Imperialist Crackpot of the Day
Defending terrible ends using embarrassingly unserious arguments is Ferguson’s specialty, so it’s hard to isolate any particularly argument as being especially bad. One can start with his inability to decide whether a war would create a massive spike in oil prices or not (whether a “Saudi spike” will mostly cover things depends on what argument he’s making at the time.) Still, I think I’ll have to go with this:
Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy … because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction?
He seems to think there’s some kind of contradiction here, but there isn’t. The regime that governs Iran has proven, in fact, quite adept at maintaining its hold on power. What is the evidence, exactly, that Iran’s political elites are irrational or indifferent to the survival of the regime? Apart from the not-very-thinly-veiled racist implications (scary Muslims! Probably suicide bombers!), there’s nothing here.
And now, the punchline:
It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.
What a wit! Join us next week for the next installment of Niall Ferguson’s Warmongering Comedy Classics, which will involve smashing watermelons that are clearly Shiite. Featuring musical guest star John McCain.
What a pompous bag of shite that man is. And how wealthy he has become by being so. There’s a lesson there for all of us, I feel.
Indeed. Being the (far) right kind of asshole is highly lucrative.
Niall Ferguson is far-right? What reality do you live in, and may I move there?
He’s pro-nationalism, pro-imperialism, pro-corporation, anti-welfare, in favor of destructive foreign adventures and well within the penumbra of outright racism. If he could get away with it, he’d be a monarchist. By what metric is he not on the far right?
Perhaps from the perspective of a Republican?
Sure, it only puts him at the median for Republican Congressional Representatives, and he’s only an islamophobe, not a Dominionist theocrat.
“Overnight”?
Lemme think….1979….plus 3, plus 30….it’s been 33 years, and somehow, the regime has managed to maintain power despite the articulate and intelligent population it has, and despite the fact that the same population has been asking for change all this time.
That hardly seems like they’ve made a “switch on the light” decision to moderate. It seems to me they’ve evolved a moderation for, uh, thirty three years.
Is Ferguson the Brit Early 20thC European History analog for our Victor Davis Hansen? Was his visibility here in the States the result of him saying things Very Serious People wanted to hear?
I have, thanks to the novel THE POET GAME, a vision of at least one faction of the Iranian intelligence services furiously running around trying to make sure no loose actors do anything too extreme that could be linked by the USA to Iran…
Re: Iran and realism
Isn’t the realist playbook for a regional power faced with an antagonist global power to counterbalance by cultivating ties with other global powers and engage in harassment of the antagonist’s interests in the region through proxies? And isn’t that what Iran’s doing, fairly well?
I’m not going to give Tina Brown page views so I’ll just have to deprive myself of Ferguson’s undoubtedly thoughtful and sober analysis of this basic objection to his argument.
Ferguson doesn’t understand realism; he seems to think that it’s something that states choose.
To be fair, there’s always been this tension about whether realism is just a description of how states have to act in an anarchic environment or a proscription for how states should choose to act if they want to survive in that environment. If it’s hard to resolve that tension in scholarly work it’s kinda unfair to expect a piece for Slate’s More Upscale Cousin to be clear on the matter.
Either way though, to say Iran is not acting in a textbook realist manner is just crazy.
We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy … because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction?
Uh, Iran probably wants nukes *because* it’s *already* “a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy.”
Realism: countries with nukes don’t get invaded by the United States.
… N.b. that Iran’s hostility to Israel is pretty despicable, but realism doesn’t address ends, only means. Not that Ferguson seems to grasp that.
Jinx!
His point about the fears of Iranian retaliation being overblown may have some legitimacy. After all, Israel — with some degree of cooperation from the U.S. — is already waging a not-so-covert war on Iran. An Israeli attack on suspected nuclear facilities would represent merely an escalation of the war.
Indeed, as Scott’s saying, Iran is showing itself to be remarkably restrained and wise in not responding to Israel’s acts of war. Certainly by the standards of U.S and Israel, it would be justified in doing so. That it doesn’t testifies to its rationality and interest in self preservation.
As would its (possible) wish to have nukes.
Actually one of the reasons that Iran may want nukes is to allow it to more freely respond to provocations…
Iran has some “proxies” it can act through (Hezbollah and Hamas) and strike at Israel in retaliation, but their interest are not perfectly aligned- Hezbollah and Hamas can make like exceedingly difficult for Israelis- but Israeli can and will do likewise to them with little hesitation. My guess is that if Iran does “retaliate” it will be by murdering some random jews somewhere like Argentina
Are you suggesting Ferguson isn’t ALWAYS the Imperialist Crackpot of the Day?
Ferguson remains the best strategist in the academic arena (Getting a teaching gig at Harvard after being run out England is good work if you can get it). He took a route no one else was, stood out, and got to be a Conservative public intellectual in a country where that’s pretty much an oxymoron. If Newt had half of his acumen, he would be president of Yale.
Really I think he already has an imperialism lifetime achievement award
Indeed.
He was awarded the Royal Gilded Chamberpot of George the III, cracked at the height of his madness after the loss of his North American empire, as a lifetime achievement award.
