Iran And China: Partners In Peace

Being the historian that I am, I ask you: When was the last time Iran attacked a foreign country?

Answer: Around 480 B.C. I’d say, give or take a few decades, until the great Kimon cleared the Greek islands from their plague.

So writes Taki in this week's Spectator.

The world's two oldest continuous civilisations may both have unpleasant regimes internally, although there are far, far worse than Iran, not least among our allies in the Middle East. But they are both remarkably nonbelligerent externally. When did China last invade anywhere? Since becoming China five thousand years ago, has she ever? Nor does she use the huge Chinese minorities in other Asian countries to destabilise them. She backs up nasty governments in places like Burma and North Korea, but motes and beams on that one, I'm afraid.

China's concern is strictly her own territorial integrity. Yes, including Tibet, before anyone starts that one. That concern is why she rightly demands the return of an island in the same position as if a civil war in Britain had left the losing side holed up on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight would not thus become a country. The rest of China now has to be made at least worthy of Taiwan, so that reunion can follow. As it surely must.

I object to economic dependence on a foreign power, and I applaud President Obama's efforts to free his country from such dependence on China. We could do with some of that over here. Not only in trade policy. And not only in relation to China. I wouldn't want to live in today's China, without any of the breaks on capitalism to which I am accustomed, but rather with a governing party into whose constitution a commitment to capitalism was specifically written, after the manner of New Labour or the Lib Dems; the Tories, to their credit, have no such.

I wouldn't be too happy living in today's Iran, either, for all the elections (the wrong side winning doesn't mean that they were rigged, and they certainly bear comparison with anything in Georgia or in "liberated" Afghanistan), the total lack of nuclear weapons, the presence of more women than men at university, or the reserved seats for Armenians, Assyrians and Jews.

But, not least as a Catholic, I'd sooner live in either than under our dear friends in Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan, to name but two. Never mind in a country where the government is so insanely war-hungry that it talks about launching pre-emptive nuclear strikes. China doesn't talk like that. And Iran can't.