The Clarity of Belligerence
It would be vindicating for conservatives if the stakes weren't so high. The Obama Administration has effectively conceded defeat on Iran's nuclear program. Assad still remains in power, and Russia and China are laughing at our bewilderment.
In a way, the recent barbarism in Syria and the Arab League's imposition of financial sanctions against the Assad regime are making things increasingly clearer. It was a mistake to look at Syria's regime as an extension of the corrupt,sclerotic, dysfunctional Arab Spring-toppled governments that liberals breathlessly denounced the US for supporting. Assad is the Arab version of Putin--a ruthless, highly efficient, personally intimidating authoritarian. He is not an obvious sociopath like Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein; he is disdainful of Arab Islamism and al-Qaeda, and his best friend in the Middle East is about-to-go-nuclear-Iran. Syria and Iran stand together, but not alone. Russia and China's uneasy but increasingly intense alliance in opposing the West on the Syrian matter have been equally clarifying. They are the beneficiaries of the Syria-Iran problems: they are the puppet masters. As Putin promises to ratchet up "defense spending" and reposition Russia as a global leader after stealing the upcoming election, we may be sure that he, along with China's authoritarian leaders, will use Syria, Iran, and North Korea as weapons in an ultimate resurgence of an anti-Western alliance that will attempt to establish primacy in some sort of new world order. The target of this giant pentagon is the U.S.
Rogue states like Iran, Syria, and North Korea are never truly rogue states. And Syrian massacres, Iranian nukes, and assorted other acts of belligerence do not happen "inevitably." They happen only due to support from the truly powerful and well-connected within the charmed circle of the UN Security Council. We borrow money from them, try to enforce our trade laws with them, "reset" our relations with them, and they have got to be laughing. They are the two most powerful authoritarian states in world history, embittered by their traumas in the 20th century and determined that the 21st century will allow them to use market forces and military power to do what their respective brands of Communism could not do: destroy the primacy of the United States.
Yes, al-Qaeda and Pakistan are dangeorus. Yes, there are disasters waiting in store in the Middle East. But don't you agree that our GOP candidates would do well to remember, discuss, and obsessively study the twin behemoths that lurk behind everything that troubles us today?
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Dec '10
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
Provoking post. I can't help but wonder if Obama is serving as a modern day Neville Chamberlain to Putin's threat of super-power nostalgia.
On the other hand, maybe the bigger threat is still lurking just beneath the surface of the turmoil we are seeing, hidden just out of sight and veiled by our ignorance because we keep expecting it to look like a familiar villain. There is no specific assumption in this. I am perhaps more in the dark than most. It's merely an uneasy feeling that the current global turmoil (economic and otherwise) is the perfect cover nefarious plotting.
Edited on Nov 27, 2011 at 2:25pmOct '10
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
I am no expert, but from what I see and hear, Putin has a long row to hoe to put Russia back on the world stage as a king-maker. The society is so corrupt and anarchy so entrenched, I cannot imagine the country being able to field a capable military in a generation. China is another story altogether. They have a society much more capable of world war. They are capable of most anything, but for now I think satisfied to bide their time and manipulate the world economies. They were on the sidelines during the latest German bond auction, but they are in talks with Canada to buy the oil Obama has taken a pass on, and would surely love to have the EU as much in their debt as the USA is.
Dec '10
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
You make a good assessment.
I've been reading a little WW2 history that has my min stirring, and I can't help but think that the charismatic leader of a downtrodden population may have an easier time rallying his population to seek former greatness than leaders with a burgeoning middle class getting it's first taste of prosperity. But that may just be the influence of a historical confirmation bias.
Dec '10
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
I think Hafez al-Assad was an efficiently ruthless dictator who had no regard for his subjects as human beings. I believe his son Bashar wanted to care about the Syrians as human beings and be different from his father, but that when they failed to appreciate what he saw as his benificence, he took a crash course in living up to his patrimony. As Macchiavelli taught, when a dictator has to take harsh measures, he must be ruthless at first and gradually ease up on the bloodshed to be seen as reforming; Bashar al-Assad has done it the opposite way, and has gradually increased the odium with which his subjects regard him.
Mar '11
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
An excellent post, thank you.
I find it puzzling that there seems to be so little debate or discussion over how to approach the two real puppet masters. Our politicos (of all stripes) seem to have a tendency to act as if by ignoring a problem, one can cause it to disappear.
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
It's perhaps a manifestation of having lived too long in Turkey and imbibed too much of the conspiracy-madness ambient in the air here, but I have this sense that our true foreign policy apparatus has gone underground, to a place too deep for ordinary Americans to see it--no less to appraise it rationally or debate it. I'm just not sure who's making it anymore: What you're saying is of course true, yet it is so little discussed--not really discussed at all, even in foreign policy debates--that the disjunct seems increasingly surreal. I don't believe that at the higher levels of our bureaucracy, people are not thinking about this. Yet they're not telling us what they're thinking. Nor are journalists trying to find out. Someday, the archives of this period will be open, and when they are, I wonder if we'll be quite shocked at the degree to which we've been kept in the dark about what our government is doing.
Feb '11
Re: The Clarity of Belligerence
And they say Ron Paul supporters are crazy conspiracy theorists. Sheesh.