who consider each problem separately and all solutions ‘on their merits’.
Despite the almost ‘knock-about’ way the term and its opposites are used,
there is a serious point of rival political theory underlying it. It has been an
article of conservative faith in most Western countries since theEnlight-
enmentthat human reason is not powerful enough fully to understand the
complexity of politics and society. As a result conservatives distrust all general
theories which purport to give blueprints for policy or social reconstruction.
The argument, as put classically byBurke, is that given our incapacity to
theorize and understand, we should, on the whole, change little, and change
only slowly. Instead we should generally accept that any institution which has
lasted for some time should stay much as it is, and opt for what a later
philosopher, Karl Popper (1902–94), called ‘social engineering’. This entails
a gradual, piecemeal and ‘practical’ orientation to reform, guided at least as
much by precedent, instinct and above all caution as by any theory. It is this
concatenation of values that ‘pragmatism’ is meant to convey, and thus
‘pragmatic’ suits the conservative temperament. The opposition is from those
who are committed to a general theory, who believe in the possibility of
radicaland systematic reform and change. To this position pragmatism all too
easily slips into opportunism, and is a synonym for mindless short-term
expediency. The distinction, in fact, between pragmatists and ideologues is
probably false, if only because pragmatism, with its dogmatic insistence on the
impossibility of far-seeing deliberate reform, is itself a deliberate ‘ideological’
standpoint on human nature. But taken at face value, from the point of view of
political science, the distinction between those who would welcome the two
labels may well be more useful than the more conventionalleftversusright
characterizations.
Pre-Strategic
The initial use of the concept ‘pre ́strate ́gique’ was in French defence policy in
the late 1980s, but it has come to be an accepted term among all defence
analysts. A pre-strategic weapon is a nuclear weapon, most likely a short-range
missile or aircraft delivered device, with a small yield intended for attacks on
troops, bridges, marshalling yards or anything with a fairly immediate impact
on a battlefield war. It was intended, conceptually, to clear away a mass of
overlapping distinctions and to identify those nuclear weapons which were not
intended for the major destruction of civilian population or economic capacity.
As the possibility of superpower nuclear warfare at the strategic level has faded,
so the particular distinction has lost its power. Nevertheless, pre-strategic
weapons are likely to be the growth area in nuclear armaments. The need
for a quick, cheap and devastating, but limited, attack may actually grow as the
Pre-Strategic