Now, Persians, Have You Ever Looked At Japan?

The Geek doesn't mean the Japan of today, the Japan of deflation, low confidence in the future, lowered expectations, but, rather, the Japan of seventy-five years ago, a Japan to which contemporary Iran has an uncanny resemblance.  History never repeats itself, which is why the subject is endlessly fascinating, but it contains remarkable and powerful analogies, analogies which are powerfully instructive.

In the years following World War I, Japanese culture, society, and politics went through a series of changes.  None of these were disconnected from earlier changes occurring in the wake of the Meiji Restoration.  Nor were they in any way other than organic to the long sweep of Japanese history.  Indeed, most were distillations, careful concentrations of certain, well defined portions of the total Japanese experience during the preceding two thousand years.

The particular changes, the unique points of emphasis which emerged during the Twenties and Thirties show remarkable similarity to developments in Iran in the years since the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979.  First and most basic is the exaggerated form of both the ancient code of Bushido and the official "state" religion of Shinto developed and promulgated by the Japanese army.

The goal--and result--of this intentional program was the development of a mindset in which dying for the Emperor and his empire was the highest duty and greatest honor for every citizen.  While the primary focus was upon men, the present and future soldiers and sailors, the program had impact on every Japanese, women as well as men.  Death for the Emperor was celebrated to an extent that boggles today's observer.

The Japanese notion is echoed by the Iranians from the time of the Iraq-Iran War to the present time.  It is based on the Shia view of Islam with the idea of sacrifice for the faith and based on the idea of the Guardian of the Revolution, which is and has been well implanted in the Iranian consciousness.

At the same time, the Emperor was portrayed as a deity pure and simple.  In this context, it is worth noting that senior clerical officials in Iran have equated dissent from the dictates of the Supreme Guardian with denying Allah.  While not precise, the analogy between an ayatollah as equivalent of the deity and the Emperor as deity is striking.

The Japanese concept of dissent being both an act of treason against the state and a direct insult to the living deity resulted in the country becoming a national security state in which the organs of security penetrated every facet and area of daily life.  The pervasiveness of security forces far exceeded even the seemingly omnipresent Stazi of the German Democratic Republic or the OGPU and its successors in the Soviet Union.  Compared to the Japanese system of coercing those who would not respond to the inducements of community coherence, the Nazi secret police were amateurs--and ineffective ones at that.

The Iranians have aspired to duplicate the Japanese model albeit unconsciously.  The Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basji are but pale imitations of the Japanese equivalents, particularly their dreaded and extremely efficient military police, but they make their best effort.  The anti-government Green movement exists but not for the authorities lack of trying to squash it.  The failure of the Tehran regime to be efficiently repressive in no way undercuts the power of the analogy.

The Japanese elite, not simply the official elite of government, armed forces, and security services but the unofficial one of media and academia maintained that Japan had the right to a regional hegemony.  The argument that Japan merited an empire covering Asia and the Pacific Ocean in a manner identical with the presumed American hegemony over the Western Hemisphere had no opposition in Japan worth mentioning from the opening days of the Twentieth Century and became louder and more strident as well as more racially based by the late Twenties and Thirties.

The Japanese elite maintained that Japan had a divine duty to expel the Europeans and Americans from Asia and the islands of the Western Pacific so as to leave "Asia for the Asiatics" under the supreme guidance of the Emperor.  The claim of racial identity was reinforced by the notion of Japan's divinely provided mission of dominance.

Iranians have made the same category of claim basing it on faith in largest measure but reinforcing it with a dose of nationalism.  The mullahs share with the Japanese elite of eighty years ago the sense of a right based on historical and religious superiority to hold hegemony over the lesser breeds of the Gulf as well as the hinterlands of Central Asia.

The view from Tehran is one of "Islamic societies for the Muslims (of the correct sort, that is.")  The agents of the mullahs have extended their influence in pursuit of this goal from North Africa to the Philippines and Indonesia with variable effectiveness.  By the same token the Japanese during and before World War II were not universally successful in fostering cooperative political movements among target populations from India and Burma to the Philippines.

