Let’s start with the classic grievances.

First, America provides global security. The US military is deployed across every continent and underwrites the safe passage of global trade through its control of sea lanes and strategic chokepoints. Countries like Germany, Japan, and many NATO members benefit from this security without shouldering a proportional financial burden. The US acts as a kind of global landlord, keeping the building safe while the tenants delay their rent.

Second, the world free rides on American innovation. The United States invests heavily in research and development, much of it publicly funded through agencies like DARPA, NIH, and NSF. The fruits of this investment—whether the Internet, GPS, or mRNA vaccines (the technology behind many COVID-19 immunizations)—quickly become global public goods. Other countries can adopt, adapt, and deploy these innovations at marginal cost, without having invested in the high-risk, early-stage research. That’s especially true for countries like China and India, but it applies more quietly to US allies in Europe as well.

Third, American policymakers argue that the US serves as the consumer of last resort. Export-oriented economies depend on the ability to sell goods to American households, while doing little to stimulate domestic demand at home. The US runs persistent trade deficits, effectively subsidizing other countries’ employment and production. The domestic costs of this role are clear: industrial decline, regional job loss, and the political consequences of economic dislocation.

Not all global imbalances are free rides. Some reflect classical economic principles; others involve asymmetries that generate positive externalities or entrench structural advantages. For instance, in trade, uneven roles can still produce mutual gain—a textbook case of comparative advantage. The US runs a trade deficit with Germany, importing cars while exporting far less in return—but both sides benefit: American consumers access high-quality vehicles, and German factories stay employed. The imbalance may look lopsided, but it’s not necessarily unfair.

Other imbalances go deeper. Consider defense spending: the US bears disproportionate military costs, but this outlay generates powerful technological spillovers in fields like aerospace, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Drones, for instance, were initially developed for military use and are now reshaping logistics and surveillance worldwide. Similarly, advances in satellite imaging and stealth technology have had wide-ranging commercial applications. Meanwhile, under-spending European allies often buy American systems rather than developing their own. As a result, local defense industries atrophy, and skilled talent is redirected. German engineers build cars instead of fire-control systems—cars that, increasingly, belong to a fading era. This dynamic doesn’t just secure the global order; it crowds out competition, reinforcing US technological and strategic dominance.

Even the benefits to American corporations follow this logic. While US taxpayers fund the security infrastructure, multinational firms leverage the resulting global stability to invest, manufacture, and operate abroad. What looks like disproportionate burden-sharing is also a way of securing the global conditions in which American firms thrive.

But the story doesn’t end there. Beneath the surface lies a quieter reality: the United States, too, is riding for free—just in deeper and more systemic ways.

Economists use the term “free riding” to describe situations where one actor enjoys the benefits of a system without contributing proportionally to its costs. Sometimes the benefits are material; sometimes they’re institutional or strategic. What matters is the asymmetry: someone bears the burden, someone else reaps the rewards. And some of the United States’ biggest advantages in the global system fall squarely into this category.

Most importantly, the US free rides on the rest of the world through its ability to issue Treasury securities that are bought and held in massive quantities by foreign governments, banks, and institutions. Because the dollar is the global reserve currency, there is unrelenting demand for US debt. This gives the US a unique privilege: it can borrow cheaply and endlessly, financing budget and trade deficits with paper that the world eagerly absorbs—extracting real goods and services in exchange for IOUs.

But this privilege, too, has a flip side.

To maintain the dollar’s global dominance, the United States must export dollars. That means running trade deficits. It also means tolerating a strong currency that can hurt domestic manufacturing. The US becomes the de facto lender and central banker of last resort, especially in times of crisis, when the Federal Reserve is expected to supply global liquidity—by offering dollar swap lines to foreign central banks or easing monetary conditions at home. In this way, the US bears the burden of stabilizing the global system—another role it half-welcomes and half-resents.

Something similar happens with global talent. Other countries invest heavily in educating their brightest students, many of whom end up in US graduate programs or research labs. The US reaps the productivity of this human capital without having paid for its early-stage development—a classic free ride. Some return home, but many stay, contributing to the US economy as part of a skilled migrant elite. The United States becomes a clearinghouse for global talent—and a net importer of human capital—while also subsidizing global knowledge through its publicly funded universities and research institutions.

And then there’s the legal and institutional order. The US was once the architect and enforcer of global rules—from the WTO to standards governing the international financial system. But as frustrations with perceived free riding have mounted, it has increasingly turned away from multilateralism in favor of unilateral tools. The US still upholds the system in parts—but only when it judges the payoff to be worth it, favoring unilateral tools such as tariffs, sanctions, and export controls—especially in its recent dealings with China and the WTO.

In the end, the international system is built on mutual dependencies—but those dependencies are rarely balanced. The US provides security, innovation, and demand. In return, it enjoys financial privilege, a steady inflow of global talent, and institutional influence. Whether that bargain still works is now an open question—and Washington’s recent behavior suggests it’s no longer convinced the answer is yes.

Every global system has its passengers. The US complains that others take too much and give too little—but it also extracts value from its central position in ways no other country can. That tension isn’t an anomaly. It’s how the system works. The real question now is whether the US still wants to carry the load that makes the ride possible.

The US could walk away from parts of the system—but it would risk losing the advantages it still enjoys. A better path may be to reform the system, not abandon it: share burdens differently, adjust incentives, and reaffirm the value of leadership without pretending it’s cost-free.

Free rides will never disappear entirely—but the terms of the ride can be renegotiated. As the US steps back from some of its global roles, new leaders may emerge to fill the gap. Germany, for example, is beginning to rearm and expand its defense sector—an economic necessity as much as a strategic one. Smaller European countries may welcome the protection while resisting the cost. The dynamic is familiar: those who lead carry others, and in return, gain influence, direction, and sometimes, quiet forms of leverage. Free riding, it turns out, is rarely one-sided.

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If the Ridley Scott film engendered feelings of exaltation, a new Netflix documentary, Surviving Black Hawk Down, pours cold water on them. In this series (also produced by Scott), we don’t hear swelling music while watching heroic deeds. Instead, we hear from old veterans with teary eyes speaking about a harrowing experience. The tears are not always sad; they sometimes convey anger and frustration, only marginally softened after thirty years of rumination. Moreover, we hear from the other side. Scott’s film, rather controversially, had no lines for the Somali characters; this documentary has extensive interviews with them, both militiamen and civilians caught in the crossfire. 

The series is a gripping exploration of the hour-by-hour drama of the Battle of Mogadishu. Its interviews with the people on the ground offer a fresh perspective and a sobering reminder of the hidden costs of war. But its narrow focus on the battle obscures any intelligent lessons from America’s intervention in Somalia. The passing of three decades since the fiasco should occasion mature insights about both the causes of this particular failure and how the United States can prudently use its military to relieve mass human suffering. Instead, it’s hard to walk away from the series with anything but the most childish moral maxim that “war is bad.” Ultimately, the series is a missed opportunity to provoke more nuanced discourse on the place of humanitarian interventions in American foreign policy. 

Evolving Mission

The lead-up to the October 3, 1993, “Black Hawk Down” event and the context of America’s intervention in Somalia are intricate. Civil war erupted in the country in 1991, following the overthrow of its long-time dictator, Siad Barre. Drought combined with the effects of war produced a famine that had killed between 200,000 and 300,000 by the end of 1992. Under pressure from the international community and recognizing the severity of the situation, the Somali warlords responsible for the conflict accepted a United Nations offer for humanitarian relief (UNISOM I). By November, 3,500 UN troops were in the country but unable to guarantee the flow of aid. In other words, Somalia was a hell hole of seemingly preventable human suffering. It seemed a perfect test case for America to apply its New World Order principles.

In the final months of his presidency, George H. W. Bush authorized the deployment of some 25,000 American troops to lead an international coalition and ensure the flow of aid. Sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 794, the aim of “Operation Restore Hope” was largely humanitarian. The bulk of the clauses of the resolution, for instance, were explicitly geared toward famine relief. A crucial clause permitted expanding the mission “to restore peace, stability and law and order with a view to facilitating the process of a political settlement under the auspices of the United Nations.” Still, the Bush administration emphasized that the operation was to be narrowly limited in scope. In a letter to the UN Secretary General, Bush clarified that the mission aimed “to create security conditions which will permit the feeding of the starving Somali people.” In other words, there was to be no nation building.

After three months, the limited operation seemed to have succeeded. Tens of thousands had been spared from starvation and the warring parties had even agreed to a ceasefire in March of 1993. The recently inaugurated Bill Clinton was pleased with the results, and lobbied the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 814, transferring responsibility for further relief and peacekeeping efforts to the UN. The resulting mission (UNISOM II), however, was much more expansive in scope while enjoying significantly less American military support. Critically, it also lacked the full acquiescence of the Somali warlords.

If the American-led mission only hinted at political objectives in Somalia, UNISOM II took them as its guide. It called for total disarmament, legal repercussions for any actor who broke international law, and an expanded UN troop presence to enforce peace. This was more than hubris on the part of UN officials; American leaders were equally enthusiastic about using the UN to rebuild a country. US Representative to the United Nations Madeline Albright was a particularly outspoken advocate, arguing in a New York Times op-ed that humanitarian goals could not be consolidated absent a stable political environment and widespread disarmament. The situation proved more difficult to manage than public pronouncements suggested. Militiamen under a particularly prickly general, Muhammad Farrah Aidid, routinely clashed with UN forces throughout the summer of 1993, reaching a high point on October 3.

The Battle and Aftermath

The documentary offers little of this background. Instead, it jumps quickly into the action. In the early afternoon, US Army Rangers were called in from their Sunday reprieve for a mission to capture senior leadership in Aidid’s militia.

