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A List For Niall Ferguson

He asks: Please send me a list of all the regimes of the past 60 years that have survived such military humiliation [comparable to an Israeli strike on Iran]. Saddam Hussein’s survival of Gulf War I is the only case I can think of—and we got him the second time around. Well, confining myself to […]

He asks:

Please send me a list of all the regimes of the past 60 years that have survived such military humiliation [comparable to an Israeli strike on Iran]. Saddam Hussein’s survival of Gulf War I is the only case I can think of—and we got him the second time around.

Well, confining myself to countries that were similarly attacked by Israel, there’s Egypt, which didn’t experience a revolution after 1967, Jordan, which didn’t experience a revolution either, and Syria, ditto. There’s Iraq, whose nuclear reactor Israel destroyed in 1981, without precipitating regime change. Even the Palestinian Authority is still kicking.

Let’s turn the question around: can you name any country that suffered military humiliation that didn’t, in consequence, turn to parties, forces or individuals who promised to redeem the national honor through new action? Germany, Japan and Italy weren’t “humiliated” by Wold War II; they were thoroughly and comprehensively defeated. France after 1870? Germany after 1918? Heck – America after 1975? The only example I can think of, honestly, is Serbia after 1999.

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