Yale University nestles in New England. But some recent graduates have buried it in sandy adventurism abroad.
Founded by Puritan Congregationalists in 1701, Yale has educated the last three American presidents — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. And another Yalie, Sen. Hillary Clinton, may run on the 2008 presidential ticket.
Kinda makes you wonder about Yale. Is it more Bush League than Ivy League?
Don’t blame Yale for the Bushes’ international adventurism. At least, don’t blame Michael Reisman, Yale’s professor of international law, who in 2004 gave The Hunt Lecture — heard by everyone in the international community save those people who needed to hear it the most.
Is President Bush listening now? Or is he cutting class again?
Maybe Bush is lounging in the Oval Office, soaking up the “optimism” of Laura’s sunburst carpet. Or maybe he has sneaked off to his Crawford ranch’s artificial lake stocked with specially cross-bred catfish genetically designed to make catching that 7-pounder, Bush bragged about, easy.
Actually, real Texans use those 7-pounders as bait to catch “real” catfish two or three times that size. But if Bush is listening, we must move fast because his attention span is notoriously short.
So I’ve abstracted Reisman’s lecture.
Two years old now, it promises an infinitely better future, provided those once-and-future Yalies pay attention.
“Regime change,” like America’s toppling of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, “is (almost always) a bad idea,” Reisman warns. It can be “noble” to use America’s considerable firepower “to liberate a people from a government that poses no imminent or prospective threat to us, but is so despotic, violent, and vicious that those suffering under it cannot shake it off.”
But nobility isn’t everything. Even when military invasion and occupation arising from noble impulses are “internationally lawful” and “feasible,” Reisman asserts, they’re “often — but not always — misconceived.”
And even as regime change becomes more popular and widespread, “successful regime changes,” Reisman cautions, “whether nationally or internationally initiated and supervised, have come to seem less and less feasible.”
That means, they don’t work. Indeed, notes Reisman: “It is certain that the United States could completely destroy Iraq in a few hours.”
However, “(i)t is not certain that it could, at a nationally or internationally acceptable price, control Iraq’s behavior.”
And the “hideous,” brash, and unrelenting violence by Iraqi insurgents has reduced America’s national protections.
America is fast on its way to losing its military.
“Regime change requires regime changers,” Reisman reminds us, “for which fewer and fewer may volunteer.”
America “may not be able to maintain a sufficiently large and effective volunteer and reserve force if prospective volunteers believe that their mission is no longer defense of the nation but the grueling task of changing regimes in other states.”
Yale graduate Bush now threatens to attack nuclear-proliferating Iran. Even if a US-led strike against Iran were noble, lawful, and feasible, is it the right thing to do? Is it wise?
A review of Reisman’s criteria answers “no.”
“It is easy,” Reisman says, “to conlude that a regime is wicked and violent.”
But the next steps are hard. Self-interested scabs like Ahmed Chalabi aside, choosing a workable, replacement regime “is difficult and indeed culturally arrogant.”
And even after all this, “the regime changers cannot say ‘mission accomplished’ and fly off. They must supervise a transformation”, which is easily stymied by “the persistent force of nationalism, culture, religion, language, and other forces of identity.”
Indeed, neoconism has failed because of its Hegelian flaw — a belief that democracy is so obviously ideal that all people will just rise up, overthrow their corrupt rulers, and establish democratic governments. Reisman notes that Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Union’s first foreign affairs commissar after the Bolshevik Revolution, believed the same about communism. Was Trotsky the first neocon? It sounds outrageous, but Reisman implies neoconism is “a type of democratic Trotskyism that, mutatis mutandis, assumes the same,” blithely ignoring powerful forces of local parochialism at its regime changers’ peril.
Should Yale grad George W. Bush bomb Iran? Should he follow the neocons’ Iraqi model and invade, occupy, and oust Iran’s government and the mullahs who man it?
Paraphrasing Reisman’s directive, the A+ answer is no: “The conditions are not propitious, the costs are unknowable but likely to be high, and durable international support is uncertain.” Think about it!
Turkey, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — all volatile states — share borders with Iran. China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are close by. Instability at any point could lead to a conflagration far exceeding the scope of any traditional World War III model.
Reisman’s alternative to the neocons’ Armageddon? Use another strategy. Diplomacy can work. It could even be popular.
Earlier this week, Bush got a letter from the engineer who runs Iran. It’s time to write a letter back. It’s time to talk. A Yale grad should be able to handle that.
