Another Trip Down The Rat Hole

The Obama administration is celebrating the start of Year 41 of the Humongous War On Drugs with the commitment of another 700 or so megabucks to up the US-Mexican cooperation in the new, improved border war. One of the justifications for this expenditure of money, manpower and diplomatic effort is the sudden recognition of a long standing reality. Mexican distribution networks have set up shop in more than two hundred US cities.

So, now, in a flurry of press releases, speeches and assorted viewings-with-alarm, the administration is seeking to execute a number of tasks under the rubric of War On The Border. Of course, the President and his people want to impose further restrictions on firearms possession by Americans. Of course, the President and his SecState wish to smooth the prickled quills of the Mexican nationalist porcupine. Of course, of course, of course.

The President, the SecState and sundry other movers-and shakers of administration and Congress will reportedly "renew the commitment to reduce demand in the US."

If any of these assorted politicos and policy wonks really, really think that after forty years of repeated and escalating failure to reduce demand for (illegal) drugs in the US, this is going to suddenly and miraculous change just because the beatified Obama decrees it, they are smoking, dropping or shooting up some fantastically righteous substance.

There is only one action which will remove the motive behind the violence and corruption in Mexico. There is only one action which will pull the ground out from under the street corner clockers who are the final point of sale.

And, we all know what that action is.

Meanwhile, further south of the border, Hezbollah continues to crank up its drug trafficking operations in both Central and South America. Hezbollah moves drugs, mostly cocaine, but now includes South American origin opiates for two reasons: It makes money for the cause; it presumably weakens the Great Satan and its allies.

Way to the east, Taliban protects the growing and movement of opium and morphine base for two reasons: It makes money for the cause. It presumably weakens the enemies of Islam.

There is only one action the US (and other governments) can take which will remove the money as an incentive for Hezbollah. And Taliban.

We all know what that action is.

Nearly a hundred years ago the Harrison Narcotics Control Act was passed in a wave of racist propaganda directed against the Chinese and their "opium dens." (This conveniently overlooked the historical fact that Great Britain fought a war with China in order to secure the right to sell opium to the Chinese. Before this opium use was virtually unknown in the Central Empire.)

Later, the sway of the Bureau of Narcotics was expanded to include cocaine in a wave of carefully orchestrated racist propaganda directed against Blacks who were portrayed as becoming sexually crazed predators under its influence. (This overlooked the historic fact that Coca-Cola originated with a refreshing mix of cocaine and cola nut without apparently inflaming its southern source with hordes of sexually crazed coke sippers.)

Ultimately Henry Anslinger, head of the old Bureau of Narcotics, was able to put marijuana under his control after yet one more racist campaign. This one, as the name of the drug makes clear, was directed against Hispanics. (Here is a fine reason for the Mexican government to be perturbed with us.)

Richard Nixon was no slouch when it came to using propaganda. Taking full advantage of the fear and loathing felt by the "Silent Majority" for their own kids, he launched the War on Drugs with waves of praise from pundits, pulpit orators and politicians alike.

The Humongous War on Drugs has been very, very good for government. It has allowed and encouraged restrictions on civil liberties and individual rights. It has provided for jobs in law enforcement and the rest of the criminal justice system almost beyond count. It has pumped money into rehab programs which do not work, punishment systems that do not work, search and destroy missions in foreign countries which do not work.

The HWOD has undercut foreign governments. It has funded foreign insurgencies. It has alienated foreign societies and polities alike. It has complicated diplomacy time and time again.

The HWOD has diverted resources at both the national and state levels from far more pressing and important usages. Arguably it has undercut education, health care, social programs generally. It certainly has diverted intelligence and military assets from tasks far more central to their mission.

The HWOD has enervated respect for law and government alike for decades, generations. It has bred a contempt for law and governmental honesty alike. It has created a credibility problem of significant size in the minds of nearly everyone who has been young at any time since the mid-Sixties.

The one thing that the HWOD has not done is limit either the appeal or availability of drugs, all sorts of drugs.

Now the Obama administration promises more of the same. More money. More enforcement. More restrictions. More of everything. Except success.

Get a grip on reality, Mr Obama. The HWOD was lost before Nixon declared it. There is no shame in admitting that. There is shame--and loss--in continuing down the well trod path of failure.

Just as one cannot kill his way to victory in an insurgency, one cannot kill or arrest his way to victory in a "war" on the human desire to alter consciousness.

There is just one action which can be taken to end the profits which propel the ambitious to traffick. We all know what is.

We're afraid to say it. The moralisers scare us. The fear mongers scare us.

FDR's famed aphorism, "All we have to fear is fear itself," is apropos in the context of the HWOD.

Get out from behind the wall of fear. The time is long past when rational people have no choice but to shout it out, "End the sham! Legalise drugs. Now!"

Identity Politics--It's All The Rage

Usually when the term "identity politics" is invoked one thinks of the US political tableau. For years now much of the American political dynamic has rested upon the rolicking gavotte of assorted victim groups and their competing claims for redress, protection and compensation.

Identity politics is playing an increasingly large role on the international stage. Nowhere is this more evident than on the shores of the Persian (or is Arab) Gulf. Here national affiliation either intertwines with religious and linguistic identity or wars against it.

The relation between identity politics and regional stability came into very sharp focus just over a month ago when an Iranian official, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri , who is an advisor to Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei blandly asserted that Bahrain was not a sovereign state but rather Iran's long lost fourteenth province. Well, on one level this was no big deal. Nateq Nouri was right, sort of.

Way back when Iran was still Persia between 1602 and 1783, Bahrain was a province of the country. Later it bounced in the vacuum at the margin of the Ottoman Empire, finally enjoying (if that is the right word) the sloppy, haphazard suzerainty of the British Empire until 1970. Following a UN sponsored referendum in which the locals voted for independence rather than a return to Iranian authority, Bahrain came into sovereign existence.

Since 1971 the Tehran regime both under the Shah and the mullahs has huffed and puffed asserting its "historic" claim to the strategic outpost island. Even as recently as 2007 when the Iranians made the assertion of proprietorship the the world, the region (but not the Bahraini royal house) greeted the pronunciamiento with a yawn.

This time was different. The Arab states generally went exoatmospheric in fast-burn mode. The yowls of outrage and keening of animus culminated with Morocco severing relations with Iran.

So, why the immense escalation in reaction? Why the quick change from indifference in 2007 to the screams of Arab solidarity in the face of Persian provocation last month?

Some features of the Bahraini reality certainly have not changed. The population in the island-state is roughly two-thirds native born and one-third outlander. That percentage has not shifted appreciably in the past two decades. The majority of the population is Muslim. Again no change. The majority of the Muslims is Shia. That also isn't a new development.

The royal house and elite generally are Sunni. Once more, no change. Iranian supported subversive and terror oriented groups litter the Shia landscape. Say it again, with feeling, "No change here."

"So, what the heck has changed?" You ask.

To which question the Geek replies, "The context. Or at least a couple of essential factors in the context."

The first factor to have shifted in recent years is, to put it bluntly, Iran is getting ever more uppity. Some of this is pure talk as when President and Orator-in-Chief Ahmedinejad announced in February that Iran was now a super-power and no country in the world would consider threatening it.

But, as the Arab Gulf states well realise there is an unpleasant amount of reality beyond the Orator-in-Chief's grandiose pronouncement. The Iranians have developed an impressive military capacity which was displayed at sea in December 2008 with a series of naval exercises which demonstrated capabilities and threat potential far surpassing the Arab ability to equal, let alone counter.

Perhaps more to the point, Iran has fought a war within living memory. The war was a long, bloody stalemate yet the Iranian military demonstrated a capacity to learn as it fought. No Arab force has fought an opponent to a stand still since the Arab Legion back in the days of Glubb Pasha did so. (Not even the short-lived, even if surprising, success of the Egyptian Army in 1973 equals what the Jordanian unit did in 1948.)

Reinforcing the demonstration of Iranian military potential is the clear success of the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon. Not only did Hezbollah inflict unacceptable losses on the IDF in the course of a poorly planned and pathetically executed Israeli incursion, the group has been politically successful beyond expectations becoming the de facto controlling force in Lebanon's government.

Even more recently the defiant attitude and policies of Hamas have added luster to the Iranian threat. Put simply the Arab states correctly see the Iranians, Shia the lot of them, have a demonstrated capacity to penetrate Sunni populations with vigorous success. As subversives, the Iranians have shown a rare talent.

The second contextual factor to have changed is an Arab loss of confidence. There are a number of contributory considerations at work here. One is the continued inability of the Arab states working in concert or individually to do anything effective in the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Militarily the Arab states have been a nullity. They have been scarcely more effective in their application of diplomacy. Even the use of the "oil weapon" has been bootless.

The collapse of last year's oil bull market is a second fact which the Arab Gulf states must consider. Far from being immune to the economic web which entangles the globe, the oil producers can be the first to feel the baleful effects of contraction in the western economies. Members of the Arab elite blessed with a memory might recall that after the oil embargoes of the 1970s, western countries, particularly the US, embarked upon successful conservation programs which cut demand for the only revenue generator the Arabs possess.

The rhetoric in the US concerning alternative sources of energy or the moves to open off-shore fields to development represent a long-term threat to Arab financial underpinnings even as demands for increased social spending to buy regimes' peace grow apace. Making the picture bleaker is the emergence of new rivals such as Brazil's off-shore deposits and the expansion of long standing competitors such as the development of Mexico's seabeds.

The oil consideration loops into another consideration. How long will the US continue to have a national and strategic interest in the Gulf region? Since the US has more than sufficient sand to meet its requirements indefinitely, the only remaining reason for our interest in this unpleasant area has to be oil.

The day will come when the US has a sufficient alternative to Gulf oil. When that day will come is imponderable at the moment. But, (here it comes, the big "but") the hoary and somewhat irrelevant They-Put-A-Man-On-The-Moon based apprehension of the enormous potential of American technological invention and innovation is going to come sooner rather than later.

Making this apprehension teeter on the border of genuine fear is the fact that the US has a president (or at least its own Orator-in-Chief) that seems to be firmly committed to the development of alternatives to Mideast oil. And, a Congress willing to spend gigabucks in that direction.

