequences. The past few years and above all, I think by Trump and some of the forces, he's”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know with an asterisk, so you know, one claim I try to make in the book is that Ever since the Iraq War presidents who've succeeded electorally have run against it and war generally, Barack Obama won against a more warlike Hillary Clinton in the 2008 nominating contest, famously. Donald Trump ran against his fellow Republicans around the Iraq war was thought to have signed his own death warrant in doing so, but actually ascended through that stance and then beat Hillary again in part, I think, for this reason. And then Joe Biden ran against the so-called forever war and his decision to hold out against skeptics and complete Obamas and Trump's withdrawal.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, superpower conflict, and why would we think the next one wouldn't have similar features? And so if that's true, then I guess I would say that clearly things will change. They always do. But I don't think we're returning anytime soon to a kind of 19th century and early 20th century when big armies clashed with powers sending them against one another without the kind of great power intervention that has been so dominant in the Cold War and since in this evolving form.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course, I do agree that the return of more conventional interstate war will have lots and lots of implications. And this kind of asymmetric war will seem not marginal, but less representative of the kinds of wars being fought. But then note even there, you see that drones are used. all of us have read the journalism around the Turkish drones and so forth. And I think there's no reason to think that a Chinese Cold War won't have lots of proxy forms in this quote-unquote periphery in which asymmetric war will be fought. What we're most Cold War struggles, but asymmetric counterinsurgencies that were fought in the midst of as part of this larger”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Iman al-Zawahiri, but also in Somalia. And so my sense is that these states have now a kind of permanent counterterrorist apparatus that is useful when it's useful and maybe the threats have subsided, but you can imagine lots of interstate war with terrorist threats intensifying and therefore no reason to think that this permanent counter-terrorist apparatus is just being mothballed.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that's absolutely true. I make a couple, you know, add a couple of provisos because I basically agree with the questioner and with your comments in the spirit of the question. First, the war on terror is not over and the legal authority claim to wage it by your state, my and others, is not been relinquished. And I think the clearest evidence of that is in Joseph Biden's speech around the Afghan withdrawal, he made very clear that he reserved the right to strike and around Afghanistan with lethal force in what he called over the horizon operations. And while it's only fair to note that he's actually curtailed the use of drones, I'm not sure what's gone on with special forces. He's used them, not just in Afghanistan very famously and in the killing.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe it is, and we're just on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. And we'll realize at least the few of us who survived that we should have been mobilizing against it. It's worth noting that the kinds of peace movements during the Cold War that were inspired by the nuclear threat have also subsided since 1989. And so they're part of that picture. I'm trying to construct and a peace culture, I think, that I'm calling for would, you know, include a lot more concern for nuclear weapons than we've had. But the kinds of conflicts that we've had Leyland that I foresee in the future don't strike me as most likely to be nuclearized. And so my focus in the book is on other kinds of war. Notably, changing forms of counterterrorism.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a good case actually for Prince Andrew. And if you go back to the early Cold War, people in the midst of kind of mutually assured destruction said Red Warren peace and said, look, Prince Andrew was right. It's just that it's not brutal war, but the threat of it that will bring peace. And that's how they justified the nuclearization of the Cold War and arms races and so forth. I've written this book in the context of a generation, our time in which at least before Ukraine, and I think even during Ukraine, the threat of nuclear, any nuclear exchange has seemed remote. I think you might reach a different answer about all of these questions when it seems, you know,”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Utopian, that then there's no more violence or there's not local domination and slaughter. On the contrary, it's obvious that there are both. But it does seem to me that most of the wars that my country and yours have fought lately. Including in this new humane form have set the world back. And so until we have better ways of creating a less risky globe through our military actions, and especially until we face down the hierarchy that's involved in sending our technology to police other people when we would never submit to the same, I think we should draw the conclusion that these wars should be ceased at least for a time.