Is Max Boot channeling Ross, or was Ross anticipating Boot?  Here’s Mr. Pith Helmet himself:

That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America’s enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from.

Not only is it impossible to prove this case, but it is also possible to prove that Boot’s argument is wrong.  Actually, Iran was lost because Carter dropped most meaningful support for the Shah and all but urged the Iranians to depose him.  That was one of the early “victories” of a foreign policy of “values” and democracy promotion.  The Shah was gone by February 1979.  Afghanistan, which the Soviets invaded in December of that year, came at least partly as a result of the failure to respond effectively to the hostage crisis, but the Soviets had already been looking to counter what Moscow saw as American gains in the 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt and the beginnings of a pro-Western turn in Baghdad under you-know-who.     

Mozambique’s communists came to power in the wake of independence from Portugal, and their internal policies provoked civil war.  Their support for ZANU and the ANC provoked some of Mozambique’s neighbours to intervene against the government’s side.  Naturally, the Soviets supported or at least sympathised with communist and pro-communist African movements, including the ANC, but the existence of these movements would not have been prevented by continued U.S. backing for South Vietnam.  Obviously.  The rise of communism in Mozambique (and Angola) had more than a little to do with resistance to Portugese colonialism and Portugal’s fairly intense efforts to prevent the independence of its African colonies.  These were national or independence movements in which communists took a leading role; outside support did not create these movements.  

The very same kind of limited thinking about the nature of Vietnamese communism that plagued policymakers in the ’60s and ’70s then seems to be plaguing latter-day Vietnam “hawks” when it comes to talking about African communist movements.  The confusion is such that Mozambique can be cited as some sort of “proof” for the validity of the domino theory, when Mozambique was  going to turn communist at that stage regardless of what happened in southeast Asia.  Communists in wars of decolonisation were not all directed by the Supreme Soviet to advance Moscow’s foreign policy.  Moscow might try to use these rebels as proxies after they had already started fighting, but communist control in Mozambique was primarily a result of their war for independence and not outside support.  There is no meaningful connection to the aftermath of the Vietnam War.  

Nicaragua’s story was rather like that of Iran.  Carter was pulling the rug out from under Somoza (Carter’s foreign policy of “human rights” strikes again) and stopped all military support in 1978, which certainly did nothing to reduce Sandinista enthusiasm for overthrowing the government.  The methods of Somoza’s dictatorship generated the resistance against the government, and the Sandinistas came eventually to dominate that resistance.  You might make a very roundabout argument that Carter did to Somoza’s regime what had been done to South Vietnam’s, but the connection with Vietnam ends there.  There is a certain irony that the policies that helped bring about these blows to U.S. power are the very ones–democracy promotion and championing of human rights–backed by the interventionists who are busily cheering on Mr. Bush’s blinkered revisionism.  Naturally, if I were a partisan of the New Carter currently in the White House I would do all I could to deflect attention to the actual causes of U.S. setbacks during the late 1970s, since a discerning eye would be able to recognise an earlier version of Mr. Bush’s “freedom agenda” doing its pernicious work in undermining American interests.  Indeed, each and every one of the examples cited has nothing to do with Vietnam and everything to do with a misguided idealistic foreign policy that the current administration seems intent on duplicating today.

Update: Separately, it seems relevant to the Drezner-Greenwald debate over the foreign policy establishment consensus to point out that Max Boot, a “paid-up” CFR man himself, has never had any difficulty endorsing the idea that the United States has been acting as an imperialist power.

No wonder Americans are so weak in learning foreign languages.  Take this case.  I had not heard of this academy, but I was not surprised to find that one of its critics was Daniel Pipes, who wrote earlier this year what may be one of the most ignorant things I have seen:

I say this because Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.

This is absurd.  I just went through the equivalent of one year of Arabic language instruction here at Chicago, and if it was laden with “pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” it would be news to all of us who were in the class.  It would be one thing to argue that, in a specific case, the instruction was loaded with such messages, but to say that learning Arabic inevitably involves “pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” is to reveal yourself as a fool. 

One of the most common textbooks used for Arabic instruction in this country, Al-Kitaab, the text we used this summer, is essentially free of anything that might be construed as political or controversial.  (The one thing that I noticed that was bluntly political and obnoxious was the depiction of Kosovo as an independent country on one of its maps.)  It is true that studying al-fusha involves not learning specific dialects, but that hardly makes it “pan-Arabist” in any meaningful way.  This would be like saying the study of German is inevitably laden with Pan-German ideology because it privileges Hochdeutsch over Bavarian, Austrian and Swiss dialects. 

Pipes isn’t finished:

Also, learning Arabic in of itself promotes an Islamic outlook, as James Coffman showed in 1995, looking at evidence from Algeria. 

