Reckless Idealism
It was only a matter of time before Michael Gerson would begin weeping green tears and telling us how immoral Obama’s restrained response was. As one might expect, we are supposed to believe that it is a problem that Obama’s foreign policy is similar to that of the elder Bush, who was, for all of his many flaws and mistakes, probably one of the most successful foreign policy Presidents of the last half-century. We cannot really blame Gerson for persisting in his obsessions, since he has to find some way to make the record of the President he served and enabled for years look like something other than the catastrophic failure that it was. In this case, mocking Bush’s more accomplished father is what he feels compelled to do.
It has become conventional to deride the elder Bush’s 1991 speech in Kiev warning against Ukrainian independence, but looking back over the last twenty years, especially in the Balkans and the Caucasus, there is something to be said for having warned against “suicidal nationalism.” Given the ethnic heterogeneity in Ukraine and the fiercely anti-Russian nature of Ukrainian nationalism, the region has been fortunate that the potential for continued political fracturing that the principle of self-determination possesses has not been realized there. The pity is that Bush did not do more to warn the peoples of Yugoslavia against the same thing a year earlier.
Self-determination is one of those things that sounds lovely in principle, but which has caused a great deal of human suffering around the world. It is, of course, the corrupt idol of Wilsonian idealism, before which Gerson prostrates himself daily. It was this principle that shattered the Austrian empire and broke it up into easily digestible bits, creating a power vacuum in central Europe that major powers were only too happy to fill soon thereafter, and it was this principle that plunged the Balkans into a decade of hell. Not that it gets much attention, but it was also the principle that sparked the Eritrean-Ethiopian war that has cost both countries thousands upon thousands of lives and wrecked their political cultures ever since. When great multinational states break up, it has rarely been a peaceful process. If Bush erred in 1991, which is very debatable, he wisely erred on the side of caution to prevent conflagrations from consuming the ex-Soviet republics. At the time Bush was speaking, Azeris and Armenians were still fighting over Karabakh, and Yugoslavia was beginning to come apart. It would have been dangerous and, of course, harmful to relations with Moscow to cheer on separatist movements.
Having said all that, the relevant comparison with Iran from the administration of the first Bush is not the speech in Kiev, but Bush’s utterly irresponsible call for Iraqi Shi’ites to rise up against Hussein when he had no intention of aiding them. Not getting more deeply involved in Iraq was wise, but urging people to risk their lives when you have no intention of providing anything but empty rhetorical support is a gross error. Let’s be clear: Gerson wants Obama to incite the protesters and urge them to seek “freedom,” which in practice will mean provoking them to greater and greater confrontation with the government and ensuring that the crackdown against them will be even more bloody and cruel than it has been so far. Their blood will flow so that Gerson’s bleeding heart can rest easy.
Having just finished The Good Soldier Svejk, which is a hilarious and bawdy take-down of the Austrian army in WWI, I’m a bit less nostalgic for that ramshackle multinational state.
Still, you’re right–”self-determination” is overrated. It might seem clever in the short run to incite the Azeris, Kurds, Luristanis, Balochis, et al. to break away from Iran, but many lives would be lost, not to speak of herds of domesticated ruminants.
So far, with some exceptions, the Iranians seem to be having the good sense to keep things peaceful. They may embark on some kinds of protracted negotiation indecipherable to Americans. Iran is not scanner-readable.
Our interests aren’t fundamentally opposed to Iran’s, and if we keep stomping the neocons, our diplomats might even figure that out. Obama may or may not be wishy-washy, but so far, he’s been smart on this one.
Perhaps Norman Podhoretz will meet his Maker before he gets his war.
I’ve always wondered Daniel, how you square your personal domestic preference for smaller, local control and disagreeing with autonomous movements/secession groups in other countries around the world? I’m not suggesting they are equivalent per se, since many secession movements seem to offer no substantial change in policy besides a reflexive nationalism, but isn’t their a valid argument that a country on the scale of say, Russia, or even China, is a bureaucratic nightmare? And that there may be a fair amount of validity in the anger or frustration at a centralized apparatus that seems out of touch?
