This blog made its name supporting liberal interventionism in the mid-2000s and supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in an effort to promote a move towards democratic government in those countries, following rule by dictators and clerics. I do not believe it was wrong to do so. The effort to spread democracy was an effort worth making. That it ultimately failed, does not mean it was wrong to try. But we have, hopefully, learned a lesson and should not repeat the mistake.
The truth of the matter is that there was only a small and barely significant minority in these counties who shared these ambitions. The vast majority were culturally and religiously inclined to rule by strongmen. These despots held onto power by the sword (or rather Kalashnikov) they held in one hand, and the holy book they held in the other. Outside of – broadly speaking – the western world, there is little appetite for democracy. It is not a traditional value.
It took eons to evolve in our civilisation and it simply could not be imposed and expected to stick in a decade or two elsewhere. It was always going to revert to barbarism and theocracy the second we dropped our guard.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to the allied coalition countries losing almost 9000 personnel killed in action, and 70,000 wounded – and many of these were ‘life-changing’ injuries. This is a huge sacrifice and it would be comforting to think that it was worth it. It wasn’t. This is not to diminish for a second the service and sacrifice our armed forces made, nor the personal cost to families who lost loved ones, or whose loved ones returned with lasting physical and mental disabilities. But the fact of the matter is, Iraq today is a lawless failed state and the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile grifter lawyers and self-styled human rights activists molest veterans in the courts and use these conflicts to agitate against the West. One of the ironies is that our noble attempt to spread democracy around the world ended up becoming a cudgel used to assault our own democracies by our own useful idiots, subversive agitators, foreign mischief makers and – most significantly – hordes of people hailing from non-Western parts of the globe with no loyalty to our own societies but whom we’d allowed to settle here. If this last part offends your liberal sensibilities – as it once would have mine – just visit a city like London or New York and see how many throng to wave the flags of our enemies and chant slogans calling for their victory and our destruction at every opportunity.
And oh did we pay dearly for this. It cost the UK an estimated £50 Billion and the US $5 Trillion, with nothing to show for it but buyers’ remorse and no reverse charge option.
Part of the reason for the high cost both financially and in casualties was our doctrine of “Hearts & Minds”. This is also something I naively thought might work and was worth a try. There is a point in life where one’s liberal side foolishly believes that at the end of the day we share a common humanity, and really, everyone wants the same thing: a nice life, moderate prosperity, safety and security for their children, and a coca cola in the refrigerator. If anything, the past quarter century has done nothing but disabuse me of this silly idea.
Kemi Badenoch got into trouble for expressing the truism: not all cultures are equal. I suspect even the people tutting and pretending to choke on their tea in horror know in their hearts that this is true. Indeed, the inescapable truth is that some civilisations (I use the word in its broadest sense) are horrible; the people are savage, the customs cruel, and the laws mad… and that’s the way they like it, and that’s the way they choose to live, and they will resist any attempt to change it. As it transpired, that is ultimately what the Iraqis and the Afghans wanted. That is what they got, again, the moment we got out of their way.
Indeed, it was the futile effort to win the hearts and minds of the heartless and mindless that cost us dearly. The effort to avoid civilian casualties or “collateral damage” left our soldiers and civilian personnel open to IEDs and suicide bombers. Our efforts to train their security forces to take over allowed enemy fighters to pose as recruits and breach our bases, leading to loss of life. The governments we tried to support and mentor ended up disloyal and corrupt.
There is no way to sugar-coat it: liberal interventionism was a shambolic mess. A noble, well-meaning, optimistic, shambolic mess.
Our reward for our efforts to spread freedom and democracy is a smug generation of young people denouncing our leaders as “the real war criminals” and greasy conspiracy podcasters sneering about “the war for oil”. They will come to live in interesting times of their own making.
And so now the question turns to Iran.
We want to stop them getting a nuclear weapon. We want to stop their obsession with “Death to America”, “Death to Great Britain” and “Wipe Israel Off The Map” rhetoric and preparation. Regime change would be a huge bonus, and likely be of service to the other aims. We believe there is a groundswell of democratically-minded Iranians who would like to see the backs of the mullahs and ayatollahs. Let’s hope that is true.
But we must not make the same mistake again. We must not put “boots on the ground”. Iraq and Afghanistan proved it was pointless and it just hands a propaganda opportunity to our enemies when, unavoidably, civilians get caught in the crossfire between us and the inevitable insurgency.
We should just use strategic bombing to achieve our aims. If the regime survives and has learned its lesson not to threaten us or our allies, let them carry on. If they change tack back to threatening us, we should bomb them into obedience. If the Iranian people seize the opportunity and overthrow the regime, I wish them luck, but whether they do or do not is up to them. We should not get involved.
I would like to think that if there is regime change in Teheran, the new government will be pro-West and pro-democracy. Frankly, it is a coin toss. I’m not sure anyone at this stage can predict what might replace the mad mullahs. Perhaps it will be the Communists, who – frankly – are just a secular version of the theocrats, and just as anti-West and anti-Israel as their bearded opponents. Who can say?
If it is a benign regime, we should make every effort to normalise relations and take the opportunity to reshape the Middle East which, without the Ayatollah’s poison and his proxies, would look very different. But, if they are something else other than this ideal, that is up to the Iranian people too. For our part, we should keep an eye on them and if they misbehave, bomb them.
But otherwise leave them to it. We cannot afford to put our boots on their ground.
I sense a reluctance to say plainly the obvious, so I’m going to call it: Diplomacy is dead. International law is dysfunctional. This century will go to the mighty. It is the century of the bomb. Our task is to stop our enemies getting bombs while building bigger and better bombs of our own – in bulk. If we fail in this, our civilisation – based on democracy, rationality, liberal values and individual freedoms – will be a historical footnote. The future will belong to those who are unashamed to use force in their own interests. It had better be us.
This is not new thinking. This is what humanity has known since the dawn of time, except for a brief and bizarre period of mad optimism at the tail end of the 20th century. Diplomacy has failed because we thought we were all speaking the same language, and – with greater understanding – we could make all our interests align. We aren’t, and they can’t. But there is one universal language that everyone ultimately understands: force.
We had better regain our fluency in this, the true lingua franca. Fast.
