More Tim and Tom on Iran
Tim and Tom's conversation started below.
Tim's reply:
Thanks, Tom.
I'll grant the comparisons to US-USSR detente, Polish/Russo puppet popularity and how Castro plays the equivalent of the "Great Satan" card to keep his regime intact.
Where I think Western, nee globalization's, rule sets break down is in accounting for how strongly religion can dictate politics in the 21st century, just as it had done in the West's now forgotten past. So much of the thinking in the Core has moved past that, we assume that others can, too.
Sure, Iran has 'failed' (until now) to export its version of Islamic revolution. Still, remember a distant monarch in Spain whose policies to spread Catholicism took his country from first to worst among his peers in a little more than a generation or two?
I would agree that trade and MTV would normally loosen the hold of the Mullahs over their populace, similar to your US-USSR example. BUT. and its a huge BUT, Iran is sitting on top of more than a trillion dollars of the world's most essential industrial commodity. (Yeah, I know about Soviet oil, but it was and is no where near the scale and foreign currency earner Iran's oil industry is compared to the rest of their economy).
So, we get lucky and find some statesmanship in the West that negotiates a truce, no sanctions, open borders with Tehran. Then I see two clocks ticking...
One clock ends with the young Iranian people taking back their government from the theocrats with more openness to the Core and positive outcomes for the broader middle east...
The other clock ticks along while the entrenched leadership in Iran gets the bomb, and choses to become an agent of Koranic prophecy by nuking Tel Aviv.
Which alarm clock (or time bomb) goes off first?
Talk about your "system perturbations!" How can the Core, or anyone else, afford to take the chance with Iran? We Americans are so 'right now' in our thinking that we have already forgotten that the Bushies choose for more than two years to let the Core in Europe and the UN try to reach an agreement with Iran. The mullahs simply don't want to play by most of the Core's new rules (India aside-- they get a nuke pass; maybe).
Think that mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv would have some effect on our hope for a better world future? I'm willing to play "MAD" with countries driven by political interests, much less excited about doing so with states lead by religious zealots.
We need a strategy that upends the mullahs *before* they get the bomb. So far, I haven't seen any hope of something new from Bush & Co. Is it just me, or is Condi Rice just an average thinker when it comes to global strategy? Others see her as a viable Presidential candidate to "stop Hillary" in '08. I just don't see it.
Where else can we turn for viable guys on the Repub side that get the vision? Have you briefed Brownback to good result (I've chatted with him, and he's definitely got something going on upstairs)? How about the crop of Dems? Is Hillary on board? If she really is, I might swallow hard and vote for her. Others?
Or, surprise of surprises to we ethnocentric Americans, is there another global leader emerging that can accelerate the vision?
Where do I send my check? Now back to prepping for my own set of talks in Hawaii next month!
Best Regards,
Tim
timlerew.com
Tom's reply:
Not truce so much as just let Iranian people get the access to world they so obviously crave and then wait.
We ask Iranian people to chose between nationalism and humiliation (just like Cuba) and that never works.
thomaspmbarnett.com |