Really?  Does that mean that Pipes’ own study of Arabic made him into an Islamist sympathiser?  This is preposterous.  Arabic predates Islam; there are still many Arab Christians (though fewer of them remain in the Near East thanks to foreign policy moves favoured by geniuses like Pipes), and there are Orthodox and Maronite liturgies in Arabic.  It is doubtful that these Arab Christians are being Islamicised when they learn the language of their parents or when they go to church.  (The phrase in the title of this post is the Arabic for the Orthodox Paschal greeting, “Christ is Risen,” and the response, “truly He is risen.”)  It is likely that Pipes would have no objection to the students learning about the history and culture of the Near East, provided that they were learning the sorts of things with which Pipes would agree.     

Of course, the results of the cited study (which appears in Pipes’ own journal, which has incidentally also played host to articles providing cover to Armenian genocide denial) might have something to do with the students being Algerian Muslims living in an overwhelmingly Muslim country.  These results have literally no bearing on instruction in this country.  It is very likely that there were other factors that determined the results Pipes cites.  For one, students in Algeria who are studying in Arabic rather than in French might already be predisposed to endorse these views.  There seems to be absolutely no control here for their social background, the political affiliations of their parents or the materials presented in the class.  Studying Arabic in and of itself cannot induce an Islamic outlook if there is no attempt to propagandise the students, and in most Arabic instruction in this country it is implausible that such propagandising is taking place.  Learning foreign languages does not compel you to embrace this or that ideological or religious frame of mind.  If Americans become convinced that learning Arabic is somehow buying into Islamic propaganda, they will be that less interested in learning it.  It is fairly despicable that a putative scholar of the region should actively spread such misinformation.  Put it down as one more reason to pay no attention to what Pipes has to say.  

Are we really supposed to believe that Maha and Khalid, two of the characters of Al-Kitaab, are the vehicles of jihadi subversion?  Give me a break.  Perhaps Pipes had this experience in Egypt, but Brooklyn is in a very different mintaqa.  Whatever else might be said about the principal of this academy or the curriculum of the school, it can hardly be a good thing that her ouster is a victory for buffoons of Pipes’ ilk.

Update: Just for your enjoyment, here is the voice of the wonderfully talented Maronite nun, Sister Marie Keyrouz, as she sings Inna Al Masih Qad Qam (approx., Christ Has Risen).  Here are additional liturgical songs courtesy of the same Melkite Catholic church site.

Now, the tribal leaders are rallying to the government and asserting themselves against al-Qa’eda. ~William Shawcross

The first part of this statement is, of course, completely untrue, as is quite a lot of Mr. Shawcross’ flimsy rah-rah article.  The “Awakening” in Anbar has no loyalty to the Maliki regime or an Iraq ruled by Shi’ites, and it is not rallying to either one.  This group, or rather the tribes that make up this group are rallying, if you like, against being assassinated and blown up by the “Islamic State of Iraq” types.  Once they have taken care of these people, they will in all likelihood turn their attention to destroying the government to which they have supposedly rallied.  I know that The Spectator has to run pro-war articles because its owner requires it, but couldn’t they be the least bit interesting and accurate while they’re at it?

Update: For good measure, Shawcross manages to invoke both the Partition and Vietnam withdrawals to try to intimidate people into supporting the war.  (He was an early one to start talking up the genocide in Cambodia as a way to bludgeon war opponents.)  This is also the same Shawcross who wrote last May that “we are winning” in an article describing the training work being done in Basra–the same Basra mission that he so thoroughly criticises and ridicules in this article.   

For those keeping track, another August 22 has passed without any sudden world-ending apocalypse, just as it passed without incident last year.  I’m sure that comes as a relief to all of us.

The rights of the siloviki, however, have nothing to do with the formal kind that are spelled out in laws or in the constitution. What they are claiming is a special mission to restore the power of the state, save Russia from disintegration and frustrate the enemies that might weaken it. Such idealistic sentiments, says Mr Kondaurov, coexist with an opportunistic and cynical eagerness to seize the situation for personal or institutional gain. ~The Economist

This is what accounts of a resurgent Russia often miss, as I have argued before.  Whether it is self-justification and rationalisation or genuine conviction, or some measure of both, Putin and the siloviki are both keenly interested in gaining and expanding their power and in achieving their goals of restoring what they see as Russia’s proper place in the world.  They are nationalists because they are power-hungry, but to some extent they are also interested in power for themselves because they believe, for good or ill, that they can restore national power.  Dismissing any of them as cynical and greedy misses the point: they are cynical and greedy because they are ideologues, and they probably think their “correct” beliefs entitle them to rewards.

