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• Noga Arikha

  Is George W. Bush Napoleon?

  Tags:

  George W. Bush,

  Iraq War,

  Leo Tolstoy,

  Napoleon,

  Noga Arikha

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  Tolstoy did not believe Napoleon was responsible for the Napoleonic Wars. Such a great event could not be the creation of an individual, however powerful he might be. Opposed to the “great man” approach to historiography, Tolstoy believed that history could not be reduced to the actions of any one human and that the study of the past should be concerned with ordinary people, real uncertainties, observations, and quiet thought. This was the stuff of War and Peace, where in one of his intriguing philosophical passages, the novelist argues that historical events are the unforeseeable, unpredictable outcomes of countless causes that no historian could ever wholly grasp. Tolstoy disapproved of the positivist historiography of his day, the product of the Enlightenment’s optimism about the knowability of the world. In his view, historical events were underdetermined, and historians accounted for events by reading causes into them; that is, by imagining accidental outcomes to be the necessary results of known incidents. So, for instance, Napoleon’s orders for the famous battle of Borodino have been lengthily examined by historians who have analyzed them in terms of the French army’s defeat, concluding that Napoleon’s decisions had been flawed; had the battle been a success for the French, though, they would read that success back into those same decisions, conveniently forgetting that Napoleon had nothing to do with the defeat because his orders proved irrelevant to the battle’s unfolding. He was just a pawn of historical will, which consisted of the unaccountable sum total of all people’s individual wills.

  What are we to make of this thought today? One cannot deny the responsibility of leaders—political, military, economic—for the wars and crimes perpetrated in their countries; if one did, the existence of an institution like the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague would make no sense. But would it be justifiable to try Napoleon in The Hague today? He might at least be found guilty of abetting war crimes and political murder, along with men like Hadrian or Genghis Khan; historical greatness, after all, often goes together with massive bloodshed, and military valor ensures perpetual fame. And in the long view of historical time, the division between military valor and moral squalor is far from clear. Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler were monsters, but they also had a real effect on the course of history, just as Hadrian and Napoleon did. One might disapprove of the method of conquest, but beyond a certain number of generations, the old crimes become historical events that cease to provoke fresh outrage. The Russians have long forgotten to ask the French to apologize for Napoleon—and the French have forgiven Napoleon the destruction he wrought to quench his thirst for imperial glory.

  But if Tolstoy were right, then even Napoleon’s accomplishments would cease to be his; there would be nothing beyond himself to praise or to criticize, only a nation to condemn, a population to shoulder the guilt—as the Germans have done for Nazism, for instance. Responsibility for large-scale events is always collective, but does this mean that individual wills are meaningless? If Tolstoy were right, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would not be responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraq; their decision to allow torture at the “black sites” would have nothing to do with the real acts of torture that took place there; and the American people would be responsible for the paranoid state in which the country has lived for years. Leaders do not act alone—but without their actions, orders, words, and thoughts, would the others act?

  Napoleon did not act alone either, but he willed that actions be taken and he encouraged certain factions and tendencies. That is the nature of power: it does not reside in the particular man, but in the unique relationship between that particular man and his office—a constellation, that is, which is unique to the formal regime officially established under his aegis. Tolstoy is right to doubt the simplicity of the causal relation between individuals and history, but that is as far as he can be taken. For without Napoleon, there might never have been a battle of Borodino. And without Bush, there might well be no American soldiers in Iraq.

  July 1, 2009
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