School of War - Ep 72: Matthew Kroenig on Machiavelli (New Makers of Modern Strategy #2)

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Matthew Kroenig, professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and contributor to the New Makers of Modern Strategy, joins the show to talk about one of the most influential strategic thinkers of all time, Niccolo Machiavelli. ▪️ Times  • 02:21 Introduction  • 03:52 Teaching Machiavelli  • 05:38 Machiavelli’s relevance • 07:49 Who was Niccolo? • 10:00 A lasting effect  • 12:16 The Art of War • 15:52 A bad reputation • 19:58 A return to republic • 22:25 The Prince • 25:45 An early realist  • 30:35 Classical influences • 35:12 Bullish on democracy Follow along on Instagram

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study. On the threshold, I take off my workday clothes covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine, and for which I was born, where I am unashamed to converse with them,

and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time, I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. And because Dante says that no one understands anything unless he retains what he has understood, I have jotted down what I have profited from in their conversation and composed a short study, the prince, in which I delve as deeply as I can,

can into the ideas concerning this topic, discussing the definition of a princdom, the categories of princdoms, how they are acquired, how they are retained, and how they are lost. So wrote Niccolo Machiavelli to a friend. Machiavelli's books revolutionized how modern man thinks about politics and also about strategy and war. Let's discuss. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We have people who not see buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome back to the show. Professor Matthew Kronig. He's professor in the Department of Government. and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He's the author of numerous books. Recently, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China. And he is the contributor of the chapter on Machiavelli to the new edition of New Makers of Modern Strategy. Matt, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Well, thanks so much for having me. It's a great, great show and delighted to be back and delighted to chat with you about Machiavelli.

So I have to one more biographical item for you before we move on to Machiavelli, which is, of course, the most important thing about you, which is you are now joining a very august group of return guests to the show. So it's basically at this point, it's you, Andrew Lambert, Hal Brands, the editor of New Makers of Modern Strategy, and Alex Micah Beridzi. I think. Cullen will inform me if I'm missing anyone. But that's pretty good company.

That's good company. And very different topics. I think we did nuclear. strategy last time. We did. We did nuclear strategy in the context of Ukraine. And I have to say, I think that is one of our more listened to, certainly top 10 most listened to episodes since we've started the show. It got a lot of attention. And folks should feel free. We recorded it relatively early after the start of hostilities in Ukraine last year, or I should say the renewed widespread hostilities in Ukraine last year. But, you know, I don't know if much of the logic, the fundamental

logic we were discussing has changed. Folks should certainly check that out. Yeah, I think it's all still relevant, unfortunately. Can I ask, so to author the Machiavelli chapter for New Makers of Modern Strategy is a bit of an honor in itself, right? Because the first edition is, you know, makers of modern strategy from Machiavelli to Hitler, right? It's the first edition. So the Machiavelli chapter has always been sort of foundational to this project. How did you come to be the one to make that contribution? Well, I was delighted when Hal invited me to do it. And I think it's because he learned that I've been teaching a course on Machiavelli at Georgetown for 10 years now.

So one of the hardship posts at Georgetown, we actually have a villa in Florence, Italy. And my colleagues in political science had been wanting to teach over there. And they were saying, well, no, it's for Italian language and culture, you know, why are you going to teach U.S. foreign policy in Florence? And then we figured it out Machiavelli. So we started teaching this course on Machiavelli and Ford Policy in Florence 10 years ago. And at the beginning, I was speaking, to be honest. But teaching the course for 10 years, I actually have learned quite a lot about Machiavelli

and I think Hal knew about that and thought about me for this chapter. That story is appropriate on just so many levels and very, very appropriate for a strategist to have figured that out as well. Got to start with the goal in mind and the goal was eating more cost and drinking more red horns. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, in that original edition, and I guess the essay was reproduced in the second edition, the way to talk about Machiavelli as a strategist, right, was to focus in on the book that he wrote explicitly about war. And you address that book in your chapter as well, but you really do a more holistic survey of Machiavelli's career and thought, sort of in the spirit of, even if it's, you know, more directed to politics and political philosophy and political practice, it's still relevant. to strategy. So speak to that if you would. Why did you widen the scope? What does it mean that, you know, the prince and discourses on Livy also have things to tell us about strategy in addition to Machiavelli's sort of, you know, handbook on strategy? Yeah, let me say a couple things.

You know, one, I think a lot of our scholars reference Machiavelli, but maybe they've read the prince or maybe they just have a couple of quotes, better to be feared than loft, but they don't really know him. And then, you know, political philosophers write about Machiavelli, but they're not experts on geopolitics. So when I started to teach this course 10 years ago, there wasn't really a great source out there to help me get up to speed on what does Machiavelli mean for strategy and geopolitics. So essentially what I tried to do with this chapter was write the chapter.

I wish I had 10 years ago. And so I think it does provide a kind of good one-stop shop for understanding Machiavelli, his time, and his writing. Yeah. So when I went back and read the original Felix Gilmbert piece, it's a good piece, but it does focus exclusively on the art of war. And I think strategy today is just broader than how do you organize and your military, which is what the art of war really focuses on. You know, we have great power competition with Russian China, sanctions, ideological aspects of the competition, economic decoupling.

And so I thought just focusing on, you know, how do you organize for war is to narrow. for understanding strategy in the world we live in today, but also unnecessarily narrows down Machiavelli and his contributions, because I think his bigger contributions probably were in the other works, in the prints, in the discourses on Libby, and not on the art of war. And just one other point, if you read the new makers of modern strategy, as I'm sure you and many of your listeners will or don't already, how hell makes a similar point in the introduction to the book,

that in the past, people, in the past editions, people thought of strategy as kind of military strategy, but in the world that we live in, we do need to think about it more broadly. So why don't we start with some basics then for folks whose information about Machiavelli is that, you know, he wrote the prints, maybe they read it in college, ends justify the means, et cetera. Give us a bit more. Who was Niccolo Machiavelli? What was the world like into which he was born and what are the broad strokes of his career?

Yeah, well, he was born in 1469 in Florence, Italy, and died in 1527. So he was living at the height of the high Renaissance. Lorenzo, the magnificent, was the leader, the Medici prince, in charge of Florence when he was a young man. And he was primarily a policymaker. That's how he thought of himself. So when the Medici were overthrown, there was a new Florentine Republic that came in after this brief rule from Savonoro a Dominican friar. And Bacchiavelli was appointed to essentially be national security advisor for the Florentine Republic and had more than a decade in office and went on diplomatic missions

to meet with popes and kings, organized the new Florentine militia, led the Florentine militia and a military campaign to retake Pisa, their big rival. And then this was the time of the Italian wars, so a lot of wars on the peninsula. And the Medici, with the backing of the Pope and Spain, were swept back into power. The Medici were put back into power, the Republic overthrown. And they didn't look kindly on the holdovers from the previous government. So Machiavelli was tortured and then exiled to his family far just outside of Florence. And so that's when he became Machiavelli.

He was in exile in the country, not a lot to do. Was Machiavellian in his personal life? We know from his letters he was drinking and having affairs and playing fards. But then he'd go home at night and write and wrote some of the greatest masterpieces in the Western Canada, the discourse is on Libby and the art of war. So really a remarkable, a remarkable life. So, I mean, you stayed outright. And then the implication of the way in which the chapter is included in this in previous volumes is that there's something foundational about Machiavelli's contribution to, to strategic thought, but maybe even modern Western thought. What is the case for that? Why is he,

there are many important writers. Why is he so important? Why does he come first? Yes. Well, I title my chapter Machiavelli and the nascence of modern strategy, that the birth of modern strategy. And, you know, he wasn't living through the Renaissance. And like many of his contemporaries in Florence, Michelangelo, Leonardo and others, he was looking to the ancient world for inspiration. and really modernized his field and brought it out of the dark ages and into the modern era. And so other scholars, Harvey Manspiel, for example, who's a leading scholar, Machiavelli, before me, said that Machiavelli made modern political thought, essentially by making a transition from focusing on how you can be good to how you can be

