Ukraine and the Axis of Evil
Photo by Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, CC BY-SA 2.0
Over the past few months and years, an interesting dynamic has been emerging in the Russo-Ukraine war. Russia, which began the war on its own back in 2014 and was still on its own when it launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, has built its own coalition.
Unlike NATO, which began life as a Cold War alliance against the Soviet Union, the new Russian coalition is not a continuation of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet bloc answer to NATO. Ironically, many former Warsaw Pact members and former Soviet republics are now members of NATO. Instead, the new Russian confederation bears a strong resemblance to the Axis of Evil.
For those of you who don’t remember, George W. Bush coined the term, “Axis of Evil,” in 2002. In a speech just a few months after September 11, Bush labeled three rogue terrorist states, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, saying, “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
We know what happened to then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Within a few short years, a US-led coalition deposed Saddam and ultimately tried and executed him for a long list of crimes against the people of Iraq. Today, Iraq has its problems but it is no longer a terrorist state.
Iran and North Korea are still around, course, and its interesting to note that both are actively involved in the Russian effort in Ukraine.
Last spring, I did a feature on the drone war in Ukraine, and as it turns out, Iran is a major supplier of high tech dronesand ballistic missiles for the Russians. Often, these weapons are used in terror attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets, which is pretty much par for the course for both Iran and Russia.
In fact, Danny Citrinowicz of the Atlantic Council reports that Iran is usurping Russia’s longtime role as a major global arms supplier. A variety of factors that include both sanctions and the underwhelming performance of Russian soldiers and equipment in Ukraine have combined to diminish Russia’s role as a weapons exporter.
Likewise, North Korea has long been supplying Russia with military equipment and munitions such as artillery shells and missiles. In return, Russia provides North Korea with food, economic aid, and military assistance. The obvious question is how hard up does Vladimir Putin have to be to look to North Korea for help?
Pretty hard up for manpower as it turns out since Russia has suffered an estimated 600,000 casualties, including 115,000 dead, since 2022. Just this week, news broke that North Korea has assigned at least 3,000 soldiers to train in Russia and possibly take part in fighting. NBC News reports that 10-12,000 North Koreans are ultimately expected to possibly deploy to Ukraine.
But wait, there’s more!
China was not a member of Bush’s original Axis of Evil, but they are a mostly-silent partner in Putin’s anti-Ukraine coalition. China has flouted sanctions to become Russia’s largest trading partner, an action that has allowed Vladimir Putin to continue the war and engage in recent escalations. While China has not overtly provided weapons to Russia, it has supplied dual-use goods that aid the military effort.
China has a vested interest in helping Russia to avoid a defeat. Putin’s war has strained NATO and EU relations while also making the West focus on Europe. China also likely hopes that Western countries will be slow to adapt and replace weapons systems and munitions stocks transferred to Ukraine.
Make no mistake, China has its eye on Taiwan as is confirmed by recent war games simulating a blockade of the island nation. If Russia can break the West’s will in Ukraine, it will give China an advantage in their attempt to reclaim Taiwan. Even drawing out the Ukraine conflict and sapping the West’s strength would give China an advantage. If Ukraine is lost (or even saved) after a long an unpopular war, the West will be less likely to intervene when China makes its move on Taiwan.
And then there is Russia. Russia also was not part of the original Axis of Evil, but it is increasingly clear that Vladimir Putin is an aggressor with imperialist designs on the countries that used to be part of the various Russian empires and spheres of influence. That includes much of Europe.
This isn’t speculation. Putin has told us that he believes his historical destiny is to rebuild the Russian empire. As the saying goes, when authoritarians tell you what they want to do, believe them. That’s especially true when the authoritarian has already been acting on these goals for decades.
The problem for Putin is that, like the Ukrainians, other people for whom Russia domination is a recent and vivid memory are not anxious to go back under the thumb Mother Russia. Vladimir Putin is going to have a very bloody time trying to enslave them once again.
