 |
 |
|
|
|
||
Bryan Caplan writes: To me, the interesting thing about the realist theory of IR is that it’s the national version of economists’ standard rational, selfish actor model. While this model works well in some situations, I’ve argued at length that for individual political behavior, it’s dead wrong. Voters’ beliefs are far from rational, and their [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs
The hope behind an engagement strategy was that the Supreme Leader might be inclined to side with the more pragmatic actors inside the system—guys like former president Rafsanjani and former prime minister Mousavi. With those people, and most of the Iranian elites of their ilk, now in open opposition to the regime, any crackdown would [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs
Alex Massie asks what effect the recent events in Iran will have on the Obama administration’s plans for diplomatic engagement: Obama’s preference for engagement is, I think, likely to be untenable assuming, as seems quite likely, that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei survive. At the very least, it’s going to be put into the freezer for a [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics, war
The Caucus has the text of Obama’s (prepared) remarks on the situation in Iran, and it seems to me that his increasingly critical rhetoric is likely to be counterproductive: He began his opening remarks with Iran, saying that “The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics
Via Andrew comes an extraordinarily bad idea from Raymond J. Learsy at the Huffington Post: There is no doubt that the current Iranian government holds two trump cards. The first is guns, and a trained and disciplined coterie of government enforcers to turn on the dissidents. The second of course is the huge cash flow [...]
Filed under: energy, foreign affairs
On Saturday, Ahmadinejad taunted the world by saying that Iran would decide its foreign policy based on how other countries treated the election results. Even from the point of view of cold-blooded self-interest, for the U.S. to have acceded to that kind of blackmail would have been a disastrous impression to give Iran’s rulers. – [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics
Via the NYT’s “Opinionator”, I see that Jonah Goldberg has been spluttering in the L.A. Times about Obama’s refusal to make brash and unnecessarily inflammatory remarks that will do no one any good “take the side of democracy” in the controversy in Iran: So far, “hope and change” has meant spending trillions we do not [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs
Just as I’d hoped, really. Straightforward condemnation of violence and the suppression of dissent, a renewed commitment to diplomacy no matter who is in charge, and no comment on the electoral irregularities beyond acknowledgment of the apparent frustration of many of the Iranian people. Oh – and no green tie, either. Watch as the news [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics
… and three dozen are worth a million. UPDATE: Image added courtesy of Flickr user .faramarz, who has many more.
Filed under: foreign affairs, media/culture
Andrew Sullivan’s blogging on the past week’s events in Iran has been indispensable, but his latest bit of advice for President Obama is much less so: What the president must do is refuse to recognize the sham government and demand an inquiry into the election. No, he mustn’t. By my lights at least, the thing [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs