Copenhagen--Theater Of The Absurd Closes

The Monster Rally Against Anthropogenic Climate Change is over. Good. Better yet, the curtain fell on this exercise in the theater of the absurd without too much real having been accomplished.

The Geek has been deeply suspicious of the climate catastrophe crowd because he is a historian, not an atmospheric physicist or one of the other forms of boffin who depends upon complex statistical analysis and assorted easy-to-fudge computer models. Being a simple minded sort of dude who has spent much of his life wading through conflicting views of what happened when, the Geek is comfortable with the simple fact that the past is not easily altered by computers or statistics.

In fact, it was the sudden erasure of the well known, very well documented Medieval Warm Period and its successor, the "Little Ice Age," which lasted from the late 1500s to the middle of the 1800s from the analysis presented in 1999 by Michael Mann, a "climate scientist" at Penn State University which first raised the Geek's eyebrows (and hackles) over the matter of human caused global warming. With a feat of statistical prestidigitation which boggled the mind, Dr Mann removed the centuries during which Greenland really was green and wine producing grapes grew in England. (His mathematical magic also ripped the cold centuries which followed from the historical record.)

The purpose of Dr Mann's exercise in massaging the data was specific--and intentional. He sought to prove that the observed minor warming of the Twentieth Century was solely due to human action. His goal was to stifle any thought that temperatures might rise or fall for reasons other than the malign, short-sighted, self-involved acts of people searching for a higher quality of life through the use of fossil fuels, industrialization, and other criminal behavior.

Since the earlier efforts of "climate scientists" to prove that the world was on the verge of a new, improved, really BIG ice age due to our use of fossil fuels, industrialization, and other criminal behavior had come a cropper, the time was ripe for a new approach. This Dr Mann did--with great success with his 1999 "J" curve analysis.

The Mann "J" curve resembled the (in)famous Laffler "J" curve which served as the justification for "trickle down" economics as practiced openly by the Reagan administration and with less candor by the administration of George W. Bush. The two "J" curves were joined shoulder and hip by the meretricious use of multivariate techniques to prove a dubious hypothesis.

Proponents of the Mann thesis like those who held the banner of Laffler high sought to stifle, suppress, rule out-of-order any opposing views. Or any who questioned the process and its results. The teleological behavior of Mann and others was made manifest by the leaking of the emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University.

Politicians who invested in the Laffler "J" curve assured all who might listen that the "trickle down" notion of economics represented a "consensus" of all economists. So also have those politicians both in the US and elsewhere who have bought into the Mann inspired "J" curve for whatsoever reason.

The assorted motivations for scientists, politicians, and members of the chattering class generally to accept the position of the climate extremists have been examined in previous posts. Suffice it to say that nothing equals the threat of global extinction to provide more and more power to central governments, international organs, and non-governmental organizations alike.

The efforts of the purportedly high minded and disinterested climate catastrophe peddlers in Copenhagen finally foundered on the rock of nationalism. The Chinese behaved as good nationalists pursuing their agenda of Really Great Power status. The assorted shakedown inclined states of Africa and elsewhere behaved as good nationalists pursuing their goals of extortion. Even the bizarre statements of Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Sudanese representative were those of good nationalists pursuing goals of their own devising.

Surprisingly even Mr Obama shook off the reins of post-modernism to act like a nationalist. His stance was clearly conditioned on a personal appreciation of the impact of national interest upon, if not his mind, the collective minds of the one hundred Senators. The American president did not sell American national interest short. For this he deserves a cautious vote of thanks.

More unrestrained thanks must be given the T. rex in the room. The name of this particular critter is "nationalism." While deprecated and declared dead by many in the chattering, academic and political classes in both Western Europe and the US, it is evident from the goings on in Copenhagen that the potent force of nationalism as expressed by self-defined national interest was not simply alive and well in the Danish capital, but thriving around most of the world.

Due to the ship of climate change having run aground on the reef of nationalism, it is to hoped that the time purchased by this fortunate (even if predictable) event will be used to effectively question and counter the arguments of Dr Mann and his ilk. Any special interest group, whether composed of credentialed "climate" scientists or any other bunch of True Believers which erases vast swaths of our collective past in pursuit of their agenda deserves nothing less than the utmost of scrutiny backed by great suspicion.

