Questions about Iran and Russia
(Note: comments on this entry begin
here.)
A couple of weeks ago reader Kilroy M. from Australia asked what would be a traditionalist conservative foreign policy regarding the Eastern European missile shield and Obama’s recent cancellation of same. How can the paleoconservatives at Chronicles, he wondered, “on one hand espouse a principled conservatism, and, on the other, dismiss loyal allies who have asked for U.S. assistance and protection (i.e. Poland and the Czech Republic)?” Yesterday in an e-mail he expressed disappointment that there had been no responses to his post. However, while Kilroy was thinking about protecting Eastern Europe from Iranian nuclear weapons, which was, we were told, the main purpose of the cancelled missile shield, his questions about Eastern Europe made me think about Russia. I said to him that I lacked an informed opinion about Russia and Eastern Europe and what our policy ought to be there, and that maybe other readers were also unsure, and that was why no one had replied to his post.
I continued:
Should we as traditionalist conservatives welcome Russia as an anti-modern, traditionalist-friendly power that will stand against neocon universalism? Paleocons (or whatever paleocons call themselves nowadays) strike that note. Or should we see Russia as a dangerous, increasingly tyrannical regime which seeks to bring the nations of Eastern Europe under its thumb again and ought to be resisted?
Should we oppose the expansion of NATO to the east (I’ve always opposed it), as an unjustified attempt to impose our will on more and more countries beyond our legitimate sphere of influence? Or should we see such expansion as the only way to secure the liberty of the countries neighboring Russia?
I lack sufficient knowledge of the nature of what is happening over there, of the good and bad of what is happening over there, and of what our legitimate interests are over there.
Kilroy replied:
That’s fair enough—that part of the world has always been a mystery to most Westerners (ironically, countries like Poland and Hungary have always been Western, it’s just the legacy of the Cold War that has coloured people’s perceptions)
Three hours later, I wrote to him again:
Well, just this story alone is enough to tell us that Russia is bad and dangerous. It doesn’t want the world to do anything to stop Iranian nukes:
BEIJING (Reuters)—Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned major powers on Wednesday against intimidating Iran and said talk of sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme was “premature”.
Even “talk about sanctions” is premature! So Russia is not on our side and wants complete Western surrender.
However, having said that, I have to point out that our own leaders, including Bush, haven’t wanted to do anything to stop Iranian nukes either, so what’s the point of blaming Putin on that point?
Then, this evening, I read the following
column by Charles Krauthammer in which he expands on Russia’s total siding with Iran, and tells yet another shocking and disturbing story of Obama as appeaser to the nth degree:
Debacle in Moscow
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 16, 2009
About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award “premature,” as if the brilliance of Obama’s foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.
To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president’s various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration—excuse me, outreach and understanding—is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.
Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let’s review.
What’s come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.
What’s come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama’s shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn’t moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it’s pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
What’s come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? “The settlement push backfired,” reports The Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have “arguably regressed.”
And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke—the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.
But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it’s too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.
The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?
“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions; Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.” Such was The Post headline’s succinct summary of the debacle.
Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “threats, sanctions and threats of pressure” are “counterproductive.” Note: It’s not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.
It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved—to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? “We are not at that point yet,” she averred. “That is not a conclusion we have reached … it is our preference that Iran work with the international community.”
But wait a minute. Didn’t Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face “sanctions that have bite” and that it would have to take “a new course or face consequences”?
Gone with the wind. It’s the United States that’s now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We’re not doing sanctions now, you see. We’re back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.
Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.
No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and “reset” buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.
[end of Krauthammer article]
Clearly Russia is not reliable from our point of view and favors, or at least has no objection to, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. But the question arises, how much of Moscow’s anti-U.S. behavior is a function of America’s own stunning weakness as documented by Krauthammer? The Russians know that Obama is not going to do anything about Iranian nukes. So why should they go through the farcical motions of saying, “Oh, yes, we’re also concerned about stopping Iranian nukes,” and invest themselves in helping America, only to see Obama drop the ball again, and again?
