Khamenei and Putin are in total agreement about the desired shape of the world they are trying to create:

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P J Media: The Iranian Death Spiral (Continued)

by Michael Ledeen December 29th, 2014 -

 

Khamenei and Putin are in total agreement about the desired shape of the world they are trying to create: 12:57 pm

I don’t believe that economic misery brings down regimes. The pidgin Marxism that passes for serious analysis among all too many of our deep thinkers would have us believe that misery causes all manner of violence, from terrorism to revolution. Whenever I hear somebody say that “if you lived as miserably as they do, you’d be a terrorist too,” I want to remind the pundit in question that there’s no terrorism to speak of in North Korea or Cuba, where misery abounds, and such terrorism as does exist in Russia is often credited to Putin’s Chekist tactics, not to a primal scream of suffering people.

 

Indeed, I can make a strong case for the opposite hypothesis: that resistance to tyranny grows as economic conditions improve. Revolution is not an act of desperation, it’s an act of hope.

 

All of which is to encourage policy makers to concentrate on the political/military dimension, not the economy of our various enemies. Take Iran, for example.