On another Near Eastern policy topic of interest, Ross comments on Reza Aslan’s remarks on democratisation:

Aslan made a dismissive comment about the advocates of “stability” over democracy during his talk, saying sarcastically: “That’s worked out so well, hasn’t it?” And of course it hasn’t – except, Meridor’s remarks suggested, when you consider some of the alternatives.

Indeed.  I am tempted to rephrase Churchill’s line about democracy being the worst of all governments, except for all the others, replacing the word democracy with stability.  That would be a little too easy, but it would make the point.  Then again, I think Churchill was wrong about that–democracy is definitely in the bottom three or four, including all competitors. 

Aslan’s dismissiveness is typical of the democratists and interventionists.  When prolonged interventionism in the Near East contributes to blowback, they blame it on the pursuit of stability, as if there had been anything stabilising about the sanctions and ongoing air war against Iraq or as if the semi-permanent garrisoning of Americans in Saudi Arabia was a hallmark of genuine realism.  Depending on which group in the region you’re talking about, even that old “stability” was a lot better than the current approach.  So, yes, for some nations “stability” did work out relatively well, at least when compared to the disasters of the last few years.  The biggest problem with critiques of the policies of the ’90s is that they mistake those policies for being unduly cautious and afraid of change, when the establishment consensus by the late ’90s was for regime change in Iraq and fairly aggressive “containment” of Iran.  That this acquired frighteningly broad support in the foreign policy establishment shows just how flexible the name
“realist” really can be.  The goal in these cases was not stability, but upheaval.  Bizarrely, in turning against the “realism” and “stability” of the ’90s (which were simply expressions of a mild interventionism), the critics have embraced precisely the elements of those policies that were the most damaging, destabilising and counterproductive and sought to replicate them on an even grander scale.  Calls to “drain the swamp” would be a lot more convincing if the people making the recommendations had not just spent the last 12 years creating the swamp–not through their tolerance of despotism, but through their misguided, heavy-handed and clumsy attempts to combat despotism.

Ross makes an important observation:

If you’re an outside observer looking at Middle Eastern politics, it’s relatively easy to take the Aslan line – which is hardly his alone – and suggest that ten “messy” years, or fifty, or even a hundred, is a small price to pay for the eventual democratization of the region.  If you’re part of Middle Eastern politics, though, and particularly if you’re the most hated country in the region, the scapegoat for every failure and the demon at the heart of every conspiracy theory, it’s a lot harder to sign up for the bumpy ride, because one of those bumps might jeopardize your very survival.

This is good, but missing here are some critical questions.  Why should anyone have to pay the price for democratisation, regardless of how long it might take?  Why does democratisation have such importance on the Near Eastern policy agenda?  If Israelis have some reasons to be skeptical of the short and middle-term consequences of democratisation (which assumes that the long-term results of such change will be ultimately positive), perhaps other peoples in the region likewise have good reasons to doubt either the practicability or even the value of democratisation.  Even supposing that it is a widely-shared goal, democratisation is still ultimately no more than a framework for the expression of the existing political priorities of a nation.  Democratists’ abstract faith in the goodwill of the common man would be touching, if it were not so totally out of touch with the deep reserves of ill-will that many peoples harbour toward one another.   

Talk of “messiness” is the sort of abstraction about violence, death and social disintegration to which interventionists and their friends, the globalists and developmentalists, often return.  You can almost hear them quoting, approvingly, the wisdom of the humanitarian Buck Turgeson, “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.  What I’m saying is that we’re talking about no more than 20 to 30 million casualties, tops!” 

If the short and middle-term consequences of something, be it democratisation or “increased diversity,” are extremely bad for social cohesion, social peace, a just ordering of the polity and the cultivation of a humane and decent order, that means that the policy is an extremely bad one.  I find it extraordinary that this rhetoric of “in the long run, we will all be better off” can still persuade after seeing where it has led in the 20th century.  If the long run involves running over a lot of people to get to the goal, maybe, just maybe, the goal is actually a bad one. 