The mission almost immediately went south. Before landing at the target building, the Black Hawk helicopters carrying the Rangers were fired upon by barrages of RPGs; Rangers were shot off of their propel ropes; dust made visibility a pipedream. Shortly after securing their target (an achievement the documentary glosses over), the first Black Hawk went down, turning the kidnapping mission into a rescue mission.

The documentary does a fine job conveying the urgency and chaos of the ensuing hours. Rangers describe facing a “wall of lead.” As one put it, “It was a small group of Americans fighting a city.” Some sought refuge in a Somali house where a mother had just given birth. She describes the fear of losing her child as militiamen fired indiscriminately at her home. The Americans interviewed confessed that they had little time to discriminate either: when fighters are firing from a crowd, there is not much opportunity to assess each face—they’re all presumed hostile. To their credit, a strict discrimination between civilian and combatant was impossible; at one point, a woman shot at the Americans with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.

What was supposed to be an hour-long operation lasted seventeen. By the end, three Black Hawks were shot down. One pilot was captured and held hostage while 82 Americans were injured. Eighteen lost their lives. The Somali casualties were much higher. The series reports that as many as 500 civilians were killed in the crossfire; other estimates put the number of total killed as high as 1,500. The stories from the interviewed civilians were difficult to hear. One mother recounts how she lost her husband and two sons (her daughter was permanently blinded but lived); a woman who was a school girl at the time tells of how she lost her whole family.

Strictly speaking, the mission was a tactical success. The Rangers secured their target and withstood a siege against a much larger force while inflicting significantly more damage. Strategically, the battle marked the end of America’s involvement in the civil war. Days after the battle, Clinton ordered the full withdrawal of American forces from the UNISOM II mission.

The Battle of Mogadishu spurred a flurry of debate about the value and achievability of humanitarian interventions. Some argued that the United States ought not to have been in the country at all. Others argued that the American mission should never have changed from a strictly humanitarian objective. Some dug in their heels and claimed that the United States should have stayed the course. The battle’s lasting legacy was to make the Clinton administration even more weary of entering foreign conflicts. Because of the “Mogadishu syndrome,” even Madeline Albright did not argue for intervening in the Rwandan genocide nine months later.

Sadly, the documentary offers no helpful contribution to this debate. This is not to say it does not submit an argument. Documentaries, like other forms of journalism, have a misguided air of objectivity. They present the facts, let people speak, and generally forgo marking out a specific position. But just as there are no unbiased news sources, there is no documentary that does not have an implicit argument. This series is no exception.

Its claims seem to be two-fold. First, America had the means to salvage Somalia but behaved in such a brutish manner that this hope was quickly squandered. It shows how upon entering the country, many Somalis initially welcomed the Americans. But once American soldiers started targeting militiamen and searching civilians suspected of working with the warlords, they laid the seeds of vengeance and militant nationalism. This is misleading. Aidid’s forces did not start attacking Americans until UNISOM II, during which the American presence dwindled substantially from 25,000 to a mere 1,200 soldiers. The peaceful disposition of Aidid’s fighters during Operation Restore Hope was more out of fear of American retaliation than good faith. Their aggressiveness during UNISOM II is more likely attributable to America’s smaller presence, not from routine “heavy handedness” that accompanies any peacekeeping operation.

The second claim seems to be that war creates unpredictable chaos and horror. This is surely unobjectionable; who among us thinks war is generally preferable to peace? The problem is the lingering implication that the United States was responsible for this horror, that the big power reared its hulking head, leading to otherwise avoidable destruction. It is a disingenuous proposition. It is fair to say that the United States broke a country like Iraq (even if it had been a thorough despotism to begin with). But Somalia was already broken; we just half-heartedly picked up a shard or two and dropped them upon cutting ourselves.

If the documentary failed to raise interesting or serious questions, might we nonetheless glean a lesson thirty years later? It is tempting to say that we should simply forgo humanitarian missions. Perhaps. But it would be irresponsible to suggest that all humanitarian missions are doomed by intractable political roadblocks—a number have been successful, including that in the Balkans. Moreover, democracies, by dint of their universal principles, are already pressed upon by their citizens to help suffering people. Our democracy feels even more pressure; our transformational aspirations, soaring rhetoric, and military prowess make it difficult to sit idly in the face of barbarism. Unless we are involved in some more pressing conflict, there will always be pressure to help; rather than refuse to do so out of hand, it would behoove Americans to approach specific cases and ask first what success looks like, and second whether that success is achievable.

There are a number of obvious lessons that Somalia teaches. First, if we are to embark on full-on nation-building, we must dedicate the appropriate resources. In Somalia, we had, amazingly, expanded the nature of our mission while simultaneously decreasing the number of troops and equipment. Such an endeavor was bound to fail. Second, despite Albright’s claims to the contrary, there is a distinction to be made between humanitarian missions and those aimed at political reconfiguration. The H. W. Bush administration operated on the basis of this distinction and found limited success because of it. By focusing strictly on aid delivery, we were able to solicit the acquiescence of the most intractable warlords, thereby limiting the risks of escalation and freeing us to focus on feeding starving people. Albright is right that Somalia would not have been “saved” under UNISOM I, but we could and did save tens of thousands of lives by ending a famine. This is something we can be proud of.

A more interesting and deeper lesson can be learned from observing how easily our nation was goaded into a police role that sought to rescue a dying country. For all their problems, the restraint school today is right that there has always been a crusading impulse in America’s foreign policy; this impulse was starkly revealed during the Clinton administration’s Somalia mission. But Clinton was wise enough to immediately correct course and take a more prudent approach to interventions after Somalia. America may have a crusading spirit, but it is regularly counteracted by an equally American pragmatic impulse.

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This latter broad approach has gained considerable traction in recent years. Its ascendancy is due in no small part to the dramatic failures of our foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, which its advocates submit as undeniable evidence of the need for substantial reform. These “forever wars” are seen as America’s Sicilian expedition—hubristic enterprises that betray a democracy and empire that has stretched itself too thin.

Memories of Iraq and Afghanistan are rightly seared into the minds of our policymakers as cautionary tales of imperial hubris. We ought to have learned that military prowess is no indication of political wisdom, that adversaries cannot always be eliminated, that societies are not easily remade. But it is a regrettable misapplication of these lessons and an abuse of history to suggest that America must give up its hegemonic status and moral leadership as a consequence of its failures in these two countries. Far from representing the crescendo of our foreign policy tradition, Iraq and Afghanistan stand out as anomalies. Our response should not be to turn away from our post-World War II legacy because of these overreaches, but to return to its true and more noble course.

The Restraint School

Advocates of restraint argue that Iraq and Afghanistan revealed a foreign policy elite that is infatuated with martial strength. The most cynical interpretation sees this unspecified elite as a corrupt cabal, whose members are beneficiaries of a closed-loop system in which national security and intelligence professionals cash in on high-paying lobbying jobs where they enjoy privileged access to Congress and the Pentagon. This “deep state” uses this access to secure high-dollar contracts to build shiny new weapons of questionable utility. As a result, they see war as a cash cow that’s good for business even if it endangers American interests and lives. A more generous interpretation posits this elite as perfectly patriotic and pure in intention, but as suffering from groupthink. Its members are nourished—or indoctrinated—by exaggerated narratives of American foreign policy grandeur that portray our military as a vanguard of liberty that has saved the world from the forces of evil at least twice. They are an unaccountable “clerisy” that worships the footsteps of men like George Kennan and George Marshall.

Nefarious or naïve, initiates of this elite (or, if you will, the military industrial complex) are cloistered in Washington, DC, far away from average American citizens. Their distance from the heartland obfuscates their interpretation of the national interest, compelling them to exaggerate the importance of goings-on in the far corners of the world, prioritizing these events above the concerns of Americans, from grocery prices to natural disasters. As Andrew Bacevich, a leading voice in this movement, puts it,“For the Pentagon, this means that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea takes precedence over wildfires, hurricanes, floods, pandemics, and porous borders here at home, not to mention quelling the occasional insurrection.” Rory Stewart—whose views are more nuanced than Bacevich’s—similarly invokes the plight of local communities, like my own home of Eastern Kentucky, which he claims are ignored at the expense of a more globally minded foreign policy. 

To correct course, advocates of restraint target the United States’ massive military and our global presence. In particular, they call for dramatic cuts to our military spending, reductions or elimination of forward troop deployments in Europe, the Middle East (and even Asia), a commitment to hard limits on our nuclear arsenal, and a general preference for diplomatic engagement with and accommodation of perceived adversaries.

The restraint school is far from new. There has always been a strain in American political discourse that is skeptical of concentration of military power and outright hostile to projecting military force abroad. In his book Special Providence, Walter Russell Mead described this impulse as the Jeffersonian school, embodied by such men as Robert Taft and John Quincy Adams. Popular through much of American history, it was largely confined to the margins after President Eisenhower made internationalism backed up by military might a bipartisan consensus. It has gained renewed strength in recent years, however, in part because of the dramatic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to Bacevich, Iraq and Afghanistan should have been to America what the Suez Crisis was to the British Empire: a wake-up call that forced the latter to severely curtail its role in the world and the military that supported it. “But the US foreign policy establishment has refused to move on, clinging to the myth that what the world needs is more American military power.” Even President Biden, who ultimately withdrew troops from Afghanistan and refused to send them to Ukraine, did not forsake the “fundamental belief in the enduring efficacy of American military power.”

It should not be surprising that such dramatic failures have bred widespread skepticism of the value or necessity of the American military industrial complex. In hindsight, it is hard to believe that serious people ever thought that the United States had the power or will to transform these countries into thriving, yet alone liberal democratic, societies. After all, neither country had strong institutions to refurbish or political cultures with experience in democratic processes, nor was there reason to believe that indigenous populations would welcome American forces as liberators instead of invaders. More importantly, the wars were incredibly costly, both in terms of resources and in terms of American prestige. The Cost of War Project at Brown University estimates that the United States spent over $8 trillion in its post-9/11 wars.

