Iran: It's Back

Good times; the return of the Iran debate. People should listen to Ray Takeyh rather than, say, Joshua Muravchik. Interestingly, Muravchik is willing to follow neoconservatism's war is always the answer approach to some outside-the-box conclusions:

After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, a single member of Britain's Cabinet, Winston Churchill, appealed for robust military intervention to crush the new regime. His colleagues weighed the costs — the loss of soldiers, international derision, revenge by Lenin — and rejected the idea.

Apparently, this was a bad idea on the part of the British government. And, no doubt, Soviet Communism proved to be a very bad thing indeed. On the other hand, the western powers actually did intervene, sending troops into Russia and giving aid to the White forces in the Russian Civil War. It didn't work out. To be sure, they could have tried intervening even more forcefully (the neocon method of saving all failed military ventures) but I don't see any real reason to think this could have worked out. Assemble a huge army (in the immediate aftermath of world war one, mind you) to march on Moscow and then . . . what? Install a puppet regime? And occupy the country -- a big country -- for how long, exactly? And, needless to say, it's not as if efforts to conquer Russia have some kind of brilliant historical track record.

Comments

Never start a land war in Asia.
This is one of the more interesting military adventures of the 20th century in terms of education- everyone in Russia learns about it in basic history, but almost no Americans know that we had troops in Russia in the late 1910s. Russians sometimes confront Americans with this fact and the Americans have no idea what they're talking about.

Posted by SP | November 19, 2006 8:51 PM

This is what I don't understand about the More, Faster crowd, and what gives them away as deeply inexperienced military virgins.

Military officers of any rank, like Wall Street traders, have to learn and do learn to reverse course quickly. They emphasise the importance of recognizing and getting out of losing positions in order to conserve strength to take advantage of wining positions that arise or to just play another day without being wiped out.

Taking a loss goes against human psychology (sunk cost fallacy?), that's why traders and officers have to learn it.

Every draft dodging neoconartist postmodernist who wants to telegraph strength should learn how real commanders make decisions before they take us along on any adolecent fantasy rides.

Posted by Chris | November 19, 2006 8:56 PM

Well, actually, they should be parachuted into Baghdad, and *if* they survive that, then they should be trained. Or, perhaps, parachuted into Tehran, to engage in 'regime change'[1].

Barry

[1] In their cases, that would mean being picked up as spies in a few hours, and tortured to death. Oh well.

Posted by Barry | November 19, 2006 9:19 PM

What's also kinda peculiar is that Muravchik and all his friends come from a hard-core Trotskyite-Communist background, and Lev Davidovich Himself was actually still leading the Red Army in 1917.

It's sort of like if some American Neo-Nazi published a long op-ed in the LA Times denouncing the British for their weakness in failing to stand up to "Mein Grosse Fuhrer" at Munich in 1939.

Posted by RKU | November 19, 2006 10:00 PM

About "even more forcefully" -- In Cradle to Cradle, his book about sustainable design, the architect William McDonough takes the measure of this kind of thinking. He (and maybe someone before him) says the slogan behind it is, "If brute force isn't working, it's because we're not using enough of it." This is the thinking that brought us the New Orleans levee system.

Posted by Rob | November 19, 2006 11:14 PM

Hell, we would probably still be there. There wasn't just Russia proper that we know of today. Back then Russia was an entire huge fucking empire. Most of the European powers were empires as well. So unless they drained their empires of both European and foreign troops and brought them into Russia, there would be no way to even pretend they were in control. This is probably one reason, I guess, that the European powers never attempted a complete takeover of China and instead opted for opening up treaty ports like Ningbo and holding onto small colonies like Hong Kong and Qingdao (except for the Japanese fascists, who were fucking insane).

Posted by Reality Man | November 19, 2006 11:38 PM

Rob, that's a really interesting wayy of looking at it. I would never have thought of that.

I've been waiting for someone to point out that Mao was perfectly willing to see China nuked. That's one reason he encouraged the people to breed more, so that there would be enough Chinese left after a nuclear attack to continue building communism. Why is China so often forgotten in discussions of the Cold War?

Posted by Reality Man | November 19, 2006 11:40 PM

Muravchik is carving out a distinctive neoconservative position, having previously established his credibility by (sorta kinda) been honest about Iraq, importantly before the election. Of course we shouldn't listen to him on substantive grounds, but given that move and his own position, we should listen to him because it's still going to be in the friendly territory of OVP that a lot of the important decisions about Iran are going to be made, as Hersh's article today makes perfectly clear, even though I think Hersh may be a little wrong about some key thing. One of the things that's notable about Muravchik's essay is how quickly and categorically he dismisses out of hand talk of regime change, and hence of democracy promotion, in Iran. This is neither about regime change, nor about full-scale war. In this regard, I think it's a mistake to lump Muravchik in with the Ledeen view, as Chris does above. Instead, I suspect we're seeing some signs of an argument among neoconservatives about just how to do Iran, and what matters is where OVP comes down - although it's possible that Muravchik's piece is rather a reflection and selling of where OVP has already come down. In any case, I predict that this is where OVP will end up, if it's not there already.