Welcome To A (Very) Dismal Future

Psychologists and their ilk have tried to topspin depression with studies showing that depressed people are more realistic in assessing their current and future situations than people who are not depressed. Perhaps this is true. It seems the US intelligence community thinks so.

Reading the Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review (QICR) with its dystopian view of the world and the US in 2025 is guaranteed to bring depression in its wake. This depressed state is enhanced by seeing the predictions as perhaps erring on the optimistic side.

The major take away of the QICR is that while the US will still be a Great Power, it will be far less of a Great Power fifteen years hence than even its diminished state today. The really Great Power will be China. While not stated with this bluntness in the QICR, it exists as a subtext in most of the document's four sets of scenarios.

Certainly the goal of the Gnomes of Beijing is that of presiding over China's emergence as the Really Great Power. That goal was explicit even in the snit thrown the other day in Copenhagen by the Chinese Prime Minister, who was bent out of shape by President Obama's unexceptional call for full transparency and accountability through international monitoring as regards emission controls and their effectiveness.

The Chinese shouted that such a monitoring and verification effort would compromise Chinese sovereignty and limit the country's economic growth. Even if this is not a necessary interpretation of the need for verification, any such international effort would carry the potential of impairing China's trajectory to Really Great Power status.

The QICR does call the nature and character of Great Power status into severe and genuine question in the first of its four sections. Entitled "Politics Is Not Always Local" this portion of the review raises the specter of transnational groups based on identity politics with access to weapons of mass destruction as well as high level capacities in cyberwarfare.

Identity politics has become a massive motivator of human behavior over the past fifty years. It doesn't matter if the basis of identity is racial, ethnic, religious, or ideological, when people derive their core identity from some external aspect, the capacity for True Belief and its implications becomes very high. Identity politics produces extreme actions. Extreme actions produce galloping instability in either a national arena or the global one.

The nation state as currently known will be under attack by identity politics powered groups including sub-national defensive insurgencies such as the Russians have become so familiar with in the Caucasus. China, even a China which is the Really Great Power of the 2020s, will be threatened with the same given the plethora of minorities under the Han yoke.

The nation state and its international system will also be under continued (and probably massively enhanced) pressure from Islamist practitioners of identity politics. The probability of this is, if anything, somewhat understated by the producers of the QICR. With the growing likelihood of Egypt going the way of Iran in the next few years, the number of potential sponsors or facilitators of Islamist jihadism is not going to lessen. It can only increase.

Should Pakistan go down the route pioneered by the mullahs of Iran, the Islamist jihadists would have not one but two potential nuclear suppliers. The use of such weapons by True Believers should never be underestimated. (Nor should Egypt's past and present role as a proliferator be overlooked, particularly with the high probability of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over long before 2025.)

The spooks correctly predict the further decline of the West. In the section "The World Without the West," the planners foresee a global dynamic in which Europe and the US are largely irrelevant, capable of being ignored with impunity by Iran, Russia, China, and India. (And others as well.) This projection seems counter intuitive given the size and economic strength of the European Union, but can be easily justified by the erosion of political will and national self-confidence on the part of its major constituent nations.

The same loss of political will can be envisioned for the US. The aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the effects of demographic changes in the American population as well as the economic consequences thereof will be profoundly weakening of both political will and material capacity to act independently on the global stage.

In this context it is worth noting that recent opinion polls show that a high percentage of We the People expect that China will surpass the US in all the measures of hard power over the next twenty years. There seems to be no odor of despair over this eventuality. Neither does there appear to be much desire on the part of the US government to take measures which would reduce the disparity between Chinese and American hard power capacities.

In what should be a modestly optimistic section of the QICR, the prognosticators of spookdom see the BRIC as crumbling. The ending of any alliance potential between Brazil, Russia, China and India is a tribute to the continued power of nationalism. While nationalism may be anathema to the elites of the US and Europe, it is and will continue as a major force in other areas of the world. Ironically, the competition for resources and markets between Marxist tinged states such as Russia and China may prove yet that Marx was right about the inherent contradictions of capitalism.

When taken in conjunction with the impact of sub-national and trans-national non-state actors, the competition between Really Great Power China, Sort of Great Power Russia, Wannabe Great Power India and Regional Great Power Brazil will serve to diminish the threats all present to the interests of the US. This area seems to be one which can be explored by future US administrations with profit for the American national and strategic interests.

