Connectivity kills
Barnett Blog
By Sean Meade on Email
Tim wrote in:
Hello Tom!
Congratulations on the new home in Indiana. My own extended family thought I was nuts when left my Silicon Valley job to pursue a freelance lifestyle from our little horse ranch here in Colorado four years ago. We had a great outdoor Easter yesterday in the shadow of the Rockies (the mountains, not our baseball team). Your recent 'personal therapy' blog session was appreciated by me and others; thank you.
I've been a big fan of PNM and BFA, buying copies for friends, frequently following your blog, even including references in my own presentations to the financial sector. Yet I still have trouble with the Mid-east pillar (pun intended) of your strategy; reaching a meaningful modus vivendi with Iran then patiently waiting for demographics to catch up with the mullahs to bring about a fundamental shift toward more liberal policies. I can see this approach working in China with a deal regarding Taiwan; after all, even the Sopranos act in their own best interest, ideology aside.
I have seen no such evidence of ideological compromise from Iran's 'religious right.' After all, their revolution came 30 years after Mao's victory in China, so perhaps they're just 30 years 'behind' the Chinese when it comes to loosening up on their ideological grip. Then again, their politics is infused with true religious zeal, something our communist friends have always lacked (never underestimate the impact the eternal afterlife has on the every day actions of true believers).
Consequently, I see no grand compromise possible with Iran unless they get most of what they want (Islamic governments friendly to Iran throughout the MIddle East and beyond) which is a non-starter for what we want (more pluralistic democracy and protection of Israel as we bring Mid-east societies out of the gap).
For my evidence, I point all the way back to the Carter administration, the ultimate 'live and let live and we'll even respect you in the morning" foreign policy replete with personal supplicating letters from JC to the Islamic leadership with the net result of... zero. Enter the antithesis of the Carter approach with tough guy Reagan, who gets what he wants without firing a shot. Still, even with the cowboy halo, McFarlane & Co. got absolutely nowhere with their efforts at a secret diplomatic rapprochement with Iran. Unless, there is a forthcoming book concerning secret diplomacy with Iran and the Clinton admin, I see their policy at best as 'benign neglect' (Hey, it's worked in the past!).
And what has been the approach from the Iranians? For the past 26 years, they have been perhaps the most consistent bankrollers of Palestinian Islamic extremism vis Hezbollah & Co. If you're a global Islamic revolutionary (reactionary would be a more accurate term) then you turn to Iran for funds and support. These guys really
believe in jihad and the promise of paradise for the martyrs; just ask the hundreds of thousands of irregular 'guards' that marched into Iraqi machine guns and mine fields in the 80s.
So, the real question is, if we could have armed the Protestants and Catholics with nukes 400 years ago, do you really think 'political realities' could have provided a credible deterrent to their use when men were fighting for their eternal souls? MAD just doesn't work when one or more parties is more focused on the hereafter then the here
and now.
So, is there another path that gets Iran *not* to go nuclear? Find that, and we'll have something. What we really need is a broad rapprochement between Israel and its hostile Mid-east neighbors, starting with Iran, *then* we'd have something! But how to get there?
Best Regards,
Tim
timlerew.com
Tom's reply:
Don't argue with that,
But all that was true in far greater degree and scope with USSR and yet we cut SALT. Connectivity--via the "hard dollar" in trade--kills their socialist economy and authoritarian state within 16 years--and they cursed us all the way to their collapse.
Isolation only strengthens the hard liners. Me, I would dump the whole WMD thing, reestablish ties and open trade, ending all sanctions. Then let the mullahs explain their rule to their unhappy masses.
Do you think Castro is still in power 40-plus years without our counter-productive embargo?
As for the threat of Shiite revolution, where has it yielded the puppet state?
We support Sunni autocracies the region over and then are surprised when oppressed Shiite minorities look to Tehran.
But here's the real issue: Shiites are nationalists. The radical Salafi movement is exclusively Sunni. Why conflate them? When Shiites come to power in Arab countries, I live in little fear that Persians will be their masters. That's like saying the Poles couldn't wait to be ruled by Russians. I think that one is overblown and poorly understood in the West.
Instead, we swallow Ahmadinejad's propaganda like gospel. Americans are too easily played. Meanwhile the Iranian Shiite revolution has succeeded nowhere in 30 years, much less at home. Yet we live in such fear of it.
Sometimes I think being a "realist" means never having to explain one's own irrational fears.
Whenever we see a state get nukes, the war we assume must happen never does. Not US-USSR, not US-China, not China-India or India-Pakistan, nor Israel and anybody.
But of course, that's such a "limited" historical record and I am so idealistic to cite it.
I remember all such skepticism on detente with the Soviets, despite all the nukes they were building, all the revolutions they were fomenting, all the terror groups they bankrolled.
How did Nixon and Kissinger know better? What made them such far-sighted strategists?
Where is anyone of that stature now on Iran?
Instead, all we get is the war-propaganda redux from the Bush White House.
Ah... Fool me once ... Says the American public because Bush chose to make the sale so heavily on WMD.
Meanwhile, Kim stockpiles nukes--today.
Thanks for your note. It pushed me nicely. |
