According to the video, the answer is -- who knows. Probably not doing anything is failing Iranians, but the nature of the totalitarian state makes it difficult to clearly assess what is...
According to the video, the answer is -- who knows. Probably not doing anything is failing Iranians, but the nature of the totalitarian state makes it difficult to clearly assess what is happening. They basically refuse to take a position on whether intervention is justified.
This is kinda always the problem to my limited understanding. What kind of intervention? The kind everyone wants doesn't much exist as far as I'm aware. There's no magical way to risk no one and...
This is kinda always the problem to my limited understanding. What kind of intervention?
The kind everyone wants doesn't much exist as far as I'm aware. There's no magical way to risk no one and yet somehow depose/overthrow/uplift their society into one that's not mass killing their civilians and treating anyone who isn't a powerful male like a second class citizen or worse.
That leaves basically:
Leave it alone
Sneaky shit
Blow shit up
2 but with boots on the ground.
If we look at this from the point of view of the Iranian populace that doesn't support the current government AND doesn't support a different totalitarian nightmare state 1 obviously doesn't help. It's up to you and your buddies to find a way to topple the regieme, peacefully or otherwise.
Of course the problem is that there's plenty of countries, like Russia for example, who have a vested interest in seeing that regime continue exist so they can help deliver weapons and supplies, and so ignoring all the internal hurdles of violence and politics, you also get the EXTERNAL hurdles of plenty of other countries and organizations fucking around.
Whiiiiich leads us to 2, sneaky shit.
Honestly I haven't ever dug in on this as much as I should. My completely amateur understanding is there's plenty of examples of "Country A tries to cause a coup or whatever in Country B" being really really awful for just about everyone...even Country A.
I suspect there's probably some examples of it working, or working at least for Country A, and I feel like I've read about some, but I can't think of any at this moment. Suffice it to say my uninformed opinion is this is not likely to do much.
Option 3 is oddly interesting in that appears to be what trump is doing after decades of mixed results (obviously not done by trump, but other countries) and lots of "that will never work". The "that will never work" part mostly comes in on it actually affecting meaningful change for country B, which if we're talking from a "justified" standpoint is the important part as just blowing people up so different people can kill them is of questionable value.
It's "easy"(you cannot bold quotes apparently but they should be) for NATO countries to do to non peer nations lacking in nuclear allies, but it seldom brings major change. That said I can't think of many attempts that were supposed to bring major change so much as just stop specific activities (such as nuclear refinement) where you can argue efficacy all day.
Option 4....well Iraq comes to mind, and I think is a very interesting framework to consider when looking at Iran.
Iraq was about as close as you can get to a SURE thing for regime change. Nation building at the cost of many lives. So...who's opinion of the Iraq invasion would change if it was "justified"? What if every allegation against Sadaam had been true? Hell what if there were even MORE things both being done to his citizens AND threatening neighbors (proof of nukes and threats of using them?). The "War" is much the same, but I'm not sure the occupation, and it's results, change in the slightest.
So that leaves 5, which is 4, BUT THIS TIME, with countries that can barely handle their own internal and external politics navigating the tense and difficult space of an external cultures millennia of politics thousands of miles of way to help bring them stability.
In the past, from what I can tell, the only thing even remotely like this seems to mainly happen in 1 case:
Utter and absolute domination/colonialism. I'm sure you're thinking of more recent history but you can go back to recorded time to find various cultures that murdered their way across a landscape and then 400 years later all agreed they were the same people and murdered their way back against the "foreigners". Or they didn't and were still killing each other. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, let alone a justified thing, but the point is that there seems to be little way to magically "turn things around".
Looking at "ideals" like post WW Italy, Germany, Japan, etc where the country was essentially rebuilt by the victors (MASSIVE handwave I know), this came from absolute surrender and an utterly broken populace after some of the most horrific wars this planet has seen, and living conditions that felt hopeless while also committing atrocities in basically every direction.
To be clear this is NOT some factual take. It's just my rough understanding. If someone has an example of what they think a better justified intervention would look like, i'm all for it. I sincerely think though that one of them right now is "somehow Trumps bullshit works" and a violent all out attack on evil leadership doesn't spin the entire area into chaos. I wholeheartedly agree that's insanely unlikely, but I'm not sure of an alternative that isn't likely to do that either.
I thought this was a remarkably good video and includes valuable investigation into the opinion of Iranians. My thinking has become more Kantian in recent years, but I'd broadly agree with his...
