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September 26, 2007
My Commenters Is Smarter Than I: The Soviet Union Was Nuts Edition
Nony writes:
the leaders in Iran don't look any crazier to me than the Soviet leadership did back in the day.
In fact, Iran looks a heckuva lot less crazy in a lot of ways. Their society seems to be a bit more open, for one thing, and their citizens seem to know what's going on in the world. The citizens there are also fairly well off, unlike the average Soviet citizen, and therefore have much more to lose. Soviet society was much more geared towards militarization than Iranian society seems to be - heck, the Iranians still allow their students and university professors to somewhat openly criticize their government policies - something that would have been unheard of from anyone living in the USSR.
All true. The common rejoinder here is that the leadership of Iran are a bunch of eschatological nutters who can't be trusted to employ such things as "rationality," or "sense." This flies in the face of recent Iranian actions, most of which have been rational, none of which have involved triggering a nuclear, or even conventional, counterattack from stronger nations, but whatever.
Remember here that the Soviet Union wasn't just a mean country. It was the epicenter of an expansionistic ideology that believed its historical triumph to be pre-assured. It was as religious as any religion. And it actually had a basis for this belief, as communism was a superficially attractive ideology that was attracting adherents in major countries -- the US included. And yet we not only dealt with the Soviets, but spoke to their leaders and welcomed them on our soil. Because we were the superpower, and we believed in our country.
September 26, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
"It was the epicenter of an expansionistic ideology that believed its historical triumph to be pre-assured. It was as religious as any religion. And it actually had a basis for this belief, as communism was a superficially attractive ideology that was attracting adherents in major countries."
Irony, thy name is my home country.
Posted by: akaison | Sep 26, 2007 10:36:11 AM
Not just an inherently expansionistic ideology - actual expansionism (see: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Estonia, etc., etc.). Actual support of armed insurgencies and violent groups in countries around the world, to an extent that makes Iran's meddling in its immediate neighborhood look quaint.
Posted by: SDM | Sep 26, 2007 10:47:37 AM
But 9/11 changed everything.
It's true -- the sun actually revolves around the earth now. And Giuliani takes his marriage vows seriously now too.
Plus the Russians weren't scary muslims with aspirations for nukes. They were Europeans (kind of) with shitloads of nukes. And we all know that the former is scarier than the latter.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | Sep 26, 2007 10:50:35 AM
However, one should note that there are precedents for refusing national leaders entry to the U.S. -- Eisenhower, on Clarence Douglas Dillon's advice, rebuffed Nasser's request to visit the U.S. due to the Egyptian leader's strong attacks on American policies. (Eisenhower did note in his communications on the matter that Israeli PM Ben-Gurion had visited the U.S. unofficially, but the interests of fairness were not judged sufficient to overrule other concerns.)
I wouldn't care to argue that Dillon was right in his advice -- and I do agree that the hysteria over Ahmadinejad's trip makes us look like a petty and irrational state -- but there wasn't anything extraordinary about the decision not to give a dictator with adversarial interests a measure of prestige through an official visit.
Posted by: WatchfulBabbler | Sep 26, 2007 10:56:46 AM
Actually....
There was a weekly-standard editorial a bit back proving that the Islamoheretiqueerofacists are just the tools of the all pervasive, but completely invisible, communist conspiracy that still lives amongst us and tries to destroy America from within.
:).
Posted by: r4d20 | Sep 26, 2007 11:04:02 AM
Here is a helpful link to the English language version of the Iranian branch of the Red Crescent: http://www.rcs.ir/en/index.php. I urge all of you to make as big of a donation as you can afford.
Posted by: LarryM | Sep 26, 2007 11:32:14 AM
I guess the upshot of this is that the U.S. should normalize relations with Iran. There have been people on both sides who've wanted to so over the course of every administration since Carter's. But it still hasn't been done. And I'd bet that will still be the case five years from now.
Posted by: henry evans | Sep 26, 2007 11:36:40 AM
"Remember here that the Soviet Union wasn't just a mean country. It was the epicenter of an expansionistic ideology that believed its historical triumph to be pre-assured. It was as religious as any religion. And it actually had a basis for this belief, as communism was a superficially attractive ideology that was attracting adherents in major countries -- the US included. And yet we not only dealt with the Soviets, but spoke to their leaders and welcomed them on our soil. Because we were the superpower, and we believed in our country."
This really isn't true post WW2, and by the sixties the USSR was run by technocrats with few true believers left and mostly lip service being paid to the communist ideals. It's astonishing how much of the Cold War was based on fear, preconceived notions and old habits on both sides.
Posted by: Mike in Denmark | Sep 26, 2007 12:10:12 PM
WatchfulBabbler says: "there wasn't anything extraordinary about the decision not to give a dictator with adversarial interests a measure of prestige through an official visit."
I'd argue that the world has changed since Eisehower's day, not because of 9/11, but if you like, because of CNN and Al Jazeera. Back then, Nasser was just a brown man from a tinpot little North African country. As a generality, the world has changed and it's not perceived as anything but unbecoming arrogance to adopt that kind of attitude today...
Posted by: Meh | Sep 26, 2007 12:18:21 PM
The Soviet Union was a secular, bureaucratic society, a kind of giant General Motors with the Politburo as the board of directors. This was in line with Lenin's admiration for the rational organization of capitalist firms and American scientific-management techniques as articulated by Frederick W. Taylor. The Soviet system was an alternative form of industrialism: i.e., the rational organization of society for the maximization of production. (See Khrushchev's famous "Kitchen Debate" with Nixon in Moscow in 1959, where they sparred over which system was more productive. One thing they agreed on: they didn't like jazz music.)
When it became obvious by the 1980s that capitalism was a more efficient form of industrialism than state socialism, the latter was junked in remarkably short order. (This eventuality was very much in line with Marx's theory that -- in a kind of Darwinian selection process -- the economic structure of society, and attendant political institutions and ideology, will take the form that best promotes the advancement of society's technological powers.)
Few people realized that the end of the Soviet empire in 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the American empire. I believe that future historians will see the 1990s as the historical apex of U.S. power in the world -- for reasons having nothing at all to do with Bill Clinton and not a lot to do with George W.'s subsequent disastrous presidency, which merely quickened the inevitable. The U.S. has now entered a period of irreversible decline in terms of its hegemony on the world scene. Multiple overlapping and interacting factors, including but not limited to peak oil, the Internet, the rise of China and India, population pressure, climate change, water shortages, environmental breakdown, mean that we are entering a strongly interconnected multipolar world of crises and opportunities. The end of U.S. hegemony is to be welcomed, but that does not necessarily mean that the best days of the U.S. are in the past. A more humane, progressive U.S. could play a vital role in building a more humane, progressive world. Whether it will or not is the question. We're all going to sink or swim together. We live in interesting times.
Posted by: mijnheer | Sep 26, 2007 12:26:38 PM
The U.S. has now entered a period of irreversible decline
Faster please.
Posted by: LarryM | Sep 26, 2007 12:30:41 PM
A more humane, progressive U.S. could play a vital role in building a more humane, progressive world.
And pigs with large, powerful wings might migrate by air.
Posted by: Christmas | Sep 26, 2007 12:36:28 PM
Yeah, the Mullahs of Iran are just a bunch of good ol' boys....what's the big deal?
Posted by: El Viajero | Sep 26, 2007 12:38:02 PM
Well the Mullahs are no angels, but the people of Iran are FAR more worthy of support than the citezens of the United States.
And then there is the little point that, you know THE UNITED STATES IS THE AGGRESSOR.
But I suppose the bottom line is this: the baby murdering "national greatness" conservatives have been trying to engineer an apocalyptic war where people are forced to take sides. Well maybe what they didn't count on is WHICH side many of us, however reluctantly, are going to take sides with.
And a clue - it sure as hell isn't going to be the USA.
Posted by: patriot | Sep 26, 2007 12:54:46 PM
This really isn't true post WW2
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the Khruschev-era repression of rebellion in Hungary or the "Brezhnev Doctrine" of the 60s which specifically stated the Soviet Union's ability to use its military force to prop up Communist governments in eastern Europe (for example, crushing the Prague Spring on 1968). And the Soviets fought Afghanistan as late as the 80s.
Posted by: SDM | Sep 26, 2007 2:36:22 PM
Meh, just after WW2 was a bit hyperbolic on my part, but shortly after nonetheless. By the fifties those states were already communist so it isn't expansionism. The major territorial ambitions of the Soviet Union ended once it had its cordon sanitaire, which it then maintained brutally, like the US tried to preserve its interests in Korea, Taiwan, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile with the military and in a multitude of other places via the CIA and such wonderful institutions as the School of The Americas. Is one of these largely rational but exceedingly brutal states "meaner" than the other?
Posted by: Mike in Denmark | Sep 26, 2007 6:20:51 PM
Typo in the above post - Chile wasn't the military but the CIA.
Posted by: Mike in Denmark | Sep 26, 2007 6:24:26 PM
...people of Iran are FAR more worthy of support than the citezens of the United States.
And you wonder why people think the left hate America!
Posted by: El Viajero | Sep 27, 2007 5:05:59 PM
"Remember here that the Soviet Union wasn't just a mean country. It was the epicenter of an expansionistic ideology that believed its historical triumph to be pre-assured. It was as religious as any religion."
Ezra Klein, this time it's you who are nuts, regurgitating decades-old cold war propaganda as religion.
I thought akaison - "Irony, thy name is my home country" = had already said what was necessary when I read the second comment by SDM: "Actual support of armed insurgencies and violent groups in countries around the world". Again, that description is true of the USA at least as much as of the USSR. The US certainly deserves credit for having used terrorist tactics more systematically and more successfully than any other country during the cold war.
It is also worth remembering that a lot of the USA's current troubles have to do with the fact that the USA in the 1980s helped religious extremists with a thoroghly antimodern (implying anti-western) ideology overthrow a secular, modernist government just because of irrational antisocialism. That was called "liberation" of Afghanistan, and in case you don't remember, in the good ol' days of Soviet "meanness" and "expansionism", females could freely go to school and university in Kabul. It was the United States of America, the great defender of liberty and democracy, who made sure that this unnatural state of affairs had to end, and who helped reduce most of the city to rubble in the process. Now don't you uninfomed uneducated American amnesiacs start insulting the glorious Soviet Union. The Soviet Union wasn't any more expansionistic than your "home of the brave", and in most cases when it supported armed insurgency (Nicaragua? Mocambique? Angola?), the Soviets were at least helping the side that looked more like the good guys. The US otoh were in cahoots with every single right-wing dictator on this planet for at least some time, including Pinochet, Suharto, Mobutu, Noriega, Marcos, Saddam Hussein.
Ezra Klein, thou shalt not lie.
Posted by: piglet | Sep 28, 2007 11:50:34 AM
SDM: "And the Soviets fought Afghanistan as late as the 80s." You idiot. The US fought Afghanistan, not the Soviets! The legitimate government of Afghanistan of the time was socialist and asked for Soviet support when attacked by Mujaheddin insurgency funded by the CIA.
Posted by: piglet | Sep 28, 2007 11:53:43 AM
olodronbas
Posted by: monpasnod | Oct 28, 2007 2:52:43 AM
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