A few footnotes to the exchange with Larison over whether Iran is, or should be called, "uniquely aggressive." I had said that it is and should because Iran has uniquely established theocolonial proxy armies of nonstate actors; is uniquely working flagrantly and diligently for nuclear arms; and issues, via Mr. Ahmadinejad, statements suggesting strongly that the elimination of Israel from the world is, if not a goal of Iranian foreign policy, an appealing and desirable result of...international geopolitical serendipity, or something.
The main criticisms against this position I articulated would seem to be that (a) lots and lots of other states have a proxy army of nonstate actors; (b) North Korea has already worked more successfully (and thus more intransigently) toward nuclear arms; and (c) Ahmadinejad is really a powerless figurehead whose anti-Zionist speeches attain the level of unique verbal aggression and nothing more.
It's true of course that the planet, or major portions of it, are crawling with subsidized and state-supported terrorist armies of one stripe or another. But rarely does a state maintain such a relationship with more than one such army, much less several major such armies. Iran's relationship with Hezbollah and Hamas is unique, and uniquely aggressive. (Its relationship with various parties in Iraq, too similar in too many ways to our own, is, by contrast, not.)
As for North Korea, that state's propensity for official deceit and agreement-breaking would be funny had it not been so serious, back when it happened, back when we had a series of chances to prevent the outcome this administration is now struggling with. Unfortunately that ship has sailed. Iran is part of a fine, long tradition of attempts to join the nuclear club. But right now it's the live wire. And, remember, North Korea couldn't have reneged unless it had first negotiated, something Iran shows a profound unwillingness to do. This only makes sense, of course, and of all Iran's activities it seems to me that its acquisition of nuclear weapons is the most difficult to prevent, and the most difficult to prevent legitimately. I'd say moreover that the level of difficulty ought to increase, not decrease, the prudence of our policy. One does not want to enforce the nuclear nonproliferation agreement by dropping bunker-busting nukes.
Finally, I don't want to hype Ahmedinejad's rhetoric as Dangerous Hate Speech, but hateful speech may nonetheless activate dangers, and even attain dangerousness itself. Certainly the role Ahmedinejad plays in the Iranian government, if not Officially Powerful, is performed with Official Support (or, more complexly, I admit, factional official toleration or neutrality). Certainly Iran is officially responsible for the words that come out of Ahmedinejad's mouth when spoken in a public or official capacity. And segregating those words from Iran's foreign policy, as actively conducted by its several proxies, shows an excess of sophistication (something I rarely detect and denounce).
It remains important nonetheless to maintain the sophistication necessary to both view Iran as the uniquely aggressive state that it is and to behave toward it with sanity, prudence, and a proper respect for our own best interests as a great power among nations, and as the United States of America particularly. And it bears recognition that the sorry state of the global hegemon is to discover that all the adversaries left to contend with do indeed tend to be unique categories of one. Iraq was. North Korea is. Cuba's another. Venezuela's becoming one. And so too with Somalia at its time, Serbia at its, and Iran. The point isn't that uniqueness ain't all it's cracked up to be -- just that we ought to recognize that global hegemony means that balancing coalitions of like states aren't to be expected. The balancers we get are a rogue's gallery -- not an Axis of Evil but a Hodgepodge of Nastiness. This of course cuts right against the overwrought shorthand of the Clash of Civilizations. That there is no "Arab Street" or politically monolithic "Muslim World" is completely consistent with a view of Iran as uniquely aggressive.
Nor ought we throw out accurate phraseologies simply on account of their use in clumsy hands. Rigor here is precisely what foreign policy ought to be about, was, at various times, and will be again. Language of "unique threat" is indeed open to wild abuse, in part for the plain reason that states in our unprecedented position seem particularly prone to facing the world's ingrate remainders. This is an empirical, not normative claim, by which I mean there is absolutely no reason why any state should or must integrate into a unipolar system of global hegemony, even if run by the USA. Burying talk of unique threatism solves the problem of idiotic misuse at the cost of intellectual probity and policy as clear as it is responsible.
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