To make the situation even more strange, the American MAGA movement has emerged as a de facto ally of Putin’s Axis of Evil. Although some MAGA members align with Putin more or less openly, many others deny that their positions put them in Putin’s corner. Still, most of the MAGA world is virulently anti-Ukraine and anti-Zelensky. The Republican MAGA faction single-handedly blocked American aid to Ukraine for months last year despite a recent poll showing that37 percent of Republicans favor aid to Ukraine (we’ll call this the Nikki Haley faction). MAGA is obviously taking its marching orders from Donald Trump, whose plan to end the conflict essentially involves hanging Ukraine out to dry and giving Putin whatever he wants.
I think MAGA antipathy to Ukraine is based on several different factors. At a very basic level, Trump and MAGA blame Ukraine for Biden’s 2020 victory and Trump’s first impeachment. If Zelensky had played ball with Trump by announcing an investigation into the Bidens, there is little doubt that MAGA would view the country and conflict in a different light.
There is also a visceral desire to see anything associated with Joe Biden fail. When Russia launched its invasion in 2022, MAGA was quick to blame Biden for losing the country. Only Ukraine was not lost, thanks in large part to Biden and US aid. I am certain that at least part of anti-Ukraine sentiment is due to the country not conveniently dying in order to prove Trump right and make Biden look bad. Two years later, Trump’s prophecy of a Ukrainian defeat must be fulfilled because Trump is always right.
Take those ingredients, stir in Trump’s well documented affinity for dictators and MAGA’s isolationism and resistance to foreign aid to anyone (except maybe Israel), and I think we’ve got a pretty fair estimation of MAGA’s motives in Ukraine. The war and US aid converge at the same point where a lot of MAGA hot buttons intersect.
It may be off the mark to say that Ukraine’s fate depends on the outcome of the US presidential election. I think the war will continue as long as Putin thinks he can take the country. Even taking the entire country won’t end the fighting. A collapse of Free Ukraine would only transform the conflict into a guerrilla war. Nothing I’ve seen from the Ukrainians makes me think they’ll stop fighting for their freedom.
But aid to Ukraine does make the difference between having the weapons to defend themselves capably or dying noble-but-wasteful deaths. If Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, there is very little chance of meaningful US aid continuing.
And to bring it back full circle, that brings up a question MAGA should be asking itself: If you believe that Iran, North Korea, and China are hostile powers, why are you working to advance their goals when it comes to Russian aggression in Ukraine?
There are many things the MAGA right should think carefully about, but soul searching why their movement is aligned with Putin’s Axis of Evil should top the list.
Isolationism in the 1930s included some Americans who openly sympathized with Nazis. That isolationism gave way to the bloodiest conflict in human history in the 1940s. It isn’t so far fetched to think that modern isolationism might encourage the various members of the Axis of Evil to continue attacking their neighbors, eventually igniting another very bloody conflict that would almost certainly involve the US.
America has made mistakes as the leader of the free world, but one thing is certain: The world is a better place with us at the forefront of world affairs than it would be without us.
It’s not remotely surprising that MAGA supports reactionary dictatorship over liberal democracy.Report
I don’t think it’s useful to talk about the war in Ukraine in terms of Team Red and Team Blue… I get why people do it during an election cycle, but I’m not seeing good commentary or assessments when done that way.
If we drop ‘scoring points’ for one team or another, we’re left with the primary definition of success. What is success in Ukraine?
Ukrainian Maximal Success
1. Expulsion of *Russians* and Russian Forces from Ukraine, esp. Donbas region (i.e. de-Russification)
2. Expulsion of Russian forces from Ukraine including Crimea
3. Expulsion of Russian forces from Donbas
4. Expulsion of Russian forces from post-2014 borders – status quo ante.
5. Recognition of post-2014 borders
6. Expansion into Luhansk and all SE Ukraine
7. Expansion into Odessa and ‘landbridge’ to Moldova
8. Domination of a ‘rump’ Ukrainian polity based in Kiev or maybe Lviv.
9. Annexation of Ukraine.
Russian Maximal Success
In terms of diplomacy, Biden has played a pretty good hand supporting Ukraine… Ukraine has successfully defended against annexation, has held off Russian advances west towards Kiev, but lost territory SE along the coast up to and around Kherson. While inflicting significant casualties to Russians and exposing Russian readiness for operations; and thereby making Russia’s invasion costly and unsuccessful of primary objectives. That’s a win.
But whither hence?
I think some of the jejune predictions I saw here and various other parts of the internet of smashing Ukrainian offensives leading to Putin’s fall and the implosion of post-Soviet Russia (talk about Maximal…) have been tempered for all but the most die-hard Neo-Cons and Lib-Ints.
It would be foolish to cut-off aid to Ukraine; it would be foolish to expand the war; and it is foolish to encourage Ukraine to go on the offensive. It was ok to test Ukrainian offensive options last year in a somewhat optimistic hope that something might ‘break’. But that hypothesis has been tested and Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower to punch and counterpunch; at best it can maintain an opportunistic reserve to exploit a mistake. And/or maybe the occasional raid. (On the raid… raids can be good; they are best when they know that they are raids and not misinterpreted as strategic manoeuvres).
It is smart to continue to make any Russian movement costly… to keep increasing the costs and even to spread the costs to Russian infrastructure where reasonable.
But realistically, this means we’re in a stalemate that Ukraine is going to lose slowly. We can fund that loss so that it is costly for the Russians… and we should do that as long as the Russians won’t negotiate. And, war is risky and unpredictable… so maybe something will break Ukraine’s way. But the asymmetrical interest in Ukraine means that Russia will outlast everyone but Ukraine. And Ukraine is losing.
The best thing the US can do is emphasize the Ukrainian success in repelling the Russian invasion; pledge continued support, pledge compensation to Ukraine for rebuilding and to offset the inevitable loss of territory, and work with China to negotiate a settlement. Time is not on Ukraine’s side. On the chart above; realistically it means a settlement range between 4-6 with 5 being best case and 5.5 most likely (some southern buffer between Kherson and Crimea… ideally including Melitopol east as far as possible, possibly at the expense of land in Luhansk)
Russia claims victory and gets some territorial expansion and official recognition of a 2014+ borders.
Ukraine claims victory for punching the Russian bear and standing its ground; and gets portions of land it no longer controls returned; new international borders; engages is some ‘light ethnic and cultural cleansing’ in eastern Ukraine – no Russian schools/language/churches; recognizes the Autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and severs ties with Russian Orthodoxy; builds regional (non-NATO) alliance w/Poland and Baltics that enables western arms sharing and integration. And retools for whatever Russia may plan in the next 10-yrs, and watches like the rest of us what happens when Putin expires.
If we must, this is closer to the Democratic position under Biden — despite the over-the-top rhetoric of total Ukrainian victory — than it is to Trump — despite the over-the-top rhetoric of magically ending the war. The ‘problem’ is that it is most in our and Ukraine’s interest to end the war with some territorial concessions than it is to continue it indefinitely as Russia grinds Ukraine into dust… which means the current rhetoric for both Team Red and Team Blue is wrong for reasons that are easily understood as long as you aren’t blindly supporting Team Red or Team Blue at Ukraine’s expense.Report
A pretty cogent analysis but left out is the problem that for the war to end both sides need to want it to end and neither side is ready yet.Report
I think it’s addressed; at the simplest level if Ukraine is offering a 1 and Russia is offering a 9, then it isn’t that neither side would take any deal, its that the deals on offer are too far apart.
Of course, publicly both sides will take maximal positions; we don’t have a good idea of where their ‘real’ positions are… or what additional considerations would be required to accept a territorial number less than a ‘preferred’ territorial number.
Not only that, but there are considerations that China/US might trade that could impact Russia/Ukraine.
The US can afford to let Ukraine/Russia grind it out; I just don’t think Ukraine can.Report
Best case is the Russian empire falls apart and something better can come from it’s ashes. Even if that doesn’t happen, the amount of economic damage that Russia is doing to itself will keep it busy for decades.Report
Where I find the Biden admin’s position… confusing is in the failure to provide and allow use of longer range missiles. Not because I think total Russian defeat is on the table at this point. But because now that we know Ukrainians aren’t going to be able to retake significant territory any time soon the only way to force Russia to the table for a settlement is creating the possibility of Russian supply lines being degraded, and the fear that they could collapse. It makes no sense to do what we’ve done so far only to let Ukraine lose slowly.
