Yglesias has already said most of what needs to be said about the trashy attack on Andrew by Leon Wieseltier, but I would add a couple of things. Wieseltier takes one of Andrew’s quotes of the day (“Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy”), which he thinks bristles “smugly with implications.” Wieseltier extrapolates from this unremarkable quote some animus against Jews. Of course, it is very easy to read into anything whatever you want to see, especially if you are convinced that stand-alone, out-of-context quotes are full of implications that are waiting to be extracted. It ought to be sufficient to write this entire piece off as lunacy, but Wieseltier’s accusation is an insulting charge and obviously a baseless one. It would also be easier to dismiss the attack as the trash that it is if it weren’t winning applause in some quarters.

For his evidence, such as it is, Wieseltier first establishes that Andrew does not agree with and does not care for Michael Goldfarb and Charles Krauthammer. Even though Andew stipulated that these people are in no way representative of American Jewish opinion, he made clear that he loathed the ideology these individuals have embraced. Who wouldn’t? They cheered and defended all the worst aspects of the previous administration, and they routinely endorse destructive, inhumane policies. Andrew is not “hunting for motives” when he describes their appalling views; he is stating his opposition to those views. Unlike Wieseltier, he does not speculate about someone’s supposed undisclosed animus against an entire group of people on the basis of a few quotes and fragments.

As far as I know, Andrew does not subscribe to Walt and Mearsheimer’s actual arguments contained in their writings on the Israel lobby. Imagine how much less he agrees with the completely distorted, despicable misrepresentation of those views that Wieseltier presents! If he agreed with Walt and Mearsheimer’s actual arguments, that would mean that he supports Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, and he would believe that the U.S. should guarantee its security. In fact, Andrew is arguably much more of a Zionist than this, and this comes through in numerous posts in which he, like many other Western Zionists, expresses his sorrow at what certain political forces inside Israel, especially Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, have been doing to the country and its reputation abroad. My impression is that it is his sympathy for Israel that makes him so critical of the mistakes he believes its government has been making.

Andrew will sometimes overstate things, and he has an Obama loyalist’s tendency to attack Obama’s opponents in very harsh terms. One post that Wieseltier cites is one that I criticized at the time, not because Andrew was all that wrong on the substance of the state of U.S.-Israel relations or Israel’s fraying relationship with Turkey, but because he did not set recent events against the background of the last several years. No reasonable person could conclude that Andrew’s statement was anything more than a strong criticism of another government that he correctly saw as an opponent of Obama’s policies. As for his remarks about jihadism, Andrew was commenting on a discussion begun by Marc Lynch, who made the argument with which Andrew was agreeing.

It is quite easy to see everything Wieseltier cites from Andrew’s writings as the product of a pro-Obama advocate who has been frustrated by the false start of Obama’s handling of Israel and Palestine and as nothing more than that. As denunciations go, Wieseltier’s is probably the most intellectually sloppy, shabby one I have seen since the days before the invasion of Iraq.

Now, on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, as Iran braces for what could be the largest and most violent demonstrations since the election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, the country may be on the brink of civil war. ~Reza Aslan

That’s an eye-catching statement, but what reason would anyone have for believing it? After a lot of background and stage-setting, Aslan writes that clashes between pro- and anti-regime crowds could “augur a civil war.” If there were such a conflict, so much the worse for the unarmed, ostensibly non-violent protest movement. The weird thing about so much pro-Green commentary in the West is that it is the movement’s sympathizers who are heartened by reports that the movement and its leaders are becoming more combative and more radically opposed to the entire regime. They seem to think that the less chance for compromise between the regime and the opposition, the better this will be for the opposition, but this seems unlikely. If clashes this week prompted widespread violence and open rebellion against the government, the opposition would be outnumbered and outgunned all over the country. A civil war, such as it would be, would be short, bloody and not to the advantage of the Green movement.

Whenever I point out that the Green movement probably represents a minority of the minority of pro-Mousavi Iranians, I am reminded that revolutions are led by minorities, but to date there have been no successful revolutions against governments like this one led by a distinct minority that also has no military forces on its side. The “color” revolutions peacefully prevailed over individual leaders and their cronies because the latter presided over very weak states. The Iranian “deep state” is much more powerful, much more entrenched, much more tied into the Iranian economy, and thus far has been entirely loyal to the current regime. For the sake of the protesters, we should hope that Thursday and the days afterwards are peaceful and not a harbinger of armed conflict, because in such a conflict the opposition would have no hope of prevailing.

