Munich: The Analogy that Keeps on Giving
By When you’ve got absolutely nothing, reach for Munich:
As in the 1930s, too, the West fell back on wishful thinking. Perhaps, some said, Ahmadinejad was only sabre-rattling because his domestic position was so weak. Perhaps his political rivals in the Iranian clergy were on the point of getting rid of him. In that case, the last thing the West should do was to take a tough line; that would only bolster Ahmadinejad by inflaming Iranian popular feeling. So in Washington and in London people crossed their fingers, hoping for the deus ex machina of a home-grown regime change in Teheran.
Niall goes on to tell a story of how demographic and cultural stagnation, combined with the efforts of some dirty pacifists in Europe and America, set the stage for the great War of 2007, in which Iran apparently launches a crusade against the West. We are supposed to believe that, somehow, the threat from Iran to the West is roughly similar to the threat posed by Germany in 1938. Germany, of course, possessed one of the most powerful economies in the world, as well as the most professional army anywhere. Iran would seem a bit less powerful, but Niall doesn’t let this stop him…
The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq’s Shi’ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.
Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration’s original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran’s nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.
Perhaps Niall would like to explain how the war lasted longer than the nuclear exchange; it seems to me quite likely that Israel, with nuclear weapons, could destroy the warmaking and demographic potential of Iran within a few minutes. Certainly, in a nuclear exchange, the United States would have no difficulties in doing so. Of course, the point here isn’t to paint any kind of realistic scenario; why build a flimsy house with no foundation when all you need is a facade?
Ferguson makes a couple of minor points worth noting. First, he suggests that the West can no longer “lord it over” the Islamic world, which I find curious given that the policy he seems in favor of, that is, the conquest of Iran and its neighbors, might well be described as quite literally “lording it over” the Islamic world. Second, in the above passage Ferguson admits, quite correctly, that our position in Iraq has become a strategic liability. I’m surprised; Niall Ferguson is hardly the person I would expect to admit the possibility of imperial overstretch, especially in the context of Iraq.
Matt’s commenter Ellen tags it right:
Self-indulgent silliness. Harvard should be embarrassed at such puerility.
Quite.