If America had forceful leadership that was defending the interests of America and the West, isn’t it at least somewhat likely that Moscow’s Iran policy would be different from what it now is and less opposed to ours?
So—as I said earlier—how can we blame Putin when Bush, and now Obama, have shown repeatedly and in the most unmistakable way that they are not going to do anything to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, including the only thing that can actually stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which is to use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? Why blame Russia for responding rationally to our weakness?
- end of initial entry -
Roland D. writes:
You wrote:
So—as I said earlier—how can we blame Putin when Bush, and now Obama, have shown repeatedly and in the most unmistakable way that they are not going to do anything to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, including the only thing that can actually stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which is to use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities?
The only military options we have for stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons are a) nuking them out of existence or b) invading and occupying them. Conventional airpower simply won’t suffice, no matter how many large bunker-buster we employ—we simply haven’t the intelligence necessary to target their, nor to perform an accurate BDA afterwards.
Note that Iranians aren’t Arabs, and that Iran is not Iraq. Assuming that a) is unacceptable from a political and/or moral standpoint, that leaves b)—and given how poorly we’ve done in Iran and Afghanistan, one can only imagine how poorly we’d fare in occupying Iran.
Whether or not Iran obtain nuclear weapons simply isn’t the business of the United States, IMHO. If they dare to use them against us, they can’t destroy our nation, and they will shortly thereafter cease to be, no matter who is president. If they attack the Israelis, ditto—the Israelis will simply nuke them out of existence.
So, it simply isn’t our problem.
LA replies:
I categorically reject all of Roland’s points and his premises as well, for reasons that have been given at this site repeatedly for several years. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran is not just a problem for us and the world but the Mother of Problems. And we do have it in our power to destroy or greatly set back their nuclear weapons program without occupying the country or nuking them out of existence. Talk about red herrings! None of the parties urging military force against Iran have proposed the occupation of Iran let alone the nuclear destruction of Iran.
Richard Hoste writes:
You wrote:
Should we as traditionalist conservatives welcome Russia as an anti-modern, traditionalist-friendly power that will stand against neocon universalism?
Yes. Where are you priorities? The only way you can think otherwise is if you think stopping Iran from getting nukes is more important than cutting off immigration and preserving historic nations. Neo-cons hate Russia because it’s resisted multiculturalism.
You write, in response to the Russian statement on Iran:
Even “talk about sanctions” is premature! So Russia is not on our side and wants complete Western surrender.
Not everybody sees letting a nation on the other side of the world that’s never attacked or threatened us do whatever it wants as “Western surrender.”
LA replies:
Again, complete cluelessness. A complete failure to grasp what Iran is and what nuclear weapons in the hands of that country would signify. Forget about Iran actually using the weapons against, most likely, Israel, which in my view would be adequate reason to stop their nuclear ambitions. Short of actual use of the weapons, the Iranians would have the ability to threaten and intimidate much of the world. They would have Europe under their thumb. Imagine Europe trying to turn back the Islamic tide with nuclear armed Iran threatening to attack it if Europe gives its Muslims a hard time.
Maybe Mr. Hoste doesn’t think that Europe is a part of the West. Maybe he thinks that the rest of the world really has nothing to do with the United States. Maybe he thinks that the United States is not just on a different continent from the Old World, but a different planet. Maybe he thinks that the Islamization of Europe is no skin off our nose.
Mark A. writes:
I think the Russians have been laughing at us since 2003. Watching us invade Iraq to impose democracy and hook 80 million Arabs up to the U.S. welfare system must have been like watching an opposing team’s wide receiver run the wrong way down the football field. The U.S. is a laughing stock to any nation that still has a hint of masculinity left in it (e.g. Russia, China, Japan).
Even Krauthammer tips his delusional hand: the U.S. should impose sanctions on Iran? Get tough with Russia? What country does he think he lives in? The United States is entirely bankrupt—fiscally, physically, and morally. Its balance sheet resembles a Third World South American country in the 1980s. Its industrial base destroyed. Its people gluttonous, ignorant, and insolent. Its culture mired in pornography, gratuitous violence, and fantasy. Krauthammer is a fool—the weak don’t get to impose sanctions on the strong. The weak get crushed, as Putin understands all too well.
