THE SPINE NOVEMBER 8, 2009
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It is just about 30 years since the wall around Iran went up. And it is a few days away from fully 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down.
The Berliner Mauer had been up for more than a quarter century, and its surface facing east, grim gray, was a metaphor for life in the German Democratic Republic. On its western face graffiti evoked the freer spirit of the half-city whose heart had nonetheless been broken by the Soviet goose step that divided it. And the Cold War was won on the very day the authorities of the D.D.R. were simply coerced by the power of human will to let its subjects scramble over the deeply ugly barrier into a Berlin with life and life-blood.
There are three broad reasons that the Wall came down. The first is that the communist system itself was a Potemkin Village, and even the village facade spread from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--always distrust political projects pompously named!--all the way through eastern Europe was not pretty. Neither was it efficient. It's human relations were, well, inhumane. No, they were cruel, although the Bolshoi Ballet danced serenely. My friend Dr. Jerry Groopman, the great chronicler of contemporary medicine, returned from a trip to Moscow a few years before the fall. And his report after visiting a few hospitals: "There is an ongoing epidemic of tuberculosis. The Soviet Union is a failure." This was not an oversimplification.
The second reason for the collapse of both the Warsaw Pact and the U.S.S.R. was the problem of nations and nationalities. The Pact put the Soviets as sovereign over great historic peoples. This simply could not last. There is just so much humiliation that Poles and Hungarians, Czechs and Rumanians could take. Moreover, the Soviet Union was also a union of coerced ethnic groups with pasts of which they were both conscious and proud. The regime began to aggress against these already shortly after the revolution, and these aggressive strategies soon included starvation, exile, population transfer and the importation of Russian nationals into the lands of others. Not many observers or, for that matter, scholars noticed--let alone, saw deeply--these issues abuilding. I was lucky. The greatest historian of communism, at least in the languages I read, Adam Ulam (now deceased), who was the supervisor of my doctoral dissertation at Harvard, saw these phenomena plenty clear and thus was always optimistic about the Soviet collapse. Look at some of his books and a few of his TNR pieces to get a sense of his depth and breadth. Also on the national question, see Hélène Carrère d'Encausse's masterful The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations, a volume the publication of which in English by New Republic Books (in collaboration with Basic Books) I had much to do.
The third reason for the fall of the endlessly aggressive Soviet Union was the fidelity of American presidents, the Congress and the people to the material (also, if necessary, military) and spiritual struggle against communism. There are some presidential exceptions, to be sure. Jimmy Carter, for instance, hadn't a clue. He was just plain dumbfounded by Moscow's invasion of Afghanistan. And he, like Barack Obama, felt he could contain the Tehran ayatollahs, poor man. In any case, he had already proclaimed at a Notre Dame commencement in 1977 that "we are free of that inordinate fear of communism..."
But before that there was Dwight Eisenhower whose foreign policy half-brain was John Foster Dulles, a pompous and righteous man who embodied the essence of an old saying: "I'd rather face 10,000 fanatics on horseback than one Presbyterian who is convinced he's right." I've already written about the pair's betrayal at Suez of France, Britain and Israel in a stupidly forlorn attempt to entice Gamal Abdel Nasser into the Western camp. Nasser's name can still evoke passion among Arabs in the Middle East. After all, like Arafat, he was the father of many failures, permanent failures, I would say. But why prejudge history?
This desertion by Ike and his patrician counselor is not what I have in mind now. I was 17 and at Brandeis University when the people of Budapest took to its streets. My memory of these days is not rich. But I do recall waking up to my usual 6:30 a.m. radio program alarm. As always, it was the gravelly voice of Bernard Cardinal Cushing, not yet known as J.F.K.'s bishop, reciting the Rosary: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..." Soon enough there was news and the voice of someone I'd never heard or heard of. Her plea was "help us." She, it turned out, was a veteran socialist (and not, as Herbert Marcuse tried to persuade us, one of many C.I.A. agents). The revolutionary government she served lasted barely ten days.
But these were ten days that shook the world. And it was not so much Soviet tanks that put them to an end, but Eisenhower's and Dulles' cool indifference to the first sign of decay in the communist world. Maybe they thought they already were on the side of history in Egypt. So why bother?