Another critical parallel is lying.  The Japanese position (well established for centuries, as for example, the old Samurai maxim, "Walk with a real man for a hundred yards and he will tell you at least seven lies") was simple: To lie in pursuit of worthy objectives was not only permissible but frankly laudable.

The same principle applies within Shia Islam and has been well practiced by Iranian officials and others.  In diplomacy and politics alike, the government and its spokesmen have raised the craft of creative lying in pursuit of national and personal interest to the status of fine art.

To summarize the impact of these features of Japanese politics and culture as they developed during the Twenties and Thirties:  They provided Japan with military personnel whose willingness to die has never been surpassed and is barely equaled by the martyrdom seekers of the Iran-Iraq War.  The changes also assured the Japanese people and government had a degree of political will which is inadequately characterized by a word repeatedly used by the Americans during World War II, "fanatical."  The Japanese were not fanatical, that is too mild and inaccurate a term, they were monolithic in their support of and belief in the Emperor and his agents, the government and, more to the point, the military.

Under a degree of punishment unprecedented in military history, the Japanese never lost their political will to continue the war.  Had not the Emperor been persuaded by a few close advisers in the aftermath of the second atomic bombing to "endure the unendurable," the resulting ground war would have been catastrophic in its costs.  Japan would have been destroyed in a welter of blood unimaginable in its extent.  Such was the political will of the Japanese.

The strength of Japanese political will, the capacity of its armed forces, the singleminded determination of the Japanese government (and Emperor) to become the Asian and Pacific hegemon took the country from success to success during the Thirties.  In their successes the Japanese were aided by events far from Tokyo in ways which again provide striking analogies with today's Iranian questions.

The West was not only badly divided but preoccupied with internal economic problems of a seemingly overwhelming sort.  The international institution of the day, the League of Nations, proved inadequate in its attempts to deal with Japanese aggression in China and Manchuria.  In a particularly noteworthy parallel, there were substantial segments of elite opinion molders in the West who were willing, even eager, apologists for Japan as well as others willing to think the worst of their own government and the best of any other one.

In summary, the West lacked political will to take any effective, coordinated action to forestall Japanese expansionism until it was too late for any approach other than total war to work.  Internal division, a very real set of economic problems, repugnance at the very idea of war, an unwillingness or inability to see the necessary consequences of delay condemned the US and others to a long, very bloody and expensive war in the Pacific.

When the war finally engulfed the US--over a decade after the first shots were fired in distant Manchuria--the Japanese launched a series of victories for itself and humiliating defeats for the US, the UK, and others such as the Netherlands and Australia.  Had the Japanese not become so intoxicated by their own successes, it is not inconceivable that the Emperor's sway over large swaths of the Pacific, China, Southeast Asia could have continued for some years.

Success led to the "victory disease."  The victory disease is one of the most lethal pathogens to infect any body politic.  The Japanese eventually died of it.  In Korea, the US which should have known better, caught a bad case, and came very close to military defeat as a result.  The Iranians of today are showing symptoms of an early infection by the same plague.

Here is where the Iranian historian in the making should pay particularly close attention.  In a very real sense the Japanese assured their own defeat by the way in which they had made war and before the attack on Pearl Harbor, by the way in which they had practiced a particularly tendentious approach to diplomacy.

The way in which the Japanese conducted war was predicated not only on their code of Bushido but on the underlying sense of racial superiority which propelled so much of their behavior at the time,  The result of these factors was the full ignition of the American propensity for an absolutist approach to fighting.  The US to an extent equaling or surpassing that of Europe, has a capacity to wage war in a particularly remorseless way, a way which seeks an absolute destruction of the enemy as if it were some form of disgusting alien life.

Americans viewed the war with Japan in a way qualitatively different from the way in which the war in Europe was seen.  Japanese were portrayed in a manner qualitatively different from the depictions of the Germans let alone the Italians.  Even the most cursory exploration of contemporary media shows that conclusively.