Correcting the Narrative

But Bacevich’s argument, and the argument of the restraint movement in general, would be more compelling if Iraq and Afghanistan represented the logical end point of America’s foreign policy trajectory after World War II. But they simply do not. Far from being the “apex,” Iraq and Afghanistan stand out precisely because they were such unique cases and stark aberrations from previous strategy.

Our post-WWII foreign policy was bold, to be sure. It sought nothing less than the eventual defeat of the communist empire and the military and economic security of democratic countries. Its orientation, however, was defensive in nature. It did not seek to forcibly transform the world into a democratic order, but rather to sustain freedom where it was under threat and to promote it via soft power where it could. It did not seek out monsters to destroy, but defended against them where it could. To be sure, there were overextensions and moral failures (e.g., Vietnam and Chile). But on the whole, as President Reagan noted, “Historians looking back at our time will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West.”

This general pattern continued into the 1990s. Immediately following the high of victory in the Cold War, our country was far more selective of the conflicts in which it inserted itself and limited in its objectives than the restraint narrative would suggest.

In the Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush exercised laudable discretion, pursuing a mission with a clearly defined objective of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait while refusing to expand the mission after decisive victory. Somalia stands out as a military intervention into a conflict of minimal strategic importance, but even here, the intervention was limited to ensuring famine relief aid was not being stolen by warlords; it was not an attempt to build a country or forcibly spread liberalism. Our failure there also prompted immediate reconsideration of humanitarian interventions, expressed in the restrained stipulations of Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-25. Following PDD-25, the United States did nothing to prevent the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 and only reluctantly took part in airstrikes to stop ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in 1995. Even Anthony Lake’s argument for “Democratic Enlargement” called for assisting democracy to grow where there was demand for it and where it was in our interests to do so. It was explicitly not a “democratic crusade.” These are hardly the actions of an unhinged ideological power forcing its vision of justice on the world.

However, if Iraq and Afghanistan were not the logical conclusion of American foreign policy, what were they? There are two interrelated factors that help to explain America’s actions in the early 2000s. First, the US suffered the worst attack on the homeland in its history on 9/11, an attack perpetrated by an enemy the nature of which the country had limited experience combatting. It is difficult to overestimate the sense of fear and paranoia following the collapse of the Twin Towers—and this paranoia was not limited to small town biddies. This attack called for a response, the intensity of which was catalyzed by the second factor: the United States in 2001 was an uncontested global power. Twenty years ago, China was still far from approaching the status of peer competitor, with an economy more than ten times smaller than what it enjoys today. Russia, meanwhile, was still recovering from the fall of the USSR and was perceived by many to be progressing towards a cooperative partnership with the United States. In such a context, muscular reaction could be executed without serious consideration to international backlash. These two factors—9/11 and the unipolar moment—were more determinant of the American response than was its Cold War legacy of international leadership.

It is important that we understand the weight of these factors when assessing the legacy of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy precisely because they are no longer present today. We are now in a multipolar world where the risk of America engaging in militarized nation-building—a practice already at odds with the full legacy of American foreign policy—is even less likely to occur than it was in the years before 9/11. Reducing our military’s strategic edge on the basis of a questionable narrative of our unipolar excess is simply not appropriate in a more competitive world where our adversaries are actively expanding their arsenals.

There is a tendency among partisans of restraint to overestimate the peaceful nature of world affairs. They often argue that Putin was “provoked,” that Iran is not expansionist, that China aspires to regional, not global, leadership. Their naivete is, paradoxically, proof of America’s success in the Cold War. Our efforts during that generational struggle yielded some of the most laudable diplomatic achievements since the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century. Europe saw an eighty-year peace, democracies thrived, and commerce flowed. Historic aggressors became prosperous allies. Most important of all, an ideological contest between nuclear powers ended peacefully with chants of liberty. The legacy of that conflict is not one of a cavalier cowboy spreading democracy at gunpoint. Instead, the United States preserved the civilized world by countering aggression with aggression, by standing firmly by our allies, and by threatening overwhelming force against our adversaries.

Having kept the monsters at bay for so long, we seem to forget that they remain, lurking in the deep. I commend the restraint school’s desire to reach diplomatic understanding with adversaries. But should there be any hope for such engagement to be effective in prompting responsible action, they would do well to remember George Kennan’s advice: “You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background.”

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The weakening of Iran’s position is promising news. But this degradation will yield only a momentary reprieve if Iran continues unabated in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Preventing a nuclear-armed Iran remains a top (if not the top) priority for promoting regional security. Because of 2024, there has never been a better time to achieve this end through diplomatic means. More specifically, there is a unique opportunity to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran that both halts its progress toward nuclear armament and curtails Tehran’s ability to support militia forces across the region. 

A Unique Opportunity

Over the past two decades, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has trained, funded, and supplied militia and proxy forces across the Middle East, notably in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen while strengthening its support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Gaza’s Hamas. This “Shia Crescent” or “Axis of Resistance” encircled the Middle East, creating a land route stretching from Iran to Lebanon’s coast and a sea route from the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab, reaching into the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. There is considerable debate among analysts concerning the precise nature of this network. Are these genuine proxies operating at the will of Tehran, or are they better understood as ideologically sympathetic clients over whom Iran holds varying degrees of influence? The answer depends on the group, but whatever its precise nature, this network has proven effective at advancing Iran’s interests: it helped keep Bashar al-Assad in power long past his due; it’s given Iran considerable influence over Baghdad’s weak government; Hamas in particular worked to prevent a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine; and from its threatening perch to the north, Hezbollah has made Israel cautious about attacking Iran directly.

All of this has changed in the past 12 months. Hezbollah and Hamas have lost most of their veteran leadership and revealed Iran’s weakness in the process. Hamas is estimated to have lost over half of its fighting force and must now try to reassert control over Gaza. Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire which, if fully implemented, would neuter its position in Lebanon. With a younger generation of officers trying to rebuild both of these organizations, they will face a serious question: how much they should rely on Iran, which did little to quell Israel’s rapid advance into either Gaza or Lebanon? The fall of Assad, meanwhile, adds considerable logistical difficulties to Tehran’s plate; it no longer has an unimpeded land connection to Lebanon. It will be years before these groups regain their former strength, if ever they do.

These regional developments only compound Iran’s domestic difficulties. Though its economy has performed better than some expected after the reintroduction of sanctions under the first Trump administration, there are telling signs of strife. Inflation was above 30 percent throughout 2024 and the value of its currency dropped to an all-time low in November with the rial trading at above 700,000 rials to the dollar. Meanwhile, the country is confronting a major energy crisis. Its president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in a rare moment of public candor, admitted on live television that the country faces “very dire imbalances in gas, electricity, energy, water, money and environment.” As urban life virtually shut down in December, the president actually apologized to Iranians. Such conditions are ripe for unrest in a country where frustration with the regime erupts into mass protest every few years. It may have been a foreshadowing omen when, just weeks ago, two members of its Supreme Court were assassinated.

For all its difficulties, internationally and domestically, Tehran nonetheless maintains one important strategic leverage: international fear of its nuclear program.

Nuclear Deal 2.0

Since the American withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, Iran has been steadily increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium, prudently keeping enrichment levels just shy of weapons grade. The process began reaching a threshold in 2024 when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a harsh private rebuke of Iranian leaders in June after confirming that Iran was “weeks away” from producing enough material for a weapon—the actual construction of which could take another year. The Americans are not alone in worrying about enrichment levels; in November, the International Atomic Energy Association censured Iran for refusing to cooperate with inspectors.

Skeptical readers might roll their eyes at these developments, and for understandable reasons. News of Iran being “weeks away” from reaching weapons-grade levels of enrichment seems to make the news cycle every few months. It is also common knowledge (written plainly in American intelligence assessments) that Iran deliberately stokes fears of its nuclear program in order to exert leverage in negotiations for sanctions relief. Moreover, it is also known that the clerical establishment is itself weary of going nuclear out of fear that the IRGC could use the weapons to mount a coup should their rule cease to be sufficiently Islamic. But things are different today. Iran’s pronounced vulnerability is such that the nuclear option, whatever dangers it may invite, could be the only true defense left for the regime.

Tehran understands that its adversaries would be far less prone to taking military action against a nuclear power. Accordingly, nuclear weapons would provide cover for Iran, both to rebuild its proxy network and to pursue an even bolder foreign policy in the region (e.g., to take more aggressive action in the Strait of Hormuz).

If that prospect were not enough to make Western policymakers serious, there are other concerns associated with a nuclear Iran. Most pressing, Iranian development of a nuclear arsenal would spur other powers in the region, notably Saudi Arabia, to do the same. Of all the regions in the world where we should hope to avoid seeing a nuclear arms race, the Middle East is at the top of that list.

There is growing consensus that some action must be taken, but the push for renewed negotiations is often drowned out by a chorus of skepticism. Opponents of renewed diplomacy have good reasons to doubt the efficacy of crafting a new deal. The JCPOA, after all, did nothing to quell Iran’s regional agenda and would only have been in effect for ten years (sunsetting in 2025, incidentally). Moreover, Iran is a notoriously dishonest partner, one whom we could reasonably expect to take every covert action available to elide negotiated barriers like international monitoring. These are precisely the concerns of Arab states in the region who deepened their relations with China after the JCPOA. The problem, however, is that the alternatives to a deal are riskier than another attempt at negotiations. 

