“Of evils one should choose the least.”- Cicero
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SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_of_two_evils_principle
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Stalin is equivalent to Hitler
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The lesser of two evils principle
(or lesser evil principle) is the principle that when given two bad
choices, the one which is not as bad as the other should be chosen over the one
that is the greater threat.
In politics
In the Cold War-era "lesser
evil" pragmatic foreign policy principle used by the United States and, to
a lesser extent, several other countries. The principle dealt with the United
States of America's attitude regarding how dictators of Third World nations
ought to be handled, and was closely related to the Kirkpatrick Doctrine of
Jeane Kirkpatrick. By contrast, the lesser of two evils principle is today most
commonly used in reference to electoral politics, particularly in Western
nations, and perhaps in the United States more than anywhere else. When popular
opinion in the United States is confronted with what is often seen as two main
candidates—normally Democratic and Republican in the modern era—that are
substantially similar ideologically, politically, and/or in their economic
programmes, a voter is often advised to choose the "lesser of two evils"
to avoid having the supposedly "greater evil" get into office and
wreak more havoc on society.
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A Soviet World War II poster depicting
retreating Nazis, among them Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels and Göring. It
reads : "Death to the German Occupiers!" The small letters on
the red flag say:"Forward to the west!"
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In warfare and conflict
An early example of the lesser of two
evils principle in politics was the slogan "Better the turban than the
mitre", used by Orthodox Christians
in the Balkans during the rise of the
Ottoman Empire. Conquest by Western Roman Catholic powers (the mitre)
would likely mean forcible conversion to the Catholic faith, while conquest by
the Muslim Ottoman Empire (the turban) would mean second-class citizenship but would at least allow
Orthodox Christians to retain their current religion. In a similar manner, the Protestant Dutch resistance against Spanish rule in
the 16th century used the slogan Liever Turks dan
Paaps (better a Turk than a Papist).
The Government
of the United States had long stated that democracy was one of the cornerstones of
U.S. society, and therefore that support for democracy should also be reflected
in U.S.
foreign policy. But following the Second World War, dictatorships of various
types continued to hold power over many of the world's most strategically and
economically important regions. Many of these dictatorships were pro-capitalist, consistent with at least some
U.S. ideological goals; thus the United States would form alliances with
certain dictators, believing them to be the closest thing their respective
nations had to a legitimate government—and in any case much better than the
alternative of a communist revolution
in those nations. This struggle posed a question: if the end result was, in any
realistic case, destined to be a dictatorship, should the US not try to align
itself with the dictator who will best serve American interests and oppose the
Soviets? This is what became known as the "lesser of two evils"
princile.
Earlier, during World War II, the Western Allies justified their support for Joseph Stalin under a lesser of two evils
principle. Justifying the act, Winston Churchill said, "If Hitler were to
invade Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the
House of Commons." Meanwhile, self-declared socialist movements had their
own versions of "lesser of two evils" policies such as justifying
their Popular Front Against
Fascism by arguing that allying with capitalist powers to overthrow fascism
would be better than having the latter successfully occupy the world and
permanently consolidate power. From the communist view, the primary scourge of
the planet at that point was fascism, and that under the circumstances, fascism
had to be defeated first and communist revolution could come after that.
Some time later, the decision of the
leadership of the People's Republic of China to seek
rapprochement with the United States in the 1970s was an especially interesting
application of the "lesser of two evils doctrine", since the United
States ended up being deemed a lesser threat by the Maoists than was the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong argued at that time that it
would be impossible to continue to deal with the turmoil of the Chinese
Cultural Revolution, the after-effects of the Sino-Soviet Split, and a hostile stance
towards the United States and its "imperialist
aggression" all at the same time. These measures of
rapprochement later expanded into full-blown cooperation between the United
States and China, and the introduction of Chinese economic
reform and Socialism
with Chinese characteristics that decisively introduced many
elements of capitalism into the Chinese political system. But at its origin,
the act was meant as an ostensibly temporary tactic by which Mao's China hoped
to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, with the United States
thus being viewed as the "lesser of two evils".
Conflicts over the nature of various
dictatorial regimes began to intensify when the Soviet Union, Cuba,
and the People's
Republic of China began to support communist
revolutions and populist guerrilla warfare against established
regimes in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. In many cases these movements succeeded (see Vietnam War for one of the major examples)
and replaced an American-allied right-wing dictator with a leftist communist
leader; to counter the trend, particularly in Latin and South America, the United States would
often use its intelligence services to help orchestrate coups that would overthrow those regimes
and reverse the leftist and/or communist trend (see Operation Condor and 1973 Chilean
coup d'état).