Aslan is probably right that Ahmadinejad’s announcement on enrichment is a bluff. Of course, the Iranian inability to enrich beyond 5% tells us that fears of their nuclear program are wildly overblown. It means that the fixation on compelling Iran to send its LEU abroad to be enriched to a higher grade is pointless, because there is little threat that Iran could produce weapons-grade material if it cannot even produce the material needed for its medical reactor. Ahmadinejad cannot be engaged in “nuclear brinksmanship” when he cannot take his government or anyone else’s to the brink of a nuclear exchange. It cannot be “blackmail” to announce a course of action that is both legally permitted and also impossible to carry out. For its part, the Iranian government sees no contradiction between continuing to negotiate fuel swaps while attempting their own enrichment. Logically, there is no contradiction. If Iran’s government does not have the technical ability to do the latter, the announcement has no significance at all and should not interfere with negotiations over fuel swaps.

Of course, this is not how Western governments are reacting. Secretary Gates has announced support for the “pressure track” (i.e., sanctions), and both German and French governments rejected last week’s offer to resume negotiations on fuel swaps. Sanctions are precisely what the Green movement does not want, because they understand that these sanctions will harm them far more than they will harm the regime. Even though everyone can see Ahmadinejad’s bluff for what it is, Western governments are reacting to it as if it were a serious announcement.

Aslan writes near the end:

Ahmadinejad is desperate to rally the country behind him using the one issue on which all Iranians, regardless of their politics or piety, agree [bold mine-DL]. Ahmedinejad hopes to elicit a belligerent response from the West, allowing him to arouse the people’s national pride.

That is probably right, and so far Western governments are doing exactly what he wants. An overwhelming majority of Iranians does support a peaceful, civilian nuclear program, which is all that Ahmadinejad has committed to publicly. What Aslan fails to explain is why Ahmadinejad is going to fail in rallying the country behind him, especially when Western governments are falling into their predictable, confrontational pattern of threats and punitive measures.

Matt Continetti continues to embarrass himself as a flack for Palin:

Palin noted that the president spent hardly any time on foreign policy during his annual report to Congress–indeed, she spent more time on our Israeli and Japanese allies, our Iranian and jihadist adversaries, and our strategic competitors than he did.

This is pretty weak praise. She “spent more time” on these things? All right, yes, she did mention Japan and Israel in passing, but what did she actually have to say about any of these things? According to one transcript, these were her remarks:

Our president spent a year reaching out to hostile regimes, writing personal letters to dangerous dictators and apologizing for America, and what do we have to show for that? Here’s what we have to show. North Korea tested nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles. Israel, a friend and critical ally, now questions the strength of our support. Plans for a missile defense system in Europe, they’ve been scrapped. Relations with China and Russia are no better. and relations with Japan, that key Asian ally, they are in the worst shape in years.

In fact, the first North Korean nuclear weapons test occurred on Bush’s watch in 2006. That isn’t Bush’s fault. For most of his second term, Bush pursued a diplomatic track in concert with China and our regional allies, but North Korea’s nuclear test is not proof that this was the wrong way to handle a difficult regime. North Korea has been unresponsive, and it is intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon. There are not many things that our government or anyone else can do about this. The second nuclear test occurred four months into Obama’s tenure. You have to be rather silly to assume that this was a result of the new administration’s policies. She mentions the missile defense decision, but has nothing to say about it one way or the other. Presumably she thinks the decision was wrong, but she can’t even muster the boilerplate outrage over the imagined “betrayal” of Poland and the Czech Republic that seems to be mandatory these days on much of the right.

If Israel questions the strength of U.S. support, it is difficult to see why this would be the case. Since Palin’s remarks are just a litany of content-free complaints, it is hard to know what she believes the administration did or didn’t do that she would have done differently. As for U.S.-Japanese relations, it is a gross exaggeration to say that they are in the “worst shape in years.” There are tensions over the Futenma basing agreement, and the administration would have preferred that the DPJ government had not followed through on its campaign pledge to allow the mandate for its Afghanistan-related refueling operation to expire, but these are manageable disagreements. Is Palin saying that she thinks Obama should be more conciliatory to the DPJ government on the basing of U.S. troops? Of course not. She would inevitably want a more assertive, arrogant approach that would offend and alienate Tokyo even more. She would be even more irritated with the DPJ government over the end of Japanese refueling operations. Supposing McCain and she had won the election, these points of contention could very well have turned into diplomatic crises rather than ongoing irritants.

Palin says that relations with China and Russia are no better. Perhaps not, but until very recently relations with both have not grown any worse. As far as Russia is concerned, the fact that Washington has stopped making things worse for a short time is a small accomplishment in itself. Why have relations with China soured recently? In short order, Taiwan arms sales, public haranguing over Iran sanctions, criticism of Internet censorship and agreeing to meet with the Dalai Lama were responsible. I doubt very much that Palin thinks Obama should have refused to make the arms sale to Taiwan. She is interested in building coalitions to confront Iran and North Korea, or so she says, so how would she have cajoled the Chinese differently on this point? She wants sanctions on Iran, which is also what the administration wants and has been working to impose. Since she is so insistent that Obama speak out more on behalf of oppressed and unfree peoples, she can’t possibly disagree with the administration criticisms of Chinese Internet censorship that began the recent spate of public arguments between our governments. Obviously, given her professed enthusiasm for political dissidents, meeting with the Dalai Lama is not something she would oppose. If relations with China are no better today, how much worse might they be if she and McCain were following her recommendations?