To follow up on the omelette metaphor Ross mentions a little later, it does not seem to trouble these “big picture,” “broader canvas” types that their ends-justify-the-means morality entails that their, our, omelette sustenance comes from effectively devouring our fellow man or at least living off of the resources created by deliberately caused human suffering.  These are the humanitarians and cosmopolitans to whose enlightened perspective we  are meant to defer.

Ross describes the nuclear proliferation panel in Aspen in this post, in which he says:

And nobody seemed willing to consider the notion that deterrence might be a viable strategic option in a world with, say, fifteen nuclear powers; the likelihood that “it’s not just Ahmadinejad getting the bomb, it’s Hezbollah getting the bomb,” in Carter’s phrase, was taken as a given. 

Having looked over the bios of the panelists, I can’t say that I am surprised.  When you have twoacademics who have circulated in upper echelon DoD circles for a long time, Jane Harman and James Woolsey (because every discredited foreign policy approach needed to be represented, I guess), you are going to get some pretty predictable–and bad–answers.  It is the predictability of the panel’s uniform “Armageddon” response is what is noteworthy here: at a convivium where ideas would be, one assumes from the festive name, celebrated and encouraged, here is a panel on one of the more compelling issues of our time and all it can produce is rather haggard, reflexive alarmism.  If the “ideas” on display involve recycling the “nuke hand-off” argument, there is not much to celebrate.  This business about “Ahmadinejad getting the bomb” is the sort of thing I would expect from amateurs and unoriginal pundits.  Even as a shorthand, it is misleading.  Ahmadinejad isn’t getting the bomb in the event of a successful test.  Vajpayee didn’t get the bomb when India acquired their nukes–he doesn’t get to take it with him when he leaves office.  If they are successful, the Iranian government and military will be getting the bomb.  Contrary to apparently common perceptions, there are actually more than three or four people in the political and military apparatus of Iran.  They might have a few things to say about how the government might use, or not use, said bomb.  There will be more and less aggressive elements in government and military circles, but sufficiently few basiji fanatics that the prospects of a regime bent on a suicide attack on any other country are not good.   

For the panelists, judging from Ross’ description, it all seems so clear: Ahmadinejad (who, the unspoken subtext tells us, is just like Hitler or some equally despicable figure) is a crazy man who will start lobbing nukes around the minute “he” gets “his” hands on them.  He will, of course, probably be out of power come 2009 come the next presidential election, barring a significant change in his relative domestic popularity and in the economic woes he was elected to address.  Note that no one in the West would have ever said that they feared “Khatami getting the bomb.”  Khatami was powerless, almost a nonentity as far as real foreign policy was concerned, and he held the very same position as the ever-threatening loon in the open-neck white shirt.  Once Ahmadinejad is gone, as he likely will be in just two years, it will be a good deal harder to psychoanalyse his successor and personalise the Iranian nuclear program as the plaything of a madman.  It is impossible not to notice that this is the exactly identical sort of argumentation that people made about Hussein and Iraq, and events have shown that they didn’t know what they were talking about then, either.  Why does anyone continue to listen to these fantasies?  (To his credit, Ross wasn’t buying any of this.)

One of the consistently craziest claims that interventionists and many realists make about the dangers of proliferation is this very “hand-off” argument.  Deterrence works, so alarmists have to find loopholes and exceptions.  “But what about the hand-off to terrorists?” they ask.  In this view, transfers of nuclear weapons will just happen between states and their proxy armies as a matter of course.  This makes no sense.  Nuclear weapons states do not make it a habit to hand over one of the most powerful weapons on earth to the relatively more lunatic people with AKs whom they use as cat’s paws.  Having seen last summer what Hizbullah did with the conventional weapons Iran had given them, why would Tehran hand over a nuke?  It is ludicrous.  In fact, the “hand-off” has never happened in over sixty years since the invention of nuclear weapons.  That’s because it is a crazy idea, and it is one that no government, especially the paranoid, control-obsessed and authoritarian kinds, would ever consider seriously.  The reasons are pretty clear.  First, it means giving up a valuable national security asset that you have invested significant money, time and manpower into developing.  Next, it means that you have handed over a weapon that can be traced back to you and retain no control over how it is used.  Perhaps most importantly, it means subtracting from your own power and increasing the power of your proxy, thus making the proxy less dependent on you.  

The real fear with Pakistan, for example, is not that its government will actually consciously deliver a nuke to a jihadi group (it would not, for all of the reasons outlined above), but that the government is so unstable that jihadi-friendlyelements in the security and military forces might be able to seize power by force or gain access to the nukes that Pakistan has.  The main danger of future proliferation, which is the largest danger of the present moment as well, is not that there will be more nukes, but that more nukes may be poorly secured and accounted for.      

The really weird thing about the standard nonproliferation argument is the way in which it regards the acquisition of these weapons by American allies as even more threatening than their acquisition by a few tinpot despotisms.  The list of probable proliferators in the event of a successful North Korean or Iranian nuclear test is mainly a list of U.S. allied or subsidised countries.  In their arguments, the nonproliferation activists seem to be almost as focused on the danger of Taiwan and South Korea acquiring these weapons as they are on the dangers of Iran and North Korea acquiring them.  Is it just a coincidence that the development of independent nuclear deterrents by our Asian allies would make the U.S. nuclear shield irrelevant to the security alliance between our countries, or do American nonproliferation activists actually fear a world in which our Asian allies are fully capable of providing for their own security?

While the great and the good flail around in Aspen with their attempts to produce workable Iran policy ideas, George Ajjan has a long post that highlights the poverty of the usual policy debate on Iran and cites a letter from a correspondent, who has many interesting observations on the recent “petrol riots” that received so much coverage in the West.  The “Ideas Festival” could do worse than to ditch Woolsey and company and talk to George and his Iranian correspondent.

The ink was probably barely dry on the commutation order before the hacks at The Wall Street Journal, fresh from being repudiated by a majority of the Senate and the country on the amnesty bill, put together their Libby editorial together.  It could have been written before the fact, but regardless of this it is a rich artifact of Bush-era propaganda.  Mr. Bush is “evading responsibility” by failing to pardon Libby, when his act of commutation before Libby’s appeal was heard was something that he definitely did not have to do.  He is “evading responsibility,” even though the WSJ position on this entire matter is one, long evasion of responsibility, moral, political and legal.  These people are simply amazing.  The commutation is a “dark moment” in the history of the administration–and not because it is giving cover to a convicted perjuror!  It is a “dark moment” because the President did not misuse his pardon power to completely exonerate a felon.  That is what these people mean.  The WSJ said that Libby deserved better.  Actually, he deserved to go to jail.  He should be glad that the President was willing to do this much for him.  So should his moronic defenders.

The Journal has a twofer of bad contributions this morning.  Brendan Miniter has arrived to tell us that–contrary to what he must think is established public opinion on the matter–George Washington didn’t win every battle!  Why, he even retreated from New York (a move that anyone even briefly acquainted with New York City can applaud for its wisdom)!  He apparently thinks that the example of the weaker, native force defeating the intruding imperial army at Saratoga is supposed to encourage us in our campaign in Iraq.  Of course he does.

I have some new Scene posts on: Alan Wolfe’s attack on Russell Kirk, the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, Bill Bennett’s ideas about history teaching.  In addition, there are my post on foreign policy traditions, my two most recentcriticisms of the Fred Phenomenon, comments on consolidation, a post on the Pashtuns, a Fourth of July week reflection on the Loyalists, and my remarks on an article in Foreign Policy on the “ideology of development.”

In terms of the wider U.S. public, Brown will find Tony Blair a hard act to follow. Notwithstanding liberal anger over Iraq, Blair has won a special place in Americans’ hearts.  This is partly due to his many consoling appearances here just after September 11.  But it was also his lucid summation of the liberal world’s case against jihadist fanaticism, which stood in such stark contrast to our own president’s leaden tongue.  ~Will Marshall

Those familiar with the PPI and those who have read my neoliberalism article for the 6/18 TAC will recognise Marshall as the spokesman for the hawkish internationalism of the DLC-style Democrats and the editor and lead contributor to their book of bad foreign policy ideas, With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty.  Yes, that is what it’s actually called.  It is no surprise that he is one of these people with a soft spot for Blair.  Those of us who opposed and oppose the war take a rather more dim view of the man for obvious reasons. 

Of course, Putin was the first foreign leader to contact President Bush and offer assistance after 9/11, and has been as blunt and straightforward about his intentions towards jihadis in Chechnya as Blair has been verbose and overblown.  Americans, as a whole, couldn’t care less about Putin’s support for the United States in a vital moment, but because Blair speaks with a British accent they think he has been imparted with special wisdom from God.  Instead of being supremely angry at Blair for helping sucker our two countries into an unnecessary war, many Americans are desperately worried about denial-of-service attacks on Estonian servers and regard Putin with dread.  By no means should we lavish Putin with the sort of embarrassing flattery and worship that people have given Blair over at least the past six years, but if we could find some happy medium between irrational adoration for a mediocre nobody and irrational hostility to one of our potentially best geostrategic allies we would be doing a little bit better by the interests of the United States.

Why would anyonethink that Dana Stevens has the need to take a lame Democratic partisan shot in every movie review she writes?  Via Ross comes her Transformers review, in which she writes:

That planet was once home to two alien races: the upstanding Autobots and the sneaky Decepticons. (Does anyone but me hear the echo of “Democrats” and “Republicans” in these names?)

Um…no.  But if this were the case, it would put Dick Cheney in the position of playing Starscream.  That does sound about right, given their shared capacity to grate on my nerves with their voices.

Well, I was obviously wrong about Bush and Libby, or at least substantially wrong enough that it makes my earlier predictions in this area fall apart.  As you will have probably seen by now, the President has commuted Libby’s sentence, leaving him with a hefty fine and two years of probation, but at least allowing him to avoid time in jail.  This is really as much as he could ever have been expected to do, no matter how many Fouad “Fallen Soldier” Ajami pieces confronted him in the press.  Technically, those of us who argued he wouldn’t pardon Libby were right, but those of us who actually take Libby’s perjury conviction seriously aren’t typically interested in emphasising technicalities.

He also should have made border enforcement a key priority of his administration far earlier in order to defuse criticism that promises to restrict illegal immigration were empty. ~Morton Kondracke

Well, yes, he should have done that, but he didn’t because those promises were empty.  Since he failed to enforce the law, why should the failure of the amnesty bill surprise anyone?  Why should we be treated to an ueber-centrist’s hectoring about legislators being “terrorized” by voters (note to Kondracke: terror is not what we normally call the process by which citizens make their wishes known to representatives in a peaceful fashion)?  The only way there was going to be enough support for that or any bill like it was if there was confidence that the government was both willing and able to enforce the law.  In reality, it wasn’t even willing.  So, yes, Mr. Bush should have made enforcement a top priority.  He should also have rejected anything remotely resembling amnesty, he should never have started the war in Iraq and he should also not run the executive branch as badly as he has, in fact, run it.  Come to think of it, Americans should not have re-elected him, but we’re past that point.

Kondracke rattles off the “cowardice caucus,” which is basically a list of ’08 Senate election incumbents, plus purple-state and populist Democrats.  What this tells me is that the Senators most sensitive to the public’s mood on the issue and most responsive to the public opposed the bill, because there were enough bad provisions to create massive opposition across the spectrum.  This is actually something close to how a deliberative, representative system is supposed to run: neither momentary passions nor narrow interests should be able to overwhelm the institutional checks against both.  Federal legislation must possess sufficiently broad support that it can overcome the many obstacles that our system has placed in the way on purpose.  This is supposed to ensue a greater measure of consent in the making of laws and the prevention of the instability of purely democratic government.  For the most part, the political class does what it wants and the rest of us are along for the ride, but every so often they run into a brick wall of public outrage.  This is a good thing.  We need more of it, and fewer of Kondracke’s “solutions.”

As many of you may already know, this week Ross will be blogging from the “Ideas Festival” in Aspen whose content I hope is not nearly so odd as its name.  He tells us that the main events begin tonight and continue thereafter.  Many of the participants whose names are familiar don’t seem that interesting to me (I do so anxiously await hearing about the contributions from Rahm Emanuel and Jim Wallis), but perhaps the gap will be filled by the others.  Queen Noor might give a stemwinder about Palestine, which would at least make for some fireworks.