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Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to characterize in a negative way the claim that there can be no moral or ethical hierarchy decided between two sides in a conflict, nor in the actions or tactics of the two sides.
The term has some limited currency in polemic debates about the Cold War, and more currently, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Moral equivalence" arose as a polemic term-of-retort to "moral relativism," which had been gaining use as an indictment against political foreign policy that appeared to use only a situation-based application of widely-held ethical standards.
Cold War
In the Cold War context, the term was and is most commonly used by political conservatives, as an implied accusation of logical fallacy, for liberal criticisms of United States foreign policy and military conduct. Some liberals contend that US power in the Cold War was used mainly to pursue an economically-driven agenda. They claim that the selfish economic motivation erodes any claims of moral superiority, attributing to the hostile (or in a different interpretation defensive) acts of (Korea, Hungary, Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua) a moral equivalence. The typical conservative counter is the claim that there was in fact, a moral difference between the Soviet Union and the United States, and that policy arising in defense of the "moral superiority" of the US could not and can not be "immoral." Hence an argument, according to conservatives, which claimed that the two parties could be viewed as "equally" culpable in a struggle for supremacy, would be advocating "moral equivalence."
Critics like Noam Chomsky claim the US was the expanding power during the cold war; guilty of more acts of aggression than the USSR and therefore --one could perhaps conclude-- quantitatively more immoral (though Chomsky doesn't use such terms) . Chomsky claims that the US was "crushing third world independence" unrelated to Soviet imperialism to maintain world control and access to cheap labor and resources, and has said that the violence of peoples fighting against colonial occupation (e.g. Vietnam, Palestine etc) is more justified than the violence of the occupiers. Chomsky, however, argues that "moral equivalence" in the US context is a red herring, because the internal freedom of the US has no relation with its external behavior i.e. freedoms were won from "below" (e.g. civil rights movement, feminist movement, labor movement etc) while those who conduct US foreign policy are government and economic elites who often called these movements "anti-American" and who delude themselves into thinking their own behavior is moral while following "monstrous" institutional imperatives.
The corporations that, according to Chomsky, influence US foreign policy, are not more democratic than Communist regimes, and the crimes of US politicians are not any less immoral for having been elected to office through "a system of elite decision and periodic public ratification" which, he claims is deceptively run by the PR industry and is just a way to make people believe they are in control of elite policy by offering them a meaningless choice every 4 years between 2 members of the ruling class. Chomsky, in short, claims that actions like murder, invasion, theft, rape etc, are morally reprehensible whether a democratic state does them, or a dictatorship does them, and--as he expressed in this BBC interview--claiming "moral equivalency" prevents criticism of one's actions:
JEREMY PAXMAN: You seem to be suggesting or implying, perhaps I'm being unfair to you, but you seem to be implying there is some moral equivalence between democratically elected heads of state like George Bush or Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and regimes in places like Iraq.
NOAM CHOMSKY: The term moral equivalence is an interesting one, it was invented I think by Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It has a meaningless notion, there is no moral equivalence whatsoever.
An early popularizer of the expression was indeed Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was United States ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration. She published an article called The Myth of Moral Equivalence in 1986. She sharply criticized those who she alleged were claiming that there was "no moral difference" between the Soviet Union and democratic states. In fact, very few critics of United States policies in the Cold War era argued that there was a moral equivalence between the two sides. Soviet Union officials claimed that that the Soviet Union was morally superior to its adversaries, because although it committed some crimes, these were with the intention of helping the world and bringing about Socialism. They claimed the USSR didn't exploit its satellites as much, support as many 3rd world dictators, invade as many countries nor killed as many foreigners as the US. American intellectuals generally believed that the U.S. was morally superior because its internal freedom was greater than the USSR's, and because the crimes the US committed happened while striving to bring democracy to places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, Nicaragua etc, though liberal critics usually argued that the United States itself risked creating a "moral equivalence" when some of its actions put it on the same level of immorality as the Soviet Union. These were actions such as supporting the violent overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government of Chile in 1973, or Mossadegh's parliamentary democracy in Iran, or Jacobo Arbenz's democratically elected government in Guatemala, or Reagan's Contra insurgency against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, or its support for dictators such as COLONEL Hugo Banzer, President of Bolivia, Fulgencio Batista, President of Cuba, SIR Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei, P. W. Botha, President of South Africa, GENERAL Humberto Branco, President of Brazil, Vinicio Cerezo, President of Guatemala, Chiang Kai-Shek, President of Taiwan, Roberto Suazo Cordova, President of Honduras, Alfredo Cristiani, President of El Salvador, Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Viet Nam, GENERAL Samuel Doe, President of Liberia, FRANÇOIS & JEAN CLAUDE Duvalier, Presidents-for-Life of Haiti, GENERAL Francisco Franco, President of Spain, Hussan II, King of Morocco, Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, General of El Salvador, Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire, GENERAL Manuel Noriega, Chief of Defense forces, Panama, Turgut Ozal, Prime Minister of Turkey, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, Shah of Iran, King of Kings, George Papadopoulos, Prime Minister of Greece, Park Chung Hee, President of South Korea, GENERAL Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, GENERAL Sitiveni Rabuka, Commander, Armed Forces of Fiji, GENERAL Efrain Rios Mont, President of Guatemala, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of Portugal, Halie Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Anastasio Somoza, SR. AND JR., Presidents of Nicaragua, Alfredo Stroessner, President-for-Life of Paraguay, GENERAL Suharto, President of Indonesia, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the Dominican Republic, GENERAL Jorge Rafael Videla, President of Argentina, Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq, President of Pakistan,
Arab-Israeli conflict
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the term is commonly used by defenders of Israel. They accuse of moral equivalence those who describe acts of Palestinian terrorism, such as suicide bombing against civilians, on one hand, and the retaliatory acts of the Israeli Defense Forces, on the other, as equally reprehensible.