The absolutist way of war is seen as well in the conduct of operations in the Pacific.  The war at the grunt level was the most savage in American history with the possible exception of some of the earliest Indian wars.  The nature of the combat along with the attitude of the American public frankly scared post-war American presidents.

The truly awe inspiring nature of American absolutism as shown in the Pacific was the reason President Truman took every precaution to assure there would be no unleashing of the absolutist propensity during the Korean War.  He took political risks to keep the American temper from boiling over, calling the war a "police action," invoking UN support from the beginning, and announcing the very un-American policy of "limited war."  His refusal to widen the war, to use the American absolutist impulse cost him and his party heavily in the election of 1952 and had other, long term results not necessarily in the best interests of the US, but it was the right thing to do at the time.

LBJ and even Richard Nixon were equally careful to keep the absoluteness potential of We the People in the box during the long, frustrating years of Vietnam.  They did so for the same reason as Truman--once unleashed the absolutist inclination would lead to unpredictable outcomes.

As a result, the tradition of carefully limited wars, wars that will not release the absolutist within the American public, has become the norm.  From the Persian Gulf War on to Afghanistan today, the US fights with great deliberation and minimal force.  However, like all "traditions," this one, the one of limited, inconclusive wars, is subject to change without notice--given the correct impetus.

The exponents of violent political Islam generally and the government of Iran in particular seem bound and determined to provide the right stimulus to awaken the absolutist giant currently snoozing in We the People.  Americans are notoriously impatient folk.  The Americans are also not known for loving inconclusive and expensive wars.  Afghanistan has been lurching along for nearly a decade without any satisfactory end in sight.  Iran has been cocking a snoot at Uncle Sam for decades now.  We the People are getting restive over the present situation.

The Iranians, like the groups addicted to violent political Islam generally, bets on the US losing its appetite for continuing its role in the world.  They may be betting well; there is a growing disengagement sector within the American public.  There is also a growing sentiment within We the People to the effect that the "terrorists" have or will win not only in Afghanistan but globally as well.

In a sense the political knife in the US is balanced on its point.  It can fall in the direction of isolationism, of disengagement, of surrendering the American position as a Great Power.  Or, it can fall in the other direction, the direction of going absolutist.

It is the second possibility that should make the Iranians afraid--very, very afraid.  The Obama charm offensive may have delighted the multi-cultural devotees of the West and beguiled some in the Arab/Muslim countries, but it is seen increasingly by the moderate Right in the US as an abject failure.  As such it is likely to be repudiated--and replaced.  The most probable candidate for the role of replacement is the absolutist alternative.

Should the next Congress, the next administration, take the absolutist route, there will be no denying it.  Given the increasing distaste with which We the People are viewing international institutions (read that as UN), there will be a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" accompaniment to the absolutist releasing of American military capacity.  Should Iran provide the cause, the effect will be the total destruction of the country as it presently exists.  Not even the coming of the mythic Mahdi will prevent that.

The record is clearly written in the history of Japan.  It is contained in the history of Japanese-American relations.  It is right there in the blood of World War II in the Pacific.  The past may not be prologue, but it is a powerful indicator of what will come if the Iranians miscalculate.  The mullahs and their frontmen are playing a highly dangerous game of chicken.

So, what are the odds of the US going the absolutist route?  Not yet fifty-fifty but getting closer to the tipping point with every failure of "diplomacy," every new sign of Iranian tergiversation.  The tipping point gets closer with every outrage committed by adherents of violent political Islam.  It gets closer with every new frustration, every new hint of declining American ability to create a world political order in which We the People can feel secure and in control of our own lives.

Iran may not be the creator of all the frustrations, of all the perceived losses of American influence and prestige, every increment of felt decline, but it is a convenient and highly visible symbol for all of these and more.  Every passing day gives a feeling that We the People have put the chip on our shoulder and are willing to dare the Iranians in lieu of another definable adversary to knock it off.  Unfortunately the Iranians seem to want to knock the chip off.

When (and if) they do, Iran will be very lucky to get off as lightly as did Japan in August 1945.  That is a fate no country, no people really deserve.