Bigger picture thought is that while I think the Biden admin has played this decently well I often wonder if they actually have an endgame in mind or if they are just reacting.Report
The vibe I’ve gotten is they’re genuinely terrified of pushing the Russians too far and then ending up with some kind of nuke use on their hands. I personally think that fear is overwrought but I also can see even, say, a 10% chance of it making the Administrations hair stand on end. But over all I agree they played it tolerably well but one can always, in hindsight, imagine playing it better.Report
Maybe that’s the case.
I’ve found the whole trajectory of US foreign policy over the last 25 years mind bogglingly frustrating. We start out the century with these completely foolish adventures in nation building, which fail for all kinds of predictable reasons,* but then seem to have become overly timid when it comes to dealing with big, state actors where self interest, moral authority, and our objectively better vision for the world order are on firmer ground. Not that I’ve ever been a hawk by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes projecting strength and willingness to take risks that deep down you hope you never need to is what it takes to secure peace.
*The way the OP slides passed Iraq almost like it was somehow a success as opposed to a pointless waste that damaged American standing, and a precedent that Putin cites for his actions in Ukraine, is itself an example of the hall of mirrors in which we live, but that’s another story.Report
Agreed but that kind of shimmy regarding Afghanistan and Iraq is the only arrow neocons have left in their quiver.Report
Michael Ledeen, one of the more overtly imbecilic neocons, put it thusly: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”Report
I’d guess that the primary reason is there’s no guaranty that LRM will be used for interdiction and there’s a reasonable assumption that Ukraine will use them to broaden the theatre and an understandable recognition that retaliation against (Russian) cities would be ‘justified’.
It depends on what Team Biden (State, Intel, Def) think it would do to the conflict and whatever non-public negotiations they are having w/Russia and it’s patron.
On the specifics of this or that weapon, I agree that increasing capabilities to make the invasion more and more costly is useful; upto the point of triggering a regional war or an asymmetrical escalation by Russia.
Not privy to any further non-public information than the rest of us have, I can’t say what exactly that line should be on any given weapons system… but my sense is that Team Biden is acting under those constraints — and they aren’t unreasonable constraints.Report
They certainly aren’t and it’s impossible to know what we don’t know.
Nevertheless if my goal is to end this war as quickly as I can, the only pressure point on Putin left not involving direct NATO intervention is the possibility of mass mutiny in the Russian ranks. If that happens he risks all of the territory gained since 2022, and maybe more. I’d think that’s also the most rational play for Ukraine strategically, as opposed to, I dunno, indiscriminately firing at Belgorod, and at least as far as we know, they’ve operated Western weapons within the constraints required by the suppliers.
But to your point, we don’t know what we don’t know.Report
It bears keeping in mind that historically it didn’t have to be this way. The Axis of Evil was, to some degree, a self fulfilling prophecy. Iran, looking askance at the sunni terrorism of 9/11 and their sunni neighbors in Afghanistan and Iraq, quietly put out feelers about peace and W, in one of his many (more than Trump even- I still consider W’s administration the most destructive in modern history) historic idiocies, lumped the Iranians into the “Axis of Evil” for their troubles.Report
Iran has been training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for terror groups since 1979. They earned their spot on the “Axis of Evil”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorismReport
That’s a principled deontological position.
I kinda wish that the unprincipled utilitarian one had been better explored.Report
Jay beat me to it. A lot of states in that miserable region indulge in that behavior. Arguably Israel is a sponsor of terror too (ironically mostly against the Palestinians and themselves) – they encouraged, funded and propped up Hamas to say nothing of the settlement movement. I never said Iran was ready to join the side of the angels- I said they were nervous and wanted to cut a deal- and got the Axis of Evil idiocy instead.Report
And what kind of deal would that have been?
They have never been willing to stop engaging in terrorism, or attempting to destabilize the other governments around there. They have never been willing to make peace in the Middle East with their various rivals. They most certainly haven’t been willing to stop abusing their own people and allow civil rights or actual voting for government.
With that as the basis, it’s hard to see how we don’t end up at odds.
It would be nice if we were more polite and used speech that was less inflammatory, especially in the context of wanting to go after Al-Qaida which they weren’t opposed to.
