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IRAN AS A SOVIETOLOGY FLASHBACK

The Brezhnevian mediocrity posing as Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Khameini ( or Grand Ayatollah, as he claims, without much evidence by Shiite scholarly standards) has ruled in favor of talks with the United States over the fate of Iraq. This move, was in my view, rather interesting on a number of levels.

The problem with dissecting Iranian politics – aside from the dearth of American scholars and USG analysts with a reasonable command of Farsi and real “in-country” experience – is that we have a faction-ridden elite whose convoluted machinations are mostly opaque. In terms of depth, our sources for Iran are quite poor , a condition that long preceded the revolution in 1979 due to the bipartisan acquiescence of multiple American administrations to the paranoid wishes of that man of straw, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, to hobble CIA activity in his country. As such we are left groping in the dark to understand the latest turn of events. Here is my view:

First, it is useful to recall as we ponder Iraq, regardless of the mistakes that the Bush administration has made since the fall of Saddam, we do not have to live next door to Iraq but the Iranians do. Moreover, their oil-rich provinces are home to an Arab minority just as their northwestern borderland houses Kurdish tribes. A nightmare scenario in Iraq has unavoidable spillover costs for an Iranian regime that is most likely better at formenting chaos than trying to suppress it on their own turf.

Secondly, Iran’s ruling clerical elite have been badly divided by the rise of ultra-hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has his supporters among a minority of the senior ayatollahs who previously blocked any bold moves on Supreme Guide Khameini’s part. The Clinton administration had previously reached out to Iran, offering a truckling apology for the CIA toppling of the erratic Mossadegh in 1953, only to be sharply rebuffed by Khameini who lacked much freedom to buck the clerical consensus on ” The Great Satan”.

Beyond that, I’m not sure we know any more about Iran’s internal politics than we did in the days of the Soviet Union where analysts poured over pictures of the Politburo reviewing parades from Lenin’s tomb for clues to the inner workings of elite Soviet decision making. An approach I never gave much credence – after all, didn’t these old guys need to use the restroom ? Run behind schedule because of infirmities ? Yet great import was placed on the body language and proximity of septuagenarian Communist bureaucrats trying to weather a public appearance for hours in the bitter Moscow cold. A ritual that killed more than one elderly Politburo member, including Leonid Brezhnev.

Trying to decipher Iran’s mullocracy reminds me a lot of Sovietology. We may be looking at all the wrong things.

ANOTHER FOR THE DEFENSE

I recently learned that David Kaiser, a professor at the Naval War College and a person with whom I have often sparred on H-Diplo ,has a blog, History Unfolding.

Dr. Kaiser is the author of American Tragedy, a history of the Vietnam War as well as other works on diplomatic, economic and social history. I am frequently, though hardly always, in general disagreement with Dr. Kaiser but I seldom fail to read his posts and suspect that you may enjoy them as well. He’s a fine writer, which is rare enough in academia, and argues his points well.

As an introduction to the world according to Kaiser, here is “Gambling on War“, where the arguments regarding von Clausewitz and defensive strategy will resonate with the followers of the 4GW school. An excerpt:

“Clausewitz’s classic On War is long and difficult, and it truly requires many years of study to assimilate, but the reader gradually realizes that certain fundamental principles, as well as a few specific questions, pervade it. Many people know his concept of “friction” and the “fog of war,” which makes battles so devilishly hard to understand and requires extraordinary qualities of mind and spirit for generals on the scene to unravel. This is an insight that has survived modern technology, as the repeated attempts to kill Saddam Hussein with air strikes—none of which, we now know, actually aimed at one of his many real hiding places—recently proved. A battle is like a football game, and just as difficult to predict. Generations of military historians—most notably those unhappy partisans of the Confederate States of America—have tried to stand this principle on its head by rewriting the outcome of every critical battle of the civil war to show how it could (or should) have turned out differently.

…To wise leaders, the inescapable uncertainty of war should militate against embarking upon it unless it is absolutely necessary—which neither Vietnam nor Iraq in 2003 was. Reinforcing this point, Clausewitz also argued repeatedly that defense was the stronger form of warfare, both tactically (since the defender need not move and fire at the same time), and strategically, since the attacked party was more likely to secure the help of allies who recognized a common interest in the survival of sovereign states. The United States implicitly recognized that principle after defeating Axis aggression in the Second World War and wrote it into the UN Charter, which authorized war only in self-defense. It enjoyed considerable allied assistance in the Korean War—another clear case of enemy aggression. But Vietnam never seemed like such a clear-cut case of aggression because South Vietnam was always so fragile, and most of the world rejected the “preventive war” argument over Iraq—in large part because other nations understood that the idea of national sovereignty simply cannot be reconciled with the concept of preventive war. By going on the offense, the United States forfeited a huge strategic advantage. It should not be too late to regain it, but the genie is out of the bottle in Iraq, and more damage, apparently, will be done.”

Shades of William Lind.

SEEKING AN ANTIDOTE FOR CULTURAL DEPRESSION

Bruce Kesler, my intrepid friend at The Democracy Project, has just recommended a writer, Richard Louv, in glowing terms:

“Louv is one of the most thought-provoking, original, common-sense columnists among the hundreds I see regularly. Louv is a true “moderate” but that is too bland a term for someone who ranges so widely over the landscape of ideas, culture, family, politics and reaches sometimes into our souls. Louv is not a moderate by seeking the medium or avoiding controversial positions, but by eschewing ideologies and rigidities and instead seeking promise across the spectrum of portents.”

