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 resident
Bush's use of the noun "axis" (lower-case "a")
to connect the terror regimes of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea troubled
our European allies and domestic skeptics. Many were quick to point
out that these three states had no real formal or informal ties
— at least in the manner of the more official Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis that fought us in World War II. Others worried that we may
be planning to go beyond bin Laden and al Qaeda to new, more dangerous,
and unforeseen challenges. Yet, the president's insinuation of the
triad's shared danger to world peace was both historically sound
and long overdue.
Despite a number
of accords, the old tripartite alliance of fascists of 60 years
ago always remained a loose concord at best — characterized
by constant squabbling and mistrust. That is perhaps why in their
rough alignment the three preferred to be called an axis (Latin
axis: "axle"), rather than emulate the close-working
relationship or nomenclature of the Anglo-American allies, who shared
supplies and closely coordinated strategy. Tokyo was shocked that
Germany had signed a neutrality pact with Russia in August 1939
— at the very moment when its own forces were skirmishing with
the Soviets. Then, tit-for-tat, Japan later refused to attack the
Soviet Union on its vulnerable eastern flank — when Germany
had invaded from the west and was soon outnumbered and in real trouble.
In turn, the Germans were as surprised as the Americans about Pearl
Harbor. Nor did they have a clue that Mussolini was going to invade
the Balkans the previous spring.
Indeed, the
failure of any of the three to act in concert either materially
or strategically helped us to win the war. The Axis powers' vague
commonality was not based on racial, religious, or even true ideological
affinity. Instead, like the present threesome, they shared a common
hatred toward free democracies. The idea of a loose bond between
a fundamentalist Shiite Iran, a faux-Sunni Iraq, and a Communist
North Korea is no more or less politically, religiously, racially,
or regionally disparate than the past coalescence of Catholic Fascist
Italians, atheist Nazi Germans, and militarist, anti-Western, and
Buddhist Japanese.
Despite the
so-called "Pact of Steel" signed between Rome and Berlin
in May 1939, it was not at all clear until spring 1940 — after
the first German tide of victory in France — that Mussolini
would even enter the war actively on the Germans side. Before the
fall of France, Japan had stayed aloof. It wanted no part of any
war against Europeans. Indeed, the formal Axis pact was not formulated
until late September, 1940 — an entire year after the
war had broken out. Even then the agreement remained mostly theoretical
for another year until Pearl Harbor.
After December
7, 1941, mutual trade, commerce, and technological assistance among
the three were in some ways hardly more formal than what we see
in the collusion between the present rogue states in their like-minded
illegal arms sales, aid to terrorism, and secretive efforts to build
weapons of mass destruction. Korea sells more weapons to Iran than
Japan ever did to Italy. And the recent on/off again relationship
between Saddam Hussein and the mullahs is not all that different
from the periodic falling out between Hitler and Mussolini. More
importantly, does anyone really believe that the governments of
Iraq, Iran, and Korea — which alike have ruined their economies
and murdered their internal opponents — do not hate the United
States, do not sponsor international terrorism, do not ship weapons
to criminals, do not have secretive programs to build nuclear weapons,
do not threaten their neighboring states, and do not quell mercilessly
internal dissent?
The incongruent
dictatorship in Iraq, theocracy in Iran, and Communist autocracy
in North Korea are, in fact, quite similar in method and intent.
Thus not surprisingly they have alike engaged in past fighting against
the United States — during the Korean War, the Iranian hostage
crisis, and subsequent terror campaign in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia,
and the Gulf War of 1991. We should also remember that the present
three, unlike the old Axis before World War II, have already
engaged in hostilities with the United States prior to our present
standoff.
Yet Mr. Bush's
real point was not merely the drama of historical allusion, but
the value of identifying publicly scoundrel nations and then lumping
them together as potential belligerents that must be confronted
sooner or later. Is his candor, then, really saber rattling and
counterproductive? Hardly. We should remember that the farcical
nature of our stance toward each of the three does not belong to
present, but to past American foreign policy.
We have tried
to bribe North Korea not to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that
could reach Los Angeles by giving them both food and the ability
to develop "peaceful" nuclear reactors. Proponents of
that policy of blackmail claim that it has largely worked, therein
forgetting that North Korea continues to sell abroad other dangerous
weapons and has more arms now than it did when we began our appeasement.
Rather than appreciating American conciliation, it is more likely,
as was the case of the Japanese in the 1930s, that they have disdain
for American magnanimity — using the pseudo-detente as a breathing
period to prepare for Armageddon rather than as the first steps
toward eventual reconciliation and unification. Blackmail was the
easiest, not the best, American policy toward North Korea —
a country which starves its own people to produce deadly weaponry
while we ship them rice.