There are two major alternatives to diplomatic engagement that aim at stopping Iran’s nuclear program. The first is to rely on military and covert measures to routinely hamper its nuclear program. Israel’s actions on this front have been at least modestly effective. But this is a game of cat-and-mouse where the mouse will eventually escape. Iran, for example, is placing its facilities in bunkers that are deeper and deeper below the earth, and therefore more and more difficult to target, let alone confidently destroy. Moreover, regular attacks will only incite more anxiety in an infamously paranoid regime, thereby empowering the hardest voices in the country.

The second alternative is a holistic strategy in which the first option is one tactic among many to foster regime change. In this approach, targeted strikes work in tandem with economic sanctions and covert support for domestic opposition to force the mullahs to abdicate and open the way to, one hopes, a democratic future. According to this outlook, the regime’s leaders are so corrupt and so ideologically enthralled that the only way to manage them is to lay the foundation for their removal.

Ignoring the poor track record of regime change in the Middle East, this approach misunderstands the structural factors at play in Iran. Bottom-up regime change requires more than popular disavowal of the reigning authorities; it also requires buy-in from the materially powerful factions in the country in question, typically the armed forces. But there are checks against this prospect built into the Iranian regime. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, was a student of revolutions who understood that his own revolution succeeded against Shah Pahlavi precisely because the armed forces laid down their weapons at the critical moment. It is no accident that Iran has had two armed forces since its founding, the regular military (Artesh) and the IRGC (Sepah). This latter is not just tasked with spreading the revolution. Its formal charge is to defend the regime against both foreign and domestic threats. In practice, it is an ideological counterweight to the regular armed forces specifically designed to prevent any seditious behavior akin to the army’s disloyalty to the Shah in 1979. Its officers are rigorously screened for loyalty to the regime and undergo intensive ideological instruction. In this context, an attempt at regime change is more apt to produce civil war with no promise whatsoever of producing a peaceful, let alone democratic, victor.

Instead of trying to blow up the Iranian nuclear program in perpetuity or quixotically pursue regime change, the Western world should try to engage Iran once more to arrive at a deal that limits and reduces the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium. Precisely because of its deleterious year, the country’s ruling elite is desperate. What is more, the leverage held by countries like the United States is larger now than it was in 2015 when the countries signed the JCPOA. Ten years ago, the inflation rate in Iran was eleven percent, a third of what it is today (and has been since 2019). Taken with the failure of its regional strategy in recent months, Iran may be just desperate enough to negotiate a deal that places harsher restrictions on its ability to fund proxies and sow chaos in the region. To this point, before Assad’s fall and shortly after Hezbollah’s virtual surrender, Iran’s Vice President for Strategic Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote in the pages of Foreign Affairs that President Pezeshkian is “ready for equal-footed negotiations regarding the nuclear deal.” If the country’s leaders were ready before the loss of Syria, they are pining for it now.

Moreover, an accord with the Iranians need not isolate our Arab friends in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who expressed valid frustrations with the JCPOA. Their concerns (chiefly with Iranian meddling in the region) can be addressed under a new, indefinite accord that limits support of terrorism—absent such limits there would be no use in pursuing the deal in the first place. There is sure to be hand-wringing and feigned astonishment. But we should remember that the Arab states have been happy to work with China despite the latter’s subsidization of the Iranian economy. In other words, fears that we will be alienating our allies in the region are exaggerated.

Such a deal will be tricky to negotiate and would require clear safeguards not only against uranium enrichment, but also against renewed support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Policymakers will further have to devise clear tripwires for determining whether Iran will continue funding proxies after the deal. There is plenty of opportunity for failure. But skeptics should remember that diplomacy can and has worked in the past. For all the JCPOA’s shortcomings, in 2016, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium plummeted. It is perfectly possible to see such a decline again.

The post Is Iran Ready for a Nuclear Deal? appeared first on Law & Liberty.

Regardless, how EU member states and Brussels react stands to set precedents. What will qualify as Russian foreign electoral interference within the European Union? And what is to be done about the likes of TikTok and other such services when weaponized by Moscow or other malign actors? And how can the West take countermeasures while firmly adhering to liberal democratic principles?

These questions have important implications for American foreign policy. The US has an interest in good governance for a country that has evolved into a supportive NATO partner. Romania’s defense expenditure has surged by 53 percent since 2023, with a projected cumulative spending of $46.3B for 2025–29. Romania now allocates over 3 percent of its GDP to defense spending and has the second largest military on NATO’s eastern flank (after Poland) and a long-term plan for hardware modernization (2023 saw Bucharest retire its last MiG jet and the Romanian Air Force now flies mostly US-made F-16s). Bucharest has also positioned itself as a key American partner on the Black Sea, allowing the US to reduce its reliance in the area on Turkey, a complicated ally with interests that do not always align with America’s. How Bucharest handles intelligence sharing, overtures from Russia and China, and domestic corruption (particularly in military procurements) is of vital interest to Washington.

Moreover, Romania shares a 400-mile border with Ukraine and has registered more Russian military drones flying over or crashing into its territory than any other NATO state. While there are traditional tensions between Ukraine and Romania, those have been put on hold as Bucharest has sent not only personnel carriers and rocket launchers but also howitzers, 122mm and 152mm shells, grenade launchers, machine guns, and much more. In short, constitutional unrest in Romania directly affects American interests in Eastern Europe.

TikTok’s Role

The first-round election results were almost immediately plunged into dispute. Days after the vote, upon exiting a meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defense, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis triggered the crisis by citing soon-to-be declassified intelligence reports that “a presidential candidate” had benefited from “massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.” The videos in question were posted by local influencers, who were supported by armies of bots that gamed the TikTok algorithms to expand audience reach. Later, the unclassified intelligence revealed a complicated network of payments to these influencers. The videos themselves were often unremarkable. In an election year that featured Indian premier Narendra Modi “performing” in viral, AI-generated pop music videos, most of Georgescu’s videos were re-posts of clips from talk show panels and think tank events.

Meanwhile, the Romanian Constitutional Court ordered a recount, prompted by unrelated complaints against the other candidate, center-right reformist Elena-Valerica Lasconi. The recount showed no technical flaws or fraud in the administration of the election, and on December 2, the Constitutional Court unanimously affirmed the electoral outcome.

But on December 4, the much-anticipated Romanian intelligence service reports were at last released, revealing a pattern of massive cyber-attacks and well-funded disinformation campaigns by an unnamed “state actor” implicating Russia.

Then on December 6—two days before the scheduled run-off—the Constitutional Court plunged Romanian politics into crisis when it reversed course and threw out the election results on the basis of these declassified intelligence documents.

Before the annulment, the Romanian Constitutional Court appears to have sent a message to Lasconi suggesting that she file the necessary appeal for annulment; Lasconi seems to have calculated that her chances of winning the December 8 election had been strengthened and so declined to file. At that point, the Court self-referred the case, drawing further criticism from civil society and Western press. Even Lasconi, confident in her likelihood of beating Gorgescu, accused the Court of intrusion in the democratic process. 

The Annulment

Electoral annulments are ordinarily driven by procedural and administrative failings and/or fraud. Decision No. 32 of the Constitutional Court of Romania marks a shift with its condemnation of platform manipulation and disinformation which, turbocharged by AI, corrupted the electoral process and created a breach of transparency, violating “the essential principles of democratic elections.” In its decision, the Court described a voter’s “right to obtain correct information about candidates.” The question is open whether this mandates further restrictions on social platforms, or if this saddles a neutral government actor, like the election management body, with compiling candidate statements and distributing them widely, as many US states do. It also raises the question many democracies are currently confronting: how can a country repel misinformation campaigns while respecting free speech?

The crisis is further complicated by the fact that the actual impact of the social media campaigns on the November 24 election is unknown and possibly unknowable. Moreover, many of the allegations in the declassified documents are not backed by evidence standards under a prosecutorial case.

US media coverage of this election and the annulment focused on the drama of TikTok algorithms and conniving Russians. But there is another piece of the Court’s decision that is just as important: namely that “the electoral process regarding the election of the President of Romania was flawed throughout its duration and at all stages by multiple irregularities and violations of electoral legislation,” and particularly that the presidential campaign featured serious violations of campaign finance law (paragraphs 5 and 18). This brought the Court back to the use of annulment in situations involving mismanagement or fraud and is integral to the Court’s full decision.

To wit, Georgescu’s official declarations to Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority (PEC) reported that his campaign had spent a grand total of nothing. While Georgescu’s public appearances were minimal, his online presence across multiple platforms was enormous; his own TikTok account alone had 3.7 million likes, 274,000 followers, and nearly 200 million views in the last two months of the campaign. Both Romanian campaign law and TikTok terms of reference require campaign videos to be labeled as such. Georgescu’s seldom were—and it’s unclear why he was never sanctioned for it. His campaign was also active on Facebook and YouTube, with support from networks on Telegram and Discord—all expensive activities to maintain for the duration of a campaign. The presence of these extensive social media campaigns was sufficient evidence for campaign finance violations, separate from any distorting effects these efforts may have had on voters.

The Court was careful to frame its decision within Constitutional and EU legal frameworks, and the violations of Romanian campaign finance law seem real enough. On the other hand, the Court’s focus on voter “rights” to “obtain correct information” creates more questions than answers.

But ultimately the Court’s standing is shaky at best and created whole-cloth at worst. The Constitutional Court acted because other Romanian institutions did not—which instantly shifted the Court into a political frame. The Council of National Defense—made up of the President, Prime Minister, and several security Ministers—appeared uncoordinated and reluctant to engage with the crisis. The national media regulator complained to TikTok, which said it had removed content—content that nonetheless remained visible for the duration of the campaign. The PEC was unresponsive to campaign finance filings and further lacked the capacity to oversee online advertising expenditures. Providing only a poor band-aid, the PEC only referred campaign finance violations to the Romanian tax authority in mid-December.