The neo-neo-mercantilism which will govern the actions of the BRIC nations will be complicated by the emergence of what the spooks term "mega-cities" forming their own policies regarding trade, economic goals, migration, and even "national" security. Mega-cities with their intense concentration of people, skills, markets, money, and (in some cases at least) intellectual property will be a major force in international affairs which has been undervalued before this QICR.

Mega-cities have the capacity even today to profoundly influence national policy. With the probable decline in power held by central governments for the reasons previously adumbrated, the ability of these massive congeries to practice independent operations regardless of central government desires will be a major complication for future American policy makers.

The most important consideration (leaving aside the relative decline of the US) is that the world of 2025 will be chaotically multi-polar. The proliferation of actors ranging from identity politics driven groups to mega-cities and trans-national corporations will combine with the erosion of central governments, the reduction of international restraints, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction to bring wars large and small into existence.

Problems ranging from crime to climate change, from migration control to the militarization of the arctic and cyberspace, from the erosion of ethical standards in biotechnology to the depletion of energy prime mover reserves will not only increase dramatically but threaten to spin beyond the control of people to handle. Overall the picture ain't at all pretty.

We are blessed (or cursed) by living in interesting times. The future appears to be even more interesting.

Are you feeling depressed yet?

Is One Child An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

There is a fine British ezine called Spiked with which the Geek finds himself in general agreement. In terms of politics the site is, in American terms, rather libertarian-socialist, which seems to be but is not a contradiction in terms. In this case the designation "libertarian-socialist" implies a strong trust in the individual, a strong distrust of central governments, and a healthy disregard for capitalism as the sovereign remedy for economic disparities and social injustices.

However, the Geek profoundly dissents from the well argued view presented by editor Brendan O'Neill in opposition to the growing applause by greens and others of the anti-global warming camp for the long standing Chinese policy limiting most urban families to one child. The recent and increasing embrace of the Chinese approach to the problems presented by overpopulation is predicated upon the belief that no child, no human, is "carbon neutral. Mr O'Neill's opposition is based upon the undeniable reality that the one child policy provides, indeed, requires a very potent governmental intrusion on the most intimate of human decisions.

The Geek yields to no one primacy of place in inherent and well founded suspicion of governmental intrusion into the private sphere. As numerous posts have shown, the Geek is unalterably opposed to any, repeat, any expansion of public space, of governmental supervision or regulation of the private space, the sphere bounded by personal, private decision making and behavior.

Given that orientation it would be natural for the Geek to agree with Mr O'Neill's position. In the present matter the weight of fact falls firmly on the side of those who support a global version of the Chinese one child policy. The successes of public health and agricultural technology over the past century have assured the world's population has exploded to a level where it exceeds the carrying capacity of the land or, in a best case, the economic capabilities of a country.

The ground truth is simple. There exists not a single matter of environmental degradation which cannot be reduced to a unitary cause: Too many people.

Whether the problem is one of pollution, resource exhaustion, or global climate change, the root cause remains the same: Too many people.

The converse is also true. Fewer people, regardless of the technological or consumption level, use fewer resources, emit less waste, generate less carbon dioxide and other alleged greenhouse gases.

In the wild and wacky world of the dismal science, economics, the same ground truths apply. Greater population exerts downward pressure on wages. Lesser population exerts a pressure for higher wages. A very fine example of this dynamic is seen in the aftermath of the Black Death epidemics in Europe. An alternative, reinforcing demonstration is seen in the effects of the Thirty Years War on population and income.

Human population growth remained very low during our long centuries as hunter-gatherers. The few remaining enclaves of hunter-gatherer societies available for ethnologists and anthropologists to study further demonstrated that the low population increase was a matter of policy, of individual choice, rather than the consequence of life being according to the paradigm of Hobbs--nasty, brutish, and short.

The hunter-gatherers practiced a wide assortment of approaches to gain the goal of limiting population. These included prolonged lactation, strong taboos, use of abortifacients, and, quite rarely, infanticide.

The development of agriculture took the lid off self-imposed restraint. Children, lots of them, were necessary not only to offset the shorter life expectancy of farmers but to provide labor.

Because of the inherent uncertainties of agriculturally based life, population growth remained low. Importantly, this low growth was imposed by the nature of agrarian life and its corollary, urbanization. The coming of industrialization in the West did nothing to change the trajectory of high birth and high death rates.