The point is not that the administration has necessarily done the right things when it has been handling relations with China recently. Especially as it relates to Iran, the administration has gone horribly wrong here. The point is that Palin demands on the one hand that the administration do even more of the obnoxious, confrontational things that worsen relations with other major players while also complaining that relations with other states are getting worse. Her foreign policy remarks are frankly a joke. She could spend all day talking about these things, and it wouldn’t make what she said any more worthwhile. Whenver you are tempted to think that Republicans might have something to say about foreign policy, just remember that this is the person the Republican Party was ready to make Vice President, and this is the person many of them would still want to have as President.

P.S. Palin also repeats the completely ignorant claim that democracies don’t go to war with each other. I understand that she is just repeating propaganda claims, but it’s still pathetic.

Discussions on expanding the group’s membership is not surprising, although that doesn’t mean Iran and Pakistan will soon join, said Niu Jun, a professor at Peking University’s School of International Relations.

Niu said he expected there would be lengthy discussions first, especially on Iran, which would be seen as a provocative move.

“If Iran joined, it would drastically change the original function of the SCO, which was dealing with the terrorism threat with cooperation from China’s neighboring countries. The joining of Iran would mean that the meaning of SCO has totally changed,” he said.

China and Russia also see the group as a way to increase cooperation on financial issues, and consider it a counterweight to U.S. influence in the energy-rich, former Soviet states of Central Asia. Iran’s participation would boost that energy cooperation. ~BusinessWeek

Via Race for Iran

As the Leveretts mention, Iran already has observer status in the SCO, so it would not be that hard to imagine the organization granting Iran full membership. Granting Iran membership would be seen in the West as a provocative move, but a good question is why anyone should be provoked by it. The SCO is not a full-fledged military alliance or defensive pact, and it has existed primarly as a mechanism to consolidate Russian and Chinese political and economic influence in Central Asia. At the moment, it is a limited security and economic structure. If Iran’s application were accepted this year, it would simply underline the how closely Iran’s neighbors are tied to Iran and how uninterested they are in punishing Iran for either its nuclear program or its internal repression. In a way, if it accepted Iran the SCO would be doing the U.S. a favor by demonstrating how efforts to isolate Iran diplomatically and economically will not succeed.

The Leveretts make a valuable observation, which is that Moscow has been the leading advocate of Iranian membership, while it is Beijing that is more reluctant to include Iran at this time. This tells us that the Russians are actively pushing to strengthen their ties with Iran even as the administration tries to persuade us that the Russians are coming around to Washington’s view of Iran. It is true that reports of Russian willingness to cooperate on Iran sanctions are greatly exaggerated, and Moscow’s interest in integrating Iran into the SCO confirms that Russian willingness to impose new sanctions is very limited, conditional and probably very transitory.

Possible integration of Iran into a Sino-Russian-led organization underscores the failure of an Iran policy aimed at isolating and “punishing” Iran by cutting it off from contact with the U.S. Cutting off ties with Iran and threatening additional sanctions have not produced Iranian compliance with U.S. demands, nor have these efforts really punished the Iranian regime, because Iran can simply look elsewhere for trade and diplomatic support. Instead of resuming relations with Iran and providing a counterweight to Russian and Chinese influence, U.S. policy has simply ceded Iran to other major powers by default. Instead of experiencing the isolation that a “rogue state” is supposed to expect, Iran seems to be gaining ground in its relations with its neighbors and rising powers around the world. Inclusion in the SCO would confirm a process of Iran’s integration with these other states that is ongoing.

Ross:

The Munich nuclear-abolition panel took place just 24 hours before Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ordered his scientists to forge ahead with uranium enrichment. Faced with yet another round of Iranian brinkmanship, you can understand why Western leaders might prefer to talk about a world without nuclear weapons. By making the issue bigger, more long-term and more theoretical, they can almost make it seem to go away.

But when it comes to containing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, the existing American arsenal simply isn’t part of the problem. And if Iran does acquire the bomb, our nuclear deterrent will quickly become an important part of the solution.

Ross is right that talk of abolishing nuclear arms is unrealistic, and he is right that the size or existence of our nuclear arsenal has no bearing on whether or not other states will pursue their own. That said, focusing on Obama’s purely rhetorical commitment to disarmament leads us away from the central flaw in nonproliferation efforts. This is simply that they are transparently, absurdly one-sided. Regimes that wish to acquire nuclear weapons have no incentives to remain within the limits of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so it is no surprise that all of the new members of the nuclear weapons club either withdrew from the treaty or never joined it in the first place. Regimes that have ratified the NPT discover that they cannot even pursue a nuclear program that is completely within their rights guaranteed by the treaty without drawing constant international attention and interference. What is most absurd about this situation is that it is only because of Iran’s adherence to the NPT that other goverments have any ability to demand monitoring or oversight of its nuclear program, but even when Iran remains more or less within the limits set down by the NPT it is treated far worse than the states that have already engaged in nuclear proliferation on a large scale.

