The first decade of the 21st century was a Deja Vu closing bookend to the twentieth century, opening with 9/11 – a second Pearl Harbor – and ending with the Great Recession – a second Great Crash – with Iraq and Afghanistan – a second Vietnam – wedged in between.
Now that we are entangled in the coils of this second Great Depression in our recent history, these economic imbalances and great fractious shocks have radicalized the political and economic systems, push the planet to the brink of a new World War and driving the engines of war once again forth.
Some suspect that the Neo-conservative changes of mind since 2008 are opportunistic and cynical. It’s true that cynicism is never entirely absent from global politics, but Realpolitik is another thing altogether. Now the gloom and doom of war clouds is here to stay. Of course bitter and strong conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose amongst the hawks of war, but there you have it.
Because so few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another – our political classes are amuck. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counter evidence will dissuade them from this belief. Not record-high corporate profits, not the almost half a million job losses in the public sector, not even the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too. Sadly conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment.
Conservatives have been driven to these fevered anxieties as much by their own trauma as by external events. In the noughts, Republicans held more power for longer than at any time since the twenties, yet the result was the weakest and least broadly shared economic expansion since World War II, followed by an economic crash and prolonged slump. Along the way, the GOP suffered two severe election defeats in 2006 and 2008. Imagine yourself a rank-and-file Republican in 2009: If you have not lost your job or your home, your savings have been sliced and your children cannot find work. Your retirement prospects have dimmed. Most of all, your neighbors blame you for all that has gone wrong in the country. There’s one thing you know for sure: None of this is your fault! And when the new president fails to deliver rapid recovery, he can be designated the target for everyone’s accumulated disappointment and rage. In the midst of economic wreckage, what relief to thrust all blame upon Barack Obama as the wrecker-in-chief.
So what can we expect? We’ll see folks who are looking for a new way of reaching the same goals — namely, globalization, open markets, and democracy. But the retention of the same goals will prove an obstacle in and of itself. The real question is going to be what values — and ultimately which of these fundamental pillars — is the developed world prepared to compromise on, or even sacrifice, to gain sufficient global cooperation. Some of this is about cash, on issues from climate change (the clash over footing the bill between developed and developing countries) to competitiveness in the euro zone, as the core and the periphery struggle over the nature of moving towards a stronger fiscal and real union. But mostly, the balance of power is about the powerbrokers themselves, those determining who makes the rules, who sets the agenda, who prioritizes and on whose laps the benefits first accrue.
So as this overarching play works out, what does it spell for the foreseeable future? Global governance will continue to dissolve — and nations and institutions will pick up some of the slack on a regional level. But what of war?
Because this is a scenario about the future and our future does includes war — as it always does. Since this is the natural reaction to fundamental imbalances, disharmonies and the constant crises of the past decades, and because now there is a fundamental area of tension again in the Middle East. For more than 40 years, the US has reflected a world order dominated by elites of the developed world, championing a system of globalization — a system that has been driven and informed by their values and priorities and their economic and political frameworks. And for the same amount of time Persia has been running the other way. And a nuclear armed Persia is a clear and present danger for all concerned…
Or is it?
Yet for now, American policy lives between the two extremes. The flight or fight instinct is taking hold and the adrenalin building. The two opposing poles of attack and acquiescence, in the realm of uncertain calculation and imperfect options are the limits to our foreign policy vs War delivery provided that war isn’t allowed to become an instrument of foreign policy… It’s a quagmire any way you look at it. Because if you want to measure the next US President against a hellish dilemma, here’s that rare chance…
And why war is more imminent than not, is this: The global system no longer functions. It has been crumbling slowly, and the events of 9/11 and the financial crisis distracted us from this overarching trend, decades in the making. So the world’s former architects will do their best to repair the old jalopy and add a new paint job. But like putting lipstick on this particular pig, not much can be achieved. So they have no choice but to seek new models that they hope will still allow their values, priorities, and institutions to hold sway. But in a world with so many important global players with such diverse values and systems, the world will need new models altogether. If and when they come, in order to reflect a very different balance of power, they will have to be a significant departure from the system of today.
