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"Talk with Iran? Yeah, talk with Iran. We talked with the
Soviet Union. We had a phone next to each other for 40 years.
Anybody forgotten that? We didn't blow each other up. That's what
you do with Iran. It's what you do with Syria. It's what you do
with North Korea. You start talking. It's a sick idea, I know,
but..." -- Iraq Study Group member and former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY)
interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition, December 7, 2006
[Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
syntonic_comma, who posted this quote
2006-12-08
(this entry is a cut-and-paste from his, with only the most trivial
of edits)]
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Then the "but..." happened.
We could talk with the Soviet Union because Kruschev and Gorbachev and Brezhnev where *reasonable* people, for whom the reality of "mutual assured destruction" meant something, something worth avoiding.
Iran's government doesn't care. They are perfectly willing to sacrifice their nation for the better Islamic good merely to destroy Israel and "the Infidel" (whatever that means this week). They really don't care. If they get the bomb, they will use it, consequences be damned, because "Allah will bless them" in the afterlife.
They simply can not be reasoned with. The only tactic you have is to promise to destroy them BEFORE they can use it, and we've already shown, thanks to the mismanagement of Iraq and the degree to which it damaged our efforts in Afghanistan, that we can't even do that right. Thus, they're calling what they see (perhaps accurately now) as our bluff.
Kim in North Korea is an idiot. He's a total egomaniac with no regard to the health of his people or the welfare of is country. All that matters is that he *thinks* having the bomb will make him look tough. Appearances are everything. If he gets the bomb, he will use it, or worse still, he will *SELL* it. The non-proliferation treaty he thumbed his nose at 4 years ago doesn't necessarily mean "I won't make the bomb". It means "I won't give the bomb to anybody who doesn't already have it."
By thumbing his nose at that, he's saying he'll be perfectly willing to sell the bomb to somebody else, perhaps Iran, perhaps Al Quaeda, perhaps some South American dictatorship in the making. Perhaps (more importantly) he's *already sold it*, in advance for the money to finish making the damned thing.
Again, knowing now that we can trace the origins of nuclear material (having shown that with tracking down the radiation that killed the spy in Britain last month), and that we have promised to treat N.K. as if they themselves dropped the bomb if any goes off with their material in it, it would be foolish for him to continue to act on it...but then again, it was foolish of him to persue the bomb anyways while his country remains the poorist in the region, far below even the worst poverties of the swamps of 'Nam, considering how much better the land is for agriculture.
It is also foolish for China to continue to turn a blind eye to Kim, but really they're enjoying this because as long as we're busy with him, we can't do anything about their recent exercises in empire-building.
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Er, no. Iran's government wants to be the big players in the Middle East, and thanks largely to George W. Bush's catastrophically idiotic mistakes (invading Iraq, ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian piece process, etc.) they're in a a far better position to make that happen then they were before. And part of making that happen is demonstrating that they can stand up to the US and the EU.
NK is a trickier issue. But understanding your adversary's motivations, instead of saying "they're just a bunch of crazy religious fanatics", is by far the most important step in preventing a larger conflict.
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see, I didn't know that they didn't know they already were, and have been since the 1979 revolution.
they must have some funny idea about what being a "big player" means, 'cause they've been an influence (and a thorn in our side) for almost 30 years. they also have had a strong influence in media propaganda in the region, more so than even saudi arabia.
and as i wrote below, even for strictly political reasons (as opposed to anti-semitism0, I don't trust them not to bomb Israel, regardless of the consequences. and they'll use religious justification to defend their people and blame a crusade for the aftermath, just as parts of Iraq have done.
(no subject)
And, short of using nukes, I suspect that Iran could hold off the US military for a long time. It's a hilly, mountainous country with a large, patriotic population. The army is well-trained and disciplined -- it hasn't been starved by a decade of sanctions, and neither has it lost a war. Iran has the means to blockade the straits out of the Gulf and to take out any ship in the Gulf -- this is not healthy for the US navy.
