America and Israel: Tick, Tock

When the dust has settled, partisan rancor has gone the way of all flesh, and the history of our times gets written sine ira et studio, what will observers say about developments in February and March, 2010. No one really knows, but I will hazard the following guess:

In those days, there was a clock ticking in the background, but no one in Washington seemed to pay it any heed. Nancy Pelosi was in her counting house counting all the votes. Steny Hoyer was exploring whether one could somehow bend the rules so that his colleagues could pass a controversial bill while telling their constituents that they had nothing to do with it. Bart Stupak, caught between the dictates of religious faith and political allegiance, was pondering when and how to sacrifice the former to the latter. And President Barack Obama issued threats to members of his own party in the House of Representatives. All of this was done in pursuit of passing into law a profoundly unpopular bill that promised to bankrupt the country, drive prospective physicians out of the profession, deprive the elderly of Medicare benefits they had paid for long ago, and reduce the quality of medical care for all but those comfortably ensconced within what came to be called the American nomenklatura. There was also material for burlesque. After being accused of sexually harassing the fellows on his staff, one Democratic Congressman attacked the White House Chief of Staff, calling him a “son of the devil’s spawn” and describing in arresting terms the manner in which the man practiced in the shower the ballet steps learned in his days as a bagman for the Daley machine in Chicago. It would have all been quite comic had there not been that clock in the background steadily ticking . . . in a country far away of which the Americans knew little or nothing.

There were, to be sure, other events. In a coordinated effort directed by the President, Joe Biden picked a quarrel with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Hillary Clinton vented her spleen against the Israeli government for announcing that it intended in a modest manner to increase the size of a long-established, already sizable, strategically located settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem; Robert Gibbs snarled and sneered and ran his mouth on a subject about which he knew little or nothing and cared even less; and the President met with the Israeli Prime Minister in circumstances designed to broadcast his disdain to the Arab world. All of this was done with an eye to bringing down a democratically-elected Israeli government and setting the stage for a Middle East settlement between Israel and a Palestinian leader who lacked firm Palestinian support, who would have fallen from power when Hamas seized the Gaza strip had the Israelis not used their checkpoints on the West Bank to thwart Hamas’ operations there, and who was in no position to negotiate any sort of lasting agreement with anyone about anything at all. This, too, would have been a matter of comic relief had that infernal clock not gone on ticking . . . in distant Teheran.

Barack Obama appeared to think that he would be remembered and celebrated as the architect of an historic healthcare reform, and he seemed to have persuaded nearly everyone in his party that this was so. He seemed also to have entertained an expectation that it would fall to him to preside over a comprehensive Middle East settlement. Neither was destined to happen. By hook or by crook, the Democrats managed to shove the healthcare bill through the House, but it turned out to be nothing more than a last-ditch, suicide mission on the part of a Progressive coalition on its last legs. And the Obama administration’s inept maneuvers made the Middle East settlement that the Americans had long sought all the more elusive.

Most of what went on in those years in Washington – apart from the buffoonery – was unremarkable. If President Obama is remembered at all, it is because it was on his watch that the fascist dictatorship in Iran got nuclear weapons. In comparative perspective, nothing else that he did or did not do really mattered at all.

Such is the verdict that, I think, will be rendered – for our time resembles an earlier epoch about which a similar verdict has already been reached. Who remembers the social programs adopted in England and France between 1933 and 1936? It was with them, however, that Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Pierre Laval, Leon Blum, and the like were largely preoccupied. It was as if, when the ship of state came within sight of a political iceberg, its officers and crew turned to rearranging the deck chairs on what was for them a functional equivalent of the Titanic.

In that earlier period, Europe was deep in the Great Depression; class strife loomed large; and the French, in particular, suffered from a stalemate between the right and the left. Almost no one had the stomach to contemplate a renewal of war. Their experience in the trenches during the First World War had encouraged the English and the French to embrace pacifism, and Ramsay MacDonald, prime minister of Britain in 1933, was not alone in hoping that Nazi Germany could be appeased.

Of course, attempts were made to contain Germany. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania negotiated the Little Entente Pact of Consolidation. Austria, Hungary, and Italy signed the Rome Protocols. The Soviet Union appointed a Jew as foreign minister, joined the League of Nations, and signed mutual assistance treaties with Czechoslovakia and France. The British, the French, and the Italians formed the Stresa Front.

These gestures were, however, all half-hearted. At no time did anyone make serious military preparations, and Adolf Hitler found it easy to pick apart these nascent alliances. Poland signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in January 1934; Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in June, 1935, shortly after joining the Stresa Front; and Benito Mussolini, who had massed troops at the Brenner Pass after Hitler had engineered the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on 25 July 1934, opted in the end to attempt to play the two sides against one another; and, when it became clear which was the stronger and the more resolute, he jettisoned the Rome Protocols and lined up with his fellow fascists. It was not hard for Il Duce, as he called himself, to read the handwriting on the wall – for when Germany’s like-named Fűhrer remilitarized the Rhineland in early March, 1936, the British and the French did nothing more than register pro-forma diplomatic protests.

The British and the French at that time had more excuse then than we can claim today. They felt only revulsion when they contemplated the carnage of World War I, and the former had long since become persuaded that Germany’s treatment in the Versailles Treaty was unjust. The combination of a sense of guilt with terror can all too easily paralyze a people. None of this, however, can justify their resolutely looking the other way when Hitler repudiated the central terms of the Locarno Pact, remilitarized the Rhineland, and laid the groundwork for a decisive shift in the balance of power on the continent of Europe. To anticipate what was to come, one had only to read Mein Kampf.

But, of course, no one at the time wanted to read Hitler’s magnum opus and think about the unthinkable. It was far less distressing to suppose that the German leader could not have really meant what he had written ten years before. In any case, we are in no position to level criticism today. We have not suffered carnage on the scale that the British and the French did in World War I. In the course of the Cold War, we hardly suffered at all. And there is no reason whatsoever for us to feel any guilt with regard to our conduct during or in the aftermath of that struggle. The Cold War was America’s finest hour. In human history, there has never been a sustained confrontation between two great hegemonic powers lasting half a century in which, relative to the size of the existing populations, there was less collateral damage inflicted by the victorious power.

Of course, when in a tizzy, one can always punt. That is what the Europeans did in the early 1930s, and that is what we with less justification have repeatedly done in the last few years. What other purpose does the United Nations these days serve? It is the perfect place in which to bury troublesome questions that one does not want to face. By referring matters of moment to it, as our European allies have so frequently shown, one can stake out the moral high ground and leave everyone with a comforting sense that something is being done without having to do anything substantive oneself. On the Iranian nuclear program, we have had report after report, and the Security Council has passed resolution after resolution. All that happens is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plays for time, alternately pretending to negotiate and then threatening his Arab neighbors, the state of Israel, Europe, and the United States – all the while thumbing his nose with aplomb at everyone concerned.

Some will say that Iran is not Germany, that it is in no way as formidable as German once was – and, of course, they are right. But this only makes our inaction less excusable – for if an Iran lacking nuclear weapons is not especially formidable, one cannot say the same about an Iran equipped with long-range missiles and brandishing nuclear weapons. One could, of course, point to the Iranian capacity to interfere with the transport of oil in the Persian Gulf; one could allude to the damage that Hezbollah could do; and one could refer to the capacity of the Iranian regime to unleash terrorist cells throughout the world. But if one were to lay emphasis on the Iranian capacity to project power and disrupt the world economy in the present circumstances, what would one be saying about Ahmadinejad’s ability to do both once his compatriots have equipped themselves with nuclear weapons and the systems necessary for their delivery?

There are two brute facts that are pertinent. First, like Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, Ahmadinejad’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles would profoundly alter the balance of power. Is there anyone who seriously thinks that, when it had a relatively free hand, the Islamic Republic of Iran would conduct its affairs in the manner of a saturated power? In assessing the significance of what is about to take place, one must keep in mind the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf and just how large a percentage of the oil that fuels the world economy is exported through that narrow body of water.

The second brute fact is no less easy to discern: In matters such as the one that concerns us here, diplomacy is bound to be ineffectual if it is not backed by a credible threat that, if one’s requests are refused, one will resort to force.

Think about what it means that, in circumstances as dire as those we now face, our leaders are devoting their energy to ramming a highly unpopular healthcare bill down our throats and to attacking a democratically elected government for announcing a modest increase in the size of a strategically located settlement. As Obama, Pelosi, Hoyer, Emanuel, Clinton, and Gibbs waste their energy on comparatively inconsequential matters, the clock in Teheran merrily ticks on – and for us time will soon, by all reports, be running out.