In Iraq, the United States supervised Saddam Hussein's rise to power to counter
the threatening growth and influence of the Iraqi Communist
Party, which by the late 1950s was on the verge of taking state
power. In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup
against Abdul-Karim Qassem
who had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy, and then the Central
Intelligence Agency both covertly and overtly helped the new Ba'ath Party government of Abdul Salam Arif in ridding the country of
suspected leftists and communists. Though many in the US Government at that
time recognized Saddam as a dictator or a potential dictator, they viewed him
as the "lesser evil" when compared with the damage the Iraqi
Communist Party might do with its planned nationalization measures and other reform
programs that would probably have run counter to U.S. interests. Similarly, in
1991, when Shi'a across Iraq revolted against
Hussein's regime (partially in response to the televised rallying call to do so
by U.S. President George H. W. Bush),
the U.S. justification for ultimately staying out of the revolt and allowing
Hussein's security forces to suppress the rebels was that the U.S. had
strategically decided Hussein's rule was better than the risk of a mujahideen- or Iranian Revolution-style
takeover.
Probably the best example of this
principle in action, however, was the political struggle behind the Vietnam War. Ngo Dinh Diem was the ruler of South Vietnam during the initial stages of
the war, and though his regime was brutal and he was dictatorial, he was also
an anti-communist who was determined to fight
the expansion of the North—something that the United States government found
sufficiently attractive and ultimately supported him. Ho Chi Minh ruled North Vietnam, was backed by the Soviets, and was a Marxist who wanted to see a united,
Communist Vietnam. The United States thus supported Diem's regime, as well as
his successor's, during the war and believed that he was the "lesser of
two evils". Diem was later assassinated, and the United States oversaw a
new South Vietnamese administration that was relatively less repressive.
It is widely speculated that because
of this principle being placed in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded it
in 1979, the jihadists the U.S. had supported were able to carry out the September 11 attacks using American weapons.
In elections
The lesser of two evils is also
referred to as a "necessary evil". In 2012, Huffington Post columnist
Sanford Jay Rosen argued that the idea became a common practice for
left-leaning voters in the United States due to their overwhelming disapproval
of the US government's support for the Vietnam War. Rosen stated that:
"Beginning with the 1968 presidential election, I often have heard from
liberals that they could not vote for the lesser of two evils. Some said they
would not vote; some said they would vote for a third party candidate. That
mantra delivered us to Richard Nixon in 1972 until Watergate did him in. And it
delivered us to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 until they were termed
out in 2009." Opponents of the modern usage of these terms in reference to
electoral politics
include revolutionaries
who oppose the existing system as a whole, as well as political moderates who
advocate that third parties
be given greater exposure in that system. For a particular voter in an election
with more than two candidates, if the voter believes the most preferred
candidate cannot win, the voter may be tempted to vote for the most favored
viable candidate as a necessary evil or the lesser of two evils.
Supporters of lesser-evil tactics in
the United States often cite United States politician Ralph
Nader's presidential campaigns as examples of what can happen when a
third-party candidate receives a significant number of votes. They claim that
the mere existence of the third-party candidate essentially steals votes
("tilts" or "tips the scales") from the more progressive of
the two main candidates and puts the election in favor of the "worse"
candidate—because the small percentage that goes towards the third party
candidate is a part "wasted" that could have instead gone to the
lesser-evil candidate. For example, in 2000
as the United States
Green Party candidate, Nader garnered 2.7% of the popular vote and,
as a result, is considered by many U.S.
Democrats to have tipped the election to George W. Bush. One counterargument is that
Nader's candidacy likely increased turnout among liberals and that Al Gore took four of the five states—and
thirty of the fifty-five electoral college votes—in which the outcome was
decided by less than one percent of the vote.
In elections between only two
candidates where one is mildly unpopular and the other immensely unpopular,
opponents of both candidates frequently advocate a vote for the mildly
unpopular candidate. For example, in the second round of the 2002
French presidential election, graffiti in Paris told people to
"vote for the crook, not the fascist". The "crook" in those
scribbled public messages was Jacques Chirac of Rally for the
Republic, and the "fascist" was Jean-Marie le Pen of the Front National.
Jacques Chirac eventually won the second round having garnered 82% of the vote.
Game theory
In game theory this scenario is
commonly known as the no-win situation, and as such refers to the necessarily
unavoidable decision between one outcome or the other; as well as the losses of
whatsoever value therein.
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Henry
Fuseli's painting of Odysseus facing the choice between Scylla and
Charybdis, 1794/6
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Mythology
Between Scylla and Charybdis Odysseus chose
to go near Skylla
as the lesser of two evils. He lost six of his companions but if he had gone
near Charybdis
all would be doomed.
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