Louv, a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune and an author, has an intriguing essay entitled “A Treatment For Cultural Depression”. Some key excerpts, some of which were already highlighted by Bruce:

“Blaming our malaise on our malaise is an old tradition. Cultural depression, an anthropological term, is the accumulation of societal ills, such as chronic substance abuse, that typically follows a major, widespread tragedy: an epidemic, a war, a terrorist attack. But when is cultural depression a matter of choice?

On every channel we hear the droning, Gothic whine. How special we are. We, the Information Overloaded and Equity Unstable. We, the people of the iPod Nation, worried about our hearing loss. If you listen too long to the bleating lawyer-commentators on the cable channels, or to the hyped-up TV shows about the perfect storm to come, or to the Rapture-ites who, as John Prine would put it, are “wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood,” then you would surely believe that the end is near.

…Well, buck up, Bucky, life isn’t half bad – and it could get better, with a little faith and effort. Yup, we’ve got problems that may yet do us in, but despair is unlikely to increase our odds. So far, no one has suggested a practical alternative to hope. By this, I am not recommending the “What? Me worry?” brand of optimism that assumes that invaders will be welcomed or that global warming does not exist.

Instead, we need an activist hope, the kind that comes by decision and without warranty – the realistic optimism that put men on the moon and fueled the civil rights movement. As has been said, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech was not called “I Have a Nightmare.” In fact, we’re well positioned to build a better civilization, to create a new peace, to make life gentler for those who really do have something to worry about, to avoid the storm of storms. “

Where fear and pessimism are commonplace in our national dialogue Mr. Louv is expressing America’s potential resilience. Not only resilience but the fact that the world is decidedly not going to hell in a handbasket ( Louv echoes the arguments of national security expert H.H. Gaffney who has pointed to the across the board improvements in the security environment since 1991). Islamism, which in my view represents a serious and real threat in the near and medium term, is not on a historical par with Communism or Fascism. Al Qaida is an enemy engaged in deadly war with the United States but it isn’t the Soviet Union. Not yet at any rate.

Fear is a useful tonic for mobilizing society for action. Certainly, in the 1930’s, Great Britain was dangerously complacent and the Parliament jeered at those like Winston Churchill who sought to raise the alarm. Only when disaster was upon the British in 1940 did they truly heed Churchill’s advice. Likewise, when the Soviets made clear their intent to dominate Western Europe without firing a shot in the aftermath of WWII, Truman and Acheson decided to ” scare the hell out of the country” rather than let America relapse into isolationism and watch Britain and France be Findlandized.

The long haul and a long war requires hope. Churchill and FDR had an Atlantic Charter and a United Nations to hold out as a vision. Truman presented the world the Marshall Plan, NATO and midwifed the seed that became the EU. Today the Bush administration champions democracy promotion which realist and partisan critics already are declaring to be dead on arrival. The critics are wrong.

Democracy however is a longitudinal game, a long-term bet and not a quick fix. Importantly, it is an option that plays on the moral level of conflict. What else is there to offer on the other side as an equivalent ? Dictatorship ? A Caliphate ? Who is going to buy that except at the point of a gun ? Our Islamist opponents are left with little more to offer their people than nihilism and martyrdom, poverty and war.

HAMAS, a terrorist organization, has been elected to govern the Palestinian territories because there was no other realistic option for Palestinian voters except Fatah corruption and thuggery. The Israelis are now sorely tempted to preemptively destroy the PA rather than let it fall under HAMAS control. This is an error. Let HAMAS first fail at governing through economic incompetence and weary the Palestinian people with religious zealotry. Liberal alternatives will emerge if the Islamists are given time to discredit themselves and if HAMAS initiates terrorism anew, then they have provided Israel with a casus belli for their own destruction.

We should look with a keen eye at our own faults without flinching but our faults and mistakes are not the whole story. We have tremendous strengths as well and we should begin to use them.

RECOMMENDED READING

Art Hutchinson, the strategic thinking guru of Mapping Strategy had a burst of fine posts last week including “Executives, Prediction Markets, and Wall Street” and “The International Intelligence Summit – Rehearsing Divergent Futures“.

Dr. Nexon at Duck of Minerva tackles the recent article on ” Fact vs. Faith” and draws a response from Marc at American Future.

Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, posts an ode to Mob Rule.

Jeff Medcalf at Caerdroia quite sensibly points out the differences between ” Warfighting and Defense Secretarying “

Sean Meade at Interact wants to clean house for steroid useat the MLB Hall of Fame ( I’m not sure how many players after 1972 will be left, but hey… )

That’s it.

CATEGORIZATION AND NOMINATIONS

Scanning my blogroll, which kind of evolves in a meandering fashion, here is one of the informal topical groups that comes to mind:

Middle East/Islamic World/Islamism:

Abu Aardvark
Aqoul
CENTCOM
Collounsbury
Counterterrorism Blog
Crossroads Arabia
Iraq the Model
JihadWatch
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment
Martin Kramer
Middle East Perspectives <-- NEW !
Sic Semper Tyrannis

I’m opening up the floor for nominations for high quality, informative blogs that deal with the Middle East, particularly if they add balance or provide a completely different perspective from what I already have on my blogroll. No conspiracy theorists, please.

Ideally I’m looking to add 1-3 new ones. You can email me or leave a rec in the comments section. Zenpundit doesn’t have a huge traffic ranking but it does get read occasionally in select quarters by some smart people so the bloggers will at least get that out of the link ( I grant you that I will probably get far more out of reading the new blogs but when situations mostly benefit me I tend to believe that all is right with the world).