Kilroy M. writes:
Thanks for posting this.
I wasn’t concerned about the U.S. defending Central Europe from Iran, which seems like an odd hypothesised conflict. Rather, I was concerned with the question of why the U.S. should be involved in that part of the world at all. The PaleoCons take the isolationist approach, which is their right. But I suggested that a conservative approach to foreign policy cannot be a dogmatic one like Fleming and Buchanan seem to propose. Allies have to be treated as such. While Bush managed to alienate the U.S. from its enemies, Obama has begun alienating it from her friends (indeed, the most loyal U.S. allies outside of the Anglosphere). True, a majority of the people in Poland and the Czech Republic don’t want the Shield, but the governments they elected do (Burke’s speech to the Electors of Bristol comes to mind).
Furthermore, as I indicated previously, it appears that the largest concentration of Euroscepticism comes from Poland and surrounding countries. It would therefore be in the interests of Traditionalists (and especially the U.S.) if those States’ political clout etc were maintained/bolstered in the face of Brussels’ and Moscow’s political ambitions. This is partly achieved by further integrating these countries into the U.S. sphere a la “New Europe” (apologies for the Rumsfeldianism). [LA replies: this may be a good point, except of course that the U.S. leadership has never seen the EU and its continuing growth into a continental unfree behemoth as a problem, but to the contrary has welcomed it at every step of the way.]
It is not an imperial act to maintain a military presence on foreign soil if that presence was invited. Moreover, it would be an act of supreme negligence to cede geopolitical space to less benevolent forces that have no compunction to take advantage of one’s own weakness (i.e. Russia). In this context the Paleos are naive and their “conservatism” too rigid and dogmatic to be realistic. The contempt that they show to these U.S. allies only makes their position a dangerous one. In my opinion, none of this is in the U.S. interest. If the Shield was an ineffective system, as some suggest, the whole affair (including Obama’s withdrawal) has been grossly botched from the start.
I suggest that the U.S. should maintain some level of “special relationship” with Central Europe, one which satisfies that part of the world in being formally and conclusively locked away from Russian neo-imperialist ambitions while also creating a counterbalance against multiculturalist/homosexualised Western Europe.
October 17
Mark P. writes:
We should do both. We can support the allies and praise Russia for being traditionalist-friendly.
LA replies:
But is Russian in reality traditionalist-friendly? Or is that just a projection of American trads looking for a country that believes in traditional peoplehood, culture, religion, when in reality, Russia is a gangster state?
Ferg writes:
We were foolish enough to help Islam against Russia. Now Russia is returning the favor. We need to decide, based on our true long term interests, who should be our friends, and how we should support them. I am not in a position to make that judgement, but it needs to be made, and soon, or we are going to find ourselves without any real friends in the world at all.
Palahalli S. writes:
Namaste,
Your observations toward the end of your article got me thinking about what I had written recently with respect to Hindusthan’s own policy on Iran.
So—as I said earlier—how can we blame Putin when Bush, and now Obama, have shown repeatedly and in the most unmistakable way that they are not going to do anything to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, including the only thing that can actually stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which is to use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? Why blame Russia for responding rationally to our weakness?
I somehow don’t think Russia or even China tend to cover for Iran because they see America’s Iran policy as weak; there could be other reasons.
When I look at Russia and China (R & C)—I see two countries that have serious internal ongoing conflicts with Islamic terrorism. Chechnya and Xinjiang. In fact, R & C have had continuous and long standing conflicts in varying degrees with Islam.
U.S. policy on both these conflicts has been uniformly ambivalent and has tended to take on a dubious moral high ground against Russia and China. Very similar to how it handles Kashmir vis a vis Hindusthan in connection to Pakistan’s active role in the conflict.
Here’s how I think it gets played out with respect to R & C.
Due to their experience in dealing with Muslims (they have dealt with them ferociously), they seem confident of controlling a nuclear Iran and plan on using it as a lever to insure their own power and influence in oil-rich Middle East.
