I find The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison to be indispensable reading. Dan never wearies in his pursuit of interventionist nonsense from both the right and left. His only problem, shockingly, is his overabundance of innocence. All too often, he really believes that the neo-cons, and their liberal interventionist counterparts, really believe what they say.
A case in point is his recent post regarding a post by Peter Beinart, trying to figure out exactly why “Iran hawks” are so confident that “tougher sanctions” would bend those rowdies in Tehran to our will. According to Pete, the hawks think that Iran is a totalitarian government and, because totalitarian governments can respond “rationally” to sanctions, harsher sanctions would work if Iran were totalitarian. The problem, says Pete, is that Iran isn’t totalitarian but rather authoritarian:
“If Iran really were a totalitarian regime, it’s possible more sanctions might bring more concessions. But because it’s actually an authoritarian regime in which different factions jostle, privately and publicly, for power, more sanctions will likely have the opposite effect. Just as prior sanctions sparked popular anger against Rouhani’s hardline predecessors, new sanctions will likely spark popular anger against him.”
Actually, says Dan (and rightly so), it doesn’t matter. Neither authoritarian nor totalitarian regimes respond to sanctions the way the sanctioners wish.
“There are two major flaws in the argument for additional sanctions. One is the mistaken assumption that a regime can continue to be forced to make concessions through ever-increasing pressure until it gives up everything. We know that this is not how governments react to external pressure. An authoritarian regime may be willing to reach a compromise on a disputed issue, but like any other government there are limits to what it will and can accept. The other flaw is the unrealistic, maximalist goal that they these sanctions are supposed to achieve. [Ark. Sen. Tom] Cotton often talks about wanting Iran to dismantle its entire nuclear program. That’s an absurd demand, and there was never any chance that Iran would agree to this. Iran hawks want to use an ineffective tactic to pursue an impossible goal. They are also wrong about the nature of Iran’s regime, but their preferred course of action would still be foolish in any case.”
That’s closer to the truth, but the real truth—as I’ve said perhaps a hundred times before—is that the hawks don’t want the sanctions to work! They don’t want peace, they want crisis, eternal crisis as an end in itself. House Speaker Boehner, recently returned from the Middle East, tells us that “the world is on fire.” Well, it isn’t, but Boehner wants us to think so, because if we don’t, we won’t vote Republican.
Afterwords
The Republicans aren’t the first to use this trick. Back in the day, when all of Ireland was part of Great Britain, hatred of the Irish, and their demands for independence, particularly when pressed by obstructionist tactics and occasional acts of terrorism, were a sure voter getter for the Tories, and kept them in power for decades. Once, at a cabinet meeting, a (very) over-excited young man put forward an extensive program of reform that, he said proudly, would assure “Ireland pacified at last”! “Ireland pacified?” snapped long-time PM Lord Salisbury. “Of what use would that be to us?”
Afterwords, Part II
Yeah, I have written this post before! So what?