This is an era of growing pains, where the old system doesn’t work, but those in a position of authority have a stake in dragging their feet. To the extent that reality is resisted, new models are likely to be more haphazard, less effective, and take longer to emerge. It’s been extremely interesting to watch this debate play out already this year. And I’m going to do my best to keep it at the forefront of discussion as we go forth boldly to prophesize.
The Bush war years cannot be repudiated. Yet the memory of the failed wars can be discarded to make way for a new and more radical ideology, assembled from bits of the old GOP war mongering platform. Still the rogue elements, that were once sublimated by the party elites but now roam the land free, the ultra libertarianism, the crank monetary theorists, the populist fury harpies, and all of their paranoid visions of a pan-islamic threat and rampant terrorism are the toxins of this debate. And let’s not forget the tea partiers. Those hardy folks who love barbecues, flag waving and beating their chests with enthusiasm — all the while holding the bible to their hearts. Because they are an instrument of foreign policy too, even they don’t know it, since in the past few years, their enthusiasm and energy has brought the GOP and their Neo-Con agenda within sight of the White House. Much as viewers tune in to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions of the Republican candidates, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But they love the idea of war shows, like 24… Yet even that spectacle has grown thin. Now they need heartier fare – like blood sport and televised carnage – and patriotism to boot.
The Neo-Cons obsession with Iran and it’s incessant drumming of the drums of war are not only indicators of bad leadership, but there are also indicative of a real crisis of solutions. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for foreign policy, proper governance, war management, diplomacy, global affairs, a multi-polar world and real power balances, and so of course it never got the education it needed and the leadership it sought. So the easily deluded always go for the easy solutions… And war is the easiest spring to bounce in the collective subconscious.
Still many hope that the tea-party model of executing policy and especially foreign policy, is just a passing mania, eventually to subside into something more like the main business of Republicanism: WAR and the inexorable drive to a Mercantilist empire. A certain drive the American public wants once more, as it gets pushed over the edge frothing in the mouth to vilify Iran… War as practised with the “everloving hate” of Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld and offered in the Fox news hour, under their colours in the hope to coalesce the strident rhetoric of the tea party and Republican radicalism into a solid war machine all over again.
And it would be easy to do so, because American Foreign policy has been consistent through the Bush and Obama administrations: (1) a declaration that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable”; (2) a combination of sticks (sanctions) and carrots (supplies of nuclear fuel suitable for domestic industrial needs in exchange for forgoing weapons); (3) unfettered international inspections; (4) a refusal to take military options off the table; (5) a concerted effort to restrain Israel from attacking Iran unilaterally — beyond the Israelis’ presumed campaign to slow Iran’s progress by sabotage and assassination; and (6) a wish that Iran’s hard-liners could be replaced by a more benign regime, tempered by a realization that there is very little we can do to make that happen.
Yet in practice, Obama’s foreign policy promises to be tougher than Bush’s. Because Obama started out with an offer of direct talks — which the Iranians foolishly spurned — world opinion has shifted in our direction. We may now have sufficient global support to enact the one measure that would be genuinely crippling — a boycott of Iranian oil. The administration and the Europeans, with help from Saudi Arabia, are working hard to persuade such major Iranian oil customers as Japan and South Korea to switch suppliers. The Iranians take this threat to their economic livelihood seriously enough that people who follow the subject no longer minimize the chance of a naval confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s not impossible that we will get war with Iran even without bombing its nuclear facilities. And that’s not the only problem with the current approach to Iran.
The point of tough sanctions, of course, is to force Iranians to the bargaining table, where we can do a deal that removes the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. But the mistrust is so deep, and the election-year pressure to act with manly resolve is so intense, that it’s hard to imagine the administration would feel free to accept an overture from Tehran. Anything short of a humiliating, unilateral Iranian climb-down would be portrayed by the armchair warriors as an Obama surrender. Likewise, if Israel does decide to strike out on its own, Bibi Netanyahu knows that candidate Obama will feel immensely pressured to go along with the sirens of blood lust war.