A fanatic Achmadinejad must know he’s playing with fire when it comes to R & C. I’m sure he’s calculated that a war is something his backers don’t want and I believe they are determined not to see it occur.
When an Islamic Republic shakes hands with regimes that are currently crushing Islamic aspirations—its pure business.
Of course a nuclear Iran can still spoil the arrangement if its leader takes his destiny too seriously and I believe R & C are no fools either.
Still, where does that leave the U.S.? For starters, would it be willing to support any anti-Islamic action in China, Russia and Hindusthan?
That would be a start.
LA replies:
I don’t know what Palahalli’s overall point is.
Richard Hoste writes:
You write in response to my message:
“Again, complete cluelessness. A complete failure to grasp what Iran is and what nuclear weapons in the hands of that country would signify. Forget about Iran actually using the weapons, say, against Israel, which in my view would be adequate reason to stop their nuclear ambitions. Short of actual use of the weapons, the Iranians would have the ability to threaten and intimidate much of the world. They would have Europe under their thumb. Imagine Europe trying to turn back the Islamic tide with nuclear armed Iran threatening to attack it if Europe gives its Muslims a hard time.
Maybe Mr. Hoste doesn’t think that Europe is a part of the West. Maybe he thinks that the rest of the world really has nothing to do with the United States. Maybe he thinks that the United States is not just on a different continent from the Old World, but a different planet. Maybe he thinks that the Islamization of Europe is no skin off our nose.”
Iran has an economy the size of Miami’s. The idea that they could threaten Europe or the U.S. militarily (or the U.S. and Europe together!) is laughable. I suppose hypothetically that they could threaten to nuke Europe if they gave Muslim migrants trouble, but there’s no reason on earth to think such a thing. Do you think the Mullahs are going to give up their country for Moroccans in French ghettos? When have Muslim regimes shown such self-sacrifice? It’s just as ridiculous as expecting Syria to invade Russia over Chechnya.
Why isn’t China scared of nuclear Iran? Surely they’ve treated their Muslim minority harshly. But the rest of the world’s Muslims, including Iran, doesn’t raise a peep. That’s because the main problems Muslims have with the West is our interference in their affairs, not real or imagined mistreatment of Muslim minorities.
The threat from Muslims is an immigration issue. Those who want to make it a military one (except for using the military to evict Muslims from the West) are doing so for their own agenda.
LA replies:
You write:
The threat from Muslims is an immigration issue. Those who want to make it a military one (except for using the military to evict Muslims from the West) are doing so for their own agenda.
Since I am making it a military issue, and have done so for years, I’m one of the people you are accusing of doing so “for my own agenda.” Apparently you mean some hidden and secret agenda beyond what I’ve spelled out in my many entries on the subject.
So (1) what exactly are you accusing me of? And (2) since you are evidently accusing me of writing in bad faith, give me a reason why should I continue posting your comments at my site.
Richard Hoste replies:
There should’ve been a “generally” in there somewhere. I apologize. Respond to the other points if you’d like.
LA replies:
Apology accepted.
Howard Sutherland writes:
As diplomatic matters stand now, Russia—from a Russian point of view, attempting to see matters from their standpoint—has no reason whatever to make life easier for the U.S. government. Ever since the end of the Cold War and the demise (good riddance!) of the Soviet Union, U.S. policy has been to contain and impoverish Russia, or so it appears.
Putin is reviled as an old Chekist, and indeed he is that. But he is a former KGB agent, and now seems to be a patriotic Russian with a sense of, and attachment to, the thousand years or so of Russia’s history and traditions that predated the Soviet Union. As far as one can tell, the same is true of Medvedev and Lavrov. Certainly, both Putin and Medvedev have seemed to welcome a revival of the Russian Orthodox Church as an important player in Russian life (with what success remains to be seen). That doesn’t strike me as the attitude of unreformed Communists.