The evidence also shows great, gaping weaknesses. Giuliani’s penchant for secrecy, his tendency to value loyalty over merit and his hyperbolic rhetoric are exactly the kinds of instincts that counterterrorism experts say the U.S. can least afford right now. ~Amanda Ripley

Hm…secrecy, loyalty rather than merit and hyperbolic rhetoric–sound like anyone else we know?

I will have to second Josh Patashnik’s post, in which he replies to Mr. Krikorian:

I’m going to offer the rival prediction that if and when the Iranian government falls, there will be no mass conversion to Zoroastrianism [bold mine-DL], no widespread beheading of Christians, and Iran will…remain Muslim.

The point about Zoroastrianism is basically guaranteed, since Zoroastrianism today is unique among the ancient world religions that originated in the Near East in that its adherents actively discourage conversion.  Also, it has not had any noticeable or significant presence in the land of its birth for many centuries.  Quixotic attempts by the Pahlavis to consciously revive pre-Islamic Iranian traditions and names were, shall we say, not wildly popular, associated as they were with a rather brutal dictatorial regime.  (For that matter, rampant Baha’i revivals are also unlikely, since the Baha’i faith hardly seized the imaginations of Iranians during the rule of the Pahlavis.)    

This reminds me of two things that would be widely considered major drawbacks to the separationist plan.  The first would be that an embargoed, isolated Islamic world (were such a thing possible) would almost certainly have a massive backlash against the native Christian populations, and the refugees we have seen fleeing Iraq for Syria would soon be fleeing the entire Levant for Cyprus and points west.  The second would be that it would make Israel’s position totally untenable in the long term.  No one would confuse me with an enthusiastic booster of the U.S.-Israel connection, to be sure, but the likely extinction of Judaism andChristianity in their native lands following the implementation of such a plan would be an unacceptable price for whatever “strategic goals” such an arrangement might serve. 

Fundamentally, the hope of this plan is that Muslims will judge the merits of Islam based on earthly successes and failures.  Though I cannot claim to know the minds of so many different kinds of Muslims throughout the world, my guess is that people raised up in a tradition that teaches them a theodicy in which trials and rewards are God’s will are not going to conclude that political tyranny or disastrous misrule are evidence that Islam needs to be fundamentally changed or abandoned all together.  It didn’t happen for the entirety of Ottoman rule, and it isn’t likely to happen in the future.  On the contrary, the woes of this world will make traditional Muslims all the more likely to turn to their deity for justice and mercy in direct proportion to the extent of the misery experienced.

If push comes to shove, Mr. Bush will face Moscow all alone. There is a great deal of dissent in Europe, from Madrid to Athens to Bucharest and Bratislava, but not even those Europeans who are nominally pro-independence—notably, the Germans—would sacrifice a single day’s supply of natural gas over Albanian claims. By contrast, this is, for Serbia, an existential issue and, for Russia, a litmus test of her ability to be a great power once again.

The most important reason the United States should not support Kosovo’s independence is and always has been cultural and civilizational; but trying to explain that to the chief executive who is fanatically supportive of a blanket amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens in the United States is as futile as trying to reform Islam.

George W. Bush has painted himself into a tight corner in the Balkans, and he will get a bloody nose if he does not relent. That is bad news for the church-burning Albanian Muslims of Kosovo, and bad news for their heroin-financed lobby in Washington, but it is very good news for America and the civilized world. ~Srdja Trifkovic

Dr. Trifkovic’s article is simply excellent, and it sums up all of the strongest arguments against Kosovo’s independence.

But the Communist victory in Vietnam did lead to the rest of Indochina going Communist, as the domino theorists predicted, and it played a role in the Soviet advances across the Third World during the rest of the 1970s – from Ethiopia and Mozambique to Afghanistan and Nicaragua, with various other proxy wars thrown in for good measure. ~Ross Douthat

Well, this may be a bit of quibbling, but something close to half of Indochina/southeast Asia (Thailand and Burma) did not turn communist, and instead of turning red Indonesia under Suharto became a (rather nasty) anticommunist bulwark and Malaysia was not seriously affected.  The Pacific Rim allies were basically fine after Vietnam.  For domino theory to have been right, many more dominoes would have had to be knocked over.  For all the warnings of ever-advancing communism, communism acquired those strategic gems of Cambodia and Laos and then contested for the various backwaters (no offense, Nicaragua) mentioned by Ross.  Having just detached China from the Soviets, America could reasonably afford to risk setbacks in such vitally important places as Mozambique.  (One problem of withdrawing from Iraq is that we have yet to have a foreign policy crew interested in or capable of pursuing anything like a China-style detachment of a formerly hostile regime.) 