Posted by Jeff | November 20, 2006 12:07 AM

The Russian context is totally different from the Iraqi situation.
The Bolsheviks were a relatively small group trying to consolidate their position in face of active opposition. If anyone fits that description in the current mess, it's the Iraqi "government" we set up, not those opposed to it.
Russia had a ongoing civil war in which the Allies intervened on behalf of one side. But they didn't start it: the Russian Whites and Reds started it all on their own. We inserted a small number of military forces on the fringes (Vladivostok and Murmansk, if memory serves correctly). We didn't send a massive army that put an entire country into chaos. It was choas before Allied troops got there.
Finally, the Allied troops were fighting in co-operation with the Whites, an already existing military force. They didn't try to start up their own White army from scratch to oppose the Reds, which is what the US is now doing in Iraq.

So sending a larger military force to help an existing military force in an ongoing civil war might have made good military sense back then. But the situation in Iraq differs in enough fundamentals that it doesn't really parallel what was going on in Russia in 1918/19.

Posted by kishnevi | November 20, 2006 12:26 AM

The similarity between the Bolsheviks and the Sadr Brigades, on the one hand, and the Whites and the Iraqi government, on the other, goes to the issue of legitimacy. In civil wars, decolonizations, revolutions, or other situations where central authority is cast off, the group which is most radically opposed to the position of the vanished authority tends to wear the mantle of legitimacy. The Kerensky government, though it had more formal legitimacy than the Bolsheviks, lacked the sense of street legitimacy which the Bolsheviks had in this situation of rapid radicalization. Russia's Whites, largely run by Vrangel and other ex-Tsarist generals and nobles, had no legitimacy whatsoever.

See also revolutionary Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, and so forth. Of course it's also crucial that the radical group be well-organized, competent, and dynamic in order to assume the aura of legitimacy. But in conditions of crisis, the more fanatical and ideological groups also tend to be better organized.

The US generally intervenes to prop up figures from the weak middle. That's why we usually lose in these situations.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 20, 2006 12:51 AM

So sending a larger military force to help an existing military force in an ongoing civil war might have made good military sense back then. But the situation in Iraq differs in enough fundamentals that it doesn't really parallel what was going on in Russia in 1918/19.

You might want to read up on the astounding political imbecility and general obliviousness of the Whites before you talk about "fundamentals". They never built sustainable popular support. Besides, Kolchak and Denikin and Wrangel were nearly as beset by factionalism as the our current Green Zone "government".

I'm still puzzled about why anyone, anywhere, takes the neo-cons seriously. Their knowledge of history is superficial at best, and their moral and intellectual integrity is less than nil. In other words -- who the hell are Perle and Krauthammer blowing?

Posted by sglover | November 20, 2006 12:54 AM

That Ray Takeyh piece, meanwhile, is interesting and funny:

"Evidently, many in Washington simply cannot grasp the fact that Hitler was a uniquely evil politician and that he is in fact dead."

Though I'd quibble with "uniquely evil". Uniquely stupid, perhaps. Though even there, Pol Pot has to give him a run for his money. Cambodia attacking Vietnam has got to be rated one of the most boneheaded, reality-defying moves in the history of mad dictators. One might also nominate Idi Amin provoking Tanzania. The good thing about the really undeterrable lunatic rulers is, they eventually do something that results in their removal from power.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 20, 2006 1:04 AM

I come to the opposite conclusion about overthrowing Lenin. If we have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, it is hard to argue that Churchill was wrong. The Reds were some nasty men, and replacing them in 1917 would have saved the world a lot of headache. Lenin was responsible for the deaths of many. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. And consider Hitler's own rise to power was certainly facilitated by exploiting a fear of communists.