Not until the advent of effective public health measures which lowered the death rates from infectious diseases did the population--even the middle class sort so beloved of demographers--move to limit family size as a matter of individual decision making. The phenomenon noted by so many of declining middle class and elite birth rates came as a consequence of lowered infant and childhood mortality during the middle decades of the Twentieth Century. As public health improvements spread from the West to other areas of the globe with the inevitable result of lowered mortality among the young, the emerging middle class of these countries followed the same limiting dynamic previously observed in the West.

The combination of lowered death rates, which ultimately affected all strata of society, and massively asymmetrical birth rates as between the elite and non-elite segments of any country's population assured the explosive overall population growth seen during the past seventy-five or so years. The reckoning predicted by Malthus was forestalled by advances in technology, most notably the "Green Revolution" of the Fifties and Sixties.

A reckoning delayed does not equal a reckoning denied. The human race has been entirely too fruitful and has multiplied too well. While all monotheistic religions decry and deny that there can ever be too many people and advocates in certain ethnic groups may loudly brand any effort at population limitation to be "genocide" inflicted on the minority by the majority, both of these positions are untenable, indefensible, and ultimately destructive of the best interests of all humans and the planet upon which we live alike.

Whether assorted clerics and "spokesmen," pundits and politicians, boosters and demagogues like it or not, population limitation is coming. Probably it is coming sooner rather than later.

Limits on our collective growth can and will be enforced in one or more of three ways. Our population can be reduced in the traditional way--The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or it can be reduced over time by the Chinese Way--governmental fiat and control. Or, finally, we can do it ourselves by acknowledging that our hunter-gatherer predecessors knew a very deep truth.

They knew to their very depths what most of us alive today recognize with the rational part of our brains. All land, every country, every piece of property has a natural carrying capacity which can be stretched only so far by the products of mind and muscle. The limits to the ultimate carrying capacity of land, whether natural as in the availability of resources or quasi-artificially as in the economic value of effort, labor, and invention, are real. They are imposed by the nature of life and the Earth themselves.

Obviously, the Geek greatly prefers the third option. But, one way or another, by act(s) of nature or the decisions of governments, the limits will be imposed. Far better we do it ourselves by individual choice rather than submit to either the iron will of pestilence, famine, and war or the dictates of government.

May we live in interesting times. Like it or not we are.

Give Us Your Money--Or Else!

After having been treated to diatribes against the developed, capitalistic countries from such astute political and social scientists as Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nations assembled in Copenhagen are now attempting to salvage a done deal on the horrid beast called "Anthropogenic Climate Change." At the root of the deal making is--what else?--money and its partner in crime: power.

Actually there are two money issues in play. The more obvious one is how much filthy capitalistic lucre can be extorted from the developed nations of the so-called "Global North" by the Mob of the "Global South." Closely related to the first issue is the second: Who or what will control the receipt and expenditure of the money meant to address the challenges of meeting climate change and assuring that at least some of the great carbon sump contained in tropical rain forests continues to exist.

The US has reportedly broken the seeming logjam over the amount of money to be "donated" by the North to the (let's be polite and sensitive about national egos) "lesser and least developed" states of the "South." Secretary of State Clinton has opined that one hundred billion bucks over ten years sounds about right.

This figure is lower than the European Union estimate of 150 gigabucks. It is a whale of a lot lower than the 350 billion dollar commitment demanded by some of the more ambitious governments on the make.

While the total dollar amount of the ransom to be paid by the posse of evil doers known as the advanced economies is important, the question of what entity will disburse and account for the payments is equally important. And, in Copenhagen, equally divisive.

Not surprisingly, the motley congeries flying the flag of the G77 want the money to be funneled through the 192 member Conference of Parties. This assembly would (presumably) appoint an executive committee which would oversee the orderly transfer of ransom funds from the extorted to those running the extortion racket.

A primary advocate for this approach is Farrukh Khan of Pakistan who is a representative of the G77 countries. As a Pakistani he is well acquainted with the mechanisms by which both bi-lateral and international organization provided aid can be hijacked for the benefit of members of any nation's elite.

Mr Khan justifies the use of the Conference of Parties mechanism in lieu of established international bodies such as the World Bank by saying the aid needed in the next few years is not simply business as usual assistance but rather a means of "basically compensating the poor so vulnerable and exposed to the effects of climate change." Oy veh! The chutzpah of this argument is utterly mind blowing!

