THE COLUMN: In Praise of Instability

One of the longest periods of "stability" in Europe was near-century that followed the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and concluded with the death of King Edward VII in 1910. Under the Pax Britannica, western civilization reached its height, physically, mentally, and morally, with enormous advances and achievements in science and the arts. Then, in 1914, a disruption in one of the restive provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire soon enough became a war to death among three relatives (George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Czar Nicholas II, all of whom could trace their family ties by blood or marriage through Queen Victoria). The First World War, a war of enervation over nothing, trip-wired by balanced alliances and ententes, put paid to an era of "stability" -- something that risk-averse diplomats have been trying to recreate ever since. 

As history shows, however, it's a fool's errand. Countries, even empires, look solid until they collapse. The illusion of permanence casts its spell until blown away by failure, ineptitude, or barbarian invasions. At Alexander the Great's death in 323 B.C. in Babylon, the 32-year-old wunderkind had birthed the Hellenistic world without suffering a single military defeat. When asked to which of his generals he bequeathed his empire, he was supposed to have replied: "to the strongest." And yet it broke apart almost immediately, creating sub-entities such as the Seleucid empire in Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia, and the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, whose last sovereign was Cleopatra VII; both ultimately fell to the Romans.

Tiny purple fishes running laughing through your fingers.

The first time I came face-to-face with the Berlin Wall, in February of 1985, on my way through Checkpoint Charlie for a two-week reporting trip through the German Democratic Republic, the DDR looked formidable. The side facing Western Berlin was adorned with graffiti: the first thing I noticed was a line from Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses" -- "tiny purple fishes running laughing through your fingers." On the other side was the blank, concrete face of communism, barbed-wired and booby-trapped. 

The East German state was considered the most successful Soviet-style communist state, and the U.S.S.R. was regarded by one and all as The Other Superpower, a first-world (sort of) counterweight to the U.S.A. and one whose suzerainty over the captive nations of Eastern Europe appeared to be unassailable. But it wasn't. Indeed, less than four years later the Wall came down at the hands of the people it was meant to suppress. The George H. W. Bush administration was caught flat-flooted, and the CIA and KGB were both chagrined, but postwar "stability" had suddenly vanished, and for the better. 

As it happened, the following year I made my first trip to the Soviet Union, covering for Time Magazine the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz's return to his former homeland. (He was born in or near Kiev, but at no time did he or anyone else refer to him as "Ukrainian.") While I was in Leningrad, Chernobyl blew up. I didn't hear the news until I had left the country, but I can't say that it surprised me. Nothing about the Soviet Union functioned well; the black market flourished openly, everyone was bribable, free-lance prostitution was rampant, construction was shoddy, and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes was the unofficial medium of exchange, the ruble being worthless.

East Germany had been marginally better because its workers were more capable and its technology more advanced, but it was clear that both "nations" were doomed: there had been an economic war with capitalism, and they had lost. The U.S.S.R. finally succumbed at Christmas, 1991, "instability" its legacy -- and opportunity.

Now it appears to be the Islamic Republic of Iran's turn on the wheel of history. Ancient Persia was defeated by Alexander and his Macedonians in three battles, the Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela, the details of which can be found in my latest book, A Rage to Conquer. 

On the day of the battle, October 1, 331 B.C., Alexander slept late that morning, rising about noon. An alarmed Parmenion finally shook him awake: “What has happened to your old alertness?” he barked. Replied Alexander: “Do you think I could have fallen asleep before easing my mind of the worries that kept me from resting?”

Unperturbed by the size of Darius’s army, Alexander had every confidence in his battle plan. The enemy was beaten even before the first arrows had been fired. He split his cavalry between his flanks and bowed them and their accompanying infantry inward, the better to defend against encirclement should things go badly against a numerically superior foe. He also obliquely angled his entire line rather than squaring up against the Persians, with his right wing slightly forward and his left wing under Parmenion held a bit back. In the center was the sarissa-bristling phalanx, reinforced in the rear by mobile hoplite infantry, who could support the phalanx or turn and fight any Persians who had gotten into the Macedonian rear...

With Darius’s forces yanked apart, the Great King a sitting duck at his left-center, the time had come for the death blow. Outnumbered ten to one on the right, and taking a hellacious beating, Alexander suddenly withdrew elements of the Companion Cavalry along with some hypaspists and a few unengaged phalanx units and delivered his trademark right cross to Darius’s glass jaw. Cutting diagonally to his left across the field, Alexander headed straight for Darius’s command and control center; in especially fierce fighting, Alexander had several horses killed beneath him, but kept on coming, implacable. True to form, Darius ran.

The Iranian mullahs are no better at fighting than Darius was. The Israelis have shredded their Islamic cloak of teleological inevitability and have left them naked, figures of ridicule in a land they have terrorized for too long, and in which they now cower in fear: impotent old men whose god has failed them. The theologically imposed "stability" they offered -- and which far too many westerners were all to eager to accept in the interests of Bush senior's New World Order -- has vanished. Now the son of the deposed Shah is waiting in the wings: Iranians may not wish for a western-style democracy but some restoration of a pluralistic monarchy is certainly agreeable to all. 

If past is any prologue, however, the lesson that some fanatics will learn is that they failed their god. Throughout the history of religious warfare, defeat in battle has been almost always linked to insufficiently fidelity. Victory is a sign of God's favor, defeat of his displeasure. The dismantling of a Muslim theocratic state must be handled with care; Osama bin Laden, recall, listed the Spanish Reconquista among his grievances. The State Department must manage the transition gracefully. Out of chaos order, and vice versa, and so the cycle returns. We are like the snail crawling up the side of the well: moving up three feet per day but sliding back two at night. Who knows, Zoroastrianism may even make a comeback.