Another War With Iran?

A Long, Vicious And Forgotten War: The country which unleashed the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was Iraq. For the duration, Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was able to count on the strong support of the United States. The backing of Presidents Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s administrations never wavered, not even when, for the first time since World War One, the Iraqis deployed chemical weapons.

WILL THERE BE a war with Iran? Better to ask: will there be another war with Iran?

So many of us in the West have forgotten that the country, currently being fitted-up as the next Middle Eastern aggressor, endured eight years of extremely vicious fighting, at the cost of at least half-a-million lives, between 1980 and 1988.

The country which unleashed this war was Iraq. For the duration, Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was able to count on the strong support of the United States. The backing of Presidents Ronald Reagan’s and Jimmy Carter’s administrations never wavered, not even when, for the first time since World War One, the Iraqis deployed chemical weapons.

The date of the Iran-Iraq War’s outbreak, September 1980, is significant. Eleven months earlier, 52 American hostages had been seized in an attack on the US Embassy in Tehran. When his secret mission to rescue the hostages ended in disaster, President Jimmy Carter quietly appealed to Saddam, who, as a secular Baathist, was no friend of Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Islamic Revolution”, for help. His reward, providing his army could win them, would be Iran’s most productive oil fields.   

The hostages’ eventual liberation, pointedly timed to coincide with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, came in January 1981. When asked by a reporter if he would ever go back to Iran, one of the freed hostages replied: “Only in a B-52!” Thanks to Saddam’s illegal invasion, however, President Reagan was never required to unleash his strategic bombers on the Iranians. The Iraqi armed forces had become America’s proxy punishers. Iran had humiliated the United States, and for eight terrible years it was required to pay the price.

With another war on Iranian soil looming, it is interesting to register the size of the Iraqi invasion force. Saddam sent 100,000 troops and hundreds of battle tanks across the Iranian border in September 1980, while his air force flew hundreds of sorties against Iranian targets. The scale of Saddam’s invasion bears close comparison with the Anglo-Soviet invasion of neutral Iran in August 1941. That, too, was a massive affair, involving hundreds of thousands of British Empire and Soviet troops.

Remember, these were invasions of Iran – not by Iran. As strategic analyst, Dr Paul Buchanan, observes:

“[I]t should be remembered that modern Iran has not engaged in an unprovoked attack on another country. Although it supports and uses irregular military proxies, it is nowhere close to being the sponsor of terrorism that several Sunni Arab petroleum oligarchies are. In spite of its anti-Israel rhetoric (destined for domestic political consumption), it has not fired a shot in anger towards it.”

This is important. If war is unleashed against Iran, its 80 million citizens will find themselves engaged in a defensive war. Accordingly, the Iranians will enjoy the home-ground advantage. The Americans, and whoever is foolish enough to join them in such a mad endeavour, will find themselves, like the Iraqis, required to fight not only Iran’s people, but also its formidable geography. In addition to confronting human-beings, the United States will be battling snow-capped mountain ranges and waterless deserts.

The Americans are not daunted. When it comes to the Middle East (and its oil) the behaviour of the United States can only be described as unhinged. When Saddam dared to act independently of the US, the debt America owed his country, for its costly – and ultimately futile – war against its Iranian neighbour, was forgotten in a heartbeat.

And it wasn’t just Saddam who paid dearly for his failure to comprehend the full extent of America’s derangement. When US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was asked by CBS’s Lesley Stahl: “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

Astonishingly, the same people who beat the war-drums for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, are beating them again in 2019. President Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, gives every impression of never having seen a square kilometre of Middle Eastern soil which could not be immeasurably improved by being pulverised with US ordnance.

It would be comforting to believe that wiser heads will prevail. Sadly, history suggests otherwise.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 July 2019.

Can Jacinda Ride “Hirschman’s Cycle” Without Falling Off?

Good Will Receiving: If New Zealanders are in a mood to promote the public good, then there is every chance that the Ardern-led government will succeed. If they are more concerned with promoting their own, private, welfare, then the resistance to the new government’s redistributive ambitions is likely to be very fierce indeed.

WILL THIS NEW GOVERNMENT SUCCEED? Across the political spectrum, that is the question. Will Jacinda Ardern and her NZ First and Green Party allies find their fellow New Zealanders broadly accommodating of, or fiercely resistant to, her government of change?

If New Zealanders are in a mood to promote the public good, then there is every chance that the Ardern-led government will succeed. If they are more concerned with promoting their own, private, welfare, then the resistance to the new government’s redistributive ambitions is likely to be very fierce indeed.

A sociologist might attempt an answer to this question by asking where New Zealand currently stands in the “Hirschman Cycle”.

Named after the much-admired American sociologist, Albert Hirschman, the Cycle describes those recurring historical transitions from periods in which society is predominantly concerned with maximising private consumption and individual well-being; to periods characterised by a general willingness to accommodate public programmes aimed at uplifting those in need and dedicated to reaffirming the nation’s core values and aspirations.

The period of US history most proximate to Hirschman’s research was the period known as “The Great Society”. After nearly two decades of rapidly rising incomes and growing affluence, Americans entered the 1960s more willing to embrace public policies of uplift and altruism than at any time since the “New Deal” of the 1930s.

The architect of The Great Society, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, attempted to sketch out his administration’s response to inequality – especially racial inequality – in his famous “To Fulfil These Rights” speech to Howard University’s commencement class on 4 June 1965:

“There is no single easy answer to all of these problems”, the President told his audience of mostly African-American students. “Jobs are part of the answer. They bring the income which permits a man to provide for his family. Decent homes in decent surroundings and a chance to learn – an equal chance to learn – are part of the answer. Welfare and social programs better designed to hold families together are part of the answer. Care for the sick is part of the answer. An understanding heart by all Americans is another big part of the answer. And to all of these fronts – and a dozen more – I will dedicate the expanding efforts of the Johnson administration.”

This, the high-water mark of social-democratic liberalism in the United States, is made even more luminous by the darkness currently enveloping Trump’s America. Born out of one of V.O. Key’s, “permissive” political consensuses, Johnson’s “Great Society” would not survive the public’s rapidly declining faith in Washington-based solutions. The race-riots of the mid-60s, a steadily escalating war in Vietnam, and the fast-deteriorating US domestic economy soon ushered America into the selfish phase of Hirschman’s Cycle.

The question Jacinda and her colleagues have to ask themselves, therefore, is whether or not such a “permissive” political consensus exists in New Zealand. Is her “administration” entering office at a point in the Hirschman Cycle roughly analogous to where the US was when President Johnson was inaugurated in January 1965?

The answer, sadly, is: “No.” Far from being swept into office on an historic landslide, Jacinda’s victory is both electorally narrow and politically controversial. If a US precedent is being sought, it isn’t to be found in the Johnson Administration, but in the politically and economically fraught administration of President Jimmy Carter.

Massive problems have grown up during the nine-year period of National Party rule. Escalating social inequality has fuelled poverty and homelessness: leading to rising levels of mental illness, suicide, violent crime and a record number of incarcerated citizens. The social and economic climate is, therefore, very different to that which prevailed when Norman Kirk was swept to victory in the golden year of 1972.

Like the Johnson Administration, the Kirk Government inherited a “permissive” political consensus of unprecedented scope. Jacinda’s political environment, by contrast, has all the room for manoeuvre of Jimmy Carter’s and Helen Clark’s. Hirschman’s Cycle-wise, New Zealand remains deeply mired in its individualistic/private consumption phase. Moreover, as Winston Peters soberly observed, there is little prospect of the country enjoying, anytime soon, the expansive economic and social conditions capable of persuading an electorate to embrace a government committed to the public good.

And yet, out-of-phase though New Zealand may be, Hirschman Cycle-wise, Jacinda and the public good have no choice but to deliver each other.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 October 2017.