That doesn’t change that the state of Iran is run by theocratic despots that are determined to engage in serious terrorism, destabilize the other ME govs, and so on. Our core interests are at odds.Report
The Saudi Wahhabi’s are evil religious despots and we get along “fine” with them. The Iranians were trying to talk it’s entirely conceivable that some level of de-escalation or arrangement could have been achieved- certainly an outcome better than W and his neocon clowns achieved by simply labelling them part of the Axis of Evil. We had, after all, just knocked over Iraq which was a major benefit to Iran. An earlier nuclear deal could have easily been conceivable, any level of de-escalation was at least theoretically possible. Being able to play Iran off the Saudi’s and off the Israeli’s would have been potentially useful.Report
The Saudi’s are heinous but mostly interested in preserving the status quo. The Iranians want to flip over the apple cart.
The “nuclear deal” that we would make with the Iranians ignores both that they’ve constantly broken their previous nuclear deal(s) and lied about it. If that weren’t bad enough, it would also do nothing about their support of terrorism and efforts to promote revolutions and/or failed states.
So we’d allow them to rebuild their economy and turn a blind eye to them destabilizing all the other countries in the ME.
Until they lose the desire to turn every state in the ME into Lebanon, our core interests are going to be opposed which makes deals a problem.Report
Yeah that wasn’t such a prominent problem in 2002 as it is now. It also bears noting that the Iranians adhered to the (later) nuclear deal until Trump reneged on it. Also we were in Afghanistan and Iraq on either side of Iran- cutting any level of deal with them could have made life a lot easier and they indicated openness to the idea but W and his lackeys wanted an idiotic speech item so we got the Axis of Evil instead. Yet another lump of crap on the wagon full of fecal matter that is neocon reputation in hindsight.Report
Any deal we make with them is going to fall apart because of who they are and what they are trying to do. That’s a long term problem and pointing to a short term deal isn’t going to change that.
It’s true that they were well behaved when we had an army in Iraq (and could maybe overturn their government) and W could have made a deal with them. But that deal would have only lasted as long as our wrecking crew was right there.
Since our army isn’t there anymore, whatever deal we could have made would have fallen apart by now.Report
That’s a lot of assertions of fact that’re more opinions and alt-history speculation than actual fact. Saudi Arabia and Iran are pretty much equally hideous and the primary reason the Saudis don’t want to upset the applecart while the Iranians do is that the Saudis have a deal with us/the developed world while the Iranians don’t (and were never offered one when they had the temerity to throw out the government we chose for them). Had W and his administration not been a passel of chuckleheaded idiots possibly we could have moved Iran more towards a Saudi Arabia state and away from an Iran-of-Now state.
Which brings us back around to Jaybirds point which was that W approached the subject of Iran deontologically rather than in a more transactional manner. I can’t know that an attempted deal with Iran would have succeeded in making them engage more productively in the Middle East- that’s alt history- but neither can you know that it would have failed. The point is they didn’t even try. Yet another example of how catastrophically badly that awful administration handled things.Report
(and were never offered one when they had the temerity to throw out the government we chose for them).
This is laughably wrong. It never occurred to Carter that throwing out their dictator meant we couldn’t deal with them. From his point of view them having a democratic revolution was a good thing. He expected that we’d have good relations.
RE: Saudis v Iranians
Most of the governments in the Middle East are Arab and Sunni. Iran is Persian and Shia. The goal of promoting Shia power/dictatorships is a problem in terms of regional stability.
That has nothing to do with their relationship with us, except that our goal of regional stability puts us at odds.
that’re more opinions and alt-history speculation than actual fact
Pot, meet Kettle.
By W’s speech they had a 20+ history of being a regional bad actor and showcasing they viewed their core values and long term goals were totally opposed to ours.
Since that speech they’ve continued on that path to the point where the Arab countries are willing to make peace with Israel.
Claiming that W’s speech moved the needle requires a lot of heavy lifting that you haven’t come close to doing.Report
I acknowledged we’re both speculating on alt history. The point remains that W’s speech and subsequent actions on that speech closed off an opportunity for lowering the temperature on that relationship when the Iranians had every reason, at the time, to want that temperature lowered. It was foreign policy malpractice- it had real opportunity costs while gaining us nothing.Report
It is unclear to me that we should want the temperature lowered. Their core desire is to destabilize the region. They’ve made this very clear.