Ferguson is a dipshit, true enough, but it does feel like the eve of some kind of destruction.
So, IMHO, the interesting questions are:
a. What will Obama do to stop Israel from escalating the violence?
b. What should he do?
c. What can he do?
Personally, I think we should give the Israelis a choice: they can attack Iran and go it alone or they can eschew preemptive action and we will extend our nuclear umbrella to them. To Iran I’d say, the 1st use of a nuclear weapon would be suicidal and then I’d target enough ICBMs on Iran to make that threat credible. I do not think there is anything we, or the Israelis, can do to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Short of war, that is, and I hope we remain well short of war. I think “no war” should be a, if not the, major foreign policy goal for the foreseeable future.
Our nuclear umbrella doesn’t already extend to them?
We have no mutual defense treaties with Israel.
We do have same with Turkey. [NATO]
Who knows about Letters of Understanding.
But no Treaties.
You don’t remember Hillary Clinton being painted as Dr. Strangelove during the 2008 primary for suggesting that we extend our nuclear umbrella to Israel?
I think Israel is bluffing. They’re playing Bad Cop to the International Community’s Good Cop, in an effort to get Iran to accede to the IAEA.
The logistics of Israel actually flying aircraft to Iran, conducing strikes that would make a difference in Iran’s nuclear program, and getting home again, probably several times, are almost certainly beyond their capability.
Does everyone remember when Israel was going to hit Iran before the end of 2011 because they needed permission to fly over Iraq? There was some truth in that. I don’t think Israel can do this even if they wanted to.
I recall reading somewhere that they were negotiating with the Saudis to let them fly over Saudi Arabia…
“creative destruction”= “birth pangs of democracy”
h/t weiss.
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/02/would-you-buy-a-used-metaphor-from-this-warmonger-niall-fergusons-creative-destruction-echoes-rices-birth-pangs.html
Joseph Schumpeter is spinning in his grave.
We’re getting slow played into a very bad situation, yet again.
The range of legitimate debate on this subject seems to be ‘we have to bomb them now or we’re all going to die!’ to ‘of course this regime is hostile, expansionist and a military powerhouse but I’m not ready to bomb they just yet’. This means the media will largely treat all claims about the fearsome Iranian regime as truth, and any questioning of that, no matter how mild, as evidence of mental illness.
As disturbing as Ferguson is, I’m less concerned about that sort of crazy than the lack of push back from those who are supposed to know better (and have the megaphone).
By “those who are supposed to know better” do you mean Obama and his administration?
Including but not limited to.
(Also, Bill Murray FTW).
Since he said megaphones, he clearly means Trent Lott and GW Bush, both of whom were cheerleaders.
We are playing a little dance of puffery with Iran on the world stage.
Iran is bluffing. We know it.
Countries who develop nuclear weapons don’t act in such a conspicuous manner to draw so much attention to their efforts when they are at the enrichment stage. At the enrichment stage, it is the only point where other countries really have a chance to stop the program. After that it is usually far too late.
Iran is acting far too obvious and in far too provocative a manner. They are overplaying their hand.
Generally the countries which developed nukes tried to avoid conspicuous actions which would draw international scrutiny to their efforts. Burying their facilities deep underground and avoiding actions which could draw attention to civilian
What Iran is doing is taking a page out of Kim Jong Il’s playbook as to how to spark an international nuclear incident without actually having nukes.
Iran knows the US, Israel and Saudis do not have the ability nor the will to do much which shall affect the regime. At best a conflict will be a bunch of temporary nuisance airstrikes. The result would be a “rally around the flag” effect and revitalize support for the mullahs.
This will all probably end with some kind of backroom deal
Ummm, N.Korea DOES have nukes…
Kim Jong Il spent years using his nuclear development program to spark international incidents, before ever having a nuke.
Not actually verified.
Their sole nuclear test of any significance did not have independent confirmation of radiation. It is possible that either it was a fizzled fission bomb with an extremely poor yield or faked with conventional explosives.
Whatever capabilities their nuclear program has is rather unimpressive. After their big fizzle, the world stopped paying so much attention to North Korea’s foibles. The bluff was called.
Israel is a nuclear power, we know it, Israel knows it and Iran knows it. Iran knows that Israel isn’t Iraq and with war the country and the mullahs will come out on the losing end.
well, to play Devil’s Advocate: if we assume a scenario in which Iran really can and would launch a credible nuclear strike at Israel, it’s hard to come out worse than the virtual obliteration of the adversary’s entire country. 200+ nukes or no, Iran’s just too big to come out “worse” than Israel.
Obviously, “winning” a full nuclear exchange isn’t much better than losing one, but anti-Iran hawks do have a ghost of a fair point.
Israel committing to preventive war against Iran with nuclear weapons might just might push down US Congressional approval for Israel from 99 percent to 98 percent.
And then those new dissenters would be killed to bring it back up to 99 percent.
Of course, Niall Ferguson knows that the Iranians are far from ever having the capability of developing a nuclear weapon and that, if they did, the Israelis, having over 150 nuclear weapons of their own, would serve as a wonderful deterrent.