I think back to October-November 1956 and, of course, I also think of Suez and how the president and his secretary of state had cooly betrayed our allies. And now this same pair were about to betray the very people whom our radio broadcasts had actually summoned into the streets and alleyways of Budapest. There was really nothing to be done at home. But we tried to do something.
What little I did was to join in founding a group called the Greater New England Collegiate Committee for a Free Hungary. At its head was the already very eminent Yale art historian Vincent Scully. We convened at Boston's Fanueil Hall where Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty had gathered to stake their claims against Britain. The hall was full. I remember we raised some money, alas, for refugees ... to Austria where Kurt Waldheim (whom only some of you remember) kept them from entering. The crowd was sombre, realizing that no aid to the revolution in Hungary would come from the United States.
Still, three decades later the satrapies of Moscow would begin to crumble one by one ... and then the communist center itself.
Can you imagine the fall of the ayatollahs? I can, and so can learned Abbas Milani, professor of Iranian studies at Stanford, whose writings you can read here, with an additional important article in both the print and on-line New Republic next week.
But can President Obama imagine an Iran freed from the iron grip of the mullahs' madness? There is nothing in his behavior to suggest that he can or, for that matter, that he would be pleased if he could. His first visit to a Muslim country was for two days in Turkey in April. He and his aides, reported Tom Raum in the Huffington Post, were ecstatic about the results. As far as I can tell, there were none, at least none that were good. Turkey has continued its drift towards an Islamic foreign and domestic policy. The Organization of the Islamic Conference is already meeting in Istanbul, and Dr. A'jad will arrive there on Sunday. Believe me, he will be royally welcomed ... and raise tremors among the declining moderate populace.
As with the meanings he conveyed to the Turks, Obama is to be judged with reference to the Iranians on what messages he has sent them. To the people in the streets, to the middle class and to the students--the only hope for Iran--he has shown them, frankly, his behind. Not a statement of solidarity. Certainly not material support. He is still apologizing for the overthrow by the C.I.A. of Iran's prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953. That was 56 years ago, for God's sake. Still, his apologies have gotten him nowhere and will get him nowhere.
It is possible still that the democrats and moderate Muslims of Iran will win, not this year or even next year. One thing we know is that the American president has set them back aplenty. And that is a result of his curious empathy for Islam not simply as a religion but as a way of politics in the world.
39 comments
Your hindmost sentence confounds me.
- basman
November 8, 2009 at 10:27am
"And that is a result of his curious empathy for Islam not simply as a religion but as a way of politics in the world. " My best friend Alla, immigrated to Israel more than 35 years, from Leningrad, USSR. She was an exceptional figure among students at the time in that she refused to condemn communist Russia when Soviet atrocities were a matter of universally conventional wisdom. We had many hours of lively discussions in which she was one against the rest of us but she never succumbed to peer pressure. She used to refer to Anatole Sharanski and his group as a bunch of hooligans. She did not deny the authoritarianism of that regime but insisted that the West unjustly painted a very dark vision of the life there, something she simply did not experience. It took me a few years to realize that her life, as a young girl, under communism was a very good life. Her father was a judge, her mother- a lawyer. They had good jobs. She lacked nothing. Alla was given the education of a Jane Austen heroine, including the pleasures of art, ballet, music. As a student, she had an even more exciting experience, in spite of sporadic encounters with antisemitism. The bottom line, is that to this day she still has "curious empathy" for Russia and communism "as a way of politics in the world." What I mean to say is that Obama's personal acquaintance with Islam throughout his life's experience was a lived reality that stands somewhat in contradiction to the universal perception of that religion. Like my friend vis a vis the Soviet Union. He was born to a Muslim father, he was brought up in a moderate Muslim country, within a Muslim culture, had many Muslim friends. He never experienced Islamic ethos as anything less than benign. So of course he would have that kind of empathy for Islam. It's not at all curious. As the Russian-Hebrew pantheistic poet Shaul Tchernichovski wrote (paraphrasing): A man is cast in the image of his childhood's landscape
- noga1
November 8, 2009 at 11:55am
Noga, Now I am curious. If you friend Alla had so good back in the USSR, why did she leave? And how did she get out in 1974 without her parents losing their privileges? Or did they also leave then and if so why, if they had it so good? In general, how did she get out? It was very hard to emigrate back then. Hershel G. Efrata / Jerusalem
- ginzy