Inevitably, the dispute caught the attention of Brussels and Washington.

Never Waste a Crisis

Washington responded by firmly implicating Russian interference. The allegation of Kremlin malfeasance so compelled the European Commission to investigate TikTok for a third time under the EU’s 2023 Digital Services Act (DSA). Intended to protect EU citizens’ right to privacy inter alia, the law comprises a hefty set of social platform regulations enforced by potential levies on its transgressors. In tandem, some European lawmakers demanded that TikTok’s CEO appear before the European Parliament to qualify his firm’s methods of disinformation prevention.

The drivers of this crisis are all too common. Călin Georgescu tapped into the gulf between the rural disaffected and urban elites, popular anger over corruption, the highest inflation rate in the EU, and voter fatigue with the two main parties—the Social Democrats and the National Liberals—which have dominated Romanian politics since the 1990s. He is a product of “covid politics” and the public distrust that sprang to life in the wake of state overreach during the pandemic. Many of Georgescu’s TikTok videos were simply clips of interviews he gave on state television. These resonated with voters, particularly with young voters. His being a Moscow puppet matters to Washington—but not to non-elite Romanian voters who want to flip off Bucharest and its governance failures.

Some analysis has been breathless about the “sophistication” of Russia’s influence operations in Romania. The technical specs on the widespread hacking attempts certainly indicate some serious firepower—computer systems from over 30 countries used advanced anonymization methods to launch cyber-attacks in an attempt to access state IT systems. But the “meat” of the influence operation was unremarkable: replays of an older man in a suit complaining on a stage were not on my 2024 bingo card of TikTok-disinformation-wizardry.

Blaming the popularity of this unlikely messenger on an algorithm or a Russian bogeyman allows elites to sidestep questions of their own failures which will only snowball future protest votes. And deploying the EU’s new social media rules in a way that targets non-elite voters will only fuel accusations that the DSA is a tool for establishment political control.

Much of this drama could have been avoided if Romanian authorities had simply enforced their own campaign finance laws during the election—as, for instance, when Georgescu did not even try to make his filing look authentic. He literally declared a zero, as if he were mocking the incontinence of Bucharest elites. Had the relevant electoral authorities invalidated Gorgescu’s campaign then and there, the present morass may well have been avoided.

What’s Next

Washington jumped at this opportunity to highlight Russian malfeasance. But there is no shortage of such opportunities. Seizing it here risks framing Washington as the European establishment’s bully. With the pro-US Lasconi likely to emerge as the next President, we should not forget that she, too, is an outsider with a strong anti-corruption message. There is no need to publicly embarrass Romanian institutions or marginalize Romanian voters who are angry. Rather, there is a real opportunity for Washington to engage diplomatically behind the scenes to encourage Bucharest to improve governance capacity and tackle corruption.

Bucharest has given us yet another exhibit of elite panic and overreach, but with the rescheduling of the two-round presidential election on May 4 and 18, they have an opportunity to redeem themselves. Quiet yet firm encouragement from Washington can supplement the pressure brought to bear on Bucharest by angry Romanian voters; pressed between a rock and a hard place, the Romanian establishment might rediscover the joys of reform and good governance. If successful, both will improve the economic and social lives of Romanians outside of Bucharest, protect the $3B of foreign direct investment that American businesses have in the country, and ensure that Romania is a stable, high-capacity military partner in Europe and the Black Sea region.

The post Romania’s Election and Elite Failures appeared first on Law & Liberty.

But the enthusiasm that ought to follow these developments is blunted by the concerns about Assad’s de facto replacement, Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Muhammed al-Jolani. Leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel faction that spearheaded the victory over Assad, Sharaa matured in the global jihadist movement, was a member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State, and until very recently was a wanted terrorist with a 10 million dollar bounty on his head. Despite his successful charm offensive in recent weeks, the question remains whether Sharaa will construct a moderate Islamist regime that acts as a responsible state actor or an extremist regime that terrorizes the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria and provides support to the global jihadist cause.

A lot hinges on this question, and not just inside Syria or the Middle East. HTS’s place in the jihadist matrix means that many extremist groups operating throughout the globe, and particularly in Africa, are looking to Syria for lessons to apply to their own theaters of operation. Should HTS embrace restraint, tolerating (or even extending equal citizenship to) religious minorities, this could act as a moderating catalyst for jihadists in regions like the Sahel. But should Sharaa instead become like a Sunni Khomeini and use the trappings of the state to usher in a new age of Islamic terrorism, global jihad may be galvanized in a way we have not seen in years.

The State of Global Jihad

In the past ten years, the focus of the global jihadist movement has shifted from the Middle East to Africa. A decade ago, the Islamic State had announced a caliphate in Raqqa, attracted some 40,000 foreign volunteers, and controlled a landmass the size of Great Britain. Today, the Islamic State exists only in the shadows of the Middle East. Its most active enterprise is now in Sub-Saharan Africa where its “provinces” compete with state authorities, criminal networks, and rival al-Qaeda affiliates. The numbers are striking. In 2015, 14 countries in Africa were experiencing a jihadist insurgency. In 2023, that number more than doubled to 35. Of the top ten countries with the highest terrorism indexes in 2023, five were African countries. Burkina Faso had the highest index, surpassing even Israel, which suffered the world’s deadliest terror attack in years on October 7.

In important ways, groups like Islamic State-West Africa Province (ISWAP) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) occupy a similar place in the jihadist nexus as did HTS before its victory in Syria. These groups are connected with transnational jihadist networks but are largely local in their aspirations. They wage insurgent-style warfare against host governments, draw support and manpower from local populations, and try to garner legitimacy by offering governing services. Though they each dream with varying degrees of intensity of establishing a global caliphate, their efforts are directed at establishing Islamic government in their own locales, leaving the caliphate business for future generations.

These more locally oriented strategies have proven effective. Some of the jihadist insurgencies have lasted well beyond the average twelve-year timespan of insurgencies. The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, for example, persists in the country’s northwest after 16 years. Al-Shabaab’s insurgency in Somalia is going on its nineteenth year. Moreover, groups like Al-Shabaab and ISWAP have proven adept at winning widespread support in their areas of operation despite their historic religious extremism. In Africa, where many areas suffer from extreme poverty and poor government services, the security and economic opportunity offered by jihadists are worth the social costs. In Mali, for instance, despite banning cigarettes and enforcing gender segregation in its areas, JNIM has curried impressive support from local populations.

This focus on local governance, on currying favor with local populations and even moderating their exclusionary worldviews, reflects longstanding debates within jihadist organizations, debates that have been raging since the formation of al-Qaeda in the late 1980s. All organizations have factions; even jihadists, despite their claims to purity, do not enjoy internal cohesion. Within any given jihadist group, there is always a faction that wants to focus on local, geographically confined conflicts and one that wants to act as a transnational actor in the service of establishing a global caliphate in the more immediate future. When Osama bin Laden formed al-Qaeda in 1988, this was precisely the problem that divided his advisors; the globalists, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, won the day. That today’s African jihadist organizations are leaning more and more toward the former is no promise that they will continue doing so; it only means that the more moderate, pragmatic factions are winning in these internal debates.

The success of these jihadist groups ranges widely. Some, like ISIS in Mozambique, are little more than enduring low-scale threats. Others are on the brink of displacing state authorities entirely. Mali has been described by one astute analyst of jihadism as “a vast jihadist arena.” In Somalia, the African Union is launching its third multinational force to quell al-Shabaab after the previous two failed. Depending on how Sharaa and HTS govern in Syria, they could highlight a more moderated path for disenchanted Muslim men across the globe who fell under the spell of Jihadism, a path that distances them from transnational networks. Alternatively, should Sharaa reveal himself to be the ISIS sympathizer he was a decade ago, this could generate a boon for the globalists’ cause.

The Vague Jihadism of HTS

Though listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department, HTS’s status in the jihadist landscape is questionable at best. Some analysts waste no breath in calling it a transnational jihadist organization. But the truth is murkier.

The argument that HTS is simply another jihadist group rests heavily on the character of Sharaa himself. Sharaa’s history as a major jihadist operative is well-established. In the weeks leading up to the American invasion of Iraq, he volunteered to join al-Qaeda. Some reports have him as a close confidant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the “Sheikh of Slaughter” whose brutal tactics inspired the Islamic State. Sharaa was later imprisoned in the infamous Camp Bucca where he established a close connection with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s founding “caliph.” When the Syrian Civil War began, Baghdadi personally selected Sharaa to establish an Islamic State foothold in Syria, resulting in the creation of the group Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), the forerunner to HTS. When al-Qaeda and the Islamic State had a public falling out in 2013, Sharaa and JaN stayed with al-Qaeda. Eventually, the al-Qaeda brand proved to be too much baggage, preventing other rebel groups from partnering with JaN. When Sharaa formed HTS in 2017, combining his group with various rebel factions, he disavowed any affiliation with outside organizations, though as late as 2018 a United Nations report claimed that HTS maintained contact with al-Qaeda. In short, Sharaa has a long history in the jihadist movement, but even when in the thick of it, he proved willing to place the demands of necessity over ideology.

His pragmatic streak continued as leader of HTS. For the next seven years, the group distanced itself from transitional jihadists, both in speech and deed. Its rhetoric has consistently focused on the local goal of ridding the country of Assad and Iranian influence. In action, the group has targeted civilians, but the vast majority of its actions have been against regime forces, Iranian proxies, and even ISIS and al-Qaeda forces. At the same time, the group has governed its enclave in Idlib province in an “Islamist but not draconian” fashion. It has accommodated religious minorities, allowed men and women to comingle in public spaces, permitted women to go without the veil, and bragged about the number of women attending universities in the province (where they are, in fact, segregated). The bar is low, to be sure, but we should remember that ISIS punished smokers with stoning in its short-lived caliphate.