Finally, Iran is in Russia's sphere of influence. It's applying to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Russia would be very, very unhappy about the US doing anything nasty to Iran. (Similarly, China would be very, very unhappy about UN/US meddling in Sudan. They have major investments in Sudan's oil.)
***
Kim's not so much of an idiot as someone trying to make the best of a bad situation. North Korea's agriculture is down the crapper and the army has been unsustainable for the last decade. His government needs international aid to survive. He's going for the desperate "I might have a nuke, so gimme stuff" gamble. And as much as South Korea and China and Russia don't like Kim, they dislike the idea of a North Korean collapse even more. They don't need millions of starving, ignorant refugees.
Diplomacy is about taking two bad options and finding a good compromise. It has a history of working.
(no subject)
Even if the Iran government doesn't do it directly, we can hardly trust them to keep the bomb out of the hands of the fanatics among their people.
"reasonable" manipulation of popular emotions, perhaps, but unreasonable to most of the west that value life over death in any instance.
Kim is an idiot, by your very justifications. His problem is in seeing "the bomb" as the means to cooperation rather than economics and offering incentives for foreign companies to build factories to compete with China and South Korea. If foreign companies come in to build factories, they'll pay to clean up the agriculture they've so abused for the last 2 decades. He ignores the fact that the very "bomb" he wants creates the very instability in the region that keeps companies from offering to move in and help him. He thinks that governments are more important than corporations in providing economic support, and that is utterly wrong and ignorant.
As for the Russians and the Chinese? Well, someone more influential than Bush (it can't be that hard to find someone) needs to tell them to get those countries in their "sphere" to clean up their acts. Really, China needs to be the victim of terrorism one of these days so they'll wake up and actually do something about their so-called "allies" out there.
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Terrorism works on US because a) US is run by morons and b) US general population hasn't had to come to terms with dead innocents since 1861 and thus has no sense of proportion. It wouldn't work in China, and it doesn't work in Russia.
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I have to agree with Leo here. Like China would care if Iran did anything to them, whatever "doing anything to them" might entail. Me, I'm still not entirely convinced that Iran is in any substantive way, at a state level, connected with terrorism. Sure, I hear a lot about Iran being a "state sponsor of terrorism," but I hear that in the US media, and apply grains of salt liberally. Name some names. Show some connections. Or, as we used to say in debates, "State your sources." More bluntly, put up or shut up. Otherwise, it's just more of the same Colin-Powell-at-the-UN bullshit. I feel sorry anyone who believed that at the time; they need their gullibility meter reset, and the service fees are a bitch.
I'm also not entirely convinced that Iran is as after Israel as all that, either. It seems to me as though Ahmadinejad's rhetorical excesses (and please see Juan Cole or another actual Farsi speaker for an accurate translation of that "wiped from the map" thing, which is not what he said; the actual phrasing was a metaphor from a classical poem and wasn't even close in meaning) is what some people would call "fronting." He's got an image to maintain, and while he probably doesn't like Israel all that much, I'm not so sure he's dumb or crazy enough to push the Israelis too far. (God knows, when one of the neighbours does something dumb and provocative like that, I can hear the sound of millions of Israeli eyes rolling and muttering "Oi, ma pitom!" or the Hebrew variant on "Bitch, please!" -- and I'm in Canada.) All this latest anti-Semitic stuff Iran has been doing reads to me like a bid for credibility with the other Islamic states in the region -- keep in mind, they're Arab, Iran is not.
I think that's basically what North Korea has been doing, too. As soon as that stupid bastard (good frickin' riddance to bad rubbish) Frum put the "Axis of Evil" thing in Bush's mouth, Kim got all nervous, and not without reason -- he knows that the US' favourite pastime in international relations is replacing people like him with "Christian heroin warlords most friendly to the West." Funny how that is, you scare someone really badly like that, when he's already in a desperate situation, and he does something stupid (see also Fidel Castro jailing dissidents in the wake of threats from the US and after decades of economic embargo and several US-planned assassination attempts).
The US should absolutely talk to anyone and everyone. They should also quit acting like they own half the world and have a lien on the rest...but like either of those two things are going to happen any time soon...
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