November 8, 2009 at 3:18pm
And speaking of the fall of the USSR, I seem to remember (but I can't point to as source0 that one eminent economist by the name of John Kenneth Galbraith predicting in the early 1980s that the USSR will eventually overtake the USA because the efficiencies and benefits of planned economy. Food for thought as Obama pushes the USA toward a more statist economy, which invariably seems to result in less innovation and more stagnation. But time will tell. hg
- ginzy
November 8, 2009 at 3:27pm
It think the Suez crisis makes for a very complicated analogy and doesn't help to clarify anything about either Berlin or Iran. It's undeniable that the U.S. in 1956 was not too concerned about the decline of French and British influence in the Middle East and reckoned that we could do a lot better, unencumbered as we were by an imperialist legacy. The Hungarian Uprising created a problem for the Eisenhower administration as people in various parts of the world wondered why the Soviet invasion of Hungary was to be condemned in the strongest terms while the British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt was at least in public treated with kid gloves (the line that the U.S. took in private was tougher). You didn't have to sketch an unsustainable equivalence between the two (obviously, the western powers didn't institute a wave of state terror afterward, as the USSR and the Hungarian Stalinists did) to ask the question, as Eisenhower was well aware. Suez was a crucial act of overreach in the imperial decline of France and Britain, but its significance (positive or negative) for Israel is something I know nothing about.
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 3:40pm
So, was the mistake in 1956 vis-a-vis Hungary that US propaganda encouraged the uprising, or that Eisenhower was unwilling to risk outright war with the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe to support it? Eisenhower, one may recall, knew first hand what a land war with the Soviets might look like, having engaged a mere decade before in defeating Germany in Western Europe, having seen first hand what the Soviets did to them in Eastern Europe, and having been the first commander of NATO after that. He no doubt knew that the Soviets could not attack the US with nuclear weapons, but he equally well knew that they could use them in Europe. And short of risking war, what exactly does Peretz imagine the US should have done to support the Hungarian awakening? All things considered, I strongly suspect that the mistake was the encouragement, not the lack of active follow through. And that's the one thing in this baroque analogy that Peretz tries to spin that matters, because one might well imagine that Obama knows that too public, too vocal, too soon, a show of support for Iranian resistance could as likely lead to their encouragement beyond our ability to actively support them and subsequent destruction, a la the Hungarians, as it could to success; and like Eisenhower, he may will be unwilling to take a lousy bet that active support won't lead to general war. To be sure, the Iranians have no 50s era Red Army, and don't yet have nukes at their command, but they certainly have the resources to create enormous chaos and subsequent suffering in the region, and put at considerable risk the United States Army, treasury, and western interests generally.
- sdemuth
November 8, 2009 at 4:31pm
Well, Ginzy, these were questions we repeatedly addressed to her. She came with her family, parents and one sister. Her father wanted to come to Israel, the land of the Jews. He was a relatively observant Jew. My friend was never very politically inclined and to this day I have no idea who she votes for, if at all. She still does not like Israelis in general, but she acts and sounds like a typical Israeli when she speaks of the more recent Russian immigrants who arrived in Israel. If you are familiar with the skit of Uri Zohar and Arik Einstein about the different alyiot you probably know what I mean:) During the early seventies there was a trickle of Russian Jews that did manage to filter through to Israel. Her roommate in the dormitories at the Mount Scopus campus was an American Jewish girl; you can imagine the cold war that was taking place there. It was a case of instant mutual contempt. I had friends in both camps but my friendship with Alla was the only one that endured. We are both scorpios!
- noga1
November 8, 2009 at 4:41pm
Ironyroad says: "The Hungarian Uprising created a problem for the Eisenhower administration as people in various parts of the world wondered why the Soviet invasion of Hungary was to be condemned in the strongest terms while the British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt was at least in public treated with kid gloves" That's the same sort of linkage that Saddam Hussein and ilk made when he invaded Kuwait: Why was the world outraged by that occupation but not with Israel's occupation? In 1956, Israel reacted against the Egyptian blockade of the Tiran Straits and another military objective was to remove the training grounds for Fedayeen groups, that unceasingly infiltrated into Israel to wreak havoc among the settlements there. (so what else is new?) What was the Soviet Union's excuse for invading Hungary? And why do you assume that people would not be able to distinguish between one invasion and another?
- noga1
November 8, 2009 at 5:03pm
"What was the Soviet Union's excuse for invading Hungary?" The SU was scared that the new Nagy government would withdraw the country from the Warsaw Pact and that would, in turn, lead to a domino-style collapse of Soviet authority in Central and Eastern Europe -- which, in their eyes, they had sacrificed millions of men to secure only ten-plus years earlier.
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 5:19pm
It's *Richard* Cardinal Cushing, olevasholem (as we used to say before Vatican II).
- lfeinber@email.unc.edu
November 8, 2009 at 5:54pm
Are you playing devil's advocate, IR? Was the Soviet Union in any danger of being invaded, blockaded, or massacred by Hungary or presumably its future new allies if they just stayed put? Was there an existential or even non-exitential but life-endangering threat from a democratic Hungary that could have justified that Russian hammer? I really don't understand how easy it is for you to get into the mind of totalitarian regimes and consider their grievances as if they had the same merit as those nations that seek to defend themselves against these regimes. You do the same with Iran's geopolitical aspirations. As if Iranian aspirations to dominate the Middle East and wipe Israel off the map should somehow be understandable.
- noga1
November 8, 2009 at 6:17pm
I haven't a clue what you're talking about, Noga. You asked me what the USSR's excuse for invading Hungary was, and I tried to respond to that question to the best of my knowledge. Maybe in future I should ask you in advance which answer you'd prefer, so I don't say the wrong thing!
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 6:34pm
Actually, I'm still in a good mood from the Leonard Cohen concert in Asheville, N.C. a week ago (!) so I don't want to get into a fight with you yet again. Maybe I misunderstood the import of your original question? I just responded to what seemed to be a fairly standard historical issue that you raised -- why the Sovs did this or that in the Cold War.
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 6:42pm
OK, I get it. Sorry. As you noted once, short fuse and all that. Besides, I don't have the benefit and advantage of being in a good mood for any reason, let alone a Leonard Cohen concert!
- noga1
November 8, 2009 at 7:28pm
I think Marty needs to clean up or clarify his post here. While he is correct about the 3 inherent contradictions in the Soviet Communism, he misses the larger point about Gorbachov. Soviet Communism was based upon lies and nothing represented those lies better than the wall in Berlin. Orders to shoot to kill anyone trying to leave the country, and deny the orders exist. But the walls fall was driven partially by the history, but more so by Gorbachov's attempt at Glasnot and Perestroika. It was wild watching Russia try to allow people to speak the truth as censors opened up and they admitted to failures. TNR had an artlicle about the Wall coming down about a month before it actually spontaneously fell. I asked a German friend about 2 weeks beore the fall if he thought it was coming down and he told me never. It was a shock. TNR was also reporting that Yeltsin was a drunk who could never run the USSR too. Right now I hope Obama is looking for an Iranian Reformer who can lead the country away from the tragedy of the Soviets. I don't think the Iranians will allow their country the freedoms needed to avoid a conflict with the west.
- CRS9TNR
November 8, 2009 at 8:24pm
mp: The Pact put the Soviets as sovereign over great historic peoples. This simply could not last. There is just so much humiliation that Poles and Hungarians, Czechs and Rumanians could take. Moreover, the Soviet Union was also a union of coerced ethnic groups with pasts of which they were both conscious and proud. gw: Great historic peoples. This is Peretz's potempkin village of choice. It's his way of making the proper distinction between ethnic groups. After all, only then can one procede to suggest that distinctions can be made between folks of different races. Not of color mind you so much as culture and geography. Though how the ancient Arabic and Hebrew Semites [along with dozens of other separate Semitic "peoples"] have evolved into the Good and Bad folks today is a little fuzzy. It all gets jumbled up in the historical evolution of language, ethnology, religion, tribes, nations, colonialism and the like. Doesn't it? But make no mistake about it, some Semites today are clearly superior to others. If for no other reason then the obvious: They worship the right God. What the Peretzes of the world will never acknowledge of course is how, historically, a child being born into the world of one "people" rather than another is merely a fortuity. What Heidegger called "dasein". And if that child had been "thrown" into another, instead, he or she would be raised to view the world in an entirely different way. These different ethnic worlds are essentially interchangable social, politial and economic contraptions invented from essentially interchangable points of view about how we should behave. Communism was just an attempt to obviate this by reducing "peoples" down to economic classes. Just as Fascism was an attempt to reduce them down to races. Both via the same brutally totalitarian methods. But while Marty wants to grant different ethnic groups a self-conscious pride when pitted against political philosophies and powers he despises [Reds and Nazis] he is far less willing to grant this self-conscious pride to other "peoples"---groups like, say, Arabs, Palestinians or Persians in or around Israel today. It's the same pea under the shell misdirection of the True Believer. He uses words like "ethnicity" for some folks when it suits his political agenda, but not for other folks when it doesn't. The Soviets were attempting to gobble up the proud, self-conscious Afghani people, but the U.S. is trying only to liberate them from their own backward and repressive culture. Same with the backward, unwashed culture of the Arab masses in the Middle East. Marty wants them to embrace their culture by abandoning it in favor of a culture more like the Israelis and "the West". They can even keep the wrong God if they wish. They just have to join the rest of us in a global economy/culture that is bursting at the seams with all that is moral and decent and noble and humane. Yeah, right. george walton j
- iambiguous
November 8, 2009 at 8:46pm
Irony, I beg to differ from you re: what you allege was the Soviet's reasoning that lead to invasion of Hungary. That was the rationalization many, in the main academic Kremlinologists/Sovietologists proffered. It didn't wash then and doesn't still. Instead it was the typical Soviet (Russian) paranoia that reflexively struck to put down anything that remotely suggested counterrevolutionary tendencies. Anyway, that's how it was read on the streets here. The seeming delay of military action was wavering and indecision in the Kremlin what our reaction might be if they went ahead as they intended all along, with usual brutal crushing suppression. I'm skeptical of the view that the Ayatollahs' thinking and intentions today are congruent with the Soviet's during the darker days of the Cold War. It's fairly easy to see what their fantasies and desires are, but I don't think it's fair to assume their thinking and planning are the same, or even close to the same as the Kremlin's. Certainly I could be wrong on this. I was eight years old in 1956, so it's only from long-term reflection on those times in light of what came to pass in the eighties.
- Tgossard
November 8, 2009 at 9:09pm
It's easy to look back and imagine oneself noting a pattern that one didn't see at the time, if one were honest about it. But I think it's worth making a distinction between German reunification, that most people in Germany and abroad didn't see coming, and the collapse of the Wall, which was the result of an historic build-up of steam over 1988 and 1989 that left no East Bloc country unaffected and that you'd have to have been blind and deaf not to have noticed. Even far-away events had their role to play. I remember coming back on the bus from Paris in the early summer and the driver had the local radio on as we entered West Berlin -- the news was about the routing of the Tienamen Square occupation. Then came the East German tourists occupying the West German embassy in Prague, and many other dramatic events all over Eastern Europe. The rise of Neues Forum in the GDR and the beginnings of the Leipzig demonstrations were compelling news and I think everyone sense there was no going back. The mass rally on Alexanderplatz on Nov 4 spelled the end of the SED and its system. But from talking with people at the time and just afterwards, the greater part of the dissident movement wanted a transformed GDR, not German reunification. "Once more time the intellectuals didn't get it!" was the common wisdom in later years. One of my own most indelible memories is watching the 40th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the GDR on East Berlin TV. Gorbatchev was there -- unwanted by the Honneker and the SED, of course, but what could they do, they had to invite the Soviet leader -- and the crowds were shouting "Gorbi! Gorbi!" and the East German reporters were doing their damndest to drown out the actual sound and claim they were cheering for the SED leadership. You could hear everything clearly, however. The actual opening of the Wall on Nov 9 was itself a series of accidents more than anything, but everyone knew that something was going to happen. I remember those few days in Berlin so well, and yet it sometimes seems like another world.
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 9:10pm
“It is possible still that the democrats and moderate Muslims of Iran will win, not this year or even next year. One thing we know is that the American president has set them back aplenty. And that is a result of his curious empathy for Islam not simply as a religion but as a way of politics in the world.” These posts get more and more bizarre. It’s not just POSSIBLE that the democrats and moderate Muslims of Iran will win, its absolutely guaranteed...but, it’s equally guaranteed that it will be on THEIR timeline, not ours, just as slavery was not eliminated in the US in 1776 or 1789 but in 1863 and the associated ethos not finally vanquished until the second half of the 20th c. Had we not meddled in their affairs in 1953, there might not have been any Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979. And the less centripetal pressure we provide to shore up the Mullahs’ republic via our absurdly vindictive policies, the sooner the transformation will take place. And thank God for Ike’s courageous stand against the tripartite idiocy of 1956 (his disgraceful support of the 1953 coup not withstanding). What, exactly, did you want him to do about the Budepest uprising? 1956 and its specific historical circumstances were not 1989 and its specific circumstances. “The first sign of decay”? How about the East German uprising of 1953? In any event, the first sign of decay is not the optimal moment to undermine the reign of a vicious regime. It’s after the first, and second, and third phases of decay weaken the totalitarian fortress and allow the influx of ideas and images that transform the regime without unpleasant side effects (like global war).
- ccarrick@vzavenue.net-old
November 8, 2009 at 9:51pm
Tgossard -- point taken about paranoia, but . . . . isn't that pretty much what I said? I'm not sure exactly where you want to differ, I mean.
- ironyroad
November 8, 2009 at 9:54pm
"Soon enough there was news and the voice of someone I'd never heard or heard of. Her plea was "help us." She, it turned out, was a veteran socialist (and not, as Herbert Marcuse tried to persuade us, one of many C.I.A. agents). The revolutionary government she served lasted barely ten days." If might be appropriate to give this heroic "veteran socialist" a name, Professor. Some of your readers rely on you to deepen their knowledge of history. As I understand, the US was operating under the general idea of "Containment," as postulated by George Kennan. This idea did not encourage the notion of military or covert intervention in Soviet controlled Eastern Europe. The only US domestic group, with the except of your little academic committee, that seriously advocated a military response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary was clustered around the ex-Trotskyist leader and Cold Warrior, Max Schachtman. The hard-line Schachtmanite followers advocated a roll-back of Soviet power. They advocated covert and overt action in favor of the anti-communist Hungarian revolutionaries. Schachtman's position on intervention in Hungary and later in favor of the Bay of Pigs invasion, sent shockwavers through the little US socialist movement. Are we to believe that the covert and sophisticated instruments of US foreigh policy played no role, objectively, in aiding the brave Iranian resistance? I don't wish to give the Iranian leadership griss for their mill, but it is improbable that covert money was not directed toward the student movement in Iran. Congress funds an entire bureaucracy (NED) devoted to analysis and soft intervention in such circumstances. When will the public be allowed, finally, to look behind the soft curtain of official denial surrounding these events?
- LawrenceGulotta
November 9, 2009 at 10:58am
irony, my point really was the SU did not act out of worry about the so-called "domino effect." It may have been an added reason. Their decision was based instead on their reflexive response to whiff of counterrevolutionary activity. They paused invading because they feared our military response, not because they were dithering how to react to the situation in Hungary. Clear?
- Tgossard
November 9, 2009 at 11:35am
Not exactly. Given that we didn't react with military force either in Czechoslovakia in 1948 or in East Germany in 1953, it wasn't illogical to believe we would also refrain from it in 1956. Also, I think your distinction between "domino effect" and "counterrevolutionary activity" was one the Sovs didn't make. They certainly didn't want a repeat of Yugoslavia, which had slipped the leash four years earlier, an action that they regarded as both counterrevolutionary and domino-threatening.
- ironyroad
November 9, 2009 at 12:08pm
The view from Eastern Europe's former dissidents: "With the West struggling to come up with a response to Iran's nuclear ambitions, Mr. Michnik cites Ronald Reagan's approach to Poland as a useful model for President Obama. The day after martial law was imposed in 1981, the U.S. publicly sided with the Polish people against their regime. "You have to support in a smart way those forces in Iran that aren't like that crazy president, that Islamo-Maoist Ahmadinejad," he says. "What is important for them is to see in America a friend. In Poland it worked; today there's no more pro-American country in the world." The violent repression of democratic protestors in Iran since June, he adds, indicates that "the ayatollahs must feel the breath of history on their backs." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704795604574519463075074956.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
- noga1
November 9, 2009 at 12:08pm
"You have to support in a smart way those forces in Iran that aren't like that crazy president, that Islamo-Maoist Ahmadinejad". Leave it to Adam Michnik to phrase this elegantly and correctly. Presenting a good-faith effort at cooperation and making realistic offers for limiting a nuclear weapons program, and then trying to line up solid international support for serious sanctions if that approach is rejected (as it seems likely to be), are smart ways to help non-crazy Iranians. Clumsily interjecting ourselves into an ongoing electoral crisis, or acquiescing in a rash and unsuccessful Israeli attack and letting America's Middle East policy come down in a crashing heap of Iranian-funded violence, is not a smart way to help those Iranians. I'm just not sure why Marty can't open his eyes and understand this. Is it because his mind is forever stuck in 1978, and every Democratic foreign policy reflects the thinking of the Carter Administration?
- wildboy
November 9, 2009 at 1:08pm
Just a word about the Fall of the Wall. Mikhail Gorbachev is a world-historical figure because he was the first Soviet leader to decide not to shoot people down in the streets like dogs. Based as it was on brute force, once Gorbachev abjured murder in the streets, the system collapsed on itself. Wildboy, we will get nothing from Iran in these "negotiations" which have been going on for years, even under the despised W. However, there will be no sanctions, because our good friends the Russians will not allow it. In any case, the anti-government forces deserve our support, clumsy or not. We stand for freedom, and should do so in Iran now. The administration has been craven.
- butchie b
November 9, 2009 at 2:51pm
I think they pretty much gave up the shooting people down thing in the 1970s under Brezhnev, as they essentially left it up to the Polish regime to handle Solidarosc in 1981. They didn't want to risk an invasion. But you're right that the system basically collapsed because it didn't really have any genuine backing outside the Party bureaucracy and it didn't have the stomach for pure force any more.
- ironyroad
November 9, 2009 at 3:09pm
Butchie, that's a nice little argument to make from the comfort of an ergonomically-correct office chair. It's much more powerful when made from a cell in Evin Prison, or from the streets of Tehran. Until Iranian protestors started making those calls recently, we were right not to give their oppressors more ammunition to marginalize them. I wish that I was just speculating here, but that is EXACTLY what happened in the student protests of the late 1990s. I think you recall the definition of insanity, and I'm glad the US is not acting insane vis-a-vis Iran for once. Our Russian friends would likely reject sanctions, as would our Chinese friends. Then we would need to play a little hardball with them at that time. As for now, we should focus on lining up Western states for sanctions, since the gap in Iran's energy services sector that would result from the withdrawal of Western money (especially German and Austrian money) can't be quickly filled by Russian, Chinese or some other investments. If Obama fumbles this over the next 8 months, then he will get my brickbats along with yours and Marty's.
- wildboy
November 9, 2009 at 3:40pm
irony, thanks for working it out. I think you/I hold our respective ground and I'm satisfied to leave it there. (but you're wrong ;)
- Tgossard
November 9, 2009 at 4:03pm
Tgoss, I'm always wrong (and yet right)
- ironyroad
November 9, 2009 at 4:08pm
...lol
- Tgossard
November 9, 2009 at 4:12pm
wildboy salutes Michnik's message by immediately mistinterpreting it. Here is Michmik: "With the West struggling to come up with a response to Iran's nuclear ambitions, Mr. Michnik cites Ronald Reagan's approach to Poland as a useful model for President Obama. The day after martial law was imposed in 1981, the U.S. publicly sided with the Polish people against their regime." And here is wildboy: "Clumsily interjecting ourselves into an ongoing electoral crisis, or acquiescing in a rash and unsuccessful Israeli attack and letting America's Middle East policy come down in a crashing heap of Iranian-funded violence, is not a smart way to help those Iranians." Perhaos wb can be so good as to explain why he is so eager to praise Michnik's wisdom while completely reversing what Michnik in effect says.
- noga1
November 9, 2009 at 4:19pm
Yes Noga, and promptly after the Iranian regime violently cracked down on its citizens demanding democracy, Obama publicly criticized the regime and called on it to stop all "unjust acts" against its citizens. So there's really no major discrepancy between official US responses to Poland's anti-democratic crackdown in 1981 and Iran's in 2009. The difference is that the US and its allies are faced with the challenge of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and unsettling the political order in the Middle East, which wasn't a concern with Poland in 1981. Immediate criticism of martial law in Poland in 1981 was "smart" for the US in the sense that it was both consistent with US ideals and didn't have the risk of harming US geostrategic interests -- after all, detene with the Soviets was already dead when martial law was declared, so what was the downside to the US from criticizing Jaruzelski?
- wildboy
November 9, 2009 at 6:07pm
Wildboy, A couple thoughts: "The difference is that the US and its allies are faced with the challenge of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and unsettling the political order in the Middle East, which wasn't a concern with Poland in 1981." It seems to me that the real difference is that in the early 1980's, Poland was occupied by one of its two principal historical enemies, Russia, in the form of the declining Soviet state. Polish nationalism (reinforced by Polish Catholicism) was a powerful weapon we could wield against the Polish regime and the Soviet occupiers. This is not the case with Iran which is not occupied. Persian/Iranian nationalism reinforced by Shia Islam is NOT on the side of regime change. (Though left to itself, Iran would gradually evolve beyond its current regime a la Cromwell's England.) All we can do is make the Iranian people hurt through impeding gasoline imports and so on, but if China is willing to supply Iran with gasoline, then we will have further undermined our long-term strategic position in Iran (the the Middle East generally).
- ccarrick@vzavenue.net-old
November 9, 2009 at 6:35pm
Wildboy, if the Iranian opposition signaled to us that it did not want us to support them for the reasons you cite, fine. Had Walesa said it, the same result obtains. But reality is to the contrary. We agree that the Rusiians and Chinese will veto any effective sanctions. We can get the Brirs and even the French on this. Can we get the Germans to give up their lucrative trade with Iran (and their Austrian cousins,too)? I doubt it, but this administration continues to let the Iranians slide, setting up deadlines, and then kicking the can down the road. The POTUS must stop voting present and make a decision, on this and Afghanistan. Enough dithering, already.
- butchie b
November 10, 2009 at 1:42pm
Butchie, they did signal (for all intents and purposes) that they did not need our open support in this election. They understood from the 90s and earlier this decade that open US support is the kiss of death for Iranian opposition groups, as it taps into the Iranian people's potent well of resentment for America's prior actions in Iran. Some of them are now, FINALLY, signaling to us that they want our open support. I think we should openly support them, or at least make active steps to encourage their ultimate success. But doing that before they wanted our support would have been very counter-productive. How much do you want to bet that a big bear-hug from the McCain Administration for the Iranian opposition this past spring would have resulted in the Iranians canceling the elections altogether and then carrying out mass roundups and show trials of the opposition leaders? As for deadlines, we set a deadline of December 31 for the Iranians to accept our offers on uranium. I think we can wait another seven weeks and change without the world coming to an end. Same goes for Afghanistan, although respectable minds differ on this one.
- wildboy
November 10, 2009 at 2:51pm
You may be right, but I'll still take the McCain administration. :-) Actually, we set deadlines for the end of September, then the end of October, now 31 Dec. Sure, we can wait, but every day we wait is one more day that the Iranians work toward a nuke. And the 68,000 troops already in Afghanistan are still in a holding pattern that the POTUS says is a loser. Like it or notm he is the Decider. Decide.
- butchie b
November 10, 2009 at 4:12pm
But here are the questions that keep getting asked on these threads but never menaningfully answered: What can the US do to stop Iran's development of nuclear arms? What is it that you would have Obama do either before or on December 31? Unilateral sanctions? That won't stop Iran's progress toward a nuclear capability. All agree that Russia and China would not join in sanctions. Germany likely would not. A big maybe on Britain and France. What is it that the admin should do to stop the slide? (By the way, there is a tendency here to incorrectly conflate the issue of Iranian nuclear ambitions and the issue of a revolution in Iran.) As to Afghanistan, what decision do you think Obama should make, and why? Oh, and let's stop conflating the issue
- dhurtado
November 10, 2009 at 7:44pm
I know this is late, but - Not a damned thing. Iran will have a nuke or 10, and all we can do is try to get IAEA inspections before they do. Unilateral sanctions would be fine, but I agree they won't stop the Iranians. I want POTUS to make it clear to the Iranians that any use of said nukes will mean the of Iran. Period. And that if a nuke goes off anywhere in the world, and we can'tell who did it, we will assume the Iranians are culpable, and Iran gets it. I call it deterrence plus. As for Afghanistan, I am conflicted, but favor giving McChrystal most of what he wants, and insisting (privately) on a deadline for improvement in the situation on the ground. If the next tranche of troops don't do the job, the answer cannot be more troops. At that point, enough already.
- butchie b
November 12, 2009 at 1:29pm