As HTS swept across Syria in its last offensive against Assad, its diplomatic talents were on full display. It communicated with Christian and Ismaili leaders before entering Aleppo, Hama, and Salamiyah, promising to protect them. In Aleppo, its troops were forbidden to wear military uniforms while roaming the city. When a Christmas tree was burned in Damascus, Sharaa responded by making Christmas a national holiday.

What, then, are we to make of this circulatory career of Sharaa’s? Is he, as Israel’s deputy foreign minister called him, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing?” Possibly. His roots in al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are indeed troubling, but they also make it such that some analysts will never accept him as a moderate Islamist who can be trusted to steward peace, whatever his achievements. It is possible that he is a diehard extremist in disguise, waiting for the smoke to settle before revealing just how fanatical he truly is. At the same time, his long pragmatic streak clearly differentiates him from the likes of Zarqawi or Zawahiri. We will not know for certain for some time, but it is more likely that he is an Islamist who learned the right lessons from jihadism’s failures in the Middle East and rejected the millenarianism of his old co-conspirators.

If Sharaa makes good on his promise to protect religious minorities, respect the rights of women (to work, to obtain a college education, etc.), and even hold elections in the future, his model of transformation could serve as an instructive example for those organizations in Africa that are still deciding just how much they buy into Salafi-Jihadism as an ideology rather than a lucrative brand. We should recall that even revolutionary bureaus and commissars have produced reformers who accept the world as it is rather than try to reinvent it. We should not close off the possibility that Sharaa is such a man. If he proves to be one, the biggest loser may not be Bashar al-Assad, but the Salafi-Jihadist movement to which Sharaa once belonged.

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It is no longer clear that Israel understands this fact. Having occupied Gaza for nearly a year, the Israeli Defense Forces are now turning their guns north to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Last month Benjamin Netanyahu expanded the formal aims of the war to include returning Israelis to their homes in the country’s northern border. Such a move is perfectly understandable and just to any decent person; Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that has harassed Israel’s north since October 8 of last year. It is also a proxy of Iran and a vocal supporter of Hamas. But the alleged clarity of justice can blind one to the dictates of prudence. Expanding the war does not just prolong the conflict and heighten the risk of unintended consequences, it further distracts from and endangers the future of the Abraham Accords. If Jerusalem, the “City of Righteousness,” hopes for peace, it should control its impulse to punish the wicked and instead re-focus its efforts to expand and consolidate the Abraham Accords.

The Success and Promise of the Accords

A year into Israel’s deadliest war since its founding, it is difficult to remember the relative stability and promise for hope that the Abraham Accords encouraged before October 7. Announced in September 2020, the Accords normalized relations between Israel and two Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain. They sought to build a “culture of peace” through “interfaith and intercultural dialogue,” the promotion of “friendly relations among States,” the end of “radicalization,” and the support of “science, art, medicine, and commerce to … maximize human potential.” The language is vague and overly optimistic, especially so when one remembers that Arab public opinion of normalization at the time was incredibly low. But in the few years between the signing of the Accords and the launch of the Gaza War, they were accomplishing what they had set out to do.

The increase in volume and value of bilateral trade between Israel and the various Arab signatories is particularly impressive. Between 2022 and 2023, for example, the value of Israeli “Beverage and Tobacco” exports to the UAE increased by a factor of nine and of “Minerals and Metals” by fifty percent. Between 2020 and 2023, the value of cumulative trade between Israel and all Arab signatories (including Morocco and Sudan who joined later) more than quadrupled.

There was increased collaboration in several non-economic fields as well, from scientific research to joint humanitarian aid efforts and defense collaboration. In June 2023, for example, the UAE’s cybersecurity head, Mohammed al-Kuwaiti, acknowledged that Israel’s security system helped repel a cyber-attack on the country and that Israeli companies were helping the Emiratis build a “cyber iron dome.”

Finally, on the level of cultural mores, the Accords spurred progress. Commerce and collaboration are laudable in themselves, but they are better understood, following Montesquieu, as means for generating softer political personalities less prone to extremism and violence. Given that cultural change can take generations, a few years is hardly enough time to gauge the effectiveness of the Accords on this axis. But there were percolating signs before October 7. In Morocco, for example, textbooks distributed by the country’s Ministry of Education taught tolerance as a virtue and portrayed Jews in a more positive light, noting their patriotism and contribution to Morocco. They still don’t teach the Holocaust (that is too much to ask it seems), but any progress on this front is a welcome change.

The success of the Accords is perhaps most strongly attested to by how close Saudi Arabia came to joining them. The prized pony of all who want to expand the Accords, Saudi Arabia’s participation would spur progress on all of the above fronts. Not only is it the region’s largest economy, but as home to Mecca and Medina, it commands important cultural power in the Arab Muslim world as well. In particular, the symbolism of Saudi Arabia, the home of Wahhabism and formerly the leading exporter of jihadists, breaking bread with Israel would be a powerful image. It was nearly the crown jewel of Netanyahu’s political career; just weeks before October 7, Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammed bin Salman, told Fox News that a deal between the two countries was “very close.”

Taken together, these developments were the most promising and meaningful steps taken in the region to promote Israeli-Arab relations in a century. The Accords went far beyond the stale promises of when Jordan and Egypt normalized relations decades ago; they were actually sparking commerce, collaboration, and cultural exchange. Continued success and expansion could, over time, change the cultural dynamic in the region that would have Israel pushed into the sea. 

The Accords After October 7

All the enthusiasm for the Abraham Accords abruptly ended on October 7. The origins of the attacks are best understood in the context of the burgeoning relations between Jews and Arab Muslims engendered by the Accords. With Persian Gulf states (Palestine’s most generous Arab donors) normalizing relations with Israel, Hamas rightly saw that Palestine was losing its most influential patrons. It was a sign of how far Arab leaders were moving on this issue when Muhammad bin Salman called for a “home” for the Palestinians rather than a “state.” The October 7 attacks were not a random act of barbarism but were based on a strategic logic: by prompting Israel to retaliate, Hamas could generate widespread anti-Israel sentiment among Arabs thereby pressuring Arab governments to halt any steps towards normalization. To some extent, Hamas has proven successful.

Though no Arab state from the Accords has withdrawn, there has also been no expansion. In the UAE, where public hostility to Israel is lowest in the Arab world, the booming business dealings with Israelis have seemingly cooled. As one local businessman put it, “things have become more discreet” since October 7. In Morocco, the Israeli diplomatic mission only resumed activities ten months after the attack and was still met with mass protests. Saudi Arabia, of course, stopped official talks on normalization. 

More important, Hamas succeeded in impressing the importance of the Palestinians on leaders of the Gulf countries. The Saudis have now made normalization contingent on a Palestinian state and the UAE has made peacekeeping troops contingent on a state as well. Whether the Israelis like it or not, the fate of the Abraham Accords is now tied to a sustainable political solution to Palestine. But rather than treat the opportunity to get rid of Hamas as the prelude to a state (or some form of responsible government), Israel has treated the war as a purely military affair, focusing on the singular objective of destroying Hamas with little effort to prepare for the political future of the Strip. While the destruction of Hamas is surely laudable after the atrocities of October 7, that destruction cannot come at the expense of long-term strategic thinking.

The issue goes deeper than the high casualty count (40,000 deaths may well be proportionate to the war aim of destroying a deeply embedded group like Hamas); the issue is the lack of a political dimension to the invasion at all. One suspects that Israel is improvising. Indeed, it was not until he addressed the US Congress in June that Netanyahu gave some definition to the war aim of destroying Hamas: demilitarization and deradicalization. Similarly, plans to create humanitarian “bubbles” in which the IDF would work with local Gazans to distribute aid have largely come to naught, with little said about the endeavor since early summer. When one adds to this the recklessness of Israel’s bombing campaign (e.g., dropping thousand-pound bombs on densely packed targets) and the extent it has limited humanitarian deliveries, it is hard to argue that Israel is preparing for the political future of Gazans in its crusade. That Israel is now turning its focus to Lebanon only drives the point home.

Over the past few weeks, Israel has led a sophisticated campaign to cripple Hezbollah’s leadership, first with exploding pagers and then the assassination of its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah. Just three days later, Israel embarked on a “limited ground operation” into Lebanon. A full-blown war in Lebanon, as opposed to the predictable and manageable tit-for-tat that has been conducted for the past year, would be catastrophic for various reasons, not the least of which is it would further risk a full war between Israel and Iran, a conflict that will be much longer and bloodier than the war with Hamas. Iran’s attack on Israel last Monday may well lock the two countries on this otherwise avoidable trajectory.

More importantly, expansion into Lebanon distracts from and prolongs stabilization and deradicalization efforts in the Gaza Strip. The job in Gaza is far from over; nearly half of Hamas’s fighting force survives while the population has been crammed into dense humanitarian zones where conditions are dire. Successful counterinsurgencies turn on the occupying force’s ability to collaborate with the indigenous population; this is difficult when the enemy can still threaten civilians and when the population resides in camps ripe for radicalization.

Israel seems to be assuming that the broader structural factors of Middle East security dynamics combined with American cultural commitment to Israel will provide sufficient cover to conduct the war as it wishes and resume business as usual afterward. This view is not without justification; the fact of Iranian aggression and subversion in the region was a driving force behind the Abraham Accords. But the Arab signatories see the security element as defensive in nature; by normalizing relations with Israel they hope to formalize an existing security cooperative approach to deter Iran and its Axis of Resistance. In other words, they do not seek further escalation with Iran with whom Saudi Arabia is actively maintaining a period of détente. Moreover, precisely because countries like Saudi Arabia have long cooperated with Israel, the need for the formalized security arrangement is far from pronounced.

Israel cannot forget that there are limits to the patience of the princes and emirs of Arabia who may see needless expansion of the war as evidence that Israel is just as destabilizing as Iran. Normalization is not risk-free for these leaders; Muhammad bin Salman reportedly told Secretary of State Blinken that “I could end up getting killed” because of normalization. Nor should Israel count on indefinite American support; the country is becoming increasingly unpopular among the American public, even among Evangelicals.

In both Gaza and Southern Lebanon, Israel must guard against choosing retribution over pragmatism. The former would justify reckless behavior in the name of avenging October 7 and putting an end to terrorists. The latter, however, demands that the country not jeopardize the success that the Abraham Accords have achieved in embedding Israelis once more among Arab Muslim populations. That Israel has inclined toward retribution reinforces an understated reason to get back to the Accords: it needs expanded interaction with Arabs for its own sake. The Accords, after all, are not just about security; they aim to decrease extremism—on both sides. Radicalism in Israel has been on the rise for years but has increased appreciably since October 7. Acquaintance with the other does not necessarily breed affection for the other, but it is more likely to soften harsh mores than the prolonged isolation that will follow should Israel continue down its current path.

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To fulfill this mandate to educate, the creators of the Netflix documentary series, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, needed only to tell the story again, to let the narrative speak for itself. In certain respects, they do this, deploying a mix of real footage from the Nazi era, choreographed scenes with actors to fill in the gaps, and historical commentary that conveys the story of Hitler’s life and how one man directed a respectable country towards evil. But the series is handicapped by crucial flaws. Chief among these is its attempts to compare the Weimar Republic and its chief villain to contemporary American politics. Its loud dog whistles equating Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump betray a desperation of the creators that goes beyond the limits of acceptable bias in such a way as to undermine the aim of the entire project.

Evil on Trial is ambitious in scope, seeking to cover the whole of Hitler’s career from starving artist to failed conqueror of Europe in just six episodes. What is more, the creators add their own twist to well-trodden territory by intersplicing the narrative with recordings from the Nuremberg trials, and with journal entries and dispatches from an American journalist, William Shirer, who was on the ground during Nazi rule. Despite the series’ title, the primary focus of the documentary is not Nuremberg (which is often a distracting aside), but instead the character of Hitler himself and his transformation of Germany.

The first episode about Hitler’s youth is surely the best in the series. Here it does a fine job capturing how a beaten boy prone to daydreaming embarked on a path to become, in the words of one Law & Liberty writer, “the most universally reviled human being on the planet today.” The showrunners are wise enough to paint a portrait of youth that is sympathetic and even respectable. Hitler was not born evil. He was a boy “with a powerful imagination” who “lived in a fantasy world.” As a young man, he went to extremes to realize his dreams of becoming an artist, living in a men’s shelter, and selling paintings he copied from postcards. Relatedly, he was a great lover of music, plunging himself into even more debt in order to see the works of Richard Wagner performed. All this sounds like the charming, if obnoxious, qualities of a harmless Bohemian.

The creators note, though they do not spell out, that this early artistic streak was closely connected with Hitler’s attachment to noble, even fantastic sentiments. As the taste for Wagner suggests, Hitler was unusually drawn towards the heroic; Wagner’s operas portrayed “a Germany of gods and heroes and great leaders,” that furnished a dreamy ideal for the young artist to take as a lodestar. To Hitler, the strong, mythical characters of German folklore, however fantastical, were tremendously more admirable than the busy-bodied and broken souls furnished by a democratic age. With such sentiments, it is little surprise that he volunteered to join the Bavarian army at the outset of World War I, describing the conflict in his own words as “a deliverance from the distress that had weighed upon me.” War is the place to demonstrate one’s possession of pagan virtues, and so Hitler prayed for and thanked the heavens for war.

Hitler proved capable as a messenger during the war, but it did not elevate him to the status of hero. Totally devastated by World War I, Germany under the Weimar Republic was poor, humiliated, and chaotic. Such turmoil might be the optimal condition for ambitious men to rise; the impoverished, embittered, but talented Hitler was able to climb the ranks of the Nazi party and then the Reichstag in a mere decade largely through charisma and a penchant for political strategy.

The series does an adequate job covering all of the main bases: the initial persecution and subsequent genocide of Jews and other minorities; the shameless propaganda; the totalitarian character of the regime; and the warmongering and expansionist designs present from the beginning. But the series’ special mark throughout is its psychological treatment of the man himself.

In the end, the dreaming boy had become not just a political dictator, but a tyrant in the classical sense. He was prone to droning on at private functions before an audience too scared to push back; he regularly berated generals for telling him harsh truths about the war or for conveying the effects of stratagems they had warned against; the man who feverishly promoted folk mores had a flapper woman for a mistress. The list goes on.

Young Hitler’s ambitious and Spartan persona could have been a potent primer to excel at any idealistic cause. Instead, his severe character and moralistic love of heroism and perfection found an outlet in the hyper-nationalism of the National Socialist Workers’ Party. Hardly the venue for refining noble inclinations, the Nazi party did not correct but rather catalyzed Hitler to take his childhood fancies to insane conclusions. Once he became the indispensable man of the party and then of the country, there was nothing to prevent him from believing that he had become one of the heroes of his youth, a mythical demigod in the flesh.

The series, then, offers both classical and classically liberal lessons about tyranny. On the one hand, it shows the potential danger of a soul too attracted to heroic nobility to recognize the goodness or superiority of alternative lives. Such souls can make vicious tyrants. At the same time, it offers a testimony to the liberal mantra that power corrupts: The Hitler in Vienna and the Hitler in the bunker are two different people. Both lessons are well worth internalizing and passing on to our youth. The problem with the documentary, however, is that this analysis of Hitler is not its primary focus.

There are plenty of superficial reasons to stop watching Evil on Trial. The first is somewhat theatric in nature. The actor who portrays Adolf somehow makes a caricature of the histrionic Führer in a way that is distracting. A petty but glaring detail is that the actor is simply too skinny to portray Hitler whom William Shirer describes as “chubby.” But one can forgive an actor for over-playing such a role—Kenneth Branagh overacts in everything and yet still makes decent films on occasion. There are more serious flaws with this series.

First, once the series reaches World War II, it focuses on Germany’s Eastern Front during the war in order to capture both Hitler’s lunacy in opening the front and the absolute devastation that the Germans caused in Eastern Europe. The problem with focusing on the East is that it ends up casting the Soviets as heroes rather than the devils whom the allies felt it necessary to support. There is not a word spoken of the brutality of the Soviet troops once they reached Germany and Berlin in particular; nothing is said about the mass rapes perpetrated by the Soviets. If the documentary’s creators wanted to show salutary or inspiring alternatives to Hitler and his inner circle, they need only to have highlighted the virtues of men like Eisenhower, Churchill, and Roosevelt who demonstrate the courage liberal democracies are capable of producing in times of crisis. Casting the Red Army as saviors is about as bad as The Birth of a Nation portraying the Confederates as honorable sentinels defending Southern virtue.

But even the focus on Eastern Europe is somewhat understandable. After all, of the 75-80 million deaths in the entire war, an estimated 40 million died on the Eastern front. A still more troubling flaw in the show is its in-your-face alarm bells that the United States is now Weimar Germany, a weak state primed at the ready for a new Hitler to emerge. The show and its interviewers never explicitly name Donald Trump, but they frequently refer to him. Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria is “like a Mar-a-Lago.” Hitler sought to “Make Germany Great Again.” What is more, he was a master of “fake news” as opposed to just “propaganda.”

These comparisons are intentional. The creator, Joe Berlinger, explained his motivation by pointing to “our own reckoning with democracy, with authoritarianism knocking on our door.” Such comparisons undermine the show, and suggest its creators failed to draw appropriate lessons from Weimar. Indeed, the creators borrow pages from actors in the Weimar Republic. Fascists and communists in those days engaged in the worst sort of rhetorical astrology, predicting apocalypse should the other side win. With so much at stake, each could and did justify political violence, paving the way for Hitler to emerge as a defender of order.

More importantly, the comparison between Hitler and Trump so misses the mark as to raise the question whether the creators did in fact understand the psychology of Hitler after all. If they did have a good grasp of him, then it means they are so indoctrinated by the worst progressive takes on Trump as to be dismissed out of hand. Say what one will about our forty-fifth president. He may be a crude man who likes to see his name on big buildings, but he is not a Wagner-loving warmonger hoping to usher in a new dawn for the perfect human race. Moreover, making a documentary that compares a current candidate to Hitler smacks of crass politicking, detracting from whatever quality historical insight it otherwise might offer.

If we wish to use history’s examples as instructive maps for the present, it would behoove journalists and educators (and documentary makers) to refrain from twisting the present to fit into history’s categories. To suggest that Trump is Adolf Hitler is about as helpful as suggesting that Kamala Harris is Joseph Stalin. Precisely because such comparisons are grossly inaccurate, they cheapen the utility of these historical examples whose lessons should be always kept in the back of our minds. Like charges of racism or xenophobia, frequent misapplication of the “fascist” label will only incline audiences to roll their eyes when we need to deploy the word to confront an actual racist, xenophobic, or genocidal maniac.

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These criticisms are hardly new, nor were older generations of conservatism unaware of them. They were diagnosed by traditionalists like Russell Kirk seven decades ago and by scholars like Allen Bloom in the late 1980s. What is new among the post-liberals is the insistence, first, that liberalism itself is to blame for today’s woes and, second, that the solution requires affirming a public commitment to a more comprehensive view of the common good. In this they hope to correct liberalism’s pretenses to neutrality and the extreme license it gives its citizens. In short, they want to replace liberalism with some new, unifying outlook that better captures and answers man’s natural, moral longings.

The most extreme solution is offered by the Catholic integralists who explicitly seek to subvert “temporal power” (i.e., the state/government) to “spiritual power” (i.e., the Catholic Church). Along similar lines, Patrick Deneen proposes “Aristo-populism” to oust corrupt liberal elites. Add to the bunch National Conservatives, new-age Pentecostals, and Reformed Protestants and it seems that all the cool kids are coming up from liberalism. No solution is agreed upon. But all agree that the regime centered on the protection of individual rights must be replaced by some new system with more intrusive powers to direct our lost souls. 

The leaders of this broad coalition are not stupid and, therefore, their arguments should be confronted honestly and given due diligence. But dissuading them from their objectives will require more than pointing out how illiberal, homophobic, or un-democratic they are. Nor will it prove sufficient to point out how unrealistic their aims are in the context of the United States. Movements always begin with foolish hopes. What is needed instead are modern examples of states where similar revolutionary projects have been executed and produced less-than-ideal results. One state fits the bill nicely: the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini’s project in Iran was surely more extreme and violent than what most post-liberals would endorse. But given the authoritarian affinities of many post-liberals (consider their muted defenses of Vladimir Putin, East Germany, and the Chinese Communist Party), a comparison to Khomeini’s Iran is more than appropriate. Indeed, given the character and aims of Khomeini’s Iran, it is necessary.

The example of Khomeinism in Iran is instructive because it illustrates two lessons that classical liberals have long known. First, when a special class of moral guardians is permitted to be above the rule of law, there is no check on their own corruptibility, which all but ensures future abuses of power. And second, using the full powers of the state to enforce religious belief will render both the state and its religion illegitimate in the minds of the people. If post-liberals are serious about reviving moral virtue or shoring up religious faith, they should study the tragic example of Khomeini.

Khomeini and the Post-Liberals

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–1989) is not a figure most think of when discussing American post-liberal intellectuals. After all, he was a Muslim cleric who defended Islamic civilization against Western civilization, the integrity of which post-liberals generally seek to defend. What is more, American conservatives despised the man while leftist intellectuals like Michel Foucault celebrated him as an authentic warrior fighting against the corroding tyranny of bourgeoise values. But there is plenty that connects Khomeini and his political project with today’s post-liberals. 

First are the more superficial similarities. Khomeini adamantly opposed liberalism, secularism, and capitalism. Not only were these modern phenomena un-Islamic, but in Khomeini’s view they were forces that misunderstood human needs and therefore culminated in states that consisted of lost individuals. Without the traditional guardrails of “laws, customs, and ordinances of Islam,” man’s selfish proclivities are unleashed. Man, left to his own devices, resides in a “dark pit of egoism.” In “individualist” or “materialist” societies, man becomes distracted from the love he is to show to his neighbors and God and is “blinded by his servitude to passion.” Such men often turn to alcohol and drugs, leading to the increase in “murders and suicides” Khomeini saw in Iran. The decline of sexual mores engendered by these strains was particularly troubling for Khomeini. He claimed in 1970 that “sexual vice [had] reached such proportions that it [was] destroying entire generations. Capitalism, too, had generated gross inequality and placed average Iranians in utter squalor. There is nothing here that an American post-liberal would find objectionable.

Second, Khomeini’s attacks on the broader intellectual currents in 1970s Iran were coupled with an equally harsh denunciation of the Iranian elite. He directed particular ire against the Shah, the man who led the push for rapid modernization in Iran and commanded a brutal intelligence service that terrorized critics of the regime. But Khomeini also chastised Islamic clergy for embracing the secular dogma pushed by Tehran and failing to hold up the true faith. Similarly, he lambasted the universities that peddled scientism while failing to provide a proper moral education. These are all symptoms that post-liberals readily diagnose in our society: a corrupt political elite, a corrupt clergy that has forgotten the true teaching of scripture, and corrupt universities that are mere factories of relativism and moral decay.

The third point of similarity is Khomeini’s political solution to the problem of excessive individualism. The solution was relatively simple: Iran required the wilayat al-faqih (government by the jurist), or put more simply, theocracy. Guided by learned men of faith who had “knowledge of justice,” this theocracy would provide a harsh corrective to modern excesses. In his widely circulated lectures on Islamic government, Khomeini outlined the contours of this theocracy that would provide for “all aspects of human life.” The unabashedly authoritarian nature of the government stemmed from the belief that the Islamic jurists were both morally superior and wiser than the average person who could not be trusted with wide freedoms to direct his own life. The clerics, by contrast, would be given unchallenged discretion in monitoring the moral health of society.

There are obvious differences between Khomeini’s Islamic theocracy and post-liberals’ vague outlines for reinvigorating moral virtue in the United States. Integralists, for example, would rather see canon law, not Sharia, rule the day. Some post-liberals even express fidelity to the American constitutional arrangement. But even here the differences are not as pronounced as we may suspect.

Khomeini certainly justified his theocracy on Islamic grounds. But throughout his lectures on Islamic government, he claimed that the rule of the jurists could be justified by human reason alone, often listing “reason” before traditional Islamic justifications like the Qur’an and prophetic traditions. In fact, Khomeini consistently grounded his project on a view of the cosmos and human flourishing that he held to be ascertainable by reason. In his 1980 lectures on the Surat al-Fatiha (the first verse of the Qur’an), Khomeini paints with surprising detail a God whose attributes are rationally ascertainable. Indeed, the very existence of God is “a rationally self-evident proposition, intuitively understood by every human being.” He was so insistent on this that he considered “rational proofs” and “philosophy” to be preliminaries for prophets to receive revelation. What is more, he did not hold adherence to sharia (Islamic law) as an end in itself. It was only a means to a higher end of human flourishing and therefore was malleable to the needs of man. At times he calls sharia a “hindrance” and argues that it is a “progressive” and “evolving” force. In other words, a vague moral flourishing was as much Khomeini’s purpose as it is today’s post-liberals.

Accordingly, the central criteria for jurists to wield political authority was both knowledge of law and justice. Khomeini paid little attention to the problem of how to ensure that the wise arrived at positions of authority, i.e., the central problem with which liberal political theorists have wrestled for centuries. He cared little for constitutions whose structures sought to clearly limit the authority of the state—these only hampered the power of the wise to do their job.

Post-liberals differ most dramatically from Khomeini in that they do not call for violent revolution. This is an important difference. But the kind of regime Khomeini inaugurated is more pertinent to our discussion than how he brought it about. To confront growing immorality, Khomeini instituted a regime that vested ultimate discretion in the hands of religious men who, by virtue of their more comprehensive grasp of human nature and the divine, could theoretically guide Iranian society to a happier future, happier precisely because of their making explicit the aims of government founded on the rationally (and religiously) ascertainable ends of man. The Ayatollah is no pope, surely. But one does not find in the modern era a more compelling case of postliberal ambitions put to the test.

What Khomeini Wrought

In 1980, Khomeini secured his position as Supreme Leader of Iran and enshrined Sharia into the national constitution. He was then in a perfect position to put his theories for a more robust and self-consciously moral form of government into practice. He wasted no time. Tens of thousands of the Shah’s supporters (and secularists opposed to Khomeini) were rounded up because of the threat they posed to a perfectly just society. Many were executed. Most fled into exile. Khomeini shuttered the country’s universities and refashioned them to be more in line with the aspirations of the new regime. Predictably, there was a massive brain drain from the country. Alcohol was banned. Women were required to wear the hijab. Adultery and homosexuality were made punishable by lashing or stoning. Morality police made regular patrols through the streets to ensure all were in good order. And, of course, religious instruction was made necessary in the primary education system.

It has been over forty years since Khomeini created his ideal regime. Did it work? Did Iranian society become more virtuous and morally serious? In some respects, it surely did. The post-liberals will be happy to learn that there are no pride parades in Iran (the authorities do not allow that). There is also no drag queen story hour. Religious symbols and exhortations, along with portraits of martyrs, adorn the streets of Tehran. But despite Khomeini’s efforts, Iranians are growing less and less religious. In 2020, a survey found that over 30% of Iranians identified themselves as either atheist or “none.” What is more, a full 88% of Iranians believe a democracy is the best form of government while two-thirds believe this government should be secular.

The decline in religiosity is surprising given the popularity clerics enjoyed in the days of the Shah. Before the 1979 revolution, the clerics were respected to an astonishing degree, in part because they were a strong voice of resistance to the Shah’s forced modernization programs. Their network of 70,000 mosques proved essential in every mass political movement in twentieth-century Iran. Indeed, when Khomeini returned from exile in 1979, he was greeted by millions in Tehran and even more across the country. But because of the discretionary powers clerics enjoy in the judiciary and their privileged economic access, the clerics as a political class have proven prone to corruption. They are widely accused of taking lucrative bribes, failing to prosecute state agents, and stonewalling parliamentary inquiries. These are not mere rumors spread by secularist opposition. Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has publicly chastised the judiciary for its corruption. Today, the class that Khomeini elevated to guide Iranians to virtue is widely despised as Iranians fight for a liberal future.

Post-liberals are right to bemoan the sad state of social discourse and cultural stagnation in the West. But the Iranian case should serve as a warning to their authoritarian prescriptions. The comparison to Iran highlights the dangers of vesting governing authority in a clerical class and predicating that authority on supposed knowledge of the comprehensive good of society. Maybe Khomeini’s project failed because his vision of the human good was flawed. That is certainly possible, especially if a part of our nature demands participation in government. But is it not equally possible, even more likely, that this failure was due to the potential for corruption even among those we hold to be morally pure? The clerics of Iran were revered during the years of the Shah. Today they are despised. This happens wherever final authority is endowed to a special class of persons, be they ayatollahs, popes, unchecked bureaucrats, or any messianic man with good intentions. Post-liberals would do well to remember this bit of liberal wisdom.

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