Before North Korea withdrew from the NPT, there was a clear opposition between “rogue states” that adhered to the nonproliferation accord and U.S.-allied, new nuclear states that did not. Of course, what makes the former into “rogue states” is that they are not our allies. As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, “rogue states” are no more and sometimes less “rogue” in their adherence to international legal norms on proliferation than India, Pakistan and Israel. If the “rogues” were our allies, their nuclear arsenals would not only scarcely bother us, but we would also actively defend their right to have these arsenals. This is one reason why I find it hard to take seriously worries about an arms race in the Near East or East Asia, when most of the potential competitors are U.S. allies. Given this arrangement, it is not surprising that “rogue states” see nonproliferation agreements to be as meaningless as our government does. What is remarkable is that Iran even bothers pretending to adhere to the NPT, even though enforcement of the nonproliferation regime is stacked entirely in favor of the U.S. and our allies.

As for Iran’s recently announced intention to produce 20% enriched uranium, which it probably cannot even do at present*, we should stop to consider whether this really counts as “brinksmanship.” Iran’s government publicly announced this decision, and it proceeded to inform the IAEA. In doing so, it is fulfilling its obligations under the NPT, and so has every legal right to proceed with this modest enrichment. When Iran’s Foreign Minister said late last week that Tehran was willing to reconsider previously proposed uranium swaps, his statement was largely met with derision. Little wonder that Ahmadinejad announced soon thereafter that they would be producing the 20% enriched uranium themselves.

To review, Iranian brinksmanship in the last week consists of offering to accept the uranium swap deal that several Western governments put forward, and after this offer was immediately shot down as a delaying tactic the Iranians decided to press ahead with a level of enrichment that is completely acceptable under the terms of an international treaty. This would be the same treaty to which several of our nuclear-armed allies do not and will never belong. On top of this, Tehran informed the relevant international agency of its decision. Yes, this is truly terrifying brinksmanship.

Of course, that’s part of the problem. There is a constant need to exaggerate threats from small and medium-sized states’ nuclear programs. These programs do not threaten us, and they do not even do much to threaten our allies, who are, as Ross reminds us, under the protection of our nuclear arsenal and could probably quickly develop their own arsenals if necessary. When they are done by the “wrong” states, the “rogues,” basically legitimate actions are viewed as threats and “brinkmanship.” Containable, manageable, regional problems are transformed overnight in intolerable threats to the entire planet. For 15 years or so after the end of the Cold War, the “international community” went along with this, but in recent years, as new centers of power have started emerging in Asia and Latin America, the “international community” is much less deferential to Western governments on this point, and even among Western governments there is much less agreement than there might have once been on such matters.

Ross has missed the most important point in all of this, which is that Obama has called for a world without nuclear weapons, but as a matter of policy has done everything he can to reinforce the double standard I am describing. His Iran engagement policy, such as it is, was always designed to lay the foundation for future punitive measures, because Obama’s nonproliferation efforts are quite conventionally aimed at “rogue states.” It is important to recognize which parts of his speeches have some practical relevance, and which are flourishes thrown in to satisfy targeted audiences.

This is why I keep insisting that we pay attention to the ideas Obama chooses to put into action. Continuing with the Indian nuclear deal was the right decision as far as U.S.-Indian relations are concerned, and reaffirming Washington’s support for Israel’s arsenal was always going to happen regardless of what Obama said in Prague. These were not bad decisions in themselves, but they would be ridiculous things to do if one actually believes that nuclear weapons should be abolished. They are also blatantly hypocritical, so long as our Iran policy dictates that Iran cannot be trusted even to produce lower enriched uranium while Pakistan can be trusted with an arsenal of scores of nuclear warheads.

* As the article in the Post mentions, it is an open question whether Iran has the technical capacity to enrich uranium to 20%. Somehow, declaring the intention to produce something that it has no technical means to produce constitutes “blackmail,” or so France’s Foreign Minister says. Obviously, if Iran cannot even manage 20% enriched uranium now, it is not going to manage to produce weapons-grade material anytime soon. This just drives home how irrational Western fears of Iran’s nuclear program are.

Stuart Rothenberg writes that some Republicans are taking a more balanced, sober view of their chances this fall:

In fact, GOP political consultants and strategists aren’t popping champagne corks yet. Instead, they worry about the euphoria on the right and believe that the party has a long way to go before it can nail down a big win in the midterm elections.

Some Republican operatives are openly concerned about the party’s tactical disadvantages, most notably its financial position. Others fear that circumstances could change, robbing the GOP of its strategic advantage.

