Goal Rationality

The question is, after the complete and thorough deconstruction of the Anglo-Zionist and liberal weltanschauung on one hand and the establishment of a “strategic balance” between East and West on the other hand, what is left for Washington? The answer is a strategy and thus the goal of cruelty and inflicting pain on everyone. The strategy and the goal assume that it can “coerce” or “influence” the victim into adopting the perpetrator’s cruelty and sadism. But is the strategy and the goal of the strategy rational? For one, and as Max Weber wrote:

“Something is not of itself ‘irrational,’ but rather becomes so when examined from a specific ‘rational’ standpoint. Every religious person is ‘irrational’ for every irreligious person, and every hedonist likewise views every ascetic way of life as ‘irrational,’ even if, measured in terms of its ultimate values, a ‘rationalization’ has taken place.”

Thus, we needed to assess the Russian or the Eastern point of view and standpoint in order to assess whether the liberal or Western point of view and standpoint was rational or not, and of course, we did. We assessed both the Eastern point of view and the Western point of view. But in terms of the basic textbook definition of the word ‘rational’ or ‘rationality’ that is used in international affairs discourse and jargon, John Mearsheimer wrote: “There is only one inviolable rule. Survival is primary, and all other objectives must be subordinated to it.” He added: “It is a matter of incontrovertible logic and evidence that a state cannot achieve any other goal if it does not first survive as a state.”

Moreover – and what Washington overlooks and ignores – is that survival is far more important than prosperity. To borrow from Mearsheimer: “To be sure, states care greatly about their prosperity. But that goal always takes a back seat to survival. It makes little sense to argue that in order to maximize their wealth, states would voluntarily go out of existence by merging with other states since this would put an end to the state whose wealth is supposedly being maximized.” He added: “Unlike business firms, which exist to make money for their owners, political entities exist in order to exist. Amalgamation into a new entity, which can be an attractive option for a firm, is thus off the table for states.”

And in theory, overexpansion as well as “under-balancing” in the face of certain threats are what undermine a state’s survival. Moreover, a “fight to the finish” against the East on the part of the West ends up being futile and pointless as a result of what we stated in terms of “containment” and “deterrence” on one hand and the Eastern perspective or point of view on the other hand. Nevertheless, the basic and underlying assumption of established or mainstream theory when it comes to just basic cognitive behavior in general is that individuals will make choices and decisions that will maximize “benefit” or “utility.” Or in other words, choice and decision is based on greed and self-interest and nothing else. Furthermore, if you can somehow place constraints on people from the very top and shape people’s preferences in a certain way from the very top, the choices and the decisions which all individuals will make will be uniform and universal. Only certain aberrations or anomalies would stray from choices and decisions that would otherwise be uniform and universal in essence and nature and in spite of the constraints and the shaping of preferences from the very top. But of course, and as we found here all along, these basic assumptions are entirely flawed and questionable.