In attempting to revive Russia after the near-death experience of Soviet Communism, Russians have looked to their past and tried to draw national strength from older Russian traditions. That, of course, is anathema to the sort of liberal who populates any U.S. administration today. People may not remember, but the old Bolsheviks were militantly internationalist, and almost no important ones were actually Russians. Communism was violently anti-national, and the nationality that posed the greatest potential threat to the Soviet Communist Party regime was precisely the Russian, especially if Orthodox Christianity revived. As Solzhenitsyn (predictably and wrongly reviled as an anti-Semite) and others pointed out, Russia has a long period of recovery ahead, and the surest road to recovery is to restore what is good in Russia’s own national character—which may not always please liberal Western democratists. One would hope that approach would resonate with Westerners of a traditionalist bent trying to salvage something from the wreckage of our own part of once-Christian civilization. [LA replies: but as I said to Mark P. above, do we know that it is true that the Russian leaders seek to revive Russia as a traditionalist nation along the lines of Solzhenitsyn’s beliefs? Or is this nothing more than a projection of traditionalist conservative Americans looking for a country that seems traditionalist and not liberal universalist? Russia wants to bring Eastern Europe under its dominion again. How is this a manifestation of a traditionalist nation, in other than the usual power-seeking sense?]
When these Russians, who are concerned to secure their country (Russians, living with wide-open invasion routes into the Great Russian motherland, feel perpetually threatened) and keep it Russian, look at the United States, what do they see? They see a perpetually meddling superpower that has shucked off its own history and traditions in favor of a manufactured messianic mission to spread democracy all over the world, whether or not the purported beneficiaries have any likelihood of being able successfully to run a democratic polis. They see a country that, having largely stripped itself of its own national character, seems determined to ensure that all other countries are stripped of their distinctive characters as well, the better to submerge them into a post-national, multi-cultural global market-state. How else to explain such idiocies as the vehement advocacy of U.S. administrations in favor of admitting Turkey to the European Union? How is that any of America’s business, and how is it anything but hostile to the traditional Europe? [LA replies: I agree with everything you say here about America. But what is Russia’s position on the admission of Turkey to the EU?]
In Russia’s case, U.S. meddling gets personal when the United States, through its intelligence agencies, appears to rig elections to put anti-Russian clients in power in such near-neighbors as the Ukraine and Georgia. Contiguous as these countries are to Russia (both were part of the Russian Empire long before the Bolshevik coup; indeed, Kiev is the first city of Russia historically and the Crimea is almost entirely Russian in population), they are a long way from America. And that meddling comes after expanding NATO as far east as the Baltic States (again, part of the Russian Empire, rightly or wrongly, long before there was a Soviet Union) in the pursuit of no identifiable American interest—and in violation of the first President Bush’s promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east if the Soviets pulled back from the Warsaw Pact. And that came after the Clinton administration made a point of bombing in support of Moslem enemies of the Slavs in Serbia—again, in the pursuit of no identifiable American interest, but in service to gauzy nostrums about diversity and an obvious hostility to Eastern Europeans, especially Orthodox Slavs. Even after the end of the USSR and the Cold War, the United States has continued to maintain a network of military bases largely encircling Russia. With the Soviet threat gone, what purpose, other than containing Russia for its own sake, does the U.S. government have for maintaining all of these unnecessary bases, the Russians must ask themselves. [LA replies: Don’t we know the answer? The U.S. is concerned that Russia will seek to restore its dominance over those states. That at least is the reason that is given. Is there no truth in it? And what does Mr. Sutherland think about Kilroy’s concern about our betrayal of the Czech Republic and Poland re the missile shield? Also, does not Obama’s cancellation of the missile shield signal that the U.S. policy Mr. Sutherland is concerned about no longer is in place?]
It does not help matters that many of the people most influential in making American foreign policy, liberals in Democratic administrations, neoconservatives (that is, liberals) in Republican ones, are the descendants of recently immigrated Jews from Poland (Russian-ruled when they left) and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. [LA replies: A hundred years ago is recent?] The Russians see them as ethnically hostile to Russia and Russians in a way that has nothing to do with American interests or America’s history—until the Bolshevik revolution, America and Russia had generally been friendly. I am afraid that, to a large extent, they are right. Nor does it help that one of the most prominent opinionators in the United States about the Russo-American relationship—one who has the ear of the Obama administration—is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Catholic Pole who is viscerally hostile to Russia for reasons that, once more, have absolutely nothing to do with America’s history or genuine interests.