affected. And so if you look at the Christian and classical political philosophers who preceded Machiavelli, you know, Cicero, St. Augustine, they focused on how can a leader be good? How can he be just? How can they be honest? How can they be generous? And Machiabelli switches and says, no, how can they be effective? How can they maintain their state? How can they grow their state in terms of power? And so that switch, Mansfield and others said, was really the switch to modern political science, thinking about the effectiveness of political action, not its goodness. And so my contribution to this piece is to just say, well, strategy is really an offshoot of broader political thought. And I think that is a move

you have to make to get to modern strategy. Strategy is after all, you know, about what are you trying to achieve? How can you best get there? And so I think that move from thinking about goodness to effectiveness was necessary. These are obviously very deep waters about which brilliant people or in which brilliant people disagree fiercely. Maybe it would be best to start. sort of narrow and very rooted with the art of war, which I don't think is as widely read. You point out it was the widest red book that he wrote in his day. I think in our day, you're much more likely to see the prints being read, and then the discourses tends to get, you know, the prize as the book that earns the most respect.

But tell us a bit about the art of war. What, if anything, does this book specifically have to tell us about strategy that is important or relevant? And was it as revolutionary as the political thought, per se? Well, it was the most widely read in his lifetime, as you point out. It was pointed in his lifetime, was widely read and influenced many other thinkers. Voltaire, for example, said that Machiavelli taught Europe the art of war. And so he sets it up as a dialogue between a famous mercenary and some young gentlemen in Florence

about how to wage war, how to raise an army, how to train the army, how to set up camps, kind of all the details you would need. And it's renaissance in its method. So he looks to the ancient world. How did the Roman Republic, you know, organized for war? And then what are the lessons of that Italy of his time? And essentially argued that, yeah, the Romans did it right, that having put soldiers packed together in dense formations

with armor and swords and shields. Now, that's the way to fight. And he was skeptical of cavalry and fire. firearms. And that's what he argued. Some of the major contributions of that book, he was a big skeptic of mercenary armies. He thought that citizen soldiers would be better. And so Felix Gilbert and his contribution, and the original maker's modern strategy really focuses on that, that Machiavelli kind of foresaw the move to professional standing armies of the modern era and away from the mercenaries of the medieval period. And I think that's true. That is a contribution,

but I think his contributions are much broader. He also paid a lot of attention to discipline and training in an army, looking at the Roman example as well and some good quotes that nature makes few brave men, but with discipline and training can make many. And one of the controversies of the art of war is, what did he think about firearms? Because he was living through really the revolution

in military affairs, the gunpowder revolution. And during his lifetime, the fridge used modern artillery to great effect on battlefields in Italy. The Spanish used firearms, arquebuses in southern Italy, effectively, really for arguably the first time. But Nankevili was skeptical. He said, no, firearms can scare your enemy. Maybe in the early stages, they're useful. But once you're underway, they don't really work. You have to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

So some have said, you know, he didn't really get it. In his defense, he was writing probably really a century before the reforms of Marisa Borenge of the Netherlands really brought the revolution to its full fruition. And he didn't recognize a niche role for firearms in the opening stages of battle. So I cut him a little bit of slack there. So you paint this picture of Machiavelli as an early and important voice in favor of what are in effect citizen soldiers. You say that sort of a fair reading of his books leads one to the conclusion that he prefers republics to principalities which in other words, as you put it,

is our democracy versus autocracy divide on which he is on the democracy side. So that's all on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, you use the word, you said Machiavelli is Machiavellian. And you use the word in its sort of traditional old sense of immoral. You know, he's out and about doing immoral things in his personal life. And you cite Mansfield as one of your, you know, teachers,

if only through his books. on this subject. And so there's a confusion here that I want you to help me work through. You know, if Machiavelli is for citizen soldiers and democracies, well, that all sounds pretty good to me. You know, we're for those things. We think we're good people. He's a founder of things that we think are good. So what's the problem? Why is he have such a bad reputation? Is that all overblown? What's going on here? Well, good questions. I think he, I think his, I think he's not as Machiavellian as people thought. I think that his reputation isn't fully deserved. He was a proponent of republics, and as we may talk about in a moment, and discourses on Libya

is pretty clear that he sees republics as superior to principalities. But, you know, the prince did cause a widespread sensation shortly after Machiavelli died. Shakespeare referred to him as the murderous Machiavel. The Catholic Church banned his writing for two centuries. And so I think that that, you know, a reputation of Machiavelli is a, kind of a teacher of evil for its own sake. Hell's been passed down to us. And it's partly justified, but not fully justified it.