Posted by Nick | November 20, 2006 1:42 AM

Nick, did you READ the COMMENT? Let us repeat: we DID follow Churchill's advice in 1918; we DID send troops to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks (occupying Archangelsk, notably). Among the many reasons we failed was that Russia was inhabited by tens of millions of Russians, millions of whom were soldiers fighting for the Bolsheviks, while we were able to project perhaps ten thousand American troops to take and hold Archangelsk. We could have sent more troops, and killed more Russians and gotten more Americans killed, but other than increasing the blood-to-snow ratio in Siberia it is hard to see what the point would have been.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 20, 2006 2:01 AM

Don't know anything about Archangelsk. Do know that the Russians, within a year of the revolution, found themselves fighting Poles, Finns, Chzecks, and various other countries. The Brits, French and Americans gave some naval support to the various groups working to overthrow the Soviets. Not a very warm welcome by any means; certainly the leadership of Russia was not something the Western powers got to decide to 'let' or 'not let' happen.

Anyway gem of a catch, Matt.

Posted by Saam Barrager | November 20, 2006 2:25 AM

Another small glitch in the Muravchik piece is his claim of the widening of Iran's influence to Sunni's. He cites the informal alliance with Syria which is 'mostly Sunni'. Problem 1 with this is that there are small number of Syrians who are not Sunni but Alawite (an Islamic sect resembling Shiism)and they are the people who actually run Syria, and make the alliances. Problem 2 is that even if this was not so, Iran co-operating with Syria would be perfectly explicable in rational, secular, my-enemy's-enemy-is-my-friend terms.

Incidentally, as a foreigner, I have a question for Matt and US commenters: What would be the US reaction if major Iranian papers very regularly ran opinion pieces headlined 'We must send suicide bombers immediately to attack major US airbases and kill thousands of USAF personnel'? This seems to be functionally equivalent to the huge number of pieces one reads in US papers saying 'we must bomb Iran';

Posted by Anon | November 20, 2006 6:49 AM

Anon: a good question. The US reaction would probably be a lot of talk about bombing or invading Iran. But we're already talking about bombing or invading Iran anyway. Which just goes to show that there's no point trying to understand our motives or address our concerns; we hate them for what they are, the only language we understand is force, and so forth.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 20, 2006 7:43 AM

In 1918 Churchill was so discredited by his mismanagment of Gallipoli that he was free to make suggestions such as overthrowing Lenin , secure in the knowledge there was no chance for them to be implemented .

As to what would have resulted from a determined attempt to not just establish a foothold but to actually ensure that "all russia is covered in snow " ( the White's anthem) who knows ? Perhaps a regime that would have formed a workable alliance with Hitler instead of
the 1939 "Potemkin alliance" . Phillip Roth could write another novel describing the possible consequences of that!

Posted by r m flanagan | November 20, 2006 8:04 AM

Phillip Roth could write another novel describing the possible consequences of that!

I'm completely puzzled by "The Plot Against America" since it isn't the political novel that it advertises itself as. The Lindbergh twist is yet another device to show how strange it was to be a Jew in America in the 1930s and 1940s. Roth's too good an artist to write the screed which his title and the book's art work promise, but there doesn't really seem to be a point to his premise if he's not going to write a wild man screed. Surely, there are a myriad ways to get into the feelings of isolation the narrator feels.

The book's a tease and more than a little flat. I'm guessing that Roth got into the book and halfway through discovered that he'd been misled by his political anger about the artistic promise of the idea.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 20, 2006 10:46 AM

There's a timing problem here, too. WWI was still going strong in '17, and the outcome was far from certain--Germany almost won the war in its big offensive the following year, only to be turned back by newly arriving American troops. "Robust military intervention" in Russia in '17 would have lost the war on the Western Front. Only after the war against Germany was won was any kind of intervention in Russia possible, and as Matt points out, it didn't work.

Posted by rea | November 20, 2006 11:49 AM

Joshua Muravchik was Chairman on the Young People's Socialist League from 1968 to 1971. It is highly unlikely that he is unawatre of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Posted by Ikram | November 20, 2006 12:17 PM

Your summary of the neo-con strategy of "intervening even more forcefully" as a way to handle all military failures reminds me of this line from "A Few Good Men":

Lt. Weinberg: "I strenuously object?" Is that how it works? Hm? "Objection." "Overruled." "Oh, no, no, no. No, I STRENUOUSLY object." "Oh. Well, if you strenuously object then I should take some time to reconsider."

There's a certain absurd similarity there. Maybe Olberman could run down St. John with "Intervene even more forcefully? Is that how it works? Hm? "Intervene." "Disaster." "Oh, no, no, no. No, I said intervene EVEN MORE STRONGLY." "Oh. Well, if you said "even more strongly" then I should take some time to reconsider"

Posted by The Black Monk | November 20, 2006 12:48 PM

After re-reading the linked article, I think Muravchik's point, such as it is, is that we should have intervened in '17 rather than waiting until '18/'19. Perfectly delusional thinking--the best case scenario would involve trading Paris for St. Petersburg.

Posted by rea | November 20, 2006 12:53 PM