John Bolton offers up his take on Iran and nuclear weapons via the WSJ.
It is hard to conclude anything except that the Obama administration is resigned to Iran possessing nuclear weapons. While U.S. policy makers will not welcome that outcome, they certainly hope as a corollary that Iran can be contained and deterred. Since they have ruled out the only immediate alternative, military force, they are doubtless now busy preparing to make lemonade out of this pile of lemons.
President Obama's likely containment/deterrence strategy will feature security assurances to neighboring countries and promises of American retaliation if Iran uses its nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for this seemingly muscular rhetoric, the simple fact of Iran possessing nuclear weapons would alone dramatically and irreparably alter the Middle East balance of power. Iran does not actually have to use its capabilities to enhance either its regional or global leverage.
At first blush, one might ask, what does any of this have to do with the American Revolution, or conservatism today. Lately, I've diverted some attention from the headlines to go back and read some history from the American Revolution.
While reading of the various campaigns and conflicts is compelling, an over-arching reality of the American Revolution is that it could not have succeeded quite as it did without global intervention. While reasonably quick to celebrate France's support and intervention, the American cause was still much in doubt until the French, Spanish and even the Dutch engaged Britain militarily.
Until then, the Brits had decided to simply wait the colonies out, harassing our ports, thinking we'd eventually come back begging for some substandard form of liberty born of economic need. It might have worked, save for the global war that enveloped their navy and even threatened their homeland, eventually.
Freedom was on the march and won, not only due to American defiance, but because of the global powers pursuing their own interests abroad. So, when I see de facto isolationist libertarians like a Rand Paul rising within the GOP and read of the non-interventionist handwringings of the American Left, I know that, unlike 1776, freedom is not on the march in the world today. It is in retreat.
What George Bush knew, or seemed to, was, when that is the case, despotism and tyranny eventually rule. Oh, it won't be that easy, or cut and dried. And eventually we may pay a terrible price for an American re-trenchment driven by provincial interests. And the price will likely be more in blood and treasure than we can even imagine right now. But it is a price that will be paid if genuine freedom is to prevail in the world.
For better or worse, like all other nations, America has always been a self-interested one. But as a myopic self-interest seems to be taking hold of her just now, American historians may one day look back on this period and write, if only things had gone differently, somehow. Unfortunately, I fear they won't.
How ironic that, on several levels, self-interest is always the enemy of liberty when it leans toward self-indulgence. And it's hard to argue that America has not become a severely self-indulgent nation over it's many, most recent years. Perhaps it's always been inevitable, as some have always insisted.
Shame.
