Via HotAir, Tom Friedman has a bold plan to end the theocratic state in Iran: put a $1 tax on U.S. gasoline! Sure, it will be a terrible burden on everyday Americans during the worst economic conditions in a generation, but surely the mullahs will embrace democratic reforms if they have slightly less money! Only exclamation marks can capture the enthusiastic absurdity of this international politics version of the broken windows fallacy!
Friedman cites the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this is a very poor analogy for several reasons. First off, in Communist states where the leadership had the will to crack down (e.g. Cuba and N Korea) there was no change in power despite loss of Soviet funding. Second, a major reason the USSR collapsed was that nearly all its constituent nations had been militarily coerced into the Union and retained their own nationalist/ethnic pride: Ukrainians voted 10:1 for independence when given the chance (and you can’t really blame them). Iran isn’t homogenous, but it’s not very likely to break up along ethnic lines either. Third, oil was only a minor factor in the overall economic devastation wrought by Communist ideology itself. The notion falling oil prices, and their effect on grain purchases, were the decisive factor ignores the fact they had to buy grain in the first place, due to 70 years of steadily worsening harvests. Iran’s regime is dysfunctional, brutal, and increasingly illegitimate, but not Communist.
And even were the Persian petro-economy to utterly collapse, which may happen anyway, it’s not clear why anyone should expect that would lead to political change, given that the mullahs seem quite unwavering in their belief in their own holiness, and also quite willing to murder anyone who expresses an opinion otherwise. The most likely outcome has the mullahs cracking down even harder, and the country gradually starting to look more and more like Afghanistan under the Taliban (except with nukes; that should be fun!)
Ultimately only two things reform militarized regimes like Iran’s: moderation/capitulation from within, or military force from without. Don’t bet on either happening anytime soon.
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Friedman has long struck me as… I am struggling for the right word. He’s not stupid. He’s not a bad writer per se. He just rarely says anything that makes any sense at all. Is “goofy” the word I’m looking for? Perhaps.
Iran’s regime is not going to fall because they sell less oil. You can cut their oil sales by 75% and the regime’s iron grip will not loosen. Friedman is just being, well, his normal goofy self I guess.
Dave, i cant find much to disagree with here. well put.
I just don’t grasp how a dollar a gallon tax in the US is supposed to hurt Iran noticeably.
Friedman’s only attempt at a link is that it would reduce US imports and “affect” the world price.
Which is true, but US imports weren’t particularly low the last time gasoline was $4 a gallon, and since the price increase here would be purely artificial, I see no reason to believe that any price drop caused by lower US demand wouldn’t be met with increased consumption in the rest of the world.
If the worldwide recession’s drop in demand isn’t going to wreck Iran’s economy, a $1 a gallon gas tax in the US certainly won’t.
(Why does he have so much against our Canadian and Mexican friends who sell us much more oil than any other nations, anyway?
Punish them so he can fund ludicrous “alternative energy” programs that, if they were useful, wouldn’t need a giant rent-seeking glob of government cash?
Ah, a brave new world of nuanced and thoughtful foreign policy, indeed.)
Which is true, but US imports weren’t particularly low the last time gasoline was $4 a gallon
Good point.
Oil is a very strange commodity — it mostly comes from theocratic, Islamic states, while the money derived therefrom props up these oppressive regimes, who fund terrorists who hate us and want to kill us — all the while, until recently, we were content to use lots of oil to fuel our large US automobiles, listening to Arrowsmith’s “Sweet Emotion”, while polluting the environment!
I’m being a bit facetious, but there is some truths buried in there:)
–HB
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