Stanley Kurtz continues to thump his belligerent tub for an Iran invasion, approvingly citing Fred Kaplan’s lack of an answer as a kind of endorsement of his preferred lunatic solution. But there is a bigger problem with Mr. Kaplan’s Iran article, and it starts with the title: “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ahmadinejad?” Leave aside for a moment that it is usually the province of assassins and dictators to describe human beings as “problems” to be “solved,” and consider the bizarre, optimistic assumption that there is a solution.

After reviewing the immense difficulties of any strike against Iran and the economic fallout of a war, he says:

Still, it’s too risky simply to shrug and to hope for the best.

Huh? Who’s the one doing the shrugging? Who is the one hoping for the best? The optimist, who thinks that somehow by hook or crook Iranian nukes can be thwarted. More importantly it is the optimistic mentality that drives him on to believe that they should be thwarted in the first place. Certain kinds of optimists believe not only that every problem has a solution, but also that every solveable problem must be solved. It is a sort of obsessive-compulsive interventionism.

There is something deeply ingrained in modern Americans’ minds, perhaps because of the responsibilities of the Cold War, perhaps because of a mutant variety of exceptionalism, and this is that if something is happening in the world that could even minutely alter the balance of power in any part of the world it is our job to ride to the rescue and “fix” the so-called problem. Instead of letting the Serbs simply win the Bosnian War, which would have settled the issue for some time, we intervene to ensure that the unstable status quo ante prevails. We assume we know the “solution,” and generally exacerbate or prolong whatever it was we thought was the “problem” in the first place. Most Americans have unconsciously become self-appointed history-stoppers. I suspect that Fukuyama’s declaration that history was at an end was not only analysis but an expression of a deep, gnostic desire to eliminate the flaws of the world and to bring the process of historical change more or less to a close. This desire is in turn born of a horror of historical change. Most Americans are, in fact, terrified of most change overseas, and I think interventionists are some of the most frightened.

Even these Jacobins among us are not nearly so revolutionary as their 18th century namesakes, though they like to make us think they are. Those Jacobins arose as the dominant faction in a declining power, a power that had already started to seem second-rate after the loss of most of its overseas colonies, so their revolutionary goals outside of France also served to rebuild French power. Meanwhile our Jacobins seem to be committed to global revolution out of the misguided and perverse conviction that it is the only way to maintain hegemony and supremacy, completely missing that leaving well enough alone is the surest way to maintain our position in the world. Whether they believe that making Muslims into democrats will make them more peaceful, as they claim publicly, or they believe that making Muslims into democrats will ultimately make them weaker, more internally divided and susceptible to greater foreign control, I cannot be sure, but nothing more horrifies an internationalist cosmopolitan than the idea that somewhere out there there are entire nations that do not feel obliged to listen to him or do what he tells them.

This is why there is very broad consensus that something “must be done” about Iran. Even Mr. Kaplan, who is aware of many of the arguments I am advancing, seems trapped by the feeling that “something must be done,” though he confesses ignorance about what should be done. But does he not see that this is a good sign that, in this case, not acting may be the wiser course of action? The old saw that you should stop digging when you’re in a hole is apt. When the logic of interventionism brings you to the brink of an unnecessary and devastating war, maybe it’s time to re-check the assumptions of that interventionism!

For the moment, however, those assumptions dominate the debate on all sides–there are very, very few of what we could reasonably call “doves.” There are hawks, falcons and vultures (I leave it to you to determine who belongs to which group), but exceedingly few who think that it is actually Iran’s own business what it does with its nuclear energy program. If there is a war against Iran, we will not be able to lay the blame solely at the feet of the neocons and pro-Israel lobbyists, though they will have played a disproportionately large role (again), but we will have to indict almost the whole of the political and chattering classes for the obsessive need to “fix” a development that is going to become more and more common in the so-called developing world.

Nuclear weapons are the new military symbol of the modernised nation, like European uniforms and training were to the Ottomans and the dreadnought navy was to the Japanese, and some African, Asian and Latin American states are going to pursue nuclear weapons technology for strategic, status and ideological reasons. We can temporarily succeed in Iran and still find many more nations pursuing the same technology. Indeed, the need for hasty development of nuclear weapons will become all the more clear after Iran has been attacked for merely attempting to have them.

Real conservatives are not afraid of these kinds of changes, but seek to channel and harness that change in a way that maintains good order and stability. Ideally, there would be no nuclear weapons, but that is not the way the world is. Rapprochement with a nuclear Iran makes the most sense, if good order and stability were our objectives. But in addition to being foolish, stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons is futile.

Direct confrontation with Iran over its nuclear weapons development, besides being explosive and potentially disastrous, will only thwart the Iranians for a short time. Whatever regime replaces that of Khameinei and Ahmadinejad will also pursue nuclear weapons because strategic imperatives dictate that they pursue them. Pakistan is a strategic rival and historically hostile neighbour–the two have been at war by proxy in Afghanistan for the better part of the last 15 years, and now that Pakistan has a considerable arsenal it is only a matter of time before Iran acquires the same technology.

If it is Tehran’s posession of nuclear weapons that is the real issue, and not the character of the regime in Tehran, we will have “solved” nothing even if we are successful in eliminating both the current weapons program and the regime. Another weapons program will be started in a few more years after the intervention, and if there is a “democratic” government in Iran it will likely be no more friendly (and perhaps more hostile) to Israel and the United States than the current regime. Newsflash: Ahmadinejad’s crazy talk about the Holocaust reflects the general population’s sentiments and views, so just imagine a future elected demagogue who could be even worse and not have the constraining influences of the clerics.

There is a time to bluff, and a time to raise the stakes, and then there is a time to walk away from the table. This is one of the latter.