On the war siren’s call a US-Israel combined pre-emptive strike, designated Operation, will entail bombing the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan, the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, the heavy-water reactor at Arak, and various centrifuge-manufacturing sites near Natanz and Tehran… A good size list of targets and plenty of collateral damage…
And here’s the plan. Sometime in the next few months the Department of Defense is going to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, because it’s an election year, and some people will say this is a cynical rally-round-the-flag move, but a nuclear Iran is a problem that just won’t wait and the military can’t stay unemployed for too long now that they are out of Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s the realpolitik of a US diplomacy based primarily on war doctrine, power and material factors, rather than ideological and ethical ones.
Yet for the seasoned observer, the short-term paradox comes back stronger than ever and now is wrapped up in a long-term paradox like those never ending Matryoshka nesting dolls. A riddle inside a riddle inside a gryph. Is this gonna be a lucky strike or is it going to involve regime change and maybe ignite another global war in the offing, to get us finally out of the global Great Recession?
Because in the end, who is to know the consequences of war on Iran and how far they will extend? But the oil companies know. Because they want to get the second biggest oil production under contract… soon as possible. But then the costs of war are not borne by them, so they don’t care since war is good for business… Goofy bastards, they don’t think that socializing the costs of their oil production usually backfires long term, but there you have it. They’ve been spoiled by the banker wankers into expecting a bail out too because a huge bail out will be needed once we open up this hornets nest.
After all, an attack on Iran is almost certain to unify the Islamic world and especially the Shiites all over the Middle East and it will amalgamate the Iranian people around the mullahs and provoke their supreme leaders to redouble terrorist activities across the globe. And of course it will lead them to pursue Iran’s nuclear weaponry goals in a fevered pitch and to use the fruits of their uncertain labours against all comers… A certain nightmare scenario easily follows. And this time, their plants and their gas centrifuges, will be driven deeper underground, and without the benefit of any international inspectors kissing and telling…
It comes to me that the Pentagon smart asses, put it this way:
“Bombing Iran is the best way to guarantee exactly what we are trying to prevent.”
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Here’s the bottom line of how this thing is gonna play out.
An Israeli or combined American air attack unites Iran in fury, locks in the Islamic Republic for another generation or two, saves the Syrian dictatorial regime, radicalizes the Arab world, freezes the Arab spring at a moment of delicate transition, ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, boosts Hamas, endangers US troops in the region, sparks a global wave of terrorism, propels oil prices skyhigh, triggers a regional war or an international one, offers a lifeline to Iran just as Europe is about to stop buying its oil, adds a Persian to the Arab vendetta against Israel, and all that for what? So we may at best set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions a couple of years — at most…
While both the United States and Israel dream about shutting down Iran’s nuclear program, that outcome might actually be one of the worst in the long run. In a twist of irony, it turns out that the best way to assure oneself that Iran’s nuclear activities remain peaceful is to keep the current program intact—subject to heavy monitoring and constraints that would lengthen whatever time Iran needs to build a nuclear weapon. Any other outcome, including the destruction of Iran’s visible nuclear program through military strikes and/or regime change, would likely increase the chances that Iran could, and would, make a nuclear weapon in secret. Forget about the vicious nation building to follow too…
On the negotiating track, I think you need some baby steps. Steps that lead to small but significant successes in order to convince each side it’s worth working with the other side if only to delay strikes. This will be the key in allowing enough time for diplomacy until both sides are ready to talk more seriously. I think there’s presently no hope of the United States being able to engage seriously on the big issues in an election year, and in particular no hope of the United States being able to compromise on zero enrichment this year. Lastly, I think much like the American election, on the Iranian side, there is a competition for who can be the most patriotic as the 2013 Persian Presidential election approaches. And the significance of this is that there may also be a competition for who can get us out of this unpleasant situation we’ve gotten into, and also avoid a popular uprising of the “Greens.”
There are lots of things we might be able to gather with Diplomacy and also get a small yet significant deal this year. Things that could start building some confidence between the two parties and delay itchy happy bomb trigger-fingers… all the while delivering a sobering persona for the President [each one of them] and maintaining Peace that is such a great gift to have and to hold unbroken.