And what I try to argue in the chapter is that he certainly was consequentialist in his morality. You know, things are not good or bad for their own sake, but they're good or bad, depending on their consequences. And so there's this quote attributed to Machiavelli, the ins justified the means, which he never actually wrote, but it's not a bad summary of his worldview. So in the prince, he is arguing that princes need to be stingy, that princes sometimes need to use cruelty well used. But he's arguing that that's necessary to maintain a state, and that's first and foremost priority

of a prince. And in the discourses on Livy, he argues in favor of Republican forms of government, but not because they protect democracy and human rights and human dignity, but rather because he thinks they're better able at accumulating wealth and power on the world stage. And he wants Italy to become a great power. And so thinks that adopting Republican institutions will do that. So certainly consequentialist in his morality, but with political objectives in mind. That's really interesting.

As you could tell, I'm attempting to pin you down here because this debate has always fascinated me. And it's sort of a foundational debate in, you know, amongst the political scientists and political philosophers that you and that you and I, I both have a lot of respect for. You have the sort of Quentin Skinner, you cite all these people in your chapter, and I just, I'm trying to figure out exactly where you are on the spectrum here. You have the sort of Quentin Skinner line of thought, and some of what you just said, I think kind of overlaps with that, that, you know, when you look at Machiavelli, he really is a founder and is a reviver of classical forms and a translator of them into modern forms that we, we like, and we appreciate. And it's an overstatement of the case to call him a, you know, Machiavellian

in the Shakespearean sense. And then the other hand, you have Mansfield, and you have Leo Strauss, whose book on Machiavelli, I once read in the sense that my eyes ran over the words on the page. But as you know, to really read that book, you need to have Livy open in front of you, preferably in Latin, you know, the prince and the discourse is preferably in Italian and sort of work your way. I have not read it in the true and highest sense.

It's great. Yeah. I think it is worth it if you can. But in any event, you know, you have that line of thought that is much, it's a much darker read of Machiavelli, but also of modernity, right? They agree that Machiavelli is a founder of modernity, but they think that there's something very dark at the heart of the enterprise, that what you call somewhat anodyneal endodinely consequentialist thinking is when you really pull the thread, like itself quite a dark thing. So is it, is your position essentially both

these things are true? Or where do you, where do you come down in this great debate? Well, I guess I'm bypassing a little bit. And I think. I think, you know, they're obviously both great scholars and making great points, but, you know, I think they were trying to figure out, you know, where it fits in in terms of political philosophy. And I was trying to figure out where does he fit in terms of geopolitics and strategy. And I think at the end of the day, he's, we've maybe overthought Machia Belli. I think he was essentially a man of action. He was tired of Florence getting kicked around by its bigger neighbors, Holy Roman Empire, and the Spanish and the French. And so he wanted a powerful prince. to unify Italy, found a Republican form of government that would grow in power, just like the Roman Republic had in the ancient world, and be able to stand up to and maybe even dominate its neighbors. And so I think keeping that in mind, a lot of these, what would appear to be contradictions, like was he in favor of principalities or republics, kind of disappear. I think he thought a powerful prince was going to be necessary to found this new state, but that he's pretty clear also that a good

should then establish a Republican form of government that will better enable it to amass power, power and well. Whatever works in a sense. Yeah. Yeah, itself. I don't think Machiavelli ever writes that, but not entirely unfair. So let's talk a bit about sort of elements of his thought that would be valuable to the modern strategists.

