The stability that never comes

I’m increasingly thinking about the theory of stability ideas that I’ve developed over the years on this blog. Before last weekend I would often say that a theory of change could involve just blowing everything up, but it is nothing without the theory of stability for that which follows. I’ll write more on that later because the present moment has made it relevant.

The present moment also demands a response.

The United States and Israel have committed to a course of action against Iran that has a clear theory of change. But they have refused to even consider what stability might look like in the other side. During the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan at least the western belligerents declared that “nation building” was a thing. That policy was a failure in Afghanistan and was really only ever intended to deliver oil wealth into western hands in Iraq. but at least it had a ring of nobility to it. And it was half-way to a purpose that people could get behind, no matter how wrong the basic premise was. It’s easy to go to war illegally against bad people. But we used to window dress a bit more.

This war has begun without even a pretence to supporting any kind of stability later. Israel under Netanyahu has become emboldened with the idea that an atrocity committed against itself can be met with the wholesale annihilation of a people or a nation with no regard whatsoever for what comes later. Netanyahu’s policy to his nearest neighbour in Palestine seems to be total colonization. Likewise the current US administration seems enchanted with the images of performative war but although they declared something about regime change last weekend they have now clearly walked that back. They are bombing Iran for peace now, justified by an anticipated need to defend itself against relation from a pre-emotive attack from another country. That’s how you know they lost the plot. They are earnestly arguing for justification by second level pre-emptive self-defense as if that was always a part of the law of war.

The regime in Iran is awful. And it is institutionally embedded in the country because it was smart enough to know in 1979 that a one-off revolution was not going to create a lasting platform for the Ayatollah’s brand of Shiite hegemony to flourish in the region. so it developed institutions to secure itself from ever being toppled from within. Those institutions survive. With successor ship plans and enough cultural support that it will probably take a civil war to upend them.

The last 75 years of American military misadventure in the world has proven beyond a doubt that, as Maral Karima says in this article from the The Walrus, “Democratic transition cannot be airdropped.” Not by pamphlets and not by bombs. The transition to democracy in Eastern Europe in the 1990s was internally driven by people who had prepared for decades to overthrow their Soviet occupiers or puppets. Elsewhere in the world where the USA tried to bomb places into democracies, disasters followed.

We now have the spectre of a US government who is devoted to isolationism while also enjoying a lawless romp around the world picking off the heads of countries without doing anything to support the people who all bear the consequences of chaos and instability. For what reason? The seizing of other people’s natural resources. The distraction from a global criminal scandal in which many of powerful financial and political leaders of the western world seem to have been compromised by their taste for sex with children. The pandering to a base of cultists who are the remaining loyalists in a political movement that is decaying in the fields.

The USA used to at least provide the gloss of supporting freedom of people around the world even when it was actively involved in killing or suppressing them. It did so with the “softer” power of liberalized trade, aid and development programs, and immigration policies that welcomed the world to the bastion of liberty. At least it did all those things when they aligned to American interests.

And who holds the torch now? For the last six weeks we might have believed it was the middle powers led by our own Canadian government that would step into the vacuum and provide a a network of nations committed to democracy.

But now we have just thrown our lot in with the Americans again as we usually do. We are standing beside them scolding a little but ultimately accepting the fact that, with no evidence or even the slightest attempt to appeal to the standards of international law, the Americans are just going to do what they want.

America is not strong at the moment. It is deeply divided and neither pole in this partisan world has much of a vision about what this country can become. Two hundred years after its founding, politics now is about money and numbers and communications strategies and not the immediate concerns of people in need. People run for office to occupy positions of authority and then refuse to use the tools to liberate wealth and enable justice and care and prosperity. They leave it up to the market, or more properly the mechanics of patronage that enrich the few and the expense of the vast majority. they out checks and balances on their executive and legislative power while unleashing corporate agendas on their own people.

The most inspiring folks around here (I am in the US at the moment) are engaging in resistance. In this they join the masses of people around the world like the women of Iran and the children of Palestine and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and may others besides who have been robbed of their wealth and dignity and self-determination by those that concentrate it in the service of cruelty and self-aggrandizement.

There is no theory of stability anymore. There is only the concentration of power so a few can do what they like to bodies, countries, and planets.

Who with power is calling for the world to be a better place? Who is calling for a future of care and support and human beings developing and polishing their brilliance? Who is pointing to a way to sustain the structures that will sustain dignity and joy and well-being? Who is prepared to do it?

Remember when we had those conversations? Remember when leaders appealed to our sense of justice and moral courage to look beyond our self-interest and build something better for all of us?

I was raised in that world of spoken hope, even as the Reagans and Thatchers and Mugabes and Ayatollahs were fixated on stripping it away. I believed in the one and clearly saw the other.

For me, nothing has changed, except the world has become a place that paints me as a naive fool for still believing in the one. I ask for better from those of us with power in hand, for those who put themselves in a place where they control the fates of millions of people. I ask for accountability and responsibility for people in those positions to wield their authority with care and deliberation. We are all asking people to just be serious.

This year is a nadir. The optimist in me says there is nowhere to go but up. The pessimist in me thinks that my biggest offering now might be to just make the most beautiful music I can. To count the birds. To love my neighbours. To find joy in the everyday cracks in community and organizational life where life can be made a little better in little ways. To celebrate young people who find their calling. To sustain heart in a heartbreaking moment. That all seems incredibly worthy and I’ll keep doing it.

How about you?