That’s not on the table, then “lowering the temperature” is rewarding and enabling what should be punished.Report
I hadn’t realized quite how deep your neocon sympathies lie in this area I admit. It’s refreshing, makes me feel fifteen-twenty years younger!Report
Definitely. The Rightwards who I tend to agree with most frequently now–like Messrs Matter and Thornton–probably would have driven me the most crazy c. 2005.Report
There was no coherence to it then and there isn’t now. If we really were concerned about Iran then the stupidest thing to do was overthrow their hostile, secular-ish, Sunni dominated neighbor and replace it with a hollowed out Shiite dominated shell.
And really the entire line of thinking on the ME needs to change in light of our own energy independence via tracking and natural gas. Yes oil is still a globally traded commodity but the region has never mattered less as far as American interests are concerned.Report
Yes oil is still a globally traded commodity but the region has never mattered less as far as American interests are concerned.
We are committed to the Middle East because we have important regional allies, and our regional allies are important because we are committed to the Middle East!Report
People have grown really hostile to realpolitiks since World War II and the Cold War. The idea that you should form diplomatic relationships with a country you find ideologically noxious because the alternative is worse is repellant to many people. At the same time, most people are dimly aware that having the sword drawn forever is a bad idea. At the same time, there are regimes that do need diplomatic isolation but nobody knows where exactly to draw the line.Report
From the point of view of serious Islamists (and Putin), we’re the aggressive ones who are attacking them.
Our culture is very aggressive, seductive, and assimulistic. We spend many billions creating movies advertising it.
Our core ideas that people (woman and religious minorities) should have rights and the gov should serve the people are extreme problems for empires and/or despot(s).
From their point of view, we’re just another empire and all these movies are propaganda designed to undermine their way of life. Ditto the idea of government reform, free elections, and so on.
Iran views itself as surrounded by enemies and it’s doing what it must to survive.Report
Fixed it for ya.
And unironically this makes it way more like Israel then Iran will ever admit.Report
Israel’s core priority is to remain Jewish, that creates conflict with everyone who insists that’s not acceptable. Until either it or it’s enemies are willing to yield the conflict will continue.
Irans’ core priority is to promote radical Shia. That includes not yielding to uppity voters who would otherwise vote out the clerics. That also includes trying to overthrow the various non-Shia governments.
Until it’s willing to yield on it’s core principle or all the surrounding states are willing to put in Shia despots, there are going to be problems.
That doesn’t mean the best solution is for us to invade and use military force (i.e. the neocon way). However IMHO we need to have realistic expectations and an understanding of what the problems are and why they exist.Report
This is something I don’t understand and has never been adequately answered to me no matter how many times I bring it up. There are over 45 countries that are Muslim majority in the world, with majorities ranging from slightly over half to nearly 100%. In the vast majority of these countries, Islam is given a front and center position in society including blasphemy laws, apostasy laws, and Islamic symbols as official state symbols, etc. A good plurality if not a majority of the Palestinians has expressed a similar desire for a Muslim Palestine. Hamas made Islamic theocracy, their official position.
Even if you think that ethnostates are bad and Zionism is settler-colonialism, it shouldn’t take that many brain cells to figure out why Jews don’t want to be part of an official Muslim state and find this unacceptable. But you lots of well-meaning and maybe not so well-meaning Western activists who can explain in elaborate and great detail how bad the concept of a Jewish state is and how alienating it is for non-Jewish residents, believe that Jews should be happy living under Arab Muslim Palestine or that creating one state would result in a secular multicultural democracy because it has to. Like despite literally having every Muslim majority state put Islam at the forefront and this being popular with the majority and the Palestinians keep insisting on it, they believe the Palestinians want secular multicultural democracy.
I have no idea how they come to these conclusions or what makes them so certain that it has to end up the way they want to.Report
Victimhood increases morality and grants ethical superiority. The Palestinians have a boot on their neck, ergo they are ethically superior to the Israelis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_CultureReport
That is part of it but I am speaking more broadly. There seems to be a reluctance on parts of large swathes of the world to admit that Jews exist as a group rather than a bunch of individuals who happen to share the same culture but a willingness and even eagerness to acknowledge the group identities of other marginalized people.
