Drang nach Osten

Drang nach Osten. Drive to the east.

Adoloph Hitler's plan to drive into the heart of the Bolshevik Soviet Union and cleanse it of its "impurities." Jews, Russians, that sort of undesirable element. Personally I don't get it; Stalin was doing a fine job. But whatever floats his boat, I guess.

Honestly, drang nach Osten derives from a time even before Hitler. In some ways it refers to the Germanic movement to the east during the middle ages (Ostsiedlung), but it really came into its own as a concept in the 19th century when German intellectuals used it to justify their desire for "lebensraum" ("living space," another favorite of the Nazis). Later still the Poles used it as propaganda to encourage anti-German sentiment.

Drang nach osten was just the German descendant of what we've all come to know and love: the concept of the "Just War." A silly little concept developed by St. Augustine of Hippo in his book Civitas Dei ("City of God"). Now, there are several criteria of a just war (jus in bellum): just cause (and I don't mean just because), comparative justice, legitimate authority, right intention, probability of success, and only as a last resort. Furthermore, once you're already fighting your little just war, you also have to follow certain rules (jus in bello), otherwise it becomes "just another war." There are also a third type of rule, jus post bellum, but since we're talking about history and philosophy here, not this new-fangled "let's all be plushy-happy good-people friendly." I'll stick with the originals; maybe I'll get around to jus post bellum some time. For now, I'll start with the history of Just War, and at some point in the future I'll move along to just how stupid the idea really is.

So, back on topic. The Just War moved from theoretical to practical in the 12th century with the birth of the Crusades. After all, what is Just if not eradicating Moslems, right? Anyway, after the disaster we call the Crusades we have the European expansion into the rest of the world in the form of colonialism. Be it the English in India or the Spaniards in New Spain, the results all flowed quite fluidly from the idea of jus in bellum, though the criteria was lacking almost in entirety, justice replaced by justification.

In the aftermath of the colonial period the Old World began to diverge from the New World, but the idea of a "just war" thrived. While drang nach Osten was the watchword of Germany, in the New World the twin ideas of "manifest destiny" and civilizing the Native American "indians" were born. The latter idea began to decline in the early twentieth century, but the former -- the idea of America's "manifest destiny" was championed by such leaders as Presidents James Monroe (The Monroe Doctrine) and Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (the Roosevelt Corollary). Manifest destiny gave way to the idea of the United States as a protector of the New World from Old World tyranny and, later, as protector of international law the world over in the form of interventionism, which Woodrow Wilson used to make the world "safe for democracy."

Through these policies, the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary and interventionism as a whole, was born the policy of American Imperialism. While the Just War concept all but died in Europe following the Second World War, in the New World it was still going strong and continues to be felt throughout the world.

The modern incarnation of the "just war" is the Neo-Conservative policy of "shoot first and, oh yeah, what's a question?" In short, what is occurring in the Middle East right now is a direct result of St. Augustine's vision of a Just War.