Mr. Bush's
direct reference to Iraq requires little amplification. All American
strategy after the outbreak of the Gulf War has proven to be a sideshow
— from passing on the advance to Baghdad, consenting to the
cessation of arms inspections, and the media metamorphosis of UN
sanctions into U.S.-driven efforts to "starve" Iraqi children.
Meanwhile brave Kurds and the Iraqi resistance have received little
moral or material support, as Saddam Hussein's liquidation of all
nascent democratic opposition continues unabated and relatively
ignored.
Iran requires
more subtlety. Unlike North Korea and Iraq, there have been real
signs of democratic fervor among the young that could be cooled
by the perception of US jingoism or actual intervention. But the
point of Mr. Bush's direct reference to Iran was not to signal an
oncoming war against the Iranian people. Rather he provided a warning
that the theocracy's present policy of arms shipments to terrorists,
murder of Americans, and providing sanctuary for killers on the
run ultimately will lead its nation nowhere but to war. Such forewarning
may well have the effect of energizing domestic dissent and forcing
the mullahs at home to explain why their past killing of Americans
has nearly brought their nation to war with the world's only superpower.
Would that
American leaders in the 1930s had warned Germany, Italy, and Japan
all at once that their respective aggression and terror ultimately
would lead to war with the United States — rather than waiting
to fight them later as enemies. By issuing strong admonitions now
when such criminal states are not yet in real concert and without
the bomb, the chances are less, not more likely, that we will soon
face any of them when nuclear and in conjunction.
Such candor,
then, puts them and the world on notice that unless things change,
America has a rendezvous with all three — and that the Europeans
and moderate Arab states better act now to restrain such terror
states before they cannot restrain us any longer. In this regard,
critics like former Secretary of State Albright and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair should ask themselves why Saddam Hussein suddenly
in a matter of days is either silent or seeks U.N. mediation —
when their own past policies had failed for years to accomplish
either goal. Why are democratic forces energized suddenly in Iran
— if not in hopes that the American action in Afghanistan and
promises to act elsewhere have given them hopes of eventual liberation?
Mr. Bush's
warning also prepares the American people for a much-needed dose
of reality. For over a decade now, we have warned the Iranian government
to stop its murdering of Americans in Lebanon and the Gulf
states; we have cajoled North Korea to stop preparing for
either a mass invasion southward or a nuclear attack on us; we have
threatened Saddam Hussein to stop preparing weapons of mass
destruction and killing his own people. Those requests — like
similar entreaties to Japan in 1931, to Mussolini in 1935-6, to
Hitler in 1939, to Saddam Hussein earlier in 1990, to Milosevic
in 1999, and to the Taliban in September 2001 — fell, as they
always will fall with such killers, on deaf ears.
Citizens in
affluent and liberal democracies must always be reminded that the
containment of thugocracies requires eternal vigilance to obtain
mere stasis — and perhaps only eventual war with them to achieve
lasting peace. Thousands are alive in Kosovo and Bosnia today, not
because of the protestations of Europeans, the UN, or our own pacifists,
but because of the efforts of the U.S. Air Force and Mr. Clinton's
sole brave and successful foreign-policy achievement.
The world is
discussing $15 billion in aid for the Afghanis now because their
despots are either killed or scattered — again without the
intervention of the U.N. or the EU. In contrast, we can legitimately
ask what were the wages of American restraint after the relative
neglect of the attacks in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Somalia,
and Yemen — if not disintegrating skyscrapers and 3,000 vaporized
in Manhattan? The American people will support intervention, however
costly and dangerous, if they believe it is in the interest
of the United States, if it will save more lives than it
takes, and if it is on the right side of history. Both Kosovo
and Afghanistan prove that well enough — and so too our eventual
showdowns with the new axis will as well.
Finally, the
more the United States opposes Saddam Hussein, the mullahs, and
the Korean Communists, the more Iraqis, Iranians, and Koreans will
appreciate Americans later on when they, like the Afghanis, are
liberated. In that regard, it is absolutely critical that all such
references to forceful opposition to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea
be linked explicitly with sympathy for their enslaved peoples and
promises that with eventual liberation will come democracy. We can
promise justice for the regimes who wish to kill us only if we promise
justice for their own people as well, who in the past have suffered
much more than we.
Sophisticated critics of Mr. Bush's rhetoric the last five months
have found it easy to ridicule his blunt and often unapologetic
metaphors. But so far, he, not they, has had the last laugh. And
so it will be with his wise and proper use of "axis" as
well.
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