So, how long can the feudal kingdoms of the Gulf expect the American military (including nuclear) umbrella to extend one millimeter beyond the borders of Israel? That thought can be (and apparently has become) a real stomach clencher around the Gulf littoral.

Then there is the matter of religious identity. Sunni Muslims have been comfortable for centuries looking down their collective clerical noses at the apostate Shia. Shias have always been the despised minority. They were consigned to the furthest marches of Islam, the outland of Persia, the margin of the Arab world in Iraq. Shias? Piffile!

Shia roared back with a vengeance in the Iranian Revolution. It has been roaring ever since. Fighting successfully against Iraq--even though Iraq received US support. Standing off the Great Powers led by the US and UK as Shia Iran developed its military, missile, and nuclear capacity.

Shia whispered as well. Extending its subversive tentacles throughout the Muslim states. Even reaching to the Western Hemisphere, the bailiwick of the Great Satan.

It is small wonder that Shia is seen as the superman version of Islam to so many among the youth of Islamic countries--particularly Arab states. Shia kicks butt! Youth admires butt-kickers. Youth (defined as those under 25) represents the absolute majority of the Arab population. Many, how many is one of those famed Rumsfeld "unknowable unknowns," youth are gravitating to the Shia camp.

Wahhabist and Salafist clerics as well as the states which give them homes and support are faced with a genuine challenge. From the perspective of the government either the option of confrontation or that of accommodation pose grave, possibly unacceptable risks. A choice will have to be made. The clerical tiger on which the feudal states ride will demand it.

Sunni versus Shia joins with Arab versus Iranian as the sharp and threatening dividing line within the heartland of oil and Islam. The Chimera of Arab solidarity shimmers more and more like a desert mirage.

The mullahocracy will do nothing in the near or mid-term to perfect their claim to Bahrain. The lesson of Iraqi ambitions in Kuwait is too recent. Besides that, there is no need. The need is simply to perturb the Arab states of the Gulf. That need has been filled.

By simply kicking the Arab anthill, the weaknesses, the uncertainties, the failures of Arab solidarity have been both exposed and exacerbated. The paradox is that the seeming single voice of outrage greeting the February announcement failed to disguise the weakness of both the Arab states and the Arab identity.

At the same time the boldness of the announcement, taken in context, reinforced the Shia-as-superman image which Iran has been projecting for decades. This means the appeal of Iranian branded Shiaism has been boosted in the critical target population--Arab youth.

Not bad for a single television clip, eh? But, the founder of the Revolution was the most underrated practitioner of absolutist politics in recent generations. The old Ayatollah Khomeini would be proud of his successors.

Let 'Em In Or Keep 'Em Out?

Two matters loom very, very large in the relations between the US and Mexico. One, as has been noted in several earlier posts, is trafficking in illegal drugs and its attendant violence. The other is (as the Mexican government puts it) migration or (as many? most? Americans see it) illegal immigration.

The two are joined at the head (diplomacy) and hip (law enforcement.) In addition both problems are easily distorted by emotion, particularly fear. Yes, and both have a complex history the effects of which continue to be played out today.

The powerful motivations for unrestricted immigration are most obvious when examining the American experience of the Nineteenth Century, particularly the years following the Mexican War and Gold Rush. To put it bluntly without (hopefully) oversimplifying: The American economy desperately needed cheap, warm, expendable bodies if it was to expand.

Thanks to a fungus and British governmental inefficiency and indifference, Irish fugitives from the Famine were available in great numbers just as industrialization based on steam power was getting up and running.

(In this context it deserves mentioning that Southern slave owners would not risk their valuable property in dangerous jobs such as feeding the boilers on river steamboats. That was left up to Irishmen whose deaths cost no one anything.)

The Irish of the 1840s, '50s and beyond were plentiful, hard working, hard drinking and Catholic. Therein resided the rub.

The Irish were culturally different from those who saw themselves as "native" Americans. The old breed was Protestant, and at least pretended they were not hard drinking. The stereotypes of the Irish both revealed the antipathy felt toward the newcomers and the resentment that reality dictated the necessity of their presence.

The American antipathy was predicated on fear. A fear that the newcomers would somehow change the identity of the American nation. This fear was a manifestation of the seemingly never-ending American identity crisis.

This crisis is understandable. The US is unique in being a totally artificial country and nation based not on geography, nor on language per se, nor long standing historical forces organic to the society.

The American identity was based on myths of (at that time) recent origin, a theory of government which was still underdeveloped and a handful of ideas and values the implications of which were only vaguely apparent. Arguably there was not even a genuine national identity yet, but rather a collection of regional identities in search of a common center.

Catholicism per se was widely viewed as a threat to the tenuous national identity. True to the heritage of the Reformation in its more extreme expressions, Americans were deeply, darkly suspicious of the Church hierarchy, to say nothing of its rituals and liturgies, its institutions such as monasteries, convents and parochial schools.

(A flourishing literary sub-genre of the mid-1800s was the (at the least) semi-pornographic portrayal of sexual misconduct behind convent walls or in the sacristies of Catholic Churches. The sexual content was always carefully mixed with a presumed Catholic affection for what were quaintly called, "ardent spirits." This matched the public perception that Irishmen loved whiskey to an outrageous extent.)

