James Diddams
The great theme of international affairs in the 21st century (so far) has been America’s failure to appreciate the implacable, ideological hostility of Russia, China, and Iran to the American-led world order. The “Russia reset” was laughable in retrospect, China’s admittance to the WTO, among other forms of international integration, did not moderate the CCP, and the JCPOA was never going to stop Iran from developing a nuke or otherwise being a sower of chaos across the Near East.
The common thread across different theaters has been an inability to recognize and appreciate the distinctly non-Western, non-liberal values according to which our adversaries operate. That Iran’s theocratic regime desires not peace with the West but perpetual conflict to legitimize itself should always have precluded the possibility of a nuclear deal except under the most stringent conditions.
The Iranian regime’s unique combination of apocalyptic Shi’a theocracy, postcolonial Marxist anti-imperialism, and fascist-style authoritarianism necessitates a constant struggle against the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel). Though many Westerners believe peace to be possible because governments such as Iran’s, despite violent rhetoric, must ultimately be concerned with matters like public health and economic growth, this epicly misses that the Islamic regime’s interests are far removed from that of the general population because the mullahs’ raison d’être is conflict with a decadent, capitalist, liberal-democratic West.
Bearing in mind that the mullahs’ aversion to normalized relations with America and Israel is structural rather than incidental, the United States faces a set of unpalatable options when it comes to Iran’s nuclear ambitions: (1) full-scale regime change that could entail the deployment of Americans to Iran, (2) attempts at another détente, likely to reproduce the present crisis in a few years, or (3) a policy of maximum pressure and, if necessary, targeted strikes to delay Iran’s acquisition of the bomb indefinitely. Only the third option is viable, yet it demands endurance for long-term, low-intensity conflict that the American public has never possessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment