ARTICLE: Rebuke in Iran to Its President on Nuclear Role, By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York Times, January 19, 2007
More evidence of Ahmadinejad's declining stock.
Meanwhile talk grows in Israel of a second Holocaust and pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Iran (Israel's getting bolder about admitting it's had nukes for decades).
All I can say to Israelis is welcome to our world, for now it faces the same conditons and decisions we encountered half a century ago (and have lived with ever since): possible annihilation versus the chance to kill millions in a nuclear holocaust. The choice is very Old Testament, the escape route very New Testament.
A magnificent power it is, the ability to extinguish entire peoples and wipe countries off the map. Historically, it clarifies the strategic mind (America remains the only country ever to use them--despite all the logical predictions of their inevitable re-use by "irrational" regimes over the subsequent decades). What Israel's got to figure out is whether they want peace more than death. The Core is defined by that decision, the Gap by its inability to confront it.
America heard the threats of "we will bury you" when we didn't enjoy the strategic superiority that Israel has so long held, thanks in large part to all that military aid from us. But somehow we moved beyond those threats and fears and made peace with an enemy whose whole ideology centered on our destruction (yes, yes, we now all remember the Sovs as cuddly thugs with no ideologies whatsoever, so it was all just a fantastic dream). We did so by growing up and leaving behind our own apocalyptic fantasies (it always takes two to tango).
Big question is whether Israel can do the same, or whether they instinctively, out of their own long history of defining themselves--as nationalists the Gap over are wont to do--primarily in terms of shared suffering at the hands of others (the source of all chips on all shoulders, with everyone's injustice being far worse than everyone else's--by definition), continue their eye-for-an-eye approach ("it takes a tank to raze a village" being Israel's patented counter-insurgency tactic) that has gotten them no strategic security to date--just more of the diabolical same from enemies whose death cult far surpasses its own in perceived righteousness (all killing is "justified" in the Middle East, according to the murderous logic of its practitioners).
Of course, the whole Middle East is built around this vengeance model (the ultimate in infantile zero-sum logic, suggesting an evolutionary retardation of the most primitive sort), which is why, no matter Israel's many laudable achievements, it remains hopelessly trapped inside the Gap.
Eventually, somebody sees a better deal to be cut with the outside world, and that somebody needs to be a Muslim state that shows real power and dignity can be achieved through brains instead of just oil and violence. Israel cannot prove that for the Muslim Arab/Persian world, that can only occur from within its ranks.
But Iran moving to nukes is more pretext than problem: all it does is speed up the inevitable choices on all sides--just like for us, the Europeans, the Slavs and the Chinese.
There is nothing new or unique in this dynamic, just the past refusing to die in a part of the world where its grip on minds is stunningly strong.
Everyone's excuse for inaction remains the same: what he did! Strategically speaking, it is passivity and fatalism of the worst sort.
America should not get sucked into this fatalistic logic by our own irrationals who will say either we act or it's the end of civilization and perhaps even the "end times."
Nothing would end with the Middle East's strategic suicide--at least nothing that matters to the Core. The adjustment would be made, and we'd simply move on, calm in the knowledge that Darwinian self-selection still works to the benefit of all mankind.
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Comments (7)
Tom, I understand your perspective on this issue as a fellow American. However, this has to be an amazingly tough call to make for any Israeli official. You're essentially asking them to call a madman's bluff with their whole existence on the line. This for a nation formed in the wake of another madman who was not bluffing. Israel's DNA as a nation-state might not allow them to not strike Iran's government pre-emptively. I agree that this would be a global cataclysm. What I don't understand is how the Bush administration is not talking to all parties involved. Communication is the only way out of this disaster, but I'm afraid its not possible between Israel and Iran.
Posted by Rob | January 19, 2007 9:58 AM
Tom you said
"We did so by growing up and leaving behind our own apocalyptic fantasies (it always takes two to tango)."
We did leave these behind but we maintained a strong capability to hurth those same thugs. We did not turn a blind eye to them. Great Blog by the way!
Posted by Rick | January 19, 2007 12:14 PM
With international hate figures (and Israel certainly qualifies) it's useful to start any meta-analysis (analysis of analysis) with the question of whether the facts assumed in the analysis actually exist. Certainly "it takes a tank to raze a village" has a certain kernel of truth to it. Israel has used force to destroy buildings and Jenin saw the use of tanks in exactly that role. But the assertion that Israel needs to grow up goes beyond an observation that Israel sometimes goes "eye for an eye" to imply that Israel's only past strategy has been to do this. If they have adopted other strategies in the past, Israel would be choosing among its past strategies. It would have already grown up.
The giving up of Sinai (twice!) and other territorial concessions and withdrawals seems to support the idea that Israel's already grown up, at least to the extent that when it has a partner it can deal with, it can make a peace and make one that lasts. Israel may very well have some further growing up to do but it's at a higher, more subtle level than simply not razing villages using tanks and bulldozers. I'd like to hear about actual problems with the Israeli model because they are there and need to be analyzed and addressed.
Posted by TM Lutas | January 19, 2007 12:36 PM
In the end, before the End, Israel and
Iran will come to terms. The difficulty
for Israel, as I have always maintained,
is it's size: it's basically two big nukes
worth of country. It shapes their way
of thinking.
Posted by Warren Roche | January 19, 2007 2:31 PM
Tom
It will seem ironic if Iranian nukes and
rhetoric lead to acceptance, toleration and cooperation between Israel and her Sunni Arabian neighbors ... "the enemy of my enemy, etc."
Posted by Lou Heberlein | January 19, 2007 4:16 PM
One of the things that we are starting to see in the relationship between the Core and the petroleum producing nations is that the oil weapon is no longer quite as potent as it used to be.
Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116916946106281010-lMyQjAxMDE3NjE5OTExNjk5Wj.html
The world wide demand for oil was pretty flat last year growing by only 1%. Among the OECD countries, oil consumption actually dropped by 0.6%. Some of that was the result of conservation, but most of the increase in energy consumption was from increased production of biofuels.
Given that there is a whole lot of room for growth in the biofuel industry and the fact that modern ethanol plants in the US can profitably produce ethanol at a wholesale price all the way down to $0.90 a gallon, Iran's leverage is going to be evaporating in the long term.
Given Israel's situation and its technical, scientific and economic resources, I am surprised that Israelis are not all over Africa building ethanol and biodiesel plants and importing ship loads of sugar and molasses from Africa to make into ethanol in Israel.
Posted by Mark in Texas | January 20, 2007 10:22 AM
What are we to make of the everybody goes nuclear - Sunni/Shiite and the middle thus rises? Hail Mary at best. Think this is not a sysadmin problem rather a system reboot then admin problem. Catalyst? Stike on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
Posted by Interested | January 21, 2007 3:02 PM