American industrial prosperity was built on the bodies of the Irish, and the Central Europeans--Poles, Czechs, Bohemians. (Note the racial epithet "honky" is itself a derivation from the late Nineteenth Century term of derision "hunky" meaning anyone from Central Europe but drawn from the word, "Bohemian.") Later sacrifices to the industrial alter were largely Italian.

It is important to understand that a very large percentage of the later waves of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe were, like the Irish, Catholic. It is equally important to recall that the single greatest reason the US took only the underpopulated northern fringe of Mexico following the Mexican War was fear that the US could not survive swallowing the large number of Spanish speaking Catholics such a move would entail.

The wave of immigration restrictions seen in the first half of the Twentieth Century was driven quite explicitly by the identity crisis. Americans of the early decades of the last century demanded a time out regardless of any consequences to the economy. The demand was typically put in terms of "racial" (meaning ethnic) purity. The fear of a presumed slackening of "Anglo-Saxon" vitality was expressed by religious, political and academic leaders alike.

Congress responded with a series of measures which ramped down the number of immigrants from Central, Southern and Eastern Europe allowed into the US. This practice was not even waived in the face of documented genocide directed against Jews before and during World War II. It did not modify until the mid-1960s.

From that time to the present all measures of immigration reform have been couched in terms of High Minded humanitarianism. Under the rhetoric of Lofty Thinking, the reality has been the squalid needs of the American economy. Even a post-industrial economy needs legions of low priced and relatively expendable labor. The immigrant fills that role.

Sectors caught in a cost-price squeeze such as construction and agriculture need cheap workers. In recent years this has meant illegal Mexicans and Central Americans. It has also meant Chinese and other Asians. In some places such as Boston, it has meant skilled Irish nurses.

It is critical to keep in mind that while the debate the past couple of years has focused on Mexicans since they represent the largest component of the illegal workforce, people of many other nationalities are involved as well. Whatever policy helps or hurts Mexicans will help or hurt the others as well be they from Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Mexico, the Central American countries as well as some South American nations all rely on the US as a sort of escape valve. The Colossus of the North is the Latin American version of the old frontier--a place where fortunes can be sought, or at least money might be made.

Most illegal workers from Mexico and the other Latin American countries have no intention of residing in the US permanently or even for a significant length of time. Their goal is to make money. Make money and send it back home. Make money and go back home to buy a better life for self and family.

This remittance based approach to temporary immigration is not new in the American experience. At many times in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century nearly as many people returned to their countries of origin as arrived in the US from those countries. Over the years only sixty percent of Italians decided to stay in the US. The rest took their savings and went back to the old country with a sizable grubstake. The same was true with Poles particularly when Poland re-emerged after World War I.

In short, a good case can be made for the contention that immigrants mulct the American economy almost as well as American industry has exploited the immigrants.

At this point the Geek would, if he were the High Minded sort, launch into a hymn of praise for the immigrant contribution to the evolving American identity. He won't. Two reasons: It would betray the three-eighths of his genome which comes courtesy of the Hot Springs Apache. It is unnecessary being self-evident that, at the very least, the American identity has survived the onslaught of Catholics, Jews, Buddhists and may very well survive the coming of the Muslims.

The reality is simple and easy to get a grip on. The economy needs cheap, temporary workers. Immigrants whether legal or not are willing and able to work for cheap. Some of those "temporary" workers will become permanent. Some will not.

A rational avenue must be available for those who choose (or are forced for whatsoever reason) to stay here permanently to assimilate, regularise their status and join as full members in the collective American identity.

This proposition has some very unpleasant implications and ramifications as the Geek would be the first to acknowledge. It has the merit of being a realistic acceptance of past and present dynamics which show no sign of having changed in nearly two centuries. Nor is there any indication that alteration is probable in the near to mid-term.

At the same time the US should not--must not--pursue an Open Borders policy. It is quite impossible for the American economy to absorb any and all comers. Further, it frees the governments and affiliated elites in Mexico and elsewhere from the obligation to take effective measures which will provide a genuine stimulus for folks to stay in the land of their birth. Closing the safety valve is actually an act of international "tough love."

What Mexico (and other countries) needs is not an "Office of Migration" as is the case currently but an "Office of Migration Control." This means that the government and its supporting elite must finally realise that it is not possible to reverse the result of the Mexican War by some sort of population infiltration scheme. The government has to put its resources where its people are not simply where the graft sticks.

Migration control means dropping the fraudulent front of "nationalism." It means allowing, inviting foreign direct investment in the new offshore oilfields as well as in the process of repairing and upgrading the decayed infrastructure of Pemex generally. It means realising that the decades of internal war ended nearly a century ago and the expropriations which might have been appropriate then are counterproductive today and positively fatal to Mexican national interest in the near-term.

Unless and until the Mexican government institutes an Office of Migration Control the US will be justified in building Great Walls of the South, sending the ICEmen into the workplace in armed raids, and other supposedly (according to Nancy Pelosi) "unamerican actions.") Unless and until the Mexican government allows and invites American talent, technology and investment to head South of the Border, we are relieved of an affirmative obligation to serve as the Big Frontier of the North.

Gott Mit Uns?