I thought this was a remarkably good video and includes valuable investigation into the opinion of Iranians. My thinking has become more Kantian in recent years, but I'd broadly agree with his final point that Iranians need to brave more labor and danger in pursuit of freedom before the world intervenes. An intervention would also be much more effective if it came from the international community than from Israel and the US.
According to the video, the answer is -- who knows. Probably not doing anything is failing Iranians, but the nature of the totalitarian state makes it difficult to clearly assess what is happening. They basically refuse to take a position on whether intervention is justified.
This is kinda always the problem to my limited understanding. What kind of intervention?
The kind everyone wants doesn't much exist as far as I'm aware. There's no magical way to risk no one and yet somehow depose/overthrow/uplift their society into one that's not mass killing their civilians and treating anyone who isn't a powerful male like a second class citizen or worse.
That leaves basically:
If we look at this from the point of view of the Iranian populace that doesn't support the current government AND doesn't support a different totalitarian nightmare state 1 obviously doesn't help. It's up to you and your buddies to find a way to topple the regieme, peacefully or otherwise.
Of course the problem is that there's plenty of countries, like Russia for example, who have a vested interest in seeing that regime continue exist so they can help deliver weapons and supplies, and so ignoring all the internal hurdles of violence and politics, you also get the EXTERNAL hurdles of plenty of other countries and organizations fucking around.
Whiiiiich leads us to 2, sneaky shit.
Honestly I haven't ever dug in on this as much as I should. My completely amateur understanding is there's plenty of examples of "Country A tries to cause a coup or whatever in Country B" being really really awful for just about everyone...even Country A.
I suspect there's probably some examples of it working, or working at least for Country A, and I feel like I've read about some, but I can't think of any at this moment. Suffice it to say my uninformed opinion is this is not likely to do much.
Option 3 is oddly interesting in that appears to be what trump is doing after decades of mixed results (obviously not done by trump, but other countries) and lots of "that will never work". The "that will never work" part mostly comes in on it actually affecting meaningful change for country B, which if we're talking from a "justified" standpoint is the important part as just blowing people up so different people can kill them is of questionable value.
It's "easy"(you cannot bold quotes apparently but they should be) for NATO countries to do to non peer nations lacking in nuclear allies, but it seldom brings major change. That said I can't think of many attempts that were supposed to bring major change so much as just stop specific activities (such as nuclear refinement) where you can argue efficacy all day.
Option 4....well Iraq comes to mind, and I think is a very interesting framework to consider when looking at Iran.
Iraq was about as close as you can get to a SURE thing for regime change. Nation building at the cost of many lives. So...who's opinion of the Iraq invasion would change if it was "justified"? What if every allegation against Sadaam had been true? Hell what if there were even MORE things both being done to his citizens AND threatening neighbors (proof of nukes and threats of using them?). The "War" is much the same, but I'm not sure the occupation, and it's results, change in the slightest.
So that leaves 5, which is 4, BUT THIS TIME, with countries that can barely handle their own internal and external politics navigating the tense and difficult space of an external cultures millennia of politics thousands of miles of way to help bring them stability.
In the past, from what I can tell, the only thing even remotely like this seems to mainly happen in 1 case:
Utter and absolute domination/colonialism. I'm sure you're thinking of more recent history but you can go back to recorded time to find various cultures that murdered their way across a landscape and then 400 years later all agreed they were the same people and murdered their way back against the "foreigners". Or they didn't and were still killing each other. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, let alone a justified thing, but the point is that there seems to be little way to magically "turn things around".
Looking at "ideals" like post WW Italy, Germany, Japan, etc where the country was essentially rebuilt by the victors (MASSIVE handwave I know), this came from absolute surrender and an utterly broken populace after some of the most horrific wars this planet has seen, and living conditions that felt hopeless while also committing atrocities in basically every direction.
To be clear this is NOT some factual take. It's just my rough understanding. If someone has an example of what they think a better justified intervention would look like, i'm all for it. I sincerely think though that one of them right now is "somehow Trumps bullshit works" and a violent all out attack on evil leadership doesn't spin the entire area into chaos. I wholeheartedly agree that's insanely unlikely, but I'm not sure of an alternative that isn't likely to do that either.
I thought this was a remarkably good video and includes valuable investigation into the opinion of Iranians. My thinking has become more Kantian in recent years, but I'd broadly agree with his final point that Iranians need to brave more labor and danger in pursuit of freedom before the world intervenes. An intervention would also be much more effective if it came from the international community than from Israel and the US.