So you spend some time talking about his idea of virtue and his idea of fortune as sort of organizing and related principles in his thought. What does he mean when he uses these words? Yeah, the skill, the dichotomy between virtue and fortuita, virtue and fortune, or, you know, skill and opportunity are dichotomy that others have picked up on. And essentially, his argument is that, you know, to be a good leader, you have to have skill, but that it helps if opportunity falls in your lap. But if opportunity falls in your lap and you don't have skill, you won't be able to succeed. And so essentially, you need both, you need the skill to kind of harness opportunity to your ends. But what, you know, this comes in the prince. And, you know, the prince is a narrower focused book than people might understand. It's not a guide to leadership broadly. He's really focused on a specific problem. How can a new prince maintain their state? And this was a real world problem in his time because he did see, you know, the Medici overthrown. He saw his quarantine republic overthrown. He saw the Malarne lose its state. The King of Naples loses state. And so this was a

the question, how can a new prince maintain their state? And he said, well, opportunity helps if your father is the Pope like Cheseray Borges was and he gives you a state, you know, that's a good starting point. But that you also have to have skill. And so more I can say about that because, you know, some people say, well, what does he mean by virtue? It's so vague. But I do think he goes into it in some of the key chapters of the prince. And this is, again, in terms of the way in which he's revolutionary. This is a refounding of the idea of virtue from from sort of classical goodness, right? Yeah, that's right. So if I could I'll quote what I think may be the key passage in the prince. And it comes in chapter 15, which is, you know, interesting. You know, I think today we'll

teach people to, you know, foreshadow your argument in the first few pages. You know, he kind of gets to chapter 15. But in chapter 15, he says he plans to, quote, seek the truth of the matter rather than imaginary conceptions. Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or heard from because how one lives and how one ought to live are so far apart that he who spurns what is actually done for what ought to be done will achieve ruin. Not just that it won't go, well, you'll be ruined. Hence it is necessary for a prince to learn how not to be go, to learn how not to be good. So there was a pre-existing genre of mirrors of the prince book where people would say ought to be a good prince. You need to be just. You need to be honest. And so Machiavelli had that in mind.

And it was just kind of a direct reaction to that. His mirror of the prince says, no, you want to be effective. If you want to maintain your estate, you have to learn how hell not to be good. It occurs to me there's probably no better person to talk to about this subject than you, Matt, this way in which Machiavelli is a realist and a kind of founder of realism. Can you say a bit of, I mean, what you're laying out here sounds realistic in every sense of the term, that is to say, devoted to seeing the world as it is, not as it ought to be, as that passage more or less lays out explicitly, but also like it ought to play into later theories and more formal theories of realism and international relations.

What is Machiavelli's role in the formation of that body of thought? Yes. Well, realism is one of the major theories of international relations. relations today and basically says that the world is anarchic. There's no world government, so countries need to protect themselves. To protect themselves, they need to be powerful. And that realistically, you know, where the name comes from, let's be realist, that if you try to be too moral in international politics, you could leave yourself vulnerable. So you see you have to do what it takes to defend yourself. Sometimes that means going to war, might mean deceiving others.

And so modern realist scholars, you know, so some critics would say, well, realism is immoral. I think modern realist scholars would say, no, it's amoral. It's just a different, you know, politics is a different sphere, trying to judge international politics with our traditional standards of morality that maybe work within a domestic society that's stable and safe. Trying to apply that to a dangerous international system just doesn't make sense. They're different worlds and different standards apply. It seems sort of like a targeted Machiavellianism, right, in the sense that the modern

theorists of realism want to apply something like Machiavelli to interstate matters, but leave open the possibility that actually there's, there are, you know, meaningful ordering principles and I say our personal conduct, right? Whereas I take Machiavelli to be somewhat more radical. Well, that's a good point, you know, because I think that contemporary realists, and contemporary realists do look back at Machiavelli as an early realist and an inspiration. But contemporary international relations scholars would say, well, there's a difference between domestic politics and international politics. Because domestic politics, you do have a state that has monopoly on the use of force,

and so therefore it can provide stability and security. And so therefore, having moral principles, being honest, you know, et cetera, makes sense because you don't have to worry about your, for the most part, you know, your security. On the other hand, in international politics, there is no world government, and so you have to protect yourself, and when we're survivals on the line, you need to maybe do things that wouldn't approve of in, you know, safer domestic context. And I hadn't thought about it that way. It's a good point, because Machiavelli is talking about how does a prince maintain order within the state and does recommend using cruelty well in order in order to do that.