For decades the German Army, the army of World War I, the army of the Nazis a generation later, had the words Gott Mit Uns emblazoned on their belt buckles. While the Americans never went that far, the military chaplains down to the present day have had a propensity of assuring the troops that theirs was a war blessed from somewhere On High.

The world is all too terribly aware of the Islamist jihadist's call, "Allahu akbar" as the clicker is pushed or the airplane flown into the building. The Islamist emphasis on killing for Allah plays a deadly counterpoint to the fear of hell which is a major defining feature of all too many sermons and religious instruction.

Comes now incontrovertible evidence that at least some members of the Israeli Defense Forces have joined the ranks of the world's "Holy Warriors," with the expectable ill-effects upon any civilian so unfortunate as to encounter them. Under the stimulus of religiously reactionary members of the rabbinate, the IDF is no longer a purely secular force pursuing nationally defined goals using an ethical base of operations derived from the general Western notions of war.

While it is possible to accurately criticise the Western ethical schemata of war fighting, there are generally observed limits. The intentional targeting of civilians is prohibited by general usage to say nothing of international conventions. The employment of indiscriminate area weapons in built up areas is frowned upon even if not always possible to prevent.

During the early days of its history, the IDF, despite occasional lapses such as those committed during "counter terror" operations by Detachments 101 and 202, fought clean wars. Now those days seem to be long past.

Testimony by combat troops leaked last week concerning operations in Gaza Strip during the recent incursion demonstrates that IDF members went way over the edge in their treatment of unarmed people. It shows that the IDF's on board rabbis from the Chief Rabbi on down encouraged and used religious justification for outrageous behavior by some of the troops.

By experience as well as study the Geek is sensitive to the extreme difficulties found in fighting guerrillas who fight from the cover of civilian structures and bodies. He knows how easily mistakes can be made--and how lethal the mistakes are.

There is a vast gulf between the normal difficulties and concomitant killing errors which are associated with military operations in urban terrain against guerrillas and the notion apparently promulgated by the right wing rabbinate that in waging war against interlopers on "holy soil" restraint is somehow in violation of divine command and will. The former is a brute fact. The latter is the creation of religious zealotry.

The rabbis who argue for "holy" war against "evil" intruders on "God's" land and counsel that "to be merciful to the cruel is finally to be cruel to the merciful" are morally equivalent to those Islamist clerics who issue fatwas authorising the killing of civilians in the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate. Rabbi and mullah are brothers under the skin.

Brothers in enlisting a personal view of the deity in pursuit of a political goal. Brothers in perverting any reasonable understanding of divine compassion, mercy and justice. Brothers in hatred.

If the rabbis and the assorted mullahs, ayatollahs and sheiks really, really believe that JWH or Allah is willing war to the death, then let them fight it out directly. Cut out the middle men. Let the troops and civilians alike stand on the sidelines while the rival clerical gangs duke it out. Why are these assorted and diametrically opposed "Men of God" so willing and eager to see others die? Watch as the middle men slaughter one another? Invoke the blessings on those of their side who kill? Call on the deity to damn those who kill and die on the other side?

Time after time in the bloody history of humanity there is a propensity for the extremes to grow. To squeeze the middle, those who are not afflicted with True Belief, to the point of oblivion.

But, there is always a Thermidor. There is always a time when the long oppressed members of the middle strike back. Reclaim the field for something less than the ideological zeal of the True Believers.

In Iraq the middle struck back by withdrawing even tacit support from the apostles of sectarian violence. In one Islamic country after another, hesitant voices are being raised in opposition to the totalistic and lethal urgings of the Islamist jihadists. Observant Muslims are slowly recognising that not only can they be truly observant without being Islamists, being observant Muslims requires rejecting the exhortations of the death oriented Islamist jihadists.

Now in Israel the secular voices are being raised and heard. Israel will have to suffer one more round in the sporadic debate over the nature and character of the country and the people. If it is to survive as a viable state with international support and understanding, the Israelis will have to argue it out.

The men and women of Israel generally and the IDF in particular will have to determine which they are: A divine miracle. Or a state with national and strategic interests in which the deity does not have a stake.

Across the Mideast and far beyond, Muslims have to go through the same process. Are they a people destined by faith and those who interpret it to be the people of killing and death? Or, are they a people of a faith which celebrates life and all the potentials that go along with being alive?

As Abe Lincoln observed when both North and South claimed divine approval for their cause, both cannot be right but both can be wrong. As the Geek sees it, leave God to the ageless, the time beyond time. History is for people.

Khamenei Slam Dunks Obama

There is nothing surprising about the response offered by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the Persian New Year's tape of President Obama. The flat rejection was telegraphed by assorted underlings in the political apparatus of Tehran.

The Iranian rejection was (or at least should have been) expected by the professionals at Foggy Bottom and Langley. The tide of revolution is still riding high in Iran even though the actuality of deposing the ancien regime is more than a generation in the past.

Revolutionary zeal is most prolonged when external opposition is prolonged, high visibility but not fatal in effect. The analogy can be seen in Cuba. There the US has been implacably hostile or, at best, angrily indifferent to the regime.

The US embarked on a policy of active hostility including diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and even para-military operations nearly a half-century ago. Even after the most obnoxious features of the failed policy were abandoned in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy Assassination, the diplomatic and economic bars remained in place.