Russians who want to preserve Russia as a Russian nation are right to see the U.S. government in its current incarnation (just look at the man from nowhere-in-particular who currently heads the administrative branch!) as hostile to their interests. Russia owes the Obama administration no concessions whatever. An intelligent, traditionalist foreign policy for America would cultivate as friendly a relationship as is practical with Russia. If there is to be a lasting restoration of European civilization and culture, both America and Russia will have to do a lot to bring it about—bearing in mind that the American version and the Russian version of that culture will still be quite different from each other. Russians and Americans are not the same, and why should they be? It goes without saying that no such restoration is part of the Obama agenda—quite the opposite. I’m sure Russia’s rulers have noticed that.
As for Russia’s relations with Iran, Russian rulers have been dealing with the Persians, for good and ill, for a great deal longer than we Americans have. Has anyone asked whether the Russians themselves might not be willing or able to squelch the Iranian nuclear program themselves, should they perceive it as a threat to Russia’s security? I would not be so sure that Russia is entirely indifferent to the possibility of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon, and may have much better intelligence than the United States does about the actual state of the Persians’ program. Iran, after all, is a near-neighbor of Russia, as it is not of America. I suspect the Russians, ever-suspicious of possibly hostile activities in their “near-abroad,” might have contingency plans of their own for Iran. Those plans might include sabotage from within—many of the nuclear technicians working in Iran are no doubt Russian, and no doubt several are on the Russian payroll as well as the Mullahs’. And—given the generally shambolic record of American dealings with Iran—the Russians probably don’t trust the Americans to get it right anyway.
Alan Roebuck writes:
In the discussion about Iran, at VFR and elsewhere, we see most people failing to acknowledge two basic points:
Iran is our enemy. They have made their hostility clear by words and actions, and we cannot induce them to change their hostility by apologizing for past misdeeds (real or imagined) or by making nice to them. When someone is your enemy, you don’t try to induce him to change his mind, you defend yourself. In fact, the best way to make him change his mind is to defend yourself.
No matter how weak we may be, and no matter how confusing the situation may be, there is always a range of options available for defending ourselves and putting pressure on our enemies. That is, there are other options besides going nuclear or passively waiting for the enemy to change his mind spontaneously. And the first and most important step is to stop talking and acting like a sissy.
Patrick Buchanan, for example, in an otherwise reasonable essay on why the Iranian protests over their recent elections are none of our business, failed to mention that Iran’s regime is our enemy and therefore our government could at least have weakened them by making public statements against them.
The situation vis a vis Russia, Iran and other rivals or enemies is obviously difficult, but liberal society cannot acknowledge even the most fundamental facts. We face an enormous educational job, among many others.
Boris S. writes:
I don’t understand your commenters who sympathize with Russia, even where its policies are opposed to American and Western interests, because the Russia of today is (they believe) “good for traditionalism.” Even if one grants the (extremely dubious) assertion that the Russian state is traditionalist in the sense the word is used at VFR, it is unclear how a “traditional” Russia helps the cause of traditionalists in the West. It is delusional to think that Putin cares one whit about sodomy or multiculturalism in the United States.
I’m equally puzzled by commenters who treat the Soviet Union and modern Russia as completely different entities, even though the current Russian leadership has exploited widespread nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and even though Putin has famously said that the collapse of the USSR has been the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Commenter Howard Sutherland, when he calls the entire Soviet period a “near death experience” for Russia, perhaps doesn’t realize that his perception could not be more at odds with that of the vast majority of Russians!
I suspect that many of these “paleo” commenters get their impressions about Russia from secondhand knowledge of some of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, as though Solzhenitsyn were representative of Russia. (Solzhenitsyn, who has disgracefully disparaged the sacrifice of Soviet Jewry on the battlefields of World War II, is held in high esteem on the far right precisely because of his apparent anti-Semitism.)