Well, it's just always struck me as a, I don't think I would describe myself. I'm a realist in the sense that everyone's a realist, and every modern at least is a realist and wants to think of the way things are rather than ought to be. But I'm not a realist in the IR theory sense. And it's one of the reasons I'm not is it's always struck me as a bit of a problem with the theory that somehow this is a manner of thinking that applies to the international system, but somehow not to other forms of politics. And Machiavelli just strikes me as much more consistent, but also, again, I'm sort of

putting my own cards down on the table here and where I come down in the great debate, but much more radical and much darker, right? In the sense that, you know, fortune, you know, as you know, and write about fortune as an ordering principle is replacing, you know, sort of classical conceptions of a much more ordered universe. But if in fact, the principal human experience is one of encounters with chance, right, and the kind of chaos, anarchy, you know, to bring the modern realists, I are realists into it, Well, that counsels a certain manner of behaving in action and reveals as ridiculous other older forms of behaving and acting, like a vision of ethics and politics that's just much, again, it's much more radical and darker than I think, you know, I'm tempted to name names, but modern academic realists would consider themselves to be. I think they all think of themselves more or less as good people.

Yeah, a couple points. One, I have a lot of criticisms of modern realism. including some of the work of John Mearsheimer, who calls himself a realist, but in many ways, I think is unrealistic and his analysis and recommendations. But, you know, I don't think Machiavelli was, I think he was making a self-conscious and radical break from the past and kind of goes through attacking one by one in several chapters, the traditional princely virtues of justice and so on. But at the same time, he did say that maybe I can find a quote, but he said it's good to be perceived as loyal and just and merciful and upright.

So he did see a value in being perceived as holding those traditional qualities. And then his quote says, but if need be, you may need to turn your back on those qualities in order to be effective. So he did say if need be, which seems to suggest to me that if you don't have the need, then behaving according to the traditional morality might make sense. Yeah. I always tell me there's a direct through line from that. observation to sort of practicing realists who for whom you know I think one can have a lot of

respect not not not not the academic variety so folks the cold war realists like henry kessinger say who is always very clear in his writing and in his actions for that matter that you know national conceptions of right and wrong you know he often talks about in terms of the histories right the histories of countries are conditioning factors that statesman must take into account right But it's very clear the way he says it and the way he lays it out that the whole thing's a bit of an annoyance, you know, and like the true role of the statesman is actually kind of navigate amongst these things. But you'd never counsel ignoring them in the same way that Machiavelli would never counsel just ignoring that it's helpful to appear to be good. But it's not the heart of the matter, you know. Yes, yes, that's right. And I think Kissinger did sometimes see domestic U.S. politics and morality getting in the way of what the United States really needed to be doing to secure its interest. Yeah. And just sticking with this theme of realism for a minute, is who is Machiavelli most barring from amongst the ancients?

You know, obviously we could talk about Livy, you know, certainly modern realists see Machiavelli. You sort of paired with Thucydides in some ways as a founder of Recivali. realism, but who are his most important classical sources? Well, the first one that comes to mind is actually in the discourses and Livy, because it's called the discourses on Livy, because he's looking back at Libby's monumental histories of Rome. And Libbyus was also influenced there because the question he's asking in the discourses is, how did, and again, a pretty narrow question that's motivating the book, how did Rome rise from becoming a small city, say, on the Tiber River,

to dominating the entire Mediterranean basin. And he concludes that it was the Republican institutions that were the key to their success. So he makes the argument very well, but Flibeus writing in the ancient world is essentially made a similar argument. And so there I think you see that ancient influence pretty directly. In terms of his realism, I'm not sure.

That's a good question. Well, maybe another way to ask the question is, are there classical authors out there that you see is not just sources of modern realist thought because there are obvious answers to that, but as sources for his particular radical take on realism. I guess what I'm getting at is it drives me nuts. It's like a huge pet peeve of mine when people will sort of speak of Thucydides and Machiavelli in the same breath as founders of realism,

as though there were no difference between them. I'm just curious to know if you share that annoyance or if you think there's something different from Machiavelli and all those old ancient writers. Yeah, I think there is something, something different. And, you know, he was writing in a different plan period for one, 1, 1,500 years or so later. But then, too, he was, you know, some of the, he was reacting to 1,500 years of classical and then Christian writing that really was holding these moral values as the supreme good and telling a leader, you know, if you want to be a good leader, you have to

be just. And, you know, would say essentially that even if you're, you know, there's going to be the ultimate judgment day, and you'll be judged by God. So even if people can't see everything that you're doing, you're going to want to be just regardless. And so Machiavelli had a very different point of view. And we haven't talked about his views on religion yet, but he was pretty disdainful, I'd say, of Christianity and the Catholic Church. And some of these traditional values is getting into way of effective leaders. And then I think also the Catholic Church, he wrote about how it was essentially the papal states prevented the unification of a powerful Italian republic. And so I think for that reason also didn't like the papal states.