This is true even in contexts that have nothing to do with Israel. There are people who see the hijab and burka as diversity symbols while also eagerly gobbling up stories of rebellious young women in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities even though Jewish and Muslim religious modesty clothing as the same reasoning behind them. The hijab is exotic while the mitpahat/tichel is oppressive.
It makes no sense to me that this distinction is made but it makes sense to a lot of people. I do not like this. If the hijab is a diversity symbol than so is the tichel and if the tichel is oppressive than so is the hijab. This is one of the areas where I think we should demand ideological consistency.
But people seem devoted to the French Revolutionary paradigm of “to the Jews as individuals everything and to the Jews as a nation nothing” to a pathological level. No matter what happens they can’t abandon it and need to put Jews in the wypipo category. Whatever in other groups stirs the activist’s heart and sends their imagination on fire, Jews lack.Report
It’s not strategic. It’s tactical.Report
I mainly irrelevant difference.* These people can not and will not accept Jews as an identity group. Like all anti-Semites, whether they be of the traditional white right sort, them, or Islamic, they know that they have the numbers to raise their fist in defiance forever. Jews can raise whatever arguments and point out whatever facts they like but they have the numbers to say “nah, nah, it doesn’t matter” and there is nothing we can do.
*For instance if Jews are being placed in the white category because it is necessary to keep the wretched of the earth coalition together, is that a strategic or tactical choice?Report
And if non-Orthodox Jewish women don’t go along with the plan, then what?Report
I’m pointing out the inherent absurdity and double standards being used here, not saying that the tichel is a diversity symbol.Report
But if you’re not saying that, what communal determination isn’t being respected here?Report
What I am saying is that I’m utterly tired of the hypocrisy of the activists and chattering classes when it comes to the Jewish people. They are attempting to have it both ways with us.Report
Any discussion about Iran’s place in the Muslim world has to understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam.
Sunni Muslims believe Shias are dammed filthy heretics, that should be better dead. In the meantime until God sends Shias to the eternal hell they deserve, Sunnis are very happy making Shias’ current life as unpleasant as possible. Probably Shia Muslims believe the same about Sunnis, but have less power to implement their desires. Except for Iran, overwhelmingly Shia, and Iraq, where Shias are a plurality, Shias are large to medium to small minorities as you move further away from Iran.
Iran is the only country in the Middle East that is not only majority Shia, but also where Shia Islam is the official religion. As such it has taken upon it to protect and defend the Shia communities abroad. Not very different to what Blessed Queen Bess did for Protestants in France and the Netherlands in the XVI Century, for which she is forever lauded.
And, no matter what they do behind closed doors, the Saudis, as formally Whahabbi and as protectors of the Holy Cities, can’t engage in realpolitik with Iran. To recognize heretics as equal would doom them and their place as leaders, not just of Saudi Arabia and its oil, but of all the Muslim (Sunni) world, probably 80-85% of all Muslims.
Ignorance of what drives the others to do what they do will be the death of America one of these centuriesReport
The exception that Islam gets to the general understanding that theocracy is bad and to be prohibited at all costs is dismal.Report
The Saudis are weird. Ostensibly, they are hardline guardians of Sunni Orthodoxy but in practice the rulers and a lot of the population tend to treat this more as a show than anything else. There is a certain cynicism about religion in Saudi Arabia from what I can tel an the princes aren’t definitely going to let the clergy tell them what to do. The Iranians clerical regime and their supporters in the population seem more honestly fanatical than the Saudis do on a whole.
I once say some BBC documentary where some Saudi businessman/prince was being interviewed. His secretary was a well dressed young and very attractive young Saudi woman who wasn’t wearing Islamic modesty clothing at all because it was inside the office. I don’t think the Iranian clerical regime would allow put on the modesty clothing outside but in the office you can take the hijab off. The Saudis were fine with this though.Report
The Saudis are well down the path of being corrupted by Western values although your experience can vary wildly. They managed to accidently create ISIS by trying to pay off their fanatics. I think they’ve been using state resources to quietly deradicalize because the Princes like being in power.
Iran was well down that path under the Shaw, which is in part what led to the revolution by the fanatics. The problem of course is after the fanatics are in charge it’s hard to remove them.