Anyhow, to side with a foreign state against one’s own country because of a perceived ideological affinity, that is, to be a useful idiot, is not my idea of conservatism.
D. from Seattle writes:
This discussion brings up an interesting question, one that I haven’t seen mentioned in my year or so reading your web site on a pretty regular basis. If you have addressed it in the past, I would appreciate linking to the old postings. Here it is:
I agree that as a matter of principle Iran, or any other Muslim country, should not have nuclear weapons. What to do about it can be a point of discussion. At the same time, we (meaning the rest of the world that could have done something about it) let Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons.
What is your position on Pakistan having nuclear weapons? Do you view Iran and Pakistan in different light on this issue, i.e. do you think that one is worse than the other, or are they the same in terms of how undesirable it is for the non-Islamic world for those two countries to have nuclear weapons?
I tend to agree with Palahalli’s assessment regarding Russia’s and China’s way of dealing with their own Muslim minorities and the Islamic world in general, i.e. that Russia and China act from a position of power first, and with concern for equality and human rights in the Western sense of those subjects, oh, probably 347th item down the list of importance. Regarding Iran threatening Europe with nuclear weapons over possible mistreatment of Europe’s Muslim minorities, UK and France have nuclear weapons too, so they presumably can take care of themselves, if they ever had the guts to use them.
If you assume that any regime capable of developing nuclear weapons is also capable of rational thought and acting in self-interest, i.e. not being suicidal, then you would conclude that nuclear deterrence would work with that regime, especially if one side is disproportionally more capable (in this case U.S. or Israel vs. nuclear Iran). I believe this was the basis of Richard Hoste’s comment, and also the basis of Steve Sailer’s lack of concern for Iran’s military threat. Sailer’s argument was that Iran’s military is technologically a joke and that Israel could obliterate Iran’s military within days in any kind of a conventional or nuclear confrontation.
You seem to be a lot more concerned about Iran’s military threat and I am curious to learn more about why this is so. Do you believe that Islamic regimes cannot be counted on to make rational decisions when dealing with nuclear weapons, i.e. that they would use them even if they knew they couldn’t get away with it, guaranteeing their own annihilation?
I’m looking forward to reading more on this topic.
LA replies:
As has been discussed at VFR, no sharia government can be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. If such a situation threatens to come about,, that government and/or its weapons must be destroyed.
Iran is now a sharia government. Pakistan is not. Pakistan’s military has long been the most secular and modern part of Pakistan society. If Taliban threatened to take over Pakistan, we would have to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear capability or take other steps to prevent nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban.
You speak of Iran as rational. But Iran, as you ought to know, has repeatedly promised to use its nuclear weapons against Israel as soon as it acquires them. The preeminent leader of Iran even said that Iran wouldn’t mind if Israel retaliated with nuclear weapons against Iran, since Iran would be partly destroyed but would survive, while Israel would be completely destroyed. Does that sound like a rational society to you?
May I also respectfully suggest that for you to appeal to the arguments of Sailer, who is manifestly motivated by anti-Semitism in these matters, and who, as I showed, made light of the idea of Israel coming under an Iranian nuclear attack, is not an effective way to advance an argument on this subject. If you’re looking for someone to quote on this issue, then you need to find someone with a less pungent aroma. Also, as I’ve pointed out before, Sailer’s argument that Iran is not a threat to Israel because it doesn’t possess a strong conventional military, is blatantly absurd, since the question is not Iran’s conventional military, but the nuclear capability it is attempting to acquire.
People who sanguinely talk about Iran possessing nuclear weapons, who sanguinely talk about accepting a mutually assured destruction standoff with Iran, because the Iranians are rational, are not being rational themselves. They don’t want to face reality, the reality of an Islamic sharia regime plus nuclear weapons, so they pretend reality is not there.
