The news that Iran has been barred from the United States following a visa dispute during the World Cup is, on the face of it, a petty squabble over bureaucratic stamps. But to the discerning eye, it is yet another symptom of the intellectual and moral decadence that has plagued our Western elites since they abandoned the art of statesmanship for the theatre of moral posturing. Britain's call for 'diplomatic restraint' is a predictably limp-wristed response.
Restraint? Why, one might ask, should we show restraint when handling a regime that has spent four decades exporting terror and suppressing its own people with a cruelty that would make Caligula blush? The answer, my dear reader, lies in the fact that our leaders have forgotten what it means to wield power.
They have replaced the robust, clear-eyed diplomacy of the Victorian era with a neurotic obsession with 'engagement' and 'process', mistaking the means for the ends. Compare this to the Congress of Vienna, where the great powers did not waste time on visa rows but redrew the map of Europe with a decisive stroke. Today, we haggle over travel documents while Iran continues its march toward nuclear capability.
The farce of the World Cup visa row is a microcosm of a larger tragedy: the West has lost its nerve. It would rather lecture Iran on football than confront it on centrifuges. The Victorians would have laughed at such pusillanimity.
They built empires with a sense of purpose, not a list of complaints. But then, the Victorians had audacity. We have only anxiety.
