According to reports, the hedge fund Elliott Management defended the Iran war in a note to investors last month. In particular, it argued against the liberal cliché that “force alone” cannot defeat an idea. Weren’t Nazism and Japanese imperialism both bombed out of existence in 1945? Did democratic constitutions not take their place? Might the same therefore not happen in theocratic Iran? On that basis, who but a churl or a pacifist would refuse to give war a chance?
It is hard to know where to begin with this, but here are two important differences between the second world war and the current crisis.
First, the German and Japanese regimes were aggressors. What tainted their ideologies forever was not just the defeat but the moral stigma of having started the war in the first place. Defeat on its own isn’t enough to discredit an idea. Otherwise, democracy would never have recovered in the Netherlands or France after the military capitulations of 1940. As it turned out, both countries were democratic again within the decade. It is guilt that tarnishes an idea, not the fact of losing. The Iranian regime, for all its direct and proxy aggression, did not start the specific war of 2026. There was no equivalent of Pearl Harbor or the invasion of Poland as original sin. (We will come back to matters biblical later.)