Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran? on Yahoo! News

Print Story: Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran? on Yahoo! News

Michael Vlahos: Will We Fight Iran?

Michael VlahosTue Mar 7, 11:03 AM ET

Will we fight Iran?

Another way to ask the question is: Will it be a war of choice?

In other words, will war happen because we want it, and freely decide that this is the best outcome of policies we have approved?

Or instead, will relentless stories -- iron narratives already in place -- force our hand?

This is what happened in August 1914.

How does a story force you into a war? Stories worked in three ways to make World War I happen, ways that should instruct us as we approach war with Iran.

First, narratives worked like iron maidens, putting each of the European powers in a vise where, once certain things happened, the only decision possible was war.

Second, there were also sacred narratives of war. National identity was wrapped in war. War was seen as necessary to national realization, in ways that could not be questioned.

Third, once set in motion, national narratives of war meshed together in unforeseen but co-dependent ways, creating an inescapable fit that ensured the terrible outcome -- and the killing of millions.

Let's look at how these iron stories worked in 1914, and how they are working today.

Narrative as Iron Maiden

Before 1914 both Germany and Austria-Hungary had decided on pre-emptive war: in other words, a defensive war in response to an attack was unthinkable. Going further, even allowing the enemy to prepare for an attack was unthinkable. The only path to security was to strike first: and the only possible objective in war was achieving total security.

It was not enough simply to be able to defeat a threat; war had to completely solve all security problems and end all threats. Moreover it was necessary for the entire experience of the war-as-solution to be controlled from beginning to end. Thus war's process was to be judged just as rigorously as achieving the war objective itself. War experience was as important as war outcome.

The problem was, living with a single, ironclad solution encouraged leaders to look for reasons to set things in motion, to find triggers for action. Thus Austria preemptively invaded Serbia in response to an act of terrorism.

This is US doctrine today. We invaded Iraq on the basis of preemptive defense. We continue to reiterate that we will not allow Iran to go nuclear, and that a nuclear Iran is an intolerable threat to the West. Just on Sunday, UN ambassador John Bolton reminded, "we must be prepared to ... use all tools at our disposal to stop the threat that the Iranian regime poses."

This does not leave us much of an out. It is true that we have done almost nothing about a nuclear North Korea, and it is also true that for fifty years, we lived according to a defensive doctrine of nuclear deterrence.

But there are no signs that we are ready to accept anything like a deterrence relationship with Iran. For one thing, we feel strong enough to control war's outcome, unlike the Cold War era. Conversely, to yield up control is declaimed by many as the path of weakness and defeatism -- sounding much like Germans and Austrians in 1914. Thus officially and in terms of the cultural conversation (the zeitgeist) we are locked into a story of inevitable war if Iran goes nuclear.

The Sacred Narrative

In 1914, when the opportunity for war came it was hard to resist for another reason: it was destiny. War was not only seductive because it promised a preemptive solution, it also seduced at the level of national psyche. War was understood in 1914 as a culmination of grander national narratives. This was true not just for Germany but also for France and Russia as well. In the world of religious nationalism, war was the cathartic liturgy -- for France, of redemption; for Russia, of vindication; for Germany, of apotheosis.

War was embraced as a dramatic advancement of the national story. Fulfillment was certain. There were no losers in the mutually expectant narratives of 1914.

European feelings before 1914 did not see decades of peace as the norm to be cherished, but rather simply as the time before inevitable moments of decision. The destinies of nations and peoples needed to be decided, and decision could only come in war.

Americans do not visibly resemble the religious nationalists of 1914 Europe. War is a terrible thing, we say. But we have our own mesmeric vision of mythic war: we are the redeemer nation. We invaded Iraq after all, in part to liberate an oppressed people. Bringing democracy to the Muslim World is the central goal in the administration's Global War on Terrorism. In the American sacred narrative, war is a terrible thing but it may also be a necessary thing, and beyond even that, a divinely ordained task. As the president has said, "we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind."

Moreover the "enemies of freedom" have been officially designated as "evil" that cannot be allowed to survive -- and Iran is now at the top of the list. Thus war with Iran is not only about self-defense, but also about bringing freedom and destroying evil. Surely this is a narrative as sacred to Americans as, say, Germany's story of destiny in 1914 -- and just as in need of fulfillment.

The Narrative "Fit"

It is forgotten now except as lore how eagerly European societies embraced war in 1914. Their ardor was almost holy in its will to passionate sacrifice. It was an outpouring.

And it was this outpouring that enabled the war that drained the life out of society itself. Once ensnared there was no escape. The narratives had become too powerful, with too much support from too many quarters, and with too few to oppose them. The stories could only be overthrown by failing. Yet on these stories' ironclad terms millions had to die -- for nothing -- before failure could be confessed. Even then many true believers, surveying the wreckage, refused to see anything less than glorious victory. True believers on all sides worked with each other -- even as enemies -- to get war started and to keep war going.

Are there not today many such true believers in both America and Iran -- who keep faith with their narratives that war is inevitable and necessary? Every day one can read the likes of Newt Gingrich or Michael Ledeen or Bill Kristol comparing Iran to the Nazis, trying to lock us into a new struggle with the promise that we will savor again the sweet, sacred narrative of World War II. The Iranian press is no different with its daily tales of US perfidy and evil.

There is even an apocalyptic dimension to this emerging narrative fit. If there is evangelical prophesy in administration rhetoric, where Iran like Nazi Germany is the primary obstacle to God's triumph of "freedom," this is mirrored by Iranian President Ahmadinejad's conviction that war with America signals the return of the hidden Imam. Many Americans and Iranians believe that apocalypse -- the revelation of God's message -- will be realized in the Great War with The Other.

None of this is to say that war with Iran is inevitable, or even that we have locked ourselves into a path of inevitability like Europe before 1914.

But consider this: we have locked ourselves into a preemptive defense doctrine, we have officially defined Iran as the evil enemy, and important factions in both societies believe in -- and work toward -- war.

We recoil at the horror of 1914, but not enough, it seems, to yet escape such fate ourselves.