This is an appropriately cautious view to take. Consider what we have been seeing in just the last week. One of the few House Republicans with any coherent policy views, Paul Ryan, made an impressive budget proposal that his own leadership cannot run away from fast enough. In his first Q&A, Scott Brown simply ignored questions that pointed out the contradiction of supporting across-the-board tax cuts and demanding debt reduction, and it is this position of no taxes/no debt/no cuts that Republican leaders have been adopting. Shelby’s blanket hold may be something that only insiders and activists notice, but it contributes to the overall picture that the minority party is unreasonable, petty and not fit to govern. This is not a party on the verge of a dramatic return to power.

This is the problem the Tories have run into in every general election since 1997. The public may be furious with Labour, but the Tories have not yet capitalized on that discontent when control of the national government is at stake. As horrible as the governing party has been, the Tories kept failing to regain the public’s trust, and they could not demonstrate they were capable of competence in government. Only now do they seem to have a real chance, 13 years later amid a nearly complete meltdown by Labour, and even now victory is not guaranteed. Should the Tories fall short yet again, the recriminations and score-settling will consume the party for years. This is something Republicans should keep in mind.

The danger of overconfidence regarding the midterm results is not just that it can make the GOP complacent, arrogant and deaf to the real concerns of voters. It creates unduly high expectations that will make even an average or decent election result seem more like a defeat. The more the GOP hypes its chances of retaking one or both houses this year, the more devastating the failure to do so will be. After GOP-friendly analysts and pundits have been telling the tale of 1974 or 1994-style losses for the presidential party all year, modest gains will make it feel as if the election is a third straight repudiation of Republicans, because their leaders will have made the election a referendum on their readiness to be in the majority rather than a referendum on the administration.

The psychology of this is simple but very important. As in anything else, if performance exceeds expectations the reputation of the company, party or individual improves much more than if the performance falls short. If Republicans succumb to the temptation to believe that they are going to do something that is virtually unprecedented in electoral politics, and if they begin telling themselves and everyone else that they believe this, it will do them no good after the midterms for them to say that they had set their sights too high. Declaring that they can win 40 House seats, as several members of the leadership seem to think they can, they had better win at least 30 or be considered complete failures. If they were wiser and set the bar much lower at 15 or 20 seats, 25 pick-ups would look much more impressive.

Like the “center-right nation” story that many Republicans keep telling themselves, the belief that Scott Brown’s win heralds a massive anti-Democratic wave gives the GOP the false assurance that all they need to do is show up and reap the rewards. This means that they will continue to neglect the preparation needed to win back many of the seats they are targeting, and this complacency will compound the financial disadvantages they already have.

Former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych could secure a victory in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential run-off, according to a poll by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute. 55.9 per cent of respondents would support Yanukovych of the Party of Regions (PR) in next month’s ballot, while 40.7 per cent would vote for current prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. ~Angus-Reid

Well, I stand corrected. From what I had understood a few weeks ago, I concluded that Tymoshenko would have a better chance in the run-off, but she has evidently been unable to win over the supporters of the minor candidates and Yanukovych seems set to be elected the new Ukrainian president tomorrow. It does not matter to America one way or the other who prevails, but it is worth reviewing some of the wailing being done by pro-Orange Westerners to remember the misguided enthusiasm and ideological mania that dominated Western views of events in Ukraine a little over five years ago.

The most comical expression of unadulterated pro-Orange propaganda comes from Taras Kuzio. Even amid the ruins of the Orange coalition, Kuzio is still flacking for their completely discredited cause. So desperate is he to find some significance in the run-off between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych that he is simply repeating the 2004 propaganda lines that the election represents is a battle between the future and the past, West vs. East, Europe vs. Russia, etc. Kuzio concludes:

On Sunday Ukrainians are faced by a stark choice between democracy or counter-revolutionary revenge and Soviet nostalgia.

This isn’t true. The choice will be between a drab functionary and ex-Kuchma hack and a megalomaniac. On major policy decisions, the two candidates are drearily similar, and their agendas are no longer defined by the 2004 fantasies of full integration into the security, economic and political structures of Europe and dramatic political reform at home. Many Westerners are lamenting the death of the Orange Revolution, but the important thing to understand is that the goals of that revolution were always unrealistic and were bound to be disappointed. The Orange Revolution died as soon as its leaders took power. The illusions they were peddling could not withstand contact with political reality.

Each of the “color” revolutions celebrated by democratists in the past seven years has failed entirely or won power and subsequently presided over the ruin of its country. As with the Rose Revolution, the figurehead of the Orange Revolution became abusive of and corrupted by power, and in different ways both Saakashvili and Yushchenko have presided over the ruin of their respective countries. Yushchenko presided over the total paralysis of the Ukrainian political system, and, of course, Saakashvili ushered in the military defeat and partition of his country. The “Tulip” revolution installed an arguably worse authoritarian in the place of another. The “Cedar” revolution freed Lebanon from a Syrian presence only to preside over the extensive bombardment of Lebanon by Israel. None of these revolutions has led to much good for these countries, most of them have scarcely changed any of the problems that supposedly motivated them.

Adam Brickley’s “eulogy” is much more balanced and informed, but it still contains within it the echo of the absurd, ideologically-driven arguments of five years ago:

These [Yushckenko and Tymoshenko] were the two who were supposed to lead Ukraine to a glorious, democratic future — and none of us would have guessed that they could fall so far, so fast.

Actually, the skeptics of the revolution assumed that it was a sham, and we assumed that the leaders of this revolution simply represented one clique of interests against the clique represented by Kuchma and Yanukovych. We didn’t expect them to fall far or fast because we didn’t think they had very far to fall, and they proved us right. Five years ago enough people favored the clique that was not in power, and tomorrow they will switch back to the clique that was in control before. The trouble here is that people like Brickley talked about a “glorious, democratic future” for Ukraine five years ago and they were serious.

Something else that linked the failures of the Orange and Rose Revolutions was their overt trafficking in virulent anti-Russian nationalism. It was this nationalism and the goal of “reintegration” that propelled Saakashvili into the disastrous escalation that led to the August 2008 war. It was this kind of nationalism that also made Yushchenko reflexively hostile to everything Russia did and pushed him into alignment with Saakashvili’s government against Ukraine’s own interests. In the end, it was sympathy for Saakashvili’s own self-destructive path that weakened Yushchenko at home and damaged his coalition’s ability to govern. As the Angus-Reid report reminds us:

In September 2008, Ukraine’s governing coalition split in great part due to disagreements over a Georgia-Russia conflict. In the days following an incursion by Russian forces into South Ossetia, a Georgian breakaway province, Yushchenko asked the government to fiercely condemn Russia’s actions in Georgia, but Tymoshenko refused to take a strong stance against Russia. Yushchenko left the coalition as a result.

The break-up of the governing coalition made it that much more difficult for Ukraine to respond to the devastating effects of the financial crisis, and the disagreement over how to respond to the war deepened the rift between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko. All of this was a result of pursuing a maniacal hostility to Russia. His rivals understood that this hostility was and would continue to be damaging to Ukrainian interests. In the end, the same virulent nationalism that helped put Yushchenko in power was what drove him to make some of the decisions that ultimately wrecked his coalition.

No matter who wins tomorrow, Ukraine will have a president that is at least somewhat more reasonable and more interested in governing according to actual Ukrainian interests rather than pursuing hostility to Ukraine’s largest neighbor and trading partner. This will not fix dysfunctional government, corruption or Ukraine’s dire financial problems, but it will be a small improvement over the disastrous presidency that is now coming to an end.

Virtually no one on the right has had anything to say about Shelby’s earmark-driven blanket hold on executive branch nominations. Progressive blogs are understandbly outraged, and the only person I have found willing to defend Shelby’s maneuver in the slightest is James Joyner. James writes:

First, he’s up for re-election this year, so bringing millions of dollars home to Alabama during troubled economic times is especially important to him. Second, at least one of these projects was previously approved — and I don’t know what Shelby gave up to make that deal — under the previous administration. Third, when we’re incurring federal debt in the trillions of dollars, it’s hard to begrudge a few measly million for what sound like perfectly valid national security-related projects. [Update: Oops — misread the first figure; obviously, this is real money we’re talking about.]

Is the use of a blanket hold a sleazy way to get the job done? Yup. But I’m not sure what other leverage Shelby has. The state is represented by two Republican Senators, neither of whom are named Olympia Snowe. With a Democratic president and 59 Democratic Senators, he has to use every trick in the book to fight for his state.

Over the last three years I have been making fun of the Republican obsession with earmarks. Coming off the ’06 defeat, Republican leaders convinced themselves that it was “wasteful spending” and earmarks that had so disgusted their rank-and-file supporters that it suppressed turnout and cost them the elections. Not only was this wrong as a matter of understanding why they had lost, but the preoccupation with a legislative mechanism about which most of the public knew nothing and cared less was proof of just how out of touch Republicans in Washington had become. In any case, Shelby’s move reminds us that even their newfound outrage over earmarks is meaningless.

In the wake of Scott Brown’s win, a number of progressive bloggers flagged Pew survey results showing remarkable public ignorance about the institutional workings of Congress. They found the low percentage that knew how many votes were required to end a filibuster (26%) to be particular discouraging, and a common conclusion was that Republican tactics were not going to be held against them because most of the public had no understanding of any of the relevant procedures that the GOP was exploiting to thwart the Democrats’ agenda. Ezra Klein:

It’s a depressing poll, and for the White House, it should be a troubling one. Their argument essentially relies on a fairly deep level of procedural knowledge and interest. Enough, at least, to understand that the amount of governing the majority can do is dependent on how much governing the minority lets them do. It’s not an easy argument to make, and it’s even harder if the White House does not plan to make an issue out of its premises.

Now Shelby has resorted to an equally obscure, poorly-understood procedural maneuver, so it seems unlikely that there are very many persuadable voters who are going to be aware of what Shelby is doing. Then again, the scale of Shelby’s blanket hold is different from most of the minority’s other maneuvers. It is considerably more brazen and obnoxious than anything the GOP has tried before this, it is a completely unforced error, and it seems to have energized both the administration and progressive activists like nothing has in months. James is giving Shelby far too much credit. His colleague, Jeff Sessions, had already placed two holds on Pentagon nominees on account of the same tanker contract. Like it or not, that is well within normal Senate practice and simply part of how things are done there. It seems probable that Sessions’ two holds could have accomplished the same goal without throwing up an obstacle on all executive branch nominees. Indeed, I can’t imagine anything more damaging to support for these projects than Shelby’s excessive use of this tactic.

What I find most irritating about Shelby’s tactic is that he pretends that his home-state projects are vital to national security. His spokesman even refers to the projects as “unaddressed national security concerns.” He does not try to defend his move as an attempt to secure money and jobs for his state, which is clearly what it is. Shelby’s move may be parochial and self-interested, but one could at least offer some minimal defense of his reasons, albeit not his methods, if he were willing to acknowledge that this is nothing more than an effort to get some federal money back home during an election year. Many of Shelby’s critics are attacking him for his parochialism, but he could at least make the case that he is trying to serve the interests of his constituents. Instead he feels compelled to pretend that this is some high-minded fight over principle and national security. This is cynical nonsense, and it makes his cause an entirely unsympathetic one.

Update: Just to drive home this last point, I refer you to this article in Federal Times that explains that Shelby’s maneuver is aimed at helping Northrop Grumman and Airbus win the bid for the tanker contract. They had already won the bid last year, but following Boeing’s protest the deal was scrapped. If Boeing wins the contract, the tankers will still be built and there will be no harm to national security. Shelby cares who wins because Northrop’s part of the contract would have been based in Mobile, but as far as the general public is concerned it doesn’t matter where these tankers are built.

Second Update: James has an update in which he backs off from his original argument:

If John Cole and Marci Wheeler are correct, and the 2008 bid was awarded in error and thereafter rescinded by the Air Force, then most of the above is moot and Shelby is unjustified in this action even by the low standards of hardball politics.

Third Update: To their credit, Ponnuru and Bunch have attacked Shelby’s move.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda — which couldn’t get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts [bold mine-DL] — is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism. ~Charles Krauthammer

It seems fair to say that there are some sincere opponents of Obama’s agenda, and then there are a great many cynical opponents who would oppose just about anything he proposed because his political setbacks are their good fortune. That is not all that important. Cynical opportunists will always be with us, and the ruling party will attempt to make hay out of their cynical opportunism. What I find remarkable about this statement is that Krauthammer is quite certain that Obama’s “social democratic agenda” led to Democratic losses in all of these races. In Virginia, it is conceivable that there was something of a genuine backlash against Obama’s agenda because it was perceived to be “social democratic” and therefore contrary to what Virginians want. In New Jersey, it becomes harder to believe this, and in Massachusetts the idea seems fairly absurd. That is, to the extent that these results were messages about Obama and the Democratic agenda (and we have reason to think that Obama/Brown voters had little or no intention of sending such a message), it is difficult to believe that Democratic candidates fell because the national party was committed to a “social democratic agenda.” In the gubernatorial elections, it is even harder to conclude that the President and the national party’s agenda were major factors.

Most of what we saw in post-election surveys in Massachusetts tell us that it is corporatism, not social democracy, that angers and disgusts voters. One critical problem with Krauthammer’s analysis is the assumption that the corporatist policies the administration has been advancing or accepting represent a “social democratic agenda.” The social democrats would beg to differ. It could be that most Americans don’t want a “social democratic agenda,” either, but that isn’t what they’re being offered. Pinning recent Democratic defeats on social democracy is a bit like attributing Bush-era failures and Republican electoral repudiation to an excessive devotion to Rothbardian economics and constitutionalism. It may entertain the rank-and-file, but it is dreadfully poor analysis of what is happening.

What we have been seeing in all of the elections over the last year is a readiness on the part of the electorate to oust the parties that have traditionally held sway in the district or state in question. Republicans lost in upstate New York, and Democrats lost in New Jersey and Massachusetts. There is no way NY-23 should have ever sent a Democrat to the House, just as no one thought a Republican could win a Senate race in Massachusetts, but the very dominance that should make these elections a lock for one side or the other is the thing that provoked the backlashes that created the unexpected results. Traditionally dominant parties have been upended by a combination of bad economic conditions, terrible candidates and competent challengers. The candidates that could best address the local concerns of voters prevailed. Those identified with distrusted political establishments or discredited national parties failed. Virginia had recently started to become a more heavily Democratic state. The last two governors were Democrats, the state legislature was dominated by Democrats after 2006, and all statewide federal races were being won by Democrats during the last two cycles. 2009 was a reaction against that trend. We are seeing a general backlash against whichever party has prevailed for too long in one place. That does mean that the Democrats are going to have more trouble, because they came into the majority nationally shortly before the financial crisis and recession, but it is the effects of the crisis and recession that are dragging them down far more than any “social democratic agenda.”

Would Krauthammer contend that Eisenhower’s refusal to overthrow the Soviet regime in 1958 was “an embarassing failure?” The Soviets did, after all, actually have nuclear weapons, many of them. The Iranians have none, and have not even mastered the enrichment cycle, let alone the long process toward weaponization. By implying that the only thing that stops the Iranians from immediately nuking New York is their technical capabilities, Krauthammer demonstrates a shocking ignorance of some of the most basic principles of international relations, beginning with deterrence. This makes him a horrible political scientist.

But as a rocket scientist, he’s even worse. ~Chris Preble

John Tabin calls this post “bizarre,” but it is hard to see how it is bizarre. Preble was responding to a false claim and an irresponsible bit of fearmongering on the part of Charles Krauthammer, and he correctly compared it to the irresponsible, equally baseless fearmongering about a Soviet missile advantage in the late 1950s in the wake of the Sputnik launch. To be fair to Preble, he says that the parallels here are only “modest,” but they are there.

Overstating the technical abilities of hostile and rival states is a common tactic that hawks and/or political opportunists have used for decades to attack their domestic opponents and to rile up the public about a threat that doesn’t exist or is not nearly as great as is being claimed. They do this for one or more of a variety of reasons. They may be misinformed, desperate to paint their opponents as “weak” on national security, instinctively militaristic, or just paranoid about foreign threats. Krauthammer probably qualifies for all of these. Regardless of why they do it, people who hype threats from so-called “rogue states” are consistently wrong about the technological capabilities of those states, and they are also wrong about the willingness of these states to use the technology that they do have against superior Western military power.

The ability to launch a rocket into space does not readily translate into an ability to put a “nuke in New York,” as Krauthammer said. This is not simply “too strong,” as Tabin grants. It is wrong. Leaving aside the fact that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons of any kind and probably remains far away from having them, its missile program is nowhere near being able to produce delivery vehicles for its non-existent nuclear weapons, and the range of its missiles is limited to approximately 1,200 miles. Krauthammer simply erases the numerous, complicated steps between launching a rocket with minimal payload into orbit and successfully arming intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads. He does this, of course, to create the impression in the minds of his audience that Iran is on the verge of being able to launch a nuclear strike on America, and he wants to add to this fear by suggesting that nothing except regime change can thwart that attack.

As Preble says, Krauthammer’s error on technical matters is compounded when he ignores deterrence as the key to checking any future threat from an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Tabin claims that Preble “seems to assume that the only problem with a nuclear Iran is that it might use its nukes.” Of course, that has always been just about the only thing that Iran hawks are worried about in the event that Iran builds a nuclear weapon. As far as the U.S. and our allies are concerned, the only real problem with a nuclear Iran is whether it might use its nukes. A nuclear-armed Iran would be reasonably secure from attack, and it would be able to engage in proxy wars much as it does now. It is probably the case that surprisingly little would change, and it seems possible that the potential costs of escalating conflict could have the effect of limiting conflicts or preventing conflict from breaking out. Regardless, the reality is that Iran does not have and is not close to having nuclear weapons. Even if Iranian missiles were far more advanced right now, there are no nukes with which to arm them.

Tabin concludes:

If the case against supporting a revolution in Iran is that the Islamic Republic won’t be any worse than the USSR, that’s not remotely comforting.

Preble doesn’t say anything like this. Preble’s purpose in making the comparison was to emphasize how dissimilar Iran’s current government and the USSR are in terms of power and military strength. Naturally, Tabin thinks that the comparison is meant to equate the two. Preble’s point in making the comparison with the USSR in the 1950s is that the USSR was vastly more dangerous and powerful than Iran, it actually possesed nuclear weapons, and it was perceived to have superior technical capabilities. The U.S. government managed to find a way to contain Soviet power and prevent Soviet use of its nuclear weapons short of a revolution toppling the communist regime. Even then deterrence kept the peace, and the West survived without suffering any direct attacks from Soviet forces over the three decades that followed. If deterrence was effective then, how much more effective will it be against a regional power that currently has no nuclear weapons and a limited missile program?

Preble wasn’t directly making a case against supporting a revolution in Iran. He was arguing that there would be other ways to prevent Iran from using nuclear weapons in the event that it ever acquired them. That means that Krauthammer’s statement that only a revolution in Iran could resolve the nuclear issue was also flat-out wrong.