Are we planning to democratize Iran?

VFR reader Richard writes:

First let me say that I appreciate that your traditionalist orientation leads you to treat diverse and otherwise seemingly unrelated topics. From a foreign policy/realpolitik vantage I have been almost exclusively focused on Iran nukes, scouring the news for every hint of a direction of events unfolding. I should add that I think it obviously desirable that this matter be resolved finally, and that can only happen with military destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities. In this regard I have been chiefly concerned about the proposed Russian “compromise”, which would allow Iran to export their enriched uranium to Russian territory and perhaps conduct further experiments there under Russian supervision. To my relief, Russia announced yesterday that such an option is no longer on the table. So, it appeared that we might be on track to bomb the nuclear facilities, which common opinion has put forth as the most sensible military course. (The first time I read this I was reminded of your proposal to abandon the political field in Iraq and launch corrective military strikes as needed from regional bases.)

And of course, following the undesirable (albeit predictable) outcomes in the Iraq and Palestinian democracy projects, the Bush administration would be quite pleased only to bomb the nuclear sites, right?

But an Asia Times piece offers that a “coalition of the willing” is being put together for the purpose of regime change. Now, they run fewer sensible than pro-Arab, anti-Western and/or pacifist articles, but new statements by Condi Rice perhaps suggests that they think a wider scope of intervention might be in order. In pertinent part: “‘We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see developed,’ Rice said at a congressional hearing.” Could it be that the administration is not chastened one bit in its regard of the utopian democracy project as the summum bonum?! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but this seems to be crossing some line and over into a new level of insanity. It may be that they’re thinking of the nuclear stand-off as an opportunity to remove this troublesome regime—the final obstacle to peace in the Mid-East! Just as the administration is forcing upon us ‘tolerance’ of foreign hostiles domestically, they are forcing us to tolerate the political rise of hostiles abroad, in the form of democracy.

LA reply:

I never (well, hardly ever) watch tv news, but just this evening I had on the BBC and saw that same sound bite from Miss Smugness. I was struck by the taken-for-granted idea, not only that we have the right to say how the Mideast should be, but that if a Mideast country has a different view from ours on how the Mideast should be, that is a virtual casus belli. It’s just horrendous. It’s one thing to make nukes a casus belli. But “having a different view from ours about the way the Mideast ought to be” as a casus belli

First, in the Asia Times article, the phrase “alliance of the willing,” has not been used by any US official, but by the author of the article.

Further, unless I’ve missed something, there’s nothing in the article, or in the article on Rice, suggesting we plan on regime change and democratization as opposed to destroying their nuclear facilities.

Richard replies:

I’m embarrassed at the possibility of seeming to have misrepresented the articles, or otherwise having wasted your time. I intended neither. As I said, I am eagerly searching the news for any indication of the way things will unfold re Iran, and to that end my email to you was as much a question as anything else. But I find it very curious that now, when all eyes are on the nuclear issue, Condi makes such brazen statements about the Iranian regime in toto. Now, I DO think it is possible to crush a government and install another, but it most certainly should not be a democracy. Certainly among a population so hostile to the West, the government installed must be most illiberal as we understand it; i.e., regarding individual civil rights. After all, we would necessarily rely on that government to protect us against its unruly and barbarous citizenry. What I don’t believe is that this administration is anywhere close to an appreciation of this fact. Therefore, any regime change under the current state of affairs would necessarily incorporate democracy. I think it is against this backdrop of assumptions that I regard characterizations of the problem broader than the nuclear crisis at hand as a cause for concern. If the chief cause of global strife is Middle East ‘unrest’, the cause of which is a lack of democracy and economic opportunity, and the chosen ‘legacy’ of this administration is to rectify this, statements such as Rice’s are not to be taken lightly.

LA replies:

Your analysis seems sound.

Here’s the situation. Even when our government is facing what seems like a purely military situation,—e.g., Iraq’s regime apparently developing WMDs but opaque to the world so that the only way we could be sure they didn’t have WMDs was to invade and take over the country—the way the Bush administration ultimately approaches this challenge is not through military force but through liberal democracy. Those of us who supported the Iraq war thought that Bush was going to use very strong measures, Shock and Awe, and crush and pulverize the Hussein regime. But they didn’t. As Angelo Codevilla wrote recently, they didn’t crush the regime, they captured the top 55 people in the regime, and let the other 2,000 in the regime go free to lead the terror fight against us. Why did our leaders do this? Because they thought the moment Hussein was out of power, the whole country would gravitate toward democracy like iron filings to a magnet; and further, that the entire Mideast would then gravite in like manner toward the Iraqi example; and further, that such democracy would cure Mideast fanaticism.

None of that has worked out, and you’d think Bushy and his twin brain would be leery of doing the same thing again. But, as you argue, the indications are they are thinking of the same thing again. Why? Because it’s the only paradigm they know. They are liberals, who think man is basically good, and is only made bad by bad institutions, so that if you remove the bad institutions, such as the Iranian regime, the Iranians’ natural goodness, i.e., their love of popular elections, instinctive obedience to rule of law, tolerance of different beliefs, enjoyment of diversity, blah blah blah blah, will just naturally flower. So, looking at the most dangerous regime on earth, Bush and his team can’t imagine defeating that regime without the weapon of democratic transformation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 09, 2006 08:50 PM | Send