Others claim that since the number of Palestinian civilians killed is much higher, and Israel was created in the former Palestine in a manner reminiscent of the United States vis a vis Native Americans, Palestinians are entitled to the same moral standing Native Americans have gained over the years, in spite Native American's many terrorist acts against white settlers. These Pro-Palestinians claim that many now perceive moral equivalence the same way US president Thomas Jefferson did in 1813 when he said that "...the cruel massacres they native Americans have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach"
Joel Mowbrey, a pro-Israeli writer, expresses his view of the coverage of the events:
- "The coverage of the * 'violence' has largely read like the equivalent of a chess match. Hamas refuses to halt suicide bombs. Israel targets a top Hamas leader. Suicide bombing in Jerusalem kills 16. Israel 'retaliates' with a strike in Gaza. What's at work is probably not anti-semitism, but a misguided attempt at objectivity. But reporting 'facts' in a moral vacuum is not objectivity; it is, in fact, just the opposite. Absent proper context, the situation can seem as if it is two equally justifiable sides making moves and countermoves, nothing more."
In recent years many commentators have called the fact that Israel is in possession of 87% of the former Palestine (as compared to the 56% assigned to Israel in the 1948 UN partition plan) and the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as "morally reprehensible" and as being the "root cause of Palestinian terrorism." This is not necessarily the same thing as arguing that there is no moral difference between terrorist bombings which kill Israeli civilians and the Israeli retaliation to those bombings, but Israelis frequently see such critics as taking this view. Many critics, however, say that assumptions of moral superiority on the part of Israelis are what lead people to believe Israeli actions are "retaliation" and not terrorism to which the Palestinians retaliate.
Aron Trauring, an Israeli peace activist, argues that Israeli air-strikes against the homes of Hamas leaders makes Israel no better than Hamas:
- "Civilians were directly targeted for death as part of an act of revenge on the part of the Israeli government. This is exactly the justification Hamas et al use for their military actions against Israeli civilians. They say the adults killed in their activities are people who perpetrate the "murderous occupation" against the Palestinians. They say these Israelis deserve to die just like Hamas leader Salah Shehada. If innocent dies as well, its just collateral damage. In essence we have reached moral equivalency."
The Israeli writer Yaacov Lozowick explains Israel's moral dilemmas:
- "Restricting the freedom of movement of entire communities is immoral. Refraining from these restrictions when there is unequivocal proof that this will lead to the murder of innocents is worse, because movement restricted can later be granted, while dead will never live again. Demolishing the homes of civilians merely because a family member has committed a crime is immoral. If, however,... potential suicide murderers... will refrain from killing out of fear that their mothers will become homeless, it would be immoral to leave the Palestinian mothers untouched in their homes while Israeli children die on their school buses. Accidentally killing noncombatants in the cross fire of battles being fought in the middle of cities is immoral, unless... refraining from fighting in the Palestinian cities inevitably means the Palestinians will use the safe havens of their cities to plan, prepare and launch ever more murderous attacks on Jewish noncombatants. These concrete examples and others like them demonstrate the moral considerations that Israelis... have been dealing with since the Palestinians proudly decided to use suicide murder as their primary weapon." ("Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars", p.260)
WWII atrocities
Implying a moral equivalence between a number of atrocities carried out by the Allies during the Second World War and the deeds of the Nazis, especially the Final Solution is a common strategy employed by apologists for the Nazis in Germany, such as politicians of the National Democratic Party of Germany.
Other more respected figures, however, have argued that a rape or a murder by an American soldier is not any less reprehensible than that committed by a German soldier.
Relevant in this context are Justice Jackson’s eloquent words at the Nuremberg Trials:
"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us...We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."
See also
External links
Further reading
- Jeane Kirkpatrick, The Myth of Moral Equivalence, Imprimis, January 1986, Vol. 15, No. 1
References
"Moral equivalence"