And there may be reasons in his biography. You know, he did live through the bonfire of the vanities and with Saffirnoll and in Florence. And so he certainly wasn't a man of the clock. Well, actually, it might be helpful to just say a bit about that, you know, bonfire of the vanities might seem to some to be a Tom Wolf movie or excuse me, Tom Boff novel and entertaining but mediocre Bruce. Willis movie based on the novel. What was the bonfire of the vanities? Yeah, so when the Medici's were overthrown and in the transition to the Florentine Republic,

you had this Dominican friar, Sabinor Rolla, who gained an enormous following in Florence and was preaching against papal corruption in Rome, preaching against the wealth of the Medici and the Florentines. I thought there was too much of a focus. On this life, they needed to be focused on the afterlife. And so we held these big bonfires of the vanities in Florence where he encouraged people to come out and burn their worldly possessions. The Renaissance paintings, their books, their jewelry, their clothes. So who knows how many Renaissance master paintings we lost in those bonfire of the vanities. But he went too far.

And the people in Florence started to bristle under his kind of theocratic rule. And he went too far and going after the Pope. And so the Pope had him exunicated. The Florentines turned against him. And he was eventually burnt at the stake outside of the Palazzo Vecchio in downtown Florence. And then Machiavelli came to power immediately thereafter. Maybe it would be good to close with a discussion of democracy versus authoritarianism and where Machiavelli comes into that debate.

This is, of course, the subject of your book, which we've never really discussed, certainly not on this show. You're bullish. You're bullish on behalf of democracies and take a dim view of the prospect of authoritarian states, which is a refreshing thing to hear in 2023, citizens of a democracy as we are. What's the broad case for that? And what role does Machiavelli play within it?

Yeah. Well, so my 2020 book does look at democracies versus autocracies and great power rivalry. And I start with the Greeks and the Persians 2,500 years ago and bring it all the way out to the U.S. and China today. And I do conclude that democracies tend to do pretty well in these things and autocracies tend to flame out

in the end. And I think there are a lot of people, though, who today are skeptical about democracy. We're too polarized. We're too gridlocked. Maybe China has the better system. They can plan for the long term. They can implement Big Bull, you know, strategies, investments in the Belt and Road Initiative and other things. And Machiavelli was clearly encountering similar arguments in his time and argued, no, looking at ancient Rome, I think the Republican forms of government are better able to amass wealth in power in the international system. And in fact, he was part of the motivation for my book. And he goes through and kind of systematically dismantle some of these arguments we typically hear about why autocracies are better. So, you know, we often hear that autocracies can plan for the long

term. She has a plan for 2049. We can't see past the next election. You know, we zigzag with each administration. And he says, I have the quote here, I therefore disagree with the common opinion that a populace in power is unstable, changeable, and ungrateful. On the contrary, quote, the prince unchecked by laws will be more unstable and imprudent than a populace. And I think that's right. You know, if you just look at Mao Zedom bouncing from one failed policy to the other, and the checks and balances in our system keeps us on a pretty stable course. I mean, there are some exceptions like the Iran deal maybe. But if you look at our foreign policy, I think there are a lot of broad continuities across parties going back to 1945 and other examples as well

where he kind of goes directly after these arguments that print dictatorships or somehow better. Matt Kronig, professor at Georgetown University, author of the Return of Great Power Rivalry and contributor of the Machiavelli chapter to the new makers of modern strategy. It is always a delight to have you on the show to talk about everything from nuclear weapons through to some of the deepest and most complicated currents of political philosophy. Thanks for indulging us again. My pleasure, Aaron.

Thanks for having me and look forward to coming back anytime. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. For maps, photos, and more School of War content, follow along on Instagram at School of War. Just tap the link in the show notes and subscribe.