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I’ve been emailed a statement signed by 40 (mostly) academics of (mostly) Iranian origin. Unfamiliar as I am with most of the signatories, the sentiments expressed seem worth passing on. It’s titled ‘Human Beings are Members of a Whole’:Protecting the Iranian Civil Society:
If we speak out against the threat of force against Iran (regarding the nuclear conflict) and warn against a military strike, we cannot be silent on the use of force in Iran itself against its own civil society. For solidarity with the civil society and a peaceful order in the region constitute the primary concern of our efforts. If we condemn foreign sanctions against the Iranian people, we deplore all the more domestic sanctions directed at peaceful demonstrators, journalists, trade unionists, professors, students and others. Thereby the government deprives itself from the domestic basis needed against foreign threats.
Quite an interesting contextualization of the crimes Ahmadinejad and the regime commit against Iran. Here, he’s a threat to national security, as if a rapacious foreign foe should seek to challenge Iran, Ahmadinejad won’t be able to call for the domestic unity to confront it. Nationalism is a powerful force, and Ahmadinejad is on the wrong side of it.
Myself, I enjoy seeing academics writing a first-principle statement like "solidarity with the civil society and a peaceful order in the region constitute the primary concern of our efforts." There’s a canard out there that intellectuals can only see threats emanating from the U.S. — and sometimes, it’s not a canard. So good for a statement like this. Particularly as it concludes with a note about unnamed actors not exploiting the Iranian opposition for a sanctions regime:
Also, it is astonishing that precisely those who have supported crippling sanctions and pushed for preventive strikes against Iran whereby civilians have been and would be harmed, suddenly speak about solidarity with the Iranian people. They only will be convincing when they stand up against sanctions and the threat of force and advocate a peaceful dialogue in the region.
I read the other day that some in the Obama administration believe that sanctions are more likely to hurt the regime than ever before, due to its alienation from the populace. But what reason is there to believe it won’t be precisely the Iranian people who suffer the most and the regime that suffers the least? That’s typically the impact of sanctions.
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Riffing off the larger point at the end of the post, when you create widespread dependencies you stifle revisionist action. A strategic bombing campaign or a broad sanctions regime will both tend to entrench the status quo, rather than unravel it (See: Cuba).
I always wonder if the enthusiasm for sanctions is tied to a mistaken projection of our own political responses onto people in other nations. Yes, Americans would pitch a fit if we couldn’t get access to [broadly important commodity]. But that reaction is predicated on a whole bunch of factors from our ability to “throw the bums out” to our belief that our own government won’t shoot us for protesting.
In countries where neither of those things are true, the responses to desperation and misery tend to be rather more muted.
On the point made in your second graf, even assuming that’s the assumption, it’s bewildering to think that Americans, in the face of a hostile foreign action, would say “This is the fault of our leaders! We need to adjust our behavior to accommodate the reasonable demands of our enemies!” I recall something like 90 percent of Americans, myself included, throwing in our lot with George Bush on 9/11. That’s how we behave. It’s a natural, predictable — if not strictly rational — response to foreign hostility.
Spencer, I don’t know how to tell you this so I’m just going to say it straight out–Elliot Abrams disagrees with you:
Or, less delusionally, we’re bad at seeing ourselves as a hostile foreign actor. When we do shit like that, we’re killin’ the firstborn of political Yul Brynners, not, you know, ruining your country.
I’m going to think about this for several days and will send a note when my ego recovers.