Walter Russell Mead must think that pacifists were in charge of major European governments in the interwar period. He must think that, because otherwise his endless droning about the evils of interwar pacifists would make no sense. These would be the same pacifist governments that gave war guarantees to Poland and ensured that Germany’s war with Poland became a general European conflict. I’ve usually thought that a large part of the responsibility for wartime deaths rests primarily with the people who declared war in support of a security guarantee they could not fulfill, but I don’t have Mead’s insight.

Mead talks about the U.S., Britain and France “enforcing the peace” to “prevent World War Two,” but any such enforcement would have involved starting a new general war, and there is no way of knowing how that conflict might have spiraled out of control. Interventionists and hawks look back on the 1930s and expect that the people who had lived through the greatest slaughter in human history up until that point should have been as willing to start wars as they are. This is simply ideological fantasizing.

However, before we can speak sensibly about WWII, we have to go back to WWI. It is impossible to understand American views on neutrality or western European views on disarmament and war in the 1920s and 1930s if we do not appreciate how completely useless, wasteful and destructive most people in the official victor nations of WWI believed the war had been. Having facilitated the punitive treaties imposed on the defeated Central Powers, Americans saw that their sacrifices had been in a bad cause and their ideals were being openly mocked by terms imposed by their allies. American intervention in Europe had been a disaster once, and there was no reason to expect anything different the second time.

Besides, American entry into WWI made no sense as far as American national interests were concerned. 115,000 Americans died in WWI for no good reason. In light of that experience, anything other than a neutralist position seemed insane to most people (and it was!), and once again most Americans concluded that entry into a second European war did not serve the national interest. Once again, their government did everything it could to bring them into it. As Niall Ferguson has argued, British entry into WWI made no sense as far as British interests were concerned, and it was a dreadful mistake that served to widen and prolong the war. Millions of British subjects died for no good reason, and perhaps millions more on both sides died than would have been the case had Britain remained neutral. Given that background, it is not only understandable why many people in Britain did not want to go to war again, but it was actually quite rational and correct as it concerned British interests.

When I was in a modern European history class in college, we debated which states were most to blame for starting WWI. As I recall, we concluded that the largest contributors to the crisis were Austria, Russia and Britain, and that still seems right. Serbia and Germany certainly had some responsibility, but it was not nearly as great as people normally assume. Obviously, Austria started the war and refused to accept Serbian concessions, so they bore the bulk of the responsibility, but it was also Russian mobilization in support of Serbia and the British refusal to declare their position early enough combined with eventually aligning themselves with France and Russia that allowed a regional conflict to explode into a continental war. It is usually the decisions of major powers to involve themselves in conflicts that have nothing to do with them that create the largest and most destructive conflicts. Russia went to war to defend Serbia, but it didn’t help Serbia in the least, and it ended up ruining Russia. Much the same happened with Britain and Poland in 1939.

Mead has revisited the interwar period, WWII and the Cold War because he wants to tar advocates of engagement with Iran as “appeasers” on par with interwar pacifists and communist sympathizers. For good measure, he smears supporters of American neutrality in the process. I wanted to address some of that first before getting to the question of engaging Iran, because it is important to remember that interventionists and hawks were the ones making policy decisions in 1914 and 1917 and the world has been paying a steep price in blood and wealth for much of the last century because of it. Now that we have emerged out of the short 20th century and mostly enjoy a stable and peaceful world, interventionists and hawks would like to resume destabilizing the world all over again. Their main obsession at the moment is Iran.

Mead begins with the assumption that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. This is debatable. The Department of Defense earlier this year claimed that they believed Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, as many states with peaceful nuclear energy programs already have, but it was not yet certain that Iran wanted to build their own arsenal. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that all of the Iranian leaders who specifically reject the possession and use of nuclear weapons as wrong and forbidden are lying. Let’s also assume that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Those are huge and largely unfounded assumptions, but even if they are right this doesn’t tell us much. If they want these weapons mainly as a deterrent against governments that have made a habit of attacking other countries in the last ten years, they might be intended primarily to prevent attack rather than provide a shield allowing greater freedom of action abroad.

Mead asks:

If the mullocracy is arming terrorists, interfering with neighbors, inflaming the Middle East and making intercontinental nuclear deals with the bad guys when Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, what makes us think that becoming less vulnerable to American countermeasures would make the Iranians settle down into responsible world citizens?

Iran is going to act as a patron of Hizbullah and Hamas in its capacity as a regional power. Its “interference” with neighbors is the normal exercise of influence by a major regional power in the surrounding area. By “intercontinental nuclear deals,” I assume Mead means the minimal technology exchange relationship Iran has established with Venezuela. None of these things is optimal in Washington’s view, but none of them is exactly a dire threat, either. Could Iran start becoming more assertive abroad once it has nuclear weapons? Perhaps, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to assert itself militarily. At most, it will probably continue to support its proxies abroad. It is possible that a “grand bargain” could include a provision that requires Iran to reduce or end its support for these groups. A sustained engagement policy might lead Iran to act less provocatively once its government has been assured that the U.S. will not act to destroy it. Of course, we won’t even begin to find out what Iran might be willing to offer if no sustained attempt is made to find out.

Does Iran actually have great ambitions that need to be “substantially” scaled back? What are they? Can Mead describe them? How passive and subservient would Iran have to become before it ceased to appear threatening to him? What would keep us from coexisting peacefully with it? This is really the heart of the issue: Americans have an absurdly exaggerated estimation of Iranian goals, and believe that Iran has to be cajoled into giving up ambitions for domination that it doesn’t actually seem to have. For some reason, Iran appears as an intolerable threat that Mead cannot abide for much longer, but this seems to have no relationship to reality. Mead has to lean so heavily on the history of far more significant conflicts against far greater enemies because the argument for confrontation with Iran is so poor that it does not stand up well on its own.

The burden of proof is not on the people urging restraint and engagement. The burden of proof is on the people who want to plunge an entire region into hell on the basis of unfounded suspicions and irrational fear of a mid-level power that may not even be seeking the weapons they claim it is.

Via Scoblete