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The Classicist Podcast, with Victor Davis Hanson: “Iran, Israel, and the Coming War”
If you’re looking for an optimist’s take on the pending nuclear deal with Iran … yeah, this podcast isn’t for you. In this week’s installment of The Classicist, VDH looks at whether the Vienna agreement deserves comparisons to Munich, dissects President Obama’s bizarre sales campaign on behalf of the deal, and examines the strategic calculus for Israel and other countries throughout the Middle East if this agreement takes effect.
Want to listen on the go? You can subscribe to The Classicist via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Can’t be bothered to spend 10 seconds setting that up? Listen in below, after the jump.
Published in Foreign Policy, Podcasts
An optimistic thinks the glass is half full. A pessimist thinks the glass is half empty. I think the damn glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
I wonder what the case made here by VDH would look like if there had been a rule that he cannot use WW2 as a reference. Perhaps there is an over obsession with WW2 which makes some people too alarmist. Remember that Munich 1938 was to avert another catastrophe like WW1 when nobody would compromise or back down. Appeasement can lead to a big war, but lack of compromise can also lead to a big war. Every situation is different.
Iran is broke with oil below $100. It is true that they will have more money as a result of a lifting of sanctions. But the idea that they will be flush with plenty of cash to throw around is just not true. And oil has taken another tumble after the deal and is probably headed to $30.
Power projection is complex the way Hayek used the concept before mathematicians labeled it complexity. Simple rules bring order out of chaos. Free markets with the right rules are orderly, creative, and prosperous but cannot be centrally managed. We can look back and discern the rules that seem to bring the order we like but if we confuse order with our clever interventions we mess things up because chaos is like that, it cannot be managed. We can improve the rules, make them simpler and better, or undo mistakes, but the system itself is not centrally manageable. Foreign policy is the same. We can project power with a presence and alliances that are well defined, but when we think we are clever enough to mange the world more actively from Washington we inevitably set in motion reordering we can’t know or control. VDH is looking back at an important source of our foreign policy principles at a time when our leaders either don’t know or believe those principles and following a time when we forgot what we can centrally control.
VDH makes a very strong case that this present appeasement will have consequences similar to that of WWII, not only insofar as Iran’s incentives and likely actions. He also particularly explains how it will affect the perceptions of the wisdom of reliance on the US on the part of our allies (not all allies are equal – with the exception of Israel, they are allied only to the extent they oppose Iran). As a result of this “deal,” Iran’s history of not abiding by agreements, and its sponsorship of Hizbollah and other terrorists (to which it has supplied over 100,000 offensive rockets and missiles), Israel and neighboring Sunni states are threatened as never before.
VDH believes the chance of war approaches 100% if Congress doesn’t stop the deal. Were I a citizen or leader of Israel, I could not ignore the longstanding and specific threats (most recently the ayatollah’s book on how to destroy my country), nor could I rely on the Obama administration for the survival of myself, my family or my nation. I would see no alternative but to preempt the oft-promised holocaust.
VDH’s summary line at the end was hideously unappealing, but probably accurate. There will be a war, another war, in the Middle East. Its only variables are when and who will be fighting who, but there will be one. It’s not just the Iranian nukes and Israel, it’s the nukes and all the other countries that will have to adapt/respond to those nukes and Iran’s willingness to use them, their threat to use them, and their now freed-up cash to help pay for everything destructive it wants to do.
I find it difficult not to pile on Barry here, since he’s the one who initiated the “peace” “talks” with Iran, but that clown is going to spend the next 1.5 years or so with his fingers crossed while simultaneously declaring victory for having acquired an “agreement” that does nothing but kick the can down the road so Barry can check something off his list for what will assuredly be an unending series of books, post-presidency, about how terrificly super-awesome was The Barry when he occasionally sat in the WH and did things, in between sittings in a golf cart and occasionally popping his head into a room when US soldiers’ lives were at stake in the taking out of a terrorist.
Actually, US citizens are going to carry a very big weight if a bomb goes off in Israel. We’ll have helped put it there by electing Barry.
Barry has abandoned us.