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's enormously controversial to say so, but I would conclude no. And that's because they seem to recreate the problem that they're intended to solve. And so counterterrorism. It seems has perpetuated terrorism, not contained it. And, you know, maybe there are other techniques that would do better. I'd add in the Afghani case that it seems as if the alternative to withdrawal would have been eternal presence or even neo-imperial rule. And yet we know that what accounted for the popularity of the Taliban in the provinces outside the urban areas of Afghanistan was the drone war and the sense that the Taliban would provide better rulership than the state in power in Kabul. And I sympathize with the question because I'm not claiming that great power withdrawal from the world is...”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which says nothing about making war more humane, but it does say it's about bringing a peaceful world about. And I would like to see human rights reclaimed as principles that inform peacemaking, a notch the humanization of warmaking.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's been proposed that adding human rights law would make war safer for civilians than the laws of war on their own make it. And so this is a noble project, both of them, because soldiers are people and combatants may have to die in conflict, but civilians die in excessive numbers today. And we might want to see less brutality on both fronts. But if that's true, then human rights law is, let's say, an accessory of this humanization process. I'm trying to analyze. I have the same answer that I have about human rights law that I have about the process in general. Of course, it's a good thing, but is it part of a nefarious project even so that we might want to revisit? I go back to the”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the European court's jurisprudence, in the Alscani and other cases, which you may have heard about, human rights is being seen as more and more relevant to the conduct of war. And I do raise in the book this newfangled idea, I think, that it's not just the laws of war that should constrain powers, but human rights law, you know, where applicable. And in my judgment, it's an attempt to, let's say, amplify the ongoing humanization of war or intensify it. And just as a couple of examples of how that might work, people are dissatisfied that the current rules of war don't require you to capture rather than kill. combatants even though their humans too with the right to life and they're especially concerned that the laws of war are too permissive in the number of civilians they allow you to kill collaterally”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, where to begin? Because the truth is, I've written most of my prior books about human rights. And this one about a different body of law known in the field as international humanitarian law was supposed to be an exit strategy for me. But you're absolutely right that”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The opposite, I do think that the kinds of people I was interested in understanding in this book, this new group of people who think that the humanization of war makes it more tolerable are much more important in a lot of these protracted conflicts than they had ever been in history. And so it's worth getting at what they think and why they think it, but it's someone else's problem to bring peace once we've understood that topic.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you could call more humane, more legally framed, and enduring occupation, even before the war on terror dawned and Americans and their allies began to follow suit in seeing that you could sustain a practice by saying you're following the rules of how to conduct it and saying you don't torture anymore and saying it's more humane and various ways. But no, I absolutely want to not concede, but just say forthrightly that if we're interested in peace, a lot of factors have to come together. And it's not as if we just stopped this humane war project. Peace would just magically, you know, coalesce in these protracted conflicts.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great question and challenge, Sean. I mean, I want to make very clear that even if you agree with me that the humanization of warfare recently is new and therefore worth studying, it doesn't mean it's the biggest factor in accounting for why wars happen and thus for what would be required to get more peaceful outcomes. I think that is something that would require a different kind of analysis and book. And I just kind of look narrowly at this new thing that I think has been neglected in our stories about the recent evolution of war, including in the Israel-Palestine conflict, since, you know, it's only fair to say that Israelis actually pioneered.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm trying to chronicle in this book because they take, you know, they make most clear that what's at stake is that in this good thing of editing out not just the killing, but possibly even the violence from what we used to think defined it, war also involves kind of forms of control of some peoples over others that we wouldn't accept just as we wouldn't accept having armed drones over our heads sent by some foreign power.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then everything will depend on what the program is. And I see no reason to think with this new moral culture why the program wouldn't demand at least as much humanity so-called as the armed drones and special forces that have marked our time achieved and possibly more so we can imagine robots that do begin to stop killing and begin to engage with new requirements like the one to capture rather than kill or only kill combatants when the risk of no collateral damage has been registered by the device. And so these to me are again the ultimate forms of this development that”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To the extent it made it remains asymmetric, you know, which is your earlier point about, you know, how existential conflict tends to mean taking the gloves off and fighting with more brutality, not less. I think your prediction is chilling and scary and apt. Already it's clear that the armed drone was a primitive tool It evolved across time becoming more precise, but now we face the prospect of algorithmic war. And that means using tools, including potentially drones, that are unpiloted, not just unmanned and obey programming.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't follow that we should leave war brutal as Prince Andrew said. It follows that we should see if the risk is being incurred in any particular situation and whether we can control or manage it. And more concretely, what it means is that we not abandon peace in the name of the humanity of our wars as we seem to have done in the past few decades. So I would like to think that we could do both things. control force including hold Vladimir Putin accountable for starting illegal wars while also getting really concerned about how they're fought if we have to have the wars. And that seems to me that kind of more persuasive moral, but there's always this possibility that maybe more brutal wars would be less frequently fought. That's true, we should at least consider. What we might say in response.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I personally wanted to kind of give him some airtime just because it is an unusual view to say the least for measure by current opinion. But I also wanted to show how Tolstoy himself, after kind of experimenting with that view, evolved. And he came up in his later years when he was the most famous pacifist in the world with, I think, a more sophisticated version of the view. And it's to say that it's not that making war less brutalism a bad thing. It's that it courts certain risks, which includes the perpetuation of war or the greater incidents of war. And if that's true, and I think it could be, then...”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to avoid drawing it, even if others do. It's really hard to make that argument stick. However, I make one of my heroes in the book, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, whose character of Prince Andrew in War and Peace actually makes that argument himself that war ought to be left brutal so that we have less of it.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there's a last point, which is that, you know, according to the information I've seen, maybe Vladimir Putin, like Obama, gained some domestic legitimacy from claiming that his wars are less brutal than they might otherwise have been, at least in the early days of the war, partly for the reasons that they were fighting differently than they are now, as you point out Russian state media would say things like, we're following the rules, we're fighting humanely. And that's amazing because it's been a liberal power and it shows that this new moral culture is contagious in a way that you might not have expected.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do. So, I mean, I think a few things are simultaneously true. One is that it's liberal powers, not illiberal ones that tend to take these rules more seriously. And so the average war fought by Russians lately including in Chechnya have been far more brutal, far less concerned about humane constraints than the wars initiated by my country or participated in by yours. However, what I think is striking is that relative to prior wars, Russians are fighting more humanely too. Now, I don't mean to offer any consolation, let alone extenuation in saying so, because what they're doing is illegal in itself and illegal in its conduct.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe has led us to care less about whether these wars keep happening, whether we could angle for better outcomes in not having the conflicts at all, whether brutal or humane. And so, you know, the answer is I don't know. My sense is, again, that it'll be all of the above, that there will be some instances in which the legacy of this rise of humane warfare will last a long time, but then there will be other instances in which it's dropped under pressure.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That at least for a while and at least even if there's a new Cold War with China, which our countries seem to be initiating, there will be proxy war if the old Cold War is any precedent and early forms of potentially direct confrontation in which the rules are taken seriously because they've been entrenched in humanitarian monitoring, in military culture, in political statesmanship as Obama's example, I think makes so vivid. And it's not like those are entrenched forever, but they're real phenomena that I think will have to be eroded. And so for the moment, I would say this is something we ought to care about. And again, we ought to care about it because this concern”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Another fantastic question. And I think my answer has to be who knows. But let me just foresee two possibilities. One, of course, is that to the extent grade powers clash as in the world wars, there's more latitude taken by the military and existential threat, especially is repelled without a lot of concern about the humanity of the response. And so I definitely wouldn't claim that this new form of warfare is eternal and that there aren't conditions under which it could just become a kind of happy memory about how war could become humane before reverting to, let's call it its original form. However, I think”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whereas the characteristic kind of means that we talked about earlier in the second successor form of the war on terror were drones and special forces, which can fight with at least some more precision. Now, even in Afghanistan and Iraq at the height of the violence, I think it's fair to say that the US military and the UK military cared a lot more about following applicable rules than those same militaries had in their wars of decolonization or in Vietnam, let alone Korea, World War II, and so forth. So I think it's a complex picture, but in a way the big public debate that gets unleashed over how the early war on terror is fought reveals that the transformation isn't finished, but helps. Drive that transformation towards humane war alone.