A week ago, Rudy Giuliani suggested the U.S. would overthrow the Iranian regime. This is a bad idea. Aside from the reality that, despite what you’ve been told, Iran can strike back, it also violates the most basic rules of sovereignty, which were developed to avoid catastrophic war.
Catholic and Protestant powers fought the devastating 30 years war in the 17th Century. The conflict resulted in the widespread destruction of Central Europe as the Hapsburgs and France sought to strangle Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation. More than eight million soldiers and civilians were slaughtered before the Peace of Westphalia brought about the modern state system based on non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.
While I support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I’m a believer in the sovereignty of nation states, to include China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba. That doesn’t mean we have to trade with them or allow their citizens access to our schools, technology and territory but we should refrain from attempting to overthrow their governments. We have meddled in the internal affairs of other states, and, now that it’s been done to us, we find we don’t like it.
All politics is local. The unique problems, capabilities and cultures of each state are present in their political system. When we try and change a state’s political regime, we more often than not are engaged in a fool’s errand. Examples of our more recent failures include South Vietnam, the Contra War in Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. Regardless of the amount of money, weapons and destruction unleashed in those states, our interference did not succeed in producing the desired ending despite the tremendous cost in blood and treasure. In fact, our interference had a lot of negative unintended consequences such as destabilizing refugee flows, increased terrorism and, in the case of South Vietnam, the collapse of neighboring countries.
This doesn’t mean we have to ignore crimes like genocide or aggressive war. But, if we’re to take even a passing glance at recent U.S. history, we didn’t lift a finger to stop genocide in Rwanda or Myanmar and are actively participating in a war which may have genocidal results in Yemen (although Yemen is 5 simultaneous wars going on).
When partisans point to “our” success in the Warsaw Pact’s collapse or revolutions in places like Ukraine, they mistakenly take credit for changes implemented by local people who wanted a say in their own governance. One of humanity’s most enduring characteristics is we don’t like being told what to do, especially by people from another tribe.
We’ve currently got troops deployed in over 150 countries. That doesn’t count intelligence operations or military contractors. Aside from the cost, it likely decreases our security by providing targets and allowing whomever we support in that country to be labeled foreign puppets. More importantly, we do not have a shared history with many of these countries, which means we easily get played by their politicians, who, like most of our politicians, are not interested in a greater good but rather power. Our founders warned against entangling alliances primarily because we’d wind up getting wrapped up in their issues instead of our own – two particular examples being Israel and Saudi Arabia.
By interfering in the internal affairs of states we don’t like, we give greater power to the very people we oppose. It gives the dictators and authoritarians an excuse to increase repression, jail opposition leaders and label all who oppose the regime as traitors. Leave them alone and the people will eventually ask, why are we putting up with this unnecessary bullshit?
Two great examples of how this works with other states are China and Russia. China rose through the 80s until a couple of years ago by not appearing as a threat. China was able to wield enormous soft power because they didn’t appear to be actively engaged in the geo-political games other major powers played. Once Xi assumed power, China stepped up its interference in other countries with predictable results: Australia realized it was under threat, Sri Lanka began to understand that it was being taken advantage of, Vietnam grew closer to both the United States and India, resentment in Africa began to rise as people started seeing a replay of colonial interference suffered at the hands of Western powers and the United States began to take China as a serious threat. Likewise, Russian actions under Putin have shattered relations with Britain, Scandinavia and much of Western Europe. Russian interference in the U.S. election has raised legitimate doubts as to the ultimate loyalty of the President and the Republican Party, which will lead to greater antipathy towards Russia when its puppets are no longer in power.
In my humble opinion, the surest way to influence the world is by example. We didn’t win the Cold War with dirty tricks, we won it with free speech, rule of law, greater political, economic and labor equality, and hard science as objective truth. Our example has faded as our elites attempt to rig the political and economic system, economic inequalities grew and we became superstitious to the point of not accepting the easily observable scientific reality of climate change.
The regime change game has lead to millions of deaths and trillions of dollars flushed down the drain. Let’s quit trying to control the world and instead focus on controlling ourselves.
Wes Clark Jr. 