[lit-ideas] Re: Worst Case Scenarios
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:19:57 -0700 (PDT)
John, what Eric wrote was pretty much what I had in
mind, and I most certainly do not WANT this to happen
but am afraid it will. Garton Ash's piece posted
previously is a pretty good assessment of where this
is heading.
Nuclear power nor nuclear weapons makes no sense what
so ever to Iran
- for energy security (they've got enough natural gas
to last centuries and I would guess hydro-power would
be possible too if for some reason they had an
eco-awakening)
- financially, see above
- militarily, this is not Soviet Union II, they have
no resources to take on USA on an arms race nor build
a credible deterrent
- politically, they already were offered pretty much
everything they can reasonably hope and declined.
That is the whole hullabaloo is pure internal
politics, and part of an effort to maintain a corrupt
and dysfunctional government by directing public anger
to external enemy. (Yes, I do realize the same could
be said of Bush administration but there is a
difference in degree here in corruptness,
dysfunctionality and instability). It is politics 101.
Politics 102 would cover the ways this strategy
backfires. Once you convince the public that all is
wrong because of the Great Satan, it becomes very hard
to make peace with the Great Satan. The impression
that the diplomats and the press that covers them had
was that the nuclear program was simply a bargaining
chip Iranians would use to get concessions in other
fronts. It seems that the Iranian diplomats themselves
thought so. Now it has become a matter of principal
and national pride, that is the Iranian negotiators
have nothing to bargain with.
Same applies to so-called asymmetric warfare. The
basic idea is that the weaker party in a conflict
moves from conventional centralized military
operations (symmetric) to decentralized total warfare.
Everything connected to the opponent becomes a target,
war is waged using guerrilla or terrorist tactics. The
idea being that the opponent will rather quit than
bear the casualties.
Two things to note here, the ethical implication of
murdering innocent civilians would be third.
First, the whole decentralized nature of operations
means they are nearly impossible to control. It is
easy to arm some independent guerrilla groups and
start a civil war, disarming the groups and ending the
civil war is very difficult. Iranians could train
terrorist cells at large scale, but after that they
take a life of their own, see CIA and Al-Qaeda for
example.
Second, the assumption here is that the opponent will
not resort to total warfare by conventional military
means in retaliation. UK, a liberal democracy, had no
problem revenging the London bombings by torching half
of German cities in the last total war we had. Given
what Ash predicts, dirty bombs in London, terror
strikes all over UK, does anyone seriously expect
millions of Brits to go out and demonstrate against
carpet bombing (or worse) of Teheran?
The Red Brigades terrorizing Europe back in 70s and
80s explicitly aimed at escalation of the conflict,
forcing the violence machine to show its true black
boots nature hidden beyond bourgeois facade, or
something to that effect. The actual damage they
caused wasn't nearly enough to force such a response.
The governing forces in Iran inciting hatred through
state controlled media and in some cases actively
sponsoring terrorism, do not want an escalation, just
enough conflict for population control. This is a
difficult juggling act that probably will quite
literally blow up in their face.
It's really all up to Iran. There is no reason to
believe that any White House (or EU, Russia, China in
order of conviction...) would be willing to simply
live with nuclear armed Iran, nor do I think they
should be. As for the obvious counter-argument, North
Korea isn't in the Middle-East. USA will not budge.
Barring a change in leadership, Iran will not budge.
To further complicate things, like you know who,
Ahmadinejad reportedly is an honestly stupid man. How
does the saying go, like watching a train wreck in
slow motion?
Yours,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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