Fights over influence in Latin America and Africa were not new in the post-Vietnam era (see Egypt, Zaire, Angola), and Soviet-backed Cuban mischief overseas had already been going on for a while.  Soviet aggression became much greater in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.  At the time, that was a huge loss.  It was the failure of the Carter Administration to cope with the challenge in Iran that helped embolden the Soviets into invading Afghanistan (similarly, it was Carter’s failure that damaged the Democrats’ reputation on foreign policy leadership immeasurably more than anything related to ending the war in Vietnam, contrary to the popular myth circulated by some GOP talking heads).  A comparable Iran-like setback, a really serious blow to our strategic interests, would be an expressly jihadist revolution in Pakistan, which would make any consequences of an Iraq withdrawal as a matter of U.S. strategic interests look small and irrelevant.  Indeed, as a matter of U.S. strategic interests–and it is this, and not, I’m afraid, the casualty count that traditionally governs great power foreign policy–the consequences of an Iraq withdrawal will be damaging but hardly devastating.  In Realpolitik, the loss of a Cambodia or a Laos is not all that important.  (Someone will say that Iraq and many of its neighbours are different and much more important, to which I say: re-read Luttwak.)  Since domino theory was meant to describe the strategic consequences of the failure to contain communism in southeast Asia by military intervention, it does not say much for domino theory that every strategically important country in Far East that should have turned communist did not actually turn.   

Domino theory related to communism was an updated version of old British paranoia dating to the Great Game: today the Russians have Tashkent, tomorrow they will have Delhi!  To the extent that the British were fairly crazy to worry about the Tsar’s armies marching over the Khyber Pass and across northern India to Delhi and through Baluchistan to the sea, the domino theory was also pretty crazy.  In its time, it was also dreadfully respectable, the sort of serious thinking that foreign policy intellectuals love. 

It was also the product of ignoring a Kennan-like approach to international affairs and accepting that the enemy was actually driven by a transnational ideology that could traverse boundaries of nationality and culture without difficulty and which would present a united, pro-Soviet front against the West.  The detachment of China, and the Sino-Vietnamese war that followed shortly after the fall of the South were proof that this idea was wrong in its core assumptions about international communism.  It was proof that Kennan’s attention to nationalism and nationalist policies in understanding communist states was the fundamentally correct analysis of how these states acted.  Wild-eyed notions of universal communism spreading around the world like wildfire (or was it fire in the minds of men?) once the fire was lit somewhere proved to be wrong, because they vastly overestimated the appeal of transnational ideology when compared to the much stronger draw of nationalism.  Having mistaken nationalist revolutionaries for true-believing commies, domino theorists could never grasp the implications that the domino theory could not happen in the real world because of the barriers created by ethnic, cultural and religious difference.  There is comparably mistaken thinking today inasmuch as those predicting the worst following a U.S. withdrawal believe that some unified global jihadism exists and will sweep all before it.  Having mistaken the particular interests of various state and non-state actors for a more or less unified jihadist (or, God help us, Islamofascist) front, these people see disastrous post-withdrawal outcomes that are unlikely to occur.  They think we are in an “ideological struggle.”  In fact, we are not, or at least it is not of the kind they are describing.  Their analysis is necessarily going to be flawed as a result.

But they cannot so easily dismiss The Economist, an avowedly conservative voice that is among the oldest and most respected periodicals in the world. ~Joe Conason

Conason refers to The Economist‘s leader on the pro-Democratic political trends in the country.  The leader lays out a compelling case that the country is trending towards the Democrats and, in certain ways, does seem to be headed leftwards.  The merits of the article speak for themselves, and the magazine’s political leanings are really beside the point.  But this description of The Economist is just absurd. 

The Economist is so “avowedly conservative” that it endorsed John Kerry in 2004 and has long maintained a position as a ‘wet’ British liberal magazine, and in many ways it has become much wetter over the last 15 years.  If Portillo and Blair could have a baby together, its name would be Economist.  Its politics are globalist, internationalist and Europhile, its economics are right of center in a pro-corporation, pro-globalisation mode, its social views are squishy center-left with hints of libertarianism, and it is conventionally multiculti on questions of immigration and diversity.  It favours military interventions for both humanitarian and supposed international security, it is positively exuberant in its support for democracy promotion and when it comes to the Near East it is skeptical about the virtues of untrammeled Israeli nationalism.  (In spite of much of this, it is still probably one of the better international news magazines around, if only because its competition is minimal.)  In neither the American nor British contexts would someone say that The Economist is “avowedly conservative,” unless we are speaking of it in comparison to Le Monde. 

But don’t take my word for it.  In their own words:

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? “It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper’s historical position.” That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage.

They describe themselves as latter-day classical liberals, which they are to some degree.