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The civil war that is the most fitting historical reference point to Iraq today is the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).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.
Pingback: Death By Historical Analogy « The Van Der Galiën Gazette
Geez, even I know that Franco’s opponents were communists.
Perhaps it’s better to avoid historical analogies altogether…
i think this is way off base.
franco was no fascists.
mussolini was.
fascists was a form of socialism – as was Nazism
franco knew that spain needed time apart from the socialist/atheist axis in order to survive.
he saved spain much like pinochet saved chile.
he kept spain out of ww2 despite hitler PERSONALLY pleading with him for hours.
hitler said upon leaving: i’d rather have all my teeth pulled then spend one more minute with thast mand.
fracnco was loyal ally to the free world during the cold war.
and he provided for spain’s transition to a true democracy which respected religion and the monarchy.
franco is a hero.
had he not staged his coup then spain woudl have become a socialiist atheist tyranny allied to the nazis and we might have lost ww2.
the correct analogy for iraq is se asia and korea.
i said/posted on this this in 2004.
I don’t think I go out of my way to try to demonize Franco in this. In a geopolitical sense there is no denying that the “nationalists” were fascist proxies (as the four divisions of fascist Italians fighting for Franco would prove, i.e. the three Black Shirt divisions and the Littorio division of the regular Italian army.) You don’t get to have it both ways. You cannot claim that the “republican” forces were all communists and the “nationalists” were in no way fascist. We don’t know how a victorious “republican” side would have reacted after a defeat of Franco. It seems likely that the civil war would have continued between various communist and anarchist factions, or that Spain would have been fractured into several autonomous regions.
I’ll agree that Franco was not a Mussolini or a Hitler, but that is as far as I’ll go.
The Republic leaned on the USSR, the Nats on Germany and Italy. The Republic ended up a Soviet puppet, the Nats not a puppet of Germany or Italy. Franco turned out to be a better negotiator than were the Republicans, and stayed independent. In fact, after the Hitler-Franco talks at Hendaye, Hitler snerled that he would rather have all his teeth pulled than negotiate with Franco, and set the OKW to work planning an invasion of Spain. Himmler even gushed about the Republican internees in the French camps.
So Franco, no democrat, managed to outfox the Outfoxers-in-Chief, thereby performing a major service for the Allies.
Pingback: A Moratorium on Bad Analogies « The Van Der Galiën Gazette
you are just wrong.
that’s all.
“the four divisions of fascist Italians fighting for Franco…” prove nothing.
he took aid.
spain would have become anarcho/atheistic communist if he had not taken over.
AS YOU WROTE/ADMIT: “It seems likely that the civil war would have continued between various communist and anarchist factions, or that Spain would have been fractured into several autonomous regions.”
pinchet was better than a marxist tyranny.
franco was better than anyone else at the time.
he was pro church and pro West – and pro a unified an independent and neutral SPAIN.
the real proof that franco was no “fascist” is in what he provided for his people: a PEACEFUL transition to a constitutional monarchy.
i cannot reiterate this enough: mussolini was a SOCIALIST; italian fascism is a spin on socialism as was marxism and nazism.
when an italian fascist said CORPORATIST they literally meant UNIONS. that what it means. it NEVER meant that the sate was run to benefit big business owners.
the sate was for the people, das volk. PERIOD.
franco was not like that. he defended the Church and kept spain out of ww2, and was on our side in th cold war.
this proves everything.
no foreign power had 20 divisions in spain.
NONE. there was no occupation.
THE ANALOGY SUCKS.
it is ignorant of the facts.
there was ZERO chance of the democratic of spain surviving – without franco. as there was none for chile – without pinochet.
the spain-chile (franco-pinochet) analogy is better than the spain-iraq analogy.
the specter of repeating the post-vietnam mistake is the best analogy.
and if we keep fighting the left then we can prevent them from LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY repeating history.
AND REMEBER:
the dems pulled the plug on our south vietnamese allies TWO FREAKIN YEARS AFTER THE LAST US COMBAT TROOP HAD LEFT.
so there is a REAL threat the Dems in Congress cvan do that. not just now, but even a few years down the line.
IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO:
iraq stabilizes and we elect hillary.
and she and the dems stop financing iraq’s govt and kazai’s.
what happens next is likely to be similar to what happened after they pulled the plug in 1975.
that’s the analogy bush made.
HE WAS RIGHT.
all the best!
First Reliapundit:
Hmmm…should I follow you or Miguel de Unamuno on what to think of Franco and the boys????? I think I’ll stick with Unamuno on this one. The falangist “death cult” was no friend of the Church, but an expression of fascist ideology and nihilism if ever there was one. That Franco backed away from the thuggish elements as the threat of war subsided says something in his favor…but at that point was there any other choice?
Well, yeah. What do you think my piece said exactly?
To Bleepless:
How can you be so sure of what you have happened in the counter-factual scenario of a Republican victory? It would seem unlikely to me that Hitler would have allowed a communist Spain to continue after he ahd defeated France and was planning to turn on the Soviets….that is presupposing that the USSR-German pact would have been agreed to as it was.
It also seems eviednt that a German invaded Spain would have fallen under US/British controll after the defeat of the Nazis. Given the horsetrading at Yalta I dont think it would go any other way.
But all of that is the idlest of speculation since one can have no idea how things would have played out.
In any event, in what sort of shape would Spain have been to aid the German war effort? They had less capabilities militarily than the Italians (by all accounts), they had large segments of their population whose loyalty was iffy at best, and an economy still largely in tatters. I’ll agree with anyone who say it was in Spain’s best interest to sit out WWII. That they did so was due less to the wisdom of Franco than to the realities on the ground in Spain.