The US effort gave the Castro regime all the cover it needed not only to emplace the accomplishments of the 26th of July Movement in concrete, but to provide the excuses and justifications required to establish a police state, embark on foreign policy adventures and not address deep, systematic problems in the Cuban economy. US policy became Castro's best and most necessary accomplice.

(Can we say, "Law of Unintended Consequences?")

The US government and We the People threw a mighty hissy-fit following the Iranian Hostage Affair. It goes almost without saying that the capture of the American embassy by the so-called "students" was authorised and controlled by Ayatollah Khomenei. The event demonstrated to Iranians and the world that the Iranian Revolution was real, potent, outrageous of old norms and permanent. The permanence was assured by the American fear and loathing directed at Iran following the release of the hostages.

At the time of the Hostage Affair as well as in its wake a few perceptive individuals commented that under the Islamist rhetoric and seeming insanity the Ayatollah Khomenei was a shrewd and very skilled Iranian politician. He quite obviously understood the cruciality of an external enemy in maintaining and consolidating the Revolution. It was the Ayatollah who assigned the role of Great Satan to the US.

The Reagan administration cheerfully accepted the role, seemingly without thought. Once accepted the role could not be easily cast off. The inertia of American domestic political considerations made that certain.

The worst effects of the US having signed on to the Iranian game plan came during the Iraq-Iran War. The US tilted far--too far--toward Iraq. The reasons adduced for this tilt were at best dubious, at worst mere twaddle.

The effect of the US orchestrated global isolation of Iran during the war has blown back on us in recent years. Not only was Saddam Hussein strengthened in his power by the US policy, Iran was tossed over to the paranoid fringe of defensiveness.

When the UN--which in the estimate of Tehran was an American tool--did not come down four square in support of Iran's animadversions of having been the target of illegal chemical weapons, a policy Rubicon was crossed in the mullahocracy. Never again would Iran lack the necessary means of deterrence and retaliation. The country would develop and field weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological and, in the fullness of time, nuclear.

The isolation, the hostility, interacted with the exsanguination of the Iraq-Iran War to buttress the revolutionary commitment of the Iranian religious and political leadership--and the mass of Iranian citizens as well. This dynamic resulted in two factors which bedevil us today.

The first of these is the Iranian drive for a nuclear capacity. The quest is expensive, very expensive. The assorted UN Security Council imposed sanctions as well as the American add-ons have increased the expense.

Every increase in cost has been ignored by Tehran at best. Met with truculent rhetoric more typically. Responded to by indirect application of counter threat at worst.

Ironically, but predictably, every attempt to abate the Iranian nuclear nuisance has made the nuisance harder to abate. Now there seems little likelihood that the Iranians will abandon either enrichment or the potential of acquiring plutonium from their soon-to-go-online heavy water "research" reactor.

The second consequence of the Us-Against-All-Of-The-World attitude so easily inculcated and nourished in the Shia population of Iran with its long, long history of persecution and war was the policy goal of leaping the ring of containment presented by the US and its Persian Gulf "allies" such as Wahhibist Saudi Arabia.

Leaping lines of containment was pioneered by the Soviet Union during the Fifties and Sixties. The Iranians followed the Moscow designed strategy.

Using the history-is-on-our-side appeal of Marxist-Leninist ideology, Moscow fostered movements and wars of "national liberation" with the goal and intent of violating the global lines drawn by the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Proxy war and propaganda worked together to make less relevant the "Free World-Soviet Bloc" paradigm which informed US foreign policy. (It also had the desirable side effect of causing the US to fritter away diplomatic, economic and military resources in remote and inconsequential areas of the globe.)

The mullahocracy of Iran has also deployed the history-is-on-our-side ideology. True, this time it is derived from "sacred" rather than secular sources. But, the effect is the same. Yes, the ideology is drawn from the minority Shia experience, but it is powerfully reinforced by the undeniable successes of the Iranian Revolution in opposing the US and the West generally.

The most high profile result of the Iranian effort to leap the line has been its alliance with Syria and sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. It deserves mention that the Iranian "outreach" efforts in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and the Philippines has not been without measurable success.

The House of Sand (oops! The Geek meant, Saud) has wakened to the danger in the past year or so along with some of the other Gulf States, but the awakening may have come a bit late and may have as its primary effect the reinforcing of Sunni Islamist groups both Wahhibist and Salifist. Other target states which have received the ministrations of the Iranian "Angels" are even further behind the curve and thus far more at risk of internally destabilizing effects from pro-Iranian Islamist groups.

So, to steal a title from one of Lenin's most famous works, "What is to be done?"

This is a genuine toughy. As with China and Cuba, the US has locked itself into a long duration policy of confrontation with Iran.

Now, the US did once in its recent history reverse a long standing effort of hostile confrontation. That one worked well from our perspective. At least initially.

The Nixon administration in one fell swoop abandoned twenty years of opposing the Peoples Republic of China. The Nixonites saw that the US and the PRC had an interlocking national and strategic interest. Both had a common rival in the Soviet Union. Beijing and Washington saw in each other a counter to Moscow. We both "seen our opportunity and took it." (With apologies to George Washington Plunkett.)