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would put it, I think I do put it in the book by saying they were the last gasp of the old and which ends up allowing for the new to get consolidated. At the time in October, November two thousand eleven, there are massive disputes within the US government because George W. Bush and certain of his lieutenants do want to lift rules most obviously in how Al-Qaeda is treated and in whether the prohibition of harsh interrogation amounting to torture applies. And that happened and I would be the last to deny it. And of course, the kinds of wars that begin immediately after September 11th are almost by nature going to be more brutal than the more recent form of the war on terror. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were heavy footprint involving massive numbers of troops sent.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of Westerners would not only have tolerated but supported the massive death of non-Christian and non-white peoples they'd ruled for centuries. And yet after this period of the 60s and 70s, for some people, maybe not, you know, everyone, but a fair number. There can be scandal. Around what their states do even in what seem like necessary wars like And so that's enough of a kind of agent to change the world, as it turns out, because the statespeople who then run these governments, like Barack Obama, pay heed. And they understand that that audience is demanding not an end to war, not an end to great power intervention globally, but a new form of it. And they bring it about.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're being forgetful of what they've supported or tolerated themselves in living memory. I think that's all we can hope for from a lot of people, that morality has to be compatible with interests. And we can't hold out for moral choices to be pure. In the case of the U.S. military, I think the warrior's honor was redefined. And these new rules became very important for a lot of people in the U.S. military, but there's no denying that it was also a response to the public relations disaster. So I don't think if it had just been a few lawyers, there would have been the massive change. I think ultimately we have to get into how culture changed. I mean, if you stopped at the end of World War II or even during the wars of decolonization,”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I think it's all of the above, and I think it's a fantastic question because it forces us to disaggregate the different kinds of people who might have been involved in it and try to fathom their reasons. And I concede it gets very complicated. I mean, if you take West Europeans, including British citizens who have seen their state do pretty terrible grotesque things for centuries, including at that time recently in events like, you know, the in Malaya in the late 40s or into the Kenya and the Mau Mau emergency and so forth, what's at stake for them to take the moral high ground now? Well, partly it's that they're honorable, but partly it's that they're”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never would want to take this too far. There's a mutation, but of course I don't think the results are humane yet. They're more humane than the kinds of wars that were fought before, notably World War II. And so this is a really pivotal period. And I think that's why what we've seen in the war on terror in its latter parts really is kind of anticipated by these events between Vietnam and September 11th in spite of that brief period under George W. Bush of authorizing torture and setting up Guantanamo Bay and killing lots of people after.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Holocaust, which was not given much attention at the end of World War II, but was given a lot of attention retroactively in the 1960s and seventies. But for me, the main cause is in America, where because that's the great power still fighting most of the wars to this day. And there you get these new humanitarians on the ruins of anti-war movements in decline. And these new humanitarians focus not on whether war is fought, but whether it's fought in conformity with the new rules that are being cracked in the 1970s, calling for not shooting at civilians, calling for limiting collateral killing of civilians, at least to some extent. And the military Also, because of the public relations disaster of Meli, resolves not to stop fighting wars, but to fight them less brutally because the public demands it. Now”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different view of war than they have before. And I think more generally, people get concerned about civilian death for cultural reasons in the 1960s and 70s than they have been before, notably because people begin to ponder.