The US and other "doner" nations favors the World Bank for the obvious reasons of honesty, transparency, accountability, and, compared to either the UN or some new outfit run by the recipient nations, lacking in corruption. Quite correctly, representatives of these nations in Copenhagen have stated with a slightly categorical edge that the money for climate adjustment purposes must be appropriated by national legislatures and these bodies (to say nothing of the taxpayers who are ultimately being mulcted) will insist upon rigid standards of both practice and transparency.

Like all the games nations (and politicians) play the real deal here is power. The international extortion effort is an exercise in wealth transfer of prodigious proportions. Whatever body runs it will become a very major player on the global scene.

It is not surprising at all that representatives of countries ranging from the large (such as Brazil, South Africa and India) to the truly piss-ant (not named for reasons of political correctness) wish most fervently for the Conference of Parties to have the ultimate say over the flow of cash. It is equally void of drama that the Great Powers (as well as the Nearly Great) want to see control and thus power reside in trustworthy hands--their own.

As the Geek has posted before, the realities of climate change and its cause do not matter. Neither does the view of at least half of all Americans. The political class of both advanced and poor nations as well as the UN and status conscious scientists hold the position that global warming is both real and man made. As a consequence, life and the world as we have known it will change dramatically in the next few years and decades.

The goal of the US government must be that of assuring the changes will have a minimal negative impact upon the citizens of this country. That is called defense of national self-interest and any government which ignores this imperative does so at great peril to its continuation in power.

So far, the Obama administration (or at least the Secretary of State) has taken a firmer line in Copenhagen than many feared (or hoped.) It must continue to do so regardless of the mighty moans and fierce threats coming from the general direction of the G77 dacoits in diplomatic dress. After all, the only real concern for an American government should be, must be, the well-being of the American people.

How Much Evidence Is Enough?

Two years ago the American intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate. In a nearly unprecedented move the NIE was made public with only (relatively) light redactions. The conclusions of the community were optimistic, but plausible.

The two most important facets were that the Iranians had ceased active research and development on atomic weapons in 2003 and, with "moderate confidence" that these efforts had not restarted by mid- to late-2007.

The London Times has called the second conclusion in the controversial NIE into serious question. If the document obtained by the Times is both genuine and accurately dated, the Iranians were beavering away on developing the neutron initiator for an implosion bomb in 2007. The neutron initiator is the very guts of an implosion bomb--or the "pit" to use the terminology employed by the Manhattan Project lads.

The Iranian document admits that the country lacked the in-country capacity necessary to fabricate and effectively test the initiator, but laid out the steps necessary to do so over a four year period. The production of a prototype and its testing are both very complex. A trenchant analysis of the document by the Institute for Science and International Security makes that clear.

However, the Pakistanis mastered the technology and executed a "cold test" of its initiator some twenty-one years ago. Indeed, a schematic of the initiator appears on the dust jacket of A.Q. Khan's book. (Similar schematics have appeared in numerous fora over the past half century or more.)

There is a vast gulf between the theory of initiators and the practice of detonating implosion weapons. The timing of detonation as well as the geometry and chemistry of the explosive lenses surrounding the uranium (or plutonium) is both critical and vital to the success of the project. Along with the compression of the hollow ball of highly enriched uranium, the timing of the neutron pulse from the (in Iran's case) uranium deuteride core must be timed with exquisite precision.

An absolute fundamental which must be acquired from testing is correct measurement of both the magnitude and duration of the neutron pulse from the UD3. Even gaining these data represents a challenge that Iran admitted it could not meet two years ago.

With evident justification the Iranian regime boasts of the country's growing capacity for self-sufficiency in weapons research, development, and production. While not a subject for boasting, the ability of the regime to evade and avoid the many sanctions barring the sale of dual use technology is equally if not even more impressive.

Some observers may take comfort in the apparent failure of the North Koreans to master the detonation technology as indicated by the fizzle yields of its "hot"tests to date, the same does not of necessity apply to Iran. The Iranian intellectual and industrial infrastructures, like those of Pakistan twenty years ago, are immeasurably superior to those available to the Hermit Kingdom of the North. So also are Iran's financial resources.

It deserves mention that while the problems of timing, explosive geometry and chemistry as well as the source of neutron initiation posed mighty problems to the Manhattan Project physicists and engineers, developments in electronic technology over the past few decades have solved the difficulties of timing at the nanosecond level. Similarly, improvements in the chemistry and physics of explosives have solved most if not quite all of the features which stumped the Manhattan Project folks for many, many months while causing the canyons around Los Alamos to echo with both the sounds of explosions and curses when yet another failure was recorded.

The give-peace-a-chance crowd will seek to deprecate the import of the Times article and the supporting documentation by questioning the veracity of the leaked piece of paper and assuming its lack of authenticity to be a very poor basis for policy planning. The Iranian government is already playing to this constituency by branding the report an aggressive move, a part of the "psychological war" being waged against Iran's defense of its "nuclear rights."

So far Israel's response to the new revelations regarding Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program has been restrained. Government figures have limited themselves to calling for "tougher new sanctions." Defense minister Barak opined that there was still time for diplomacy to work but refused to eschew the use of military force.

The Obama administration has not been notably more robust in its treatment of the new information. Secretary of State Clinton allowed as how "our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of positive response from the Iranians."

Duh!

More realistically the outstretched hand method of Obama diplomacy has resulted in nothing but kicks in the crotch in return. Tehran correctly sees the American president and his administration as too weak, too loving of peace at any price, to represent a credible threat to either the regime or its activities. The Iranian government has also properly assessed the global weakness of the US currently as well well as how that weakness links to the self-interest of both China and Russia.

In short, there is little, if any, apprehension in Tehran as to further sanctions. Nor is there any appeal in the pursuit of diplomacy beyond that provided by the desirability of buying even more time as the centrifuges spin and the researchers research.

In blunt and unpleasant fact, the US (and such as its allies who might care) has precisely two choices. The first alternative, which appears to be the default, is to accept a nuclear capable Iran and the concomitant realignment of what the Soviets termed "the correlation of forces" in the Mideast, Persian Gulf, and Northwest Asia. The second is to employ whatever level of force is necessary to destroy the Iranian nuclear complex as well as associated weapons systems, command and control sites, and the government itself.

The second option will be nasty, brutish, and far from short. It would bring in its train any number of very bad and quite long lasting consequences. It is an alternative which is only marginally less undesirable than the first--if that.

What gives the second option any attraction whatsoever is the eschatological leanings of so many in both the Iranian clerical elite and the government of Ahmadinejad. This end times orientation calls into serious question the calculus of rationality employed by the ultimate decision makers in Iran. It calls into doubt the efficacy of containment and mutually assured destruction which served the US so well during the long years of the Cold War.

Containment and deterrence through MAD worked for fifty years only because both the US and the Soviet Union shared the ultimate imperative of national and governmental survival. It is not at all certain that the top echelons of the Iranian regime see life in similar terms.

One cannot help but wonder whether or not Mr Obama regrets having left that nice cushy seat in the Senate. At least there he was not responsible for the end of Western Civilization as we have known it or, less dramatically, the decline and fall of the US as a Great Power.

Eschatology And The Hidden Imam--And The US

The Geek is not a big fan of the Fox network's approach to news. Not that he has much brief with all the other television "news" sources either. However, this time kudos can go quite deservedly to the Mighty Murdoch Outlet.

Last Monday Fox news--and only Fox among American MSM--covered an important story from al Arabiya. In a characteristically rambling interview Iran's President and Orator-in-Chief, Ahmadinejad, stated he had "documentary evidence" proving the US was acting to prevent the return of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi.

The importance of this small story lies not in its inherent absurdity but rather in the insight it provides regarding the world view of Ahmadinejad--and many others involved in the governing of Iran. Put quite simply the world view is eschatological in nature. That means it is focused not on the world and time as such currently exist but on the time after time, the world after the present world ends.

Eschatological world views are not the sole province of Shia believers. Nor is it the possession of Muslims alone. There exists a large number of Christians who share this "end times" view of life both present and future.

However, Christian Evangelicals do not possess nuclear weapons. Neither are they seeking to acquire this end-of-the-world capacity.

Yes, there is a strain of Jewish thought that might be characterized as end times oriented. There are Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox members of that faith who await the coming of the Messiah. Within this group there are a few who see the Messiah coming only as the world collapses in blood and destruction. It is, however, quite doubtful that this sort of mentality controls Israel's version of the Big Button, the mythical push-to-kill feature which would launch the Samson Option.

Things are quite different at the top levels of the Iranian semi-theocracy. Both Ahmadinejad and his mentor, Ayatollah Mezbah Yazdi, (who is also a member of the very important Assembly of Experts), believe strongly in the coming of the Mahdi. More, they believe to the depths of their souls that human action can hasten the returning of the Hidden Imam.

Basically, the human actions which must be taken to hurry along the coming of the Mahdi fall in two categories. One of these is consolidating and expanding the theocratic hold on all Iranians. This implies the necessity of suppressing all internal dissent not simply because it is a threat to the political structure of the state but because it is inherently evil, the product of Satan.

The second task ordained by their "divine mission" comes under the rubric of "international." The Iranian president and his ilk use this precise term in ways which are not customary elsewhere in the world.

The "international tasks" imposed by the "divine mission" are oriented toward bringing about the Shia version of Apocalypse. The most common understanding of the return of the Hidden Imam focuses upon the necessity for widespread death and destruction. Death and destruction which centers on the Mideast.

To this end President Ahmadinejad and his fellow True Believers have provided assistance to terrorist groups in countries ranging from Lebanon to Yemen. They have fostered religiously based political violence in a host of states across the Arab and Muslim world. Lastly, but far from least important, they have pursued the acquisition of nuclear weapons with a singleness of purpose which would be laudable were it not so potentially dangerous.

Three years back the defense and intelligence communities warned the Bush/Cheney administration of the eschatological nature of the Iranian regime as well as the implications of this orientation for US policy. It is evident that these warning were not taken seriously by the Deep Thinkers and Great Strategists of the time.

It is equally evident that the current administration is equally unconcerned about the relationship between eschatological True Belief and our efforts to dissuade Tehran from seeking their own personal end-the-world-as-we-know-it capacity. A blunt ground truth is that mere diplomatic isolation, sanctions, and the rest of the panoply of coercion short of war will be quite counterproductive. The power of nations is nothing compared to the potency of a divine mission.

The more pressure is placed on Iran, the more intransigent the country's leadership will be. If Russia and China were to join the Western countries in a new round of sanctions, the results will be a further stiffening of Iranian resistance. In the eschatological world view, the opposition is not to be treated as a warning, a cautionary note, but rather as the plain indication that divine will is being tested.

Not even the threat of an Israeli attack will exercise a deterrent effect. If the coming of the Mahdi depends upon the Apocalypse, then an Israeli attack and its aftermath serves as well as one launched by the Great Satan. To the eschatologists of Iran the Apocalypse is not to be avoided but welcomed, not retarded but hastened.

To many in the US, the West generally, the power of True Belief, particularly a True Belief rooted in both the necessity and desirability of the world as we know it coming to a bloody end, is difficult to fathom. Almost impossible to accept. Our view of life, of international relations, of the way the world should operate, is predicated upon the supremacy of rationality.

That fervent faith in the power of reason is our legacy from the Reformation and the generations which followed it. Our faith in the power of reason seems to have been recurrently justified by the accomplishments of Western science, technology, even politics and economics. We are all that we are today--wealthy, free, advanced in our toys and necessities alike--because reason has triumphed.

Yet there are other forms of reason. The rationality of the eschatological True Believer is not one which is warped. Neither is it the product of delusion. The desire for the Mahdi, the "divine mission" of seeking the early return of the Hidden Imam, is not divorced from reason.

Rather, the foundation truth with which we must deal is that the rationality of Ahmadinejad and others like him come from predicates different from ours. They grow rationality from a set of axioms not found widely in the West these past several centuries, but that does not make them any less powerful, any less real, any less of a threat.

If anything the different axioms make for a result far more risky for the world.

The Climate, National Identity, And Extortion

At first, the "mixed messages" sent by President Nicholas Sarkozy to the Muslim population of France and the ongoing rhubarb at the Monster Rally Against Global Warming seem to have little in common. A bit of reflection, however, shows a deep and necessary connection.

Mr Sarkozy stated that discrimination against Muslims was unacceptable to French law and French historical traditions. He went on to say in no uncertain terms that Muslims who came to France as well as those born in the country had to accept the realities of French and European history, which included the centrality of such non-Islamic features as equality before the law, transparent democracy, and--most un-Muslim of all--the powerful impact of the Christian religion on all facets of life.

President Sarkozy bored directly to a vital question not only in France or Europe but throughout the world. That question revolves around both the nature of national identity and the cruciality of national identity to matters of international relations.

The Sarkozy position on national identity and its necessary twin, nationalism, runs counter to the myth making of the chattering, academic, and (some of the) political classes in both Western Europe and the US. The French president spoke reality. He spoke truth.

The truth of his position has been underscored rather dramatically in the brouhaha which has emerged since one of the discussion drafts prepared by the host government, Denmark, was leaked to the Guardian in the UK. This so-called "Danish Text" ignited a firestorm of protest by representatives of the G77 states as well as their advocates among the NGO crowd such as Oxfam.

The important features of the draft discussion text include the apparent scuttling of the Kyoto Accord, the removal of the UN from the role of largess distributor, measures which would limit the economic destruction of the world's advanced economies, and the replacement of hard and fast decrements of carbon emissions by hazier goals. None of these features are exceptional given the current status of the questionable science undergirding the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, the fragile state of the recovery from the Great Recession, the past record of the UN when administering wealth transfer programs, or the technological realities of carbon reduction.

Nor are any of the features exceptional when considered in terms of national identity, or, to be more blunt, national interest.

The reaction of countries at the bottom end of the international economic spectrum show just how powerful and real national interest, nationalism, is right now in Copenhagen. Lumumba Stanislaus Dia Ping, the Sudanese ambassador to the G77, called the draft document another manifestation of imperialism. In words which would have done any Marxist-Leninist revolutionary proud, he said, "The Empire has always relentlessly and ruthlessly grabbed natural resources."

Presumably the "natural resources" being "grabbed" this time by the "Empire" (whatever that might mean) are the atmosphere and climate of the world. This, of course, overlooks the minor fact that the "Empire" shares both air and weather with even the Sudanese.

A more salient exhibition of the power of national identity and nationalism is resident in the threat by the "poor" countries to walk out of the climate conflab unless their demands for money are adequately met. Again, it was Mr Dia Ping who set the tone by decrying the ten billion dollars to be committed by the "rich" nations (presumably the "Empire") as a "wholly inadequate bribe" which put the "climate crisis" on a lower priority than the Great Recession.

If ten billion dollars per year for the period 2010-2012 is an inappropriately small "bribe," what would Mr Dia Ping consider to be an acceptable figure? Twenty billion? Fifty billion? No limit?

Apparently, the small, poor nations can't agree on the number, but they have achieved a consensus on the notion that "compensation" is necessary. Without the iron clad guarantee of proper wealth transfer from the industrialized nations to the assorted "have nots," there is a threat that the latter group will simply walk out of the Monster Rally.

This dramatic gesture would simply be a means of attention grabbing as well as an instrument of extortion. Most of all, it would be a strong, even strident example of nationalism at work. It might be a very good idea if the G77 states would stage a walk out. Such an action would force the political and perhaps even the chattering class to reevaluate their prize notion that nationalism is a dead or dying force in the politics of international relations.

Both the "Danish Text" and the G77 response show the power of nationalism--cloaked in the garments of national interest--has the compelling power ascribed to it by President Sarkozy's remarks on the relation of French history and culture with that of Islam. The lens of national interest bends whatever light passes through it. It must distort.

But, that distortion is not one of evil intent. It is one of the unique history of a people, of a nation which produces as an inevitable consequence a particular view of the world and what the nation must seek or accept in the dynamics of international relations.

Governments as a result must look out for their own interests, their own survival first and foremost. Democratic, pluralistic countries produce governments which serve their own interests by effectively (appearing to be) serving the best interests of their citizens. Other, less democratic, less pluralistic, less open governments skip the charade of serving the interests of the nation and focus on the personal fortunes and futures of those in government or most tightly connected to it.

The government of Sudan--and many of the G77 states fall in the latter category. These worthies have little if any concern for the well being of those unfortunate to live under their sway. They do, however have a great concern for personal well-being, personal survival, personal finances.

Not surprisingly, the representatives of these governments look to the US and the other industrialized, advanced economies as cash cows to be milked at length. It is for this reason as well, these governments would love to see the UN in charge of wealth redistribution programs as the chances for graft and corruption would be magnified thereby. (For proof of this unflattering contention simply review the Oil-For-Food Program as administered for a decade by the UN.)

Nationalism and its underpinning, national identity, are alive and well every moment of every day. They motivate as well as conceal the efforts by governments great and small to do the work of both running a state and playing the Great Game of Nations in all its many forms. It is this ground truth which links head, shoulder, and hip the cautionary statements of Mr Sarkozy and the gavotte in progress at the Monster Rally in Copenhagen.

More examples of the interesting times in which we live.