Local control and decentralism do not necessarily require full political independence for each canton, much less nation-state level sovereignty for every enclave. In the largest polities, I think decentralization of as many functions as possible is best, and I would like to see local government and decentralization in other large polities, but where I get off the bus is when people insist on using our foreign policy to pressure other states to cede control over their own territories. Westerners who shout the loudest for self-determination for Albanians in Kosovo, for example, are horrified by the slightest hint of separatism or localism at home. I am not absolutely opposed to any and all forms of separatism, but most of them are founded on abstract nationalist ideology that tends to be harmful to the countries in question.
One doesn’t need to valorize the Habsburg empire to see that it was a lot better than what came after it. Ramshackle it may have been, but it provided a measure of stability and order and decent government in central Europe that took eighty years to replace.
It seems so clear to many of us, both on the left and on the “alternative right”. that Obama’s position on the Iranian situation is prudent, adult, and perhaps even morally responsible. I am thus a bit mystified at the criticisms coming from the the neo-cons and their fellow travelers. I would normally ascribe a lot of this to mere partisan posturing and I’m sure that some of it is. But some of it seems frighteningly sincere. It’s like the critics are living in some alternate reality where the USA is perceived as “The Good American” by the Iranian populace. One would have thought/hoped that our track record in the Middle East, particularly our recent track record, would have promoted the virtue of humility.
My God, I never thought that I would sing the praises of men like Bush I, Scowcroft, Baker or Kissinger. But at least those guys knew how to get from point A to point B.
Doesn’t anyone know how to play this game?
Daniel, I agree that the “self-determination” program in Central Europe was a disaster. Sometimes a ramshackle central authority is preferable both to internecine conflict and efficient centralization.
I’m just Svejky today, humbly report. That reminds me of a pickle-maker in Gordzowy Klevocec . . . . but never mind. Humbly report, your lodrdship, I am an idiot after all . . .
“…Bush’s utterly irresponsible call for Iraqi Shi’ites to rise up against Hussein when he had no intention of aiding them. Not getting more deeply involved in Iraq was wise, but urging people to risk their lives when you have no intention of providing anything but empty rhetorical support is a gross error.”
Did he encourage (publicly or covertly) a Shiite uprising? I was a kid at the time, but my assumption after the fact was that when George H.W. Bush called for “the Iraqi people” to depose Saddam he was actually trying to encourage a coup that would have replaced Saddam with a different Sunni strongman. When the coup didn’t materialize, but Shiite and Kurdish uprisings seemed to present the Iranians with an opportunity to expand their influence, Bush basically sided with Saddam against the Iranians and their perceived allies. Is there anything to this or does the record show that Bush encouraged the Shiites specifically?
@GOM -
Excellent reading choice. I recommend also, as your time permits, Musil’s “The Man without Qualities” for the same period (though much more focussed on Vienna).
@Charlie -
Bush I specifically and overtly encouraged rebellion. AFAIK the calls to revolt were not specifically aimed at Sh?‘ah (though Salah Omar Al-Ali’s explicit call on Feb 24 probably was “coded” mostly for Sh?‘ah; that is pure guesswork on my part). I was 32 at the time, and my interpretation of US policy at the time was that it was based on wishful thinking that a coup would magically materialize and the resulting strongman or junta would suppress Iraq’s fissile tendencies and support the US and the Gulf states against Iran. I suppose they would have strongly preferred another Sunni on the “pragmatic” grounds that:
1) a Sh?‘? would be a priori more favorable to Iran (the rebellion in the south was partly led by the Badr Organization).
and
2) A Sh?‘? would be fairly unwelcome to the Saudis, who were at the time very concerned with unrest among their own Sh?‘ah (who were/are a majority around Dharan, for example).
but I suspect that anybody who would keep Iraq both unitary and opposed to Iran would have been acceptable in a pinch.