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now when did the change come? Well, my argument is that the really pivotal period was the 1960s and 70s for a few reasons. First, I think most important was the decolonization of the world, the quadrupling of the number of states and the liberation of peoples who'd borne the brunt of the violence of states like yours and mine long before World War II for centuries. And they want more peace in the world, but they also say, could you actually fight more humanely? And West European powers, including the United Kingdom, no longer have as many reasons to fight since they're giving up their empires and, you know, not that they don't engage in American coalitions like in the war on terror, but they can take a”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think you're right to start with World War II because it's a war in which what rules there are around the conduct of hostilities are not very well obeyed. And that's especially true in aerial bombardment of civilian populations, which with its colonial origins, all sides in the war, all powers perpetrate. Interestingly, if we look at the Nuremberg trials, the International Military Tribunal, like the UN Charter, the emphasis is on constraining aggression, keeping great powers in their boxes so that they don't do what Adolf Hitler did. And that sets up a kind of baseline for our time in which great powers sort of do whatever they want. And we focus much more on how they're doing.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Broadest conflict contacts. We used to have very prominent peace movements, in part because war affected people in the transatlantic, notably World Wars I and two, that led to extraordinary mobilization in order to constrain the use of force. And with the shifting kind of context of global affairs, we're safe and sound from war for the most part. We might even support wars fought by our states elsewhere for the sake of ethical improvement or humanitarian intervention and our concern then goes to not whether our states are fighting, but whether they're fighting more. And as a result, we've gotten the kinds of kind of ethical attention and moral agitation that have been prominent in our time.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comes at the time in which there's a massive international peace movement. And this atrocity, when it's revealed, throws fuel on the fire of that anti-war cause and helps bring the conflict to an end. Conversely, Abu Ghraib comes in the absence of any such anti-war pressure, though there was more of one in the United Kingdom than in the United States. And the result of the concern about the brutality of the war on terror helped remove, if you like, the bug from the program of what became endless war since the war on terror has not been concluded. And so, you know, that's just one example, but I try to argue in the book that in the very”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's one of the main concerns. I focus on lawyers in government, but of course we know of prestigious reformist movements outside government that have defined our time, I think very deeply that focus on minimizing or lessening the carnage in war. But they are prominent in the absence of any or many organized peace movements. And they, I think, you know, stand for a time in which people in general have focused their concerns from not having war to, let's say, the lesser ambition of constraining its brutality. So if you take those two events I mentioned, Milai and Abu Ghraib, the comparison, I think is very revealing on this.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How far other states will follow suit and adapt to the precedents that have been set in the war on terror. But I think it's right to raise the concern about the transformation of that war because it may cast the die for a future. We want because we want less brutality, but we also might not want because we don't want a war torn globe when lots more states get to practice endless humane war.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's a great question, and actual contract probably not very common. In part, that's because there's still, to the extent there's war happening now, there's still extraordinary brutality in it. And that's true whether states like Russia are fighting it or whether there's endemic civil war across the world, which there is, sadly. However, the war on terror was, I think, by anyone's estimation one of the most significant global events in the past twenty years. And it was fought by Western powers and coalition, liberal powers with America in the lead. And so it's just the kind of bleeding edge, if you like. Maybe that's the wrong metaphor of progress. And so we don't know what will happen if China becomes more militaristic than it currently.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Humane war allowed him to claim for enduring war. And we know that because his two main speeches on the war on terror, on how he proposed to reinvent it, his Nobel Peace Prize address in two thousand nine, and his drones program address in twenty thirteen made the new humanity of the war rhetorically central. And of course, he also did introduce new rules that made it central in fact to the way that the war on terror evolved after he was elected.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Less controversial, more tolerable to more people. And thus, if we want to get rid of it all together harder to challenge, I use the example, which the United Kingdom was deeply involved in in my country too, of the long attempt to make chattel slavery more humane, which gave it a new lease on life because a less brutal slavery was more tolerable to at least some important people. And so it stands to reason that we would incur a risk in making war less offensive, that we would entrench it. And I'm not, it's very hard to prove that that's actually happening, but it could. I believe it became very important for President Barack Obama to play on the legitimacy that more”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Horrifying. It's made differently horrifying. And I don't think it should be counterintuitive because I think we all accept that just to take another example, if we decide that what's most important is to make the administration of the death penalty less brutal, we may make the actual penalty.”
2022-09-26 · Intelligence Squared · Forever War: How Conflict Became Endless, with Samuel Moyn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT