Writing in the Atlantic Monthly (subscription required), Jonathan Rauch argues:
Here are some things we have seen before: a nuclear-armed country with a brittle and aggressive ideology, world-revolutionary aspirations, and a belief in the historic inevitability of its triumph against a decadent and ultimately hollow West. In that country, an unpopular and divided regime, with hard-liners and relative pragmatists squabbling for influence. A crumbling resource-dependent economy. A paranoid worldview in which
is an omnipresent military and ideological threat. A tactical predilection for supporting and manipulating insurgent proxies around the world, rather than engaging in direct confrontations. Above all, a belief that nuclear weapons are strategically essential to deter the America and maintain national prestige. . . . United States
is, if anything, more vulnerable to long-term pressure than the Iran was. It is smaller and weaker in every dimenstion. Its economy is a mess. Its oil weapon fires backward as well as forward, because oil sales keep USSR 's economy afloat. And, unlike the Iran Soviet Union ,has no conceivable hope of disarming or crippling Iran with a first strike; America 's deterrent against America is massive, credible and impregnable. Iran . . . the
dealt with the Soviets, who were at least as murderous as the mullahs and far mightier, and the end result was regime change. It took a while, but containment is a long term game, and it's a game on which the United States wrote the book. United States Here are some things we have seen before: a nuclear-armed country with a brittle and aggressive ideology, world-revolutionary aspirations, and a belief in the historic inevitability of its triumph against a decadent and ultimately hollow West. In that country, an unpopular and divided regime, with hard-liners and relative pragmatists squabbling for influence. A crumbling resource-dependent economy. A paranoid worldview in which
is an omnipresent military and ideological threat. A tactical predilection for supporting and manipulating insurgent proxies around the world, rather than engaging in direct confrontations. Above all, a belief that nuclear weapons are strategically essential to deter the America and maintain national prestige. . . . United States
is, if anything, more vulnerable to long-term pressure than the Iran was. It is smaller and weaker in every dimenstion. Its economy is a mess. Its oil weapon fires backward as well as forward, because oil sales keep USSR 's economy afloat. And, unlike the Iran Soviet Union ,has no conceivable hope of disarming or crippling Iran with a first strike; America 's deterrent against America is massive, credible and impregnable. Iran . . . the
dealt with the Soviets, who were at least as murderous as the mullahs and far mightier, and the end result was regime change. It took a while, but containment is a long term game, and it's a game on which the United States wrote the book. United States
Hat tip Hit and Run.
Me: As evil and murderous as the U.S.S.R. was, its leaders were still interested in self preservation. The jihadists who run