The Iranian people understand that the priests are corrupt, self serving dictators and would vote them out if they could.Report
The Iranians are probably the least religious country in all Muslim majority countries. I get the feeling that the political and religious divide between the Saudi masses and the princes is a lot less than it is in Iran. The problem is that there is just enough of a religious block in Iran to give the clerical regime a lot of power like there is in the United States.Report
FWIW, Iran’s Total Fertility Rate is something like 1.3 – well below the 2.1 replacement rate. I don’t know what this means “under the hood” of Iranian society but once would think the religious leadership would want more future adherents.Report
You’re thinking of Russia. Iran’s rate is 1.66 https://www.statista.com/statistics/294115/iran-fertility-rate/
The problem in both places is “current leadership makes the economy suck”. That’s a description of both the problem, the solution, and why leadership won’t do it.Report
They managed to accidently create ISIS by trying to pay off their fanatics.
Huh? This is a version of history I’ve never heard.
ISIS is of course a creation of the Iraq War. It was led by an Iraqi, aligned most closely with a Jordanian, though it also aligned, as part of the larger insurgency, with Al Qaeda, which was of course a very different animal by that point, and no longer really a mostly Saudi group in Iraq. So I can’t think of any way it makes sense to say the Saudis created ISIS, because they didn’t, we did.Report
ISIS is a renamed “Al Qaida in Iraq” which means it’s a branch of Al Qaida.
Al Qaida is the creation of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Billionaire religious fanatic.
It’s certainly reasonable to say ISIS had a lot of growth because of what we did in Iraq. It’s also reasonable to say a lot of the origin of the whole fanatical Islam movement has something to do with the crazy amounts of money the Saudi’s spent promoting it back in the day.
Their thinking was they’ll buy off their zealots and get a pass on running the country.Report
ISIS is not a renamed Al Qaeda in Iraq (and to be clear, Al Qaeda in Iraq was not a creation of bin Laden; it was an affiliated group founded by Zarqawi, who was not Saudi). ISIS came out of an Al Qaeda in Iraq-algined group, Jaish al-Ta’ifa al-Mansurah, but was not funded by or an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
I suppose you could do a sort of counterfactual analysis in which the U.S. and the Saudis don’t, from the Afghan War into the 90s, help create the original Al Qaeda, then 9/11 doesn’t happen, and then Bush doesn’t have the political capital to start a war of choice in Iraq, which then creates an insurgency out of which ISIS is formed (and later, a power vacuum into which ISIS slots itself), but to say that this means that the Saudis created ISIS is not much different from saying that the Ottomans created Al Qaeda by not being able to hold onto the Levant in WWI.
We are responsible for the existence of ISIS. We might as well just accept that.Report
We were even on relatively (emphasis on relatively) good terms with North Korea at the time.
And while we had effectively been in a state of near war with Iraq for more than a decade, they had little to nothing to do with global terrorism, and especially with Al Qaeda.
In other words, it was a clear attempt by Bush and his admin to lump the enemies he wanted us to have in with terrorists. And in a lot of ways it worked, as the invasion of Iraq was popular despite being based on blatant lies, and we haven’t had really productive communication with North Korea or Iran since.
Building a new Axis of Evil by analogy, therefore, should be something we are all very skeptical of. Especially trying to put China into it. Our relations with China are unnecessarily bad as it is; there’s no reason to make them even worse for decades.Report
I generally agree though China is, in of itself, a pretty complicated subject.Report
One irony is that the analogy is bad because, no matter where you put China, you actually have the Russians using Iranian drones in Ukraine, alongside actual North Korean troops supporting the Russians [1], and of course Russians and Iranians have been cooperating closely for ages to support their shared client in Syria.
They actually are acting like an axis, which makes them very much unlike the “Axis of Evil” that David From assembled in the Oughts in one of the more shameless and successful bouts of policy entrepreneurship in US history.
[1] Supporting them well? Perhaps not so much.Report
Ugh, David Fr*u*m. Stupid autocorrect. Stupid edit window.Report
Yes indeed. China is, of course, another subject. Not so much as a member of such an Axis, exactly, so much as simply the emerging opposite pole of a bipolar global scene and the pole that’s more sympathetic to the Russian Axis while having a number of self interested red lines- nuke use for instance where is expects the Axis to toe their line and they have to or else.Report