Death By Historical Analogy

Historical analogy may just be the death of us all, especially when those engaged in it don't seem to know the actual history involved. Today's case in point is this piece by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt: The real analogy for Iraq

The civil war that is the most fitting historical reference point to Iraq today is the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). That war revolved around two main sides: one pro-democracy, the other pro-fascist. Neither side was particularly cohesive or well-organized. Both consisted of fractious coalitions of diverse organizations and agendas, many based on personality. It often looked more like a war of fragmented tribes and clans than modern organizations.

The simplistic partitioning of the warring factions into "pro-democracy" and "pro-fascist" camps does extreme violence to the actual historical situation. Yes, the nominal conflict was between the "republican" forces, aligned with what was left of the Spanish government in 1936, and the "nationalist" forces, aligned around the military led proto-fascists. However, to label the "republican" cause as "pro-democracy" is an outright falsehood. Yes, many liberals in 1936 wished to maintain the existing constitutional order, but it is in no way clear that such sentiments were dominant. (As can be seen by the repudiation of the "republic" by such thinkers as Jose Ortega y Gasset, Menendez Pidal, and Perez de Ayala.) To argue the growing tide of anarchist and communist parties in the republic wished to maintain Spanish "democracy" is simple nonsense. (It is telling that Arquilla and Ronfeldt's article never once uses the words "anarchist" or "communist.") The actual political situation in Spain was not a dichotomous choice between democracy and fascism, but a teeming morass of various totalitarian visions and utopian schemes, where those few who supported traditional liberalism or Christian democratic politics were used when useful, discarded when not.

The Spanish Civil War became an arena for great-power competition; only two (America and Japan) remained aloof. Outside governments maneuvered overtly and covertly to reshape the dynamics within each side, including through infiltration and betrayal.

This gives a very warped view of the actual historical events. In truth, the Western democratic powers, namely France and England, were very stand-offish. In the earliest days of the conflict, when the liberal elements in Spain were rallying behind the republic, France and England withheld crucial support. They were so afraid of getting involved against the rising tides of extremism, either attacking fascism or indirectly helping communism, that they did basically nothing. This helped define the battle in Spain as a proxy battle between fascism (with the direct material support of Germany and Italy) and communism (with the less open but still direct support of the U.S.S.R.) Now, it is an open question as to how efficacious French or English help might have been for liberal democratic forces in Spain, but certainly the withholding of open support ensured democracy would not survive.

And in the end, dictatorship won in Spain, partly because its vision of restoring an authoritarian past provided unifying glue for its forces. The pro-democracy side tried to rally around a utopian vision of the future, but it was not well-defined and provoked internal argument far more than solidarity.

This gives you a sense of just how bizarre this piece is. Arquilla and Ronfeldt must believe that no one reads Homage to Catalonia anymore. I'm not sure if this identification of the communist and anarchist projects as being "pro-democracy" is the result of their trying to shoe-horn the Iraq war into this strained analogy, or if it represents the warped ideological vision of the authors. Either way it can only be convincing to people completely ignorant of history. Dictatorship "won" in Spain because, by the second year of the war, the conflict had become a battle of competing dictatorial visions and nothing else.

Over at Power Line they have a similar take on this:

Arquilla and Ronfeldt draw a further policy lesson from the Spanish experience:

[I]t may be advisable to pull back from pressing for an American-style democracy in Iraq. Ending the Spanish Civil War resulted in the installation of a dictatorship for 40 years before Spain eventually transitioned into a liberal democracy.

This is an odd way to describe what happened in Spain. That country's civil war wasn't "ended" by some outside agency, resulting in the "installation" of a dictatorship. The Nationalists won the war, and Franco assumed dictatorial powers, as he had always intended. The truth is that democracy was probably not an alternative for Spain in the 1930s. The Republicans were led largely by Soviet agents and other radicals, and would no more have instituted a democracy, had they won, than Franco.

But why does that Spanish reality of the 1930s tell us what will happen in Iraq? In Iraq, there is a genuine democratic alternative; in fact, however one may evaluate its government, Iraq is already a functioning democracy. Iraq's experiment in self-government may very well fail, but the Spanish experience tells us nothing about that, one way or another.

In too many ways to count, the Iraq-Spanish Civil War comparison seems to be the wrong analogy, at the wrong time, for the wrong ideological reasons.

This is cross-posted at Blue Crab Boulevard.