Perhaps this is what people fear the most–an Israel and an Iran forced to deal with the fact that they can’t use their own nuclear weapons for fear of being attacked with nuclear weapons.
Well, weapons for everyone then. Let’s have some creative detente.
An armed Middle East is a polite Middle East.
Exactly.
I’m serious, though. No one in the media ever mentions that Israel has an impressive stockpile of nuclear weapons. A stockpile that could more than adequately destroy any nation that dares to attack it.
But they triple swore that they would never talk about it.
Good enough for The New York Times.
I’m not sure that any Country is all that far from developing nukes, the US did it nearly 70 years ago.
North Korea with less money, people or resources did it.
Pakistan, an unstable mess did it.
Of course, once you have nukes what do you do with them? It seems that Iran’s likely targets also have them, if your targets have them you can’t use them. It seems the only role that Iran’s nukes would have is invasion deterrence.
(Of course the reason South Africa developed nukes is sobering, it turns out they planned to use them to hostage their own country’s citizenry should the regime be in danger of falling… of course that turned out to be too nuts even for the hardcore aparthieders)
Unlike North Korea or Iran, South Africa and Pakistan’s program were kept under insane levels of secrecy until their big test. The goal was nuclear weapons not creating a brouhaha and dare the world to stop them.
North Korea had the advantage of major uranium deposits and 2 nuclear powers as close allies from whom they could purchase some of the technology from. The North Korean nuclear capabilities are still somewhat dubious. The region is in more danger of a Korean Chernobyl than a Nork Nuclear strike.
If Iran was serious about developing nuclear weapons, they would not be so obvious about it. There is no need to. Least of all at their stage in the development.
Enriching uranium is a slow, expensive process. A country which is making nuclear weapons tries to hide this step as much as possible. Its the only time when another country could seriously derail such a program.
Iran is being ridiculously conspicuous about its efforts in this respect. They are deliberately trying to spark an international incident involving nuclear weapons without actually having them. This way they can goad the west into some hostile action and look like the victim. This sort of thing would play well for the Mullahas and shore up support for the regime.
Kind of like Saddam goaded the West into invading Iraq, capturing him, trying him, and hanging him?
I swear, the leadership in Iran has said many times that they aren’t making nuclear weapons and the very smart people are all like ‘They’re fucking dictators, they’re lying!’ Of course when evidence is required our very smart people are found lacking.
Oh, all right, then.
I swear, the gullibility on the internet towards any sufficiently nasty regime, as long as they’re in a spat with the United States, is mind-boggling.
Lemme guess – we can take Mullah Omar’s word for it that he was going to turn over Osama bin Laden, too, right?
For worst argument, I’d have to go with “The Sunni Arabs would only cry crocodile tears if Israel struck Iran.” Is that sort of like how Iran had absolutely no problem whatsoever with Operation Iraqi Freedom?
Also: the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights
OK, everyone, listen up. We are not all Georgians anymore. Clear?
actually they really didn’t have much of a problem with it, I mean they don’t want US there, but having Hussein gone and a shiite government there? That’s almost an unmitigated good.
No, no they don’t, and that was rather part of the deal with OIF – the US being there – though I take your point about the removal of Saddam.
Now, Israel, being located in Southwest Asia, is and will be “there.”
The other good point John F made is that the people who replaced Saddam are probably as close to Iran as they are the U.S.
Yglesias wrote a piece back in the day with the facetious premise that George W. Bush was an Iranian agent under deep cover….
the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization
Technically, I think that would be New Zealand. It’s both littler and ever so slightly further east than Australia.
No no no – they’re western outposts.
You’re forgetting that we’re in the middle.
I was never a Georgian.
God, you are reminding of that sniveling little idiot in there before Obama.
Stop that.
Focusing on the terribleness of Ferguson’s individual arguments threatens to miss what’s really terrible about Ferguson’s rhetorical strategy here.
The really terrible thing is how Ferguson frames the debate. He isn’t presenting arguments for an attack, but is instead starting from the point of view that an attack is justified UNLESS opponents can come up with a knock down argument against it.
Shorter Niall Ferguson: Bombing Iran is justified because nobody has convinced me that it isn’t.
So I take it then that you don’t believe we’re on the eve of [creative] destruction?
“Defending terrible ends using embarrassingly unserious arguments is Ferguson’s specialty….”
That exact thought came to mind early today when I was urinating with Morning Joe on in the background.
[...] Lemieux does a pretty swift takedown of Niall Ferguson’s self-congratulatory Tower of Babble on why Israel should bomb Iran and [...]
Under the laws of war established at Nuremberg, I wonder if advocating for preventive war is a war crime.
Ferguson’s stupid career is a testimony to how much some Americans like to be fluffed by someone with a British Isles accent. If he’d been born in Glasgow, Missouri, none of us would have heard of him.
[...] that poisonous concept mainstream credibility. Writing at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Scott Lemieux made the case that Ferguson’s latest Newsweek column, “Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a [...]