The same imperative has never existed with respect to Cuba. It does not exist in the case of Iran. Our opportunity came and was untaken twenty years ago as Chemical Ali's bombs fell on unprotected Iranian troops.

This brute fact seems to rule out any replay of Kissinger's "secret" trip to China forty years ago. It seems to obviate the potential for a dramatic rapprochement with Tehran. Certainly the terms for rapprochement laid out by Ayatollah Khameni are unacceptable. Great Powers may alter their policies thus tacitly admitting past errors, but they do not apologise.

(For the record, there is no hint that Lesser Powers make a habit of apologising. Being a government means never having to say you're sorry.)

Dropping sanctions without some sort of quid pro quo is also a non-starter. To do such would only embolden, would simply stoke revolutionary zeal and appeal with long term results which would not be desirable from an American perspective.

This leaves keeping to our present course. It implies an increase in sanctions. This means gaining full support from both Moscow and Beijing. This in turn implies that the US will have to have something to offer in return. Beijing is unthreatened by anything Iran does in the near to mid-term. Moscow feels qualified to deal with Iran unaided if a real threat seems to be developing.

Both countries may be right. The US may have to grant that point and keep its fingers crossed. The fall back position is greater reliance upon EU countries to firmly enforce the sanction regime. Given the leakage caused by German and French companies, there is room for improvement. A lot of room.

However, under current global economic conditions the Europeans are not going to do anything which harms national interest. What, if anything, can the US offer to offset this understandable position? Hard to say. But, probably not enough.

Well, what about the Israeli option?

Realistically that option does not yet exist. The Israelis will require US assistance and support. The climate is not right for that move. Yet.

That leaves public diplomacy. We have heard the official response from the mullahocracy. We have not yet heard from the "outlying precincts," the Iranian people. In a few more days word will start electronically leaking out in sufficient quantity to get some sense on the degree to which the average sort-of-upscale Iranian supports or opposes the Ayatollah-in-Chief.

If there are any grounds for encouragement, President Obama should go back to the TV studio. His greatest personal tool is his (teleprompter dependent) rhetoric and engaging public persona. Keep on using it, Mr President, you may be our best, least secret weapon. What the heck, it's better than bombs bursting in the sand.

Now, Obama Best Consider A Gesture To Russia

Russian President Medvedev has tossed down a gauntlet to the US. He has also handed the Republicans a major issue for 2010 and, tah-dah!--2012. The front man half of the Putin-Medvedev duarchy has announced that not even the current economic distress in which Russia finds itself will prevent a major modernisation of the Russian military capacity.

According to Medvedev and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov something approximating ninety percent of Russia's military machine is outdated. The Deep Thinkers of the Kremlin also believe (or at least pretend) that Russia faces a number of national security threats including "NATO encroachment." The remedy to these looming menaces is an expensive, extensive upgrading of Russia's military capacities including nuclear and strategic forces.

It is doubtful that NATO is casting covetous eyes at Russian territory. Nor is NATO seeking to coerce Russia into compliance with its policy dictates. That doesn't matter. The outside threat is sufficient to provide a stimulus for internal support of rearmament.

Given the history of Russia and the Soviet Union before that, in fact stretching back into the mists of the Russian Empire, the government has never lacked the political will to spend money on the military regardless of negative consequences to the civilian population. It is legitimate to take Medvedev at his word. It matters not that oil prices have fallen, the Russian stock market melted to oblivion and foreign direct investment fled. Defense uber alles will be the watchword.

Or not. There is a big "unless" tacit to the Medvedev declaration.

It is an "unless" predicated upon a real world concern. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, a real world deficiency within the Russian version of the "military-industrial complex." Not to put to fine a point on matters, it is doubtful that Russia currently possesses the physical or intellectual infrastructure to play catch-up with the US and the West in the new categories of military technology.

While espionage might remedy some of the intellectual deficiency in the near future as it did so often in the Soviet past, that force multiplier will not be enough to cure all the systemic lacks suffered by the Russians. It will not, for example, give the core of very highly skilled technicians necessary to construct and maintain the systems. It will not provide the industrial facilities needful to make the devices the Russians must make if they hope to hold their own with the US and the rest of the West--or even China for that matter.

When it comes to countries which may have a political need to inhibit Russian diplomatic actions or coerce the Kremlin into compliance, China has to lead the list for any rational Kremlin strategist. Even if the Men in the Forbidden City harbor no ambitions regarding those portions of Siberia which lingered so long as a bone of contention, there can be little doubt that these men want the most free hand possible in pursuing global ambitions.

This means that the Russians as well as the Americans have to be inhibited, deterred from opposing Chinese policy. The massive improvements in the Chinese military as well as in the underlying economy generally provide the basis for this.

This implies an opportunity for the US. Taking advantage of this opportunity will require more than symbols and smooth words--even if those are a necessary launching pad. The first challenge for the Obama administration is that of convincing the Putin-Medvedev regime that the US sees Russia as a fellow Great Power and will treat it accordingly.

The second challenge is simply not to be taken in by Putin or Medvedev. The record of the past several years shows that both men, particularly the first, are accomplished workers in the snow job department. Apparent affability or seemingly implacable hostility are both tools in the kits of these accomplished political sharks.

All too many European and American diplomatic and policy level politicians have failed to recognise that Putin (and therefore his chosen front guy, Medvedev) is a Russian nationalist. The current regime is nationalist. This reality is not going to change. Not now. Not in the next few years. Perhaps not ever.

European and American statesmen beyond counting made the precise same error in dealing with the leaders of the Soviet Union. They ignored the obvious. Regardless of internationalist rhetoric, Soviet bosses from Stalin on were resolute Russian nationalists. All efforts were bent to securing and protecting Russian national and strategic interests.

This fundamental Russian trajectory did not die with the last of the Czars. It did not fall with the last of the Commissars. It is alive and well today with Putin and company.

Putin, Medvedev, et al are not globalists. They are not sensitive multi-culturalists. They do not accept such soft, squishy ideas as "We are all passengers on spaceship Earth."

They are Russians, the lot of them. This means they pursue Russian national and strategic interest first, last and always.

So, get a grip, folks. Don't bemoan the nationalism of the Kremlin Crew. Don't think of it as backwards, reactionary, a grave violation of the Lofty Ideals of the High Minded of the West.

Work with it! Nationalism is neither inherently evil nor necessarily good. It simply is a brute fact which must be taken into account in formulating and executing foreign policy.

For the Obama administration and for the president personally, this recognition is liberating. It allows, indeed, demands a fresh approach to US-Russian relations. The US and Russia have several critical coinciding national and strategic interests. The list of real world, realpolitick issues which can either divide or unite us is headed by Iran, Islamism, economic imperatives, nuclear proliferation, transnational terrorism and China (not necessarily in that order.)

Putin, Medvedev and company have been waiting to see if the new administration has a better grip on the realities of international life than the neocon ninnies of the past eight years. Medvedev has provided a solid wake-up call.

Will the Obama administration (and the president personally) pick up the phone? Will it and he accept that Russia is a Great Power, first among all other potential claimants of that status? Will it and he recognise that nationalism--not ideology--provides the best, perhaps the only, base for productive relations? Constructive address of mutual interests and concerns?

Obviously it is too early to give the answers to these critical questions. It is not too early to assert that if the US does not give the correct response, we are in for an expensive arms race when we can least afford it and the Obama agenda will be buried in the rhetoric of democrats-are-soft-on-defense as have been so many administrations and agendas before it.

Thumbs Up On The Obama Tape To Iran

Since much, but far from all or even the most critical parts of diplomacy, is comprised of symbols, the Persian "New Year's" Greeting sent to the Iranian people by President Obama is a good idea. It remains a good idea even if the initial, tepid Iranian governmental response turns colder over the next few days and weeks.

Public diplomacy, to use the new, improved and politically correct term for what was formerly called propaganda is a much maligned, often poorly used and typically undeservedly underutilized tool in the diplomatic arsenal. In the Pliocene of mass communications the potential of propaganda--oops! The Geek means "public diplomacy--was limited. Government's had too much capacity to completely control their citizens' access to unfiltered, external messages.

Now, with the proliferation of horizontal mechanisms of communication the task confronting a control freak government is far more complicated. In Iran the wide usage of satellite television and Internet assures that much of the Iranian public will have the chance to see and hear Obama's olive branch message and judge it for themselves. Whether this reality may or may not influence the Iranian government or mullahocracy in the development and implementation of policy is impossible to judge accurately.

At the very least the apparent sincerity of the president's words and gestures as well as the novelty effect will go some distance to undercutting any public support for a reflexive rejection through the imposition of impossible conditions by the Tehran regime. It should be recalled that the regime feels insecure on a nearly perpetual basis.

While the regime points at "foreign powers" and "subverters of religion" as the cause of their chronic anxiety, the reality is far less remote or rarefied. The country's economy is so far in the tank that it makes current conditions in the US look like a business expansion. The social consequences of this reality coupled with increasing resentment with the heavy-handed actions of the morality and virtue police have escalated toward a tipping point of destabilization.

So, the mullahs and politicos alike have to listen to the word of Allah with one ear while keeping the other firmly oriented toward the street. Of late the rumbles from the latter have been louder than the sweet music of the former.

Insecure regimes are dangerous regimes. They are also regimes looking for a face saving way back from the looming crevice of internal instability. The Obama tape gives a way back.

If the Iranians can, for the first time in thirty years eschew threats, bluster and chest-beating, they can take the route provided by the president's message. The mullahs of Mahdi-land need to have an epiphany. They need to get the word that stability is best provided over the long term by measures other than banging the gong of war, the issuance of threats or the claiming of superior military technology which does not exist.

Since the mullahs and their mouthpieces often refer to the days of the great Persian Empire over two thousand years ago, they might consult the history books. They might look at the chapters covering the fall of the mighty empire. They might note that a scruffy band of fractious Europeans fought the enormous empire first to a stand still and then, after the requisite period of internal conflict, shattered the myriads of Darius.

The moral of the story is simple: Bluster, threats and nuke waving won't buy a stable future. They are far more likely to finally force the outsiders to unite against you--with a predictable replay of ancient history. Ancient history with a modern body count.

The Obama gesture in public diplomacy shows an alternative. The only question--and its a very, very big one--is this: Do the mullahs and mouthpieces have the wit to respond in kind?