At this moment, the world is in retreat before Islam. The Western powers are signing UN resolutions promoting the suppression of speech that “defames religion,” the religion being Islam. The West is already dhimmi-ized to a significant degree. Now imagine the effect of a nuclear armed Iran on that already terrible situation. Would that strengthen the will and confidence of the West to stand against Islam, or do just the opposite? Your assumption that a nuclear armed Iran is acceptable, so long as a nuclear war doesn’t happen, misses how the world changes immeasurably for the worse with a nuclear armed Iran.
Did the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s make the USSR weaker, or stronger? Obviously, it made it a lot stronger, and for the next 40 years Europe lived under continual pressure and threat from the Communists, with many in the West constantly calling for accommodation to the Soviets so as to lessen the threat of nuclear war. Nuclear arms in the hands of Iran means a world in which many in the West will be constantly pushing for accommodation with Iran and Islam. Is that what you want? Is that what you see as a desirable or acceptable future—an immeasurable strengthening of the power of jihadist Islam, in international organizations, in Europe, in the Mideast, in the whole world? Of course the Sailers don’t mind such a prospect, because they don’t see Iran and Islam objectively. The only significance Iran and Islam have in their mind is that they are Israel’s enemy, and Israel’s enemy cannot be their enemy.
October 18
D. from Seattle replies:
Thanks for elaborating on the subject.
Your distinction between a sharia-based government and a non sharia-based government is a useful one; it makes sense now that you stated it explicitly.
As a side note, I have been pro-Israel for a long time, but after following your site for a while, I have become even more so, so we can credit that to your writings.
The main reason I mentioned Sailer’s arguments is because he is widely read and his arguments appeal to many and are likely to be cited by many, so it’s good to have a reply ready. I’m used to doing “rude Q&A” type argumentation professionally, where we think of all the unpleasant questions or arguments the public may come up with and prepare replies for each, so that kind of thinking slipped in here. I should have made that more clear up front.
LA replies:
Thanks.
As far as the Sailer-type thinkers are concerned, no argument on my side would make any difference. They will never support anything that was arguably to the advantage of Israel. If there were some act needed for the defense of Europe or the U.S., and Israel would also benefit from it, they would oppose it.
October 19
D. from Seattle writes:
In your latest post, you wrote:
As far as the Sailer-type thinkers are concerned, no argument on my side would make any difference. They will never support anything that was arguably to the advantage of Israel. If there were some act needed for the defense of Europe or the U.S., and Israel would also benefit from it, they would oppose it.
I wonder why that is so; one possible explanation I can come up with is that they somehow can’t or are unwilling to distinguish between Israeli Jews who are fighting for physical survival, and liberal Jews in the West (on both sides of the Atlantic) who are often at odds with the Israeli Jews on many subjects. But that’s a question they (the Sailer-type thinkers from your paragraph above) should answer.
Palahalli S. replies to LA:
Namaste,
You said—“I don’t know what Palahalli’s overall point is.”—In short what I’m saying is that the US has till date failed to articulate an anti-Islam or anti-Muslim policy that remains consistent across borders. If one looks at its statements and actions with respect to Chechnya, Xinjiang (the US hosts a rebel leader on its soil), Kashmir, Bosnia etc it simply does not come across as a power that is serious about containing Islam.
Why should the Russians and the Chinese support the US on Iran?
Here’s where I think they derive their confidence about influencing Iran; they know they can be ruthless if Iran fails to pay heed to them. They want Iran where it can help them in the region. They don’t want (to support) Iran because of its messianic goals. The case of Hindusthan is more complicated. It has to deal with a China that wants it to lie low. China is also apprehensive of a Hindu-US alliance and is doing everything in its power to browbeat both the US and Hindusthan.
Therefore it becomes difficult for Hindusthan to adopt positions that seem close to China’s wrt Iran. This even though Iran seeks to trade with Hindusthan (the gas pipeline for instance). Like most times before, Hindusthan will seek a balance between the West and Iran.
I think I would clarify and sum up in the following manner:
Iran’s inherent irrationality will be balanced by the inherent rationality of its supporters—Russia and China.
A destroyed Middle East is of no material use to any rational power.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2009 10:49 PM | Send