Realism based community

Hot Air brings up an interesting point in a recent post about the alledged offer by the Iranian theocracy to negotiate with “everything on the table”. Hot Air points out two things:

• “Everything” did not include any sort of domestic reform.
• Given the recent history of Iranian negotiations and the example of North Korea, why would any one expect that a “successful” negotation back in 2003 would have had any real effect?

First, one notes that these are not unrelated. The reason it’s naive at best to trust the Iranian theocracy is because it is a theocracy and not a liberal democracy. Without the former, there is no point in the latter.

Second, as Hot Air also notes, one can plausible believe that liberal democracy is the only long term cure for the dangers to the USA and the rest of the world from the Middle East and therefore any negotiation that doesn’t lead to that is too instriniscally flawed to be worthwhile. Instead, the promoters of this are simply manifesting an aspect of Logo-Realism, making a signed document the most important outcome, not any actual change in behavior.

Finally, note what the lack of domestic reforms means that the promoters of having negotiated then are in fact promoting the policy of “they’re bastards, but their our bastards”. I.e., that it doesn’t matter what sort of oppression the Iranians suffer, as long as American foreign policy interests are satisfied. Does this mean that all of the complaints of how that kind of policy created the blowback we are suffering from now can be disregarded?