mutually assured destruction

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Kinetic Peace Action #2

Following NATO’s war in Libya, hawkish commentators have been salivating over the prospect of more “liberal interventionism” in the middle east.

Now, thanks to the Arab League, they might just get their wish.

From Zero Hedge:

Yesterday we reported that the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria. Today, we get an escalation which confirms we may be on the edge. Just out from CBS: “The U.S. Embassy in Damascus urged its citizens in Syria to depart “immediately,” and Turkey’s foreign ministry urged Turkish pilgrims to opt for flights to return home from Saudi Arabia to avoid traveling through Syria.” But probably the most damning evidence that the “western world” is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria, and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor, which always has some very interesting if always controversial view on geopolitics, where we find that for the first time in many months, CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked right next to Syria.

The point, I think, is that the Arab League and NATO would be very happy to see Iran’s wings clipped through regime change in Syria. I’ll be absolutely clear: I think that this is an attempt to get Iran to directly intervene in Syria, and get their fingers burnt by a humiliating NATO counter-offensive. The preferred outcome would be a resurrection of the Green Revolution, a bringing of the Arab Spring to the streets of Tehran, and regime change.

I don’t think Ahmadinejad is that stupid. He long ago absorbed the lessons of Saddam Hussein (now confirmed by the demise of Qaddafi). As I wrote last month, these are:

  1. Nuclear weapons are an essential prerequisite to holding off NATO-sponsored regime change.
  2. Western nations and organisations — including NATO, the United States, Britain, France and the UN — cannot be trusted.

Ahmadinejad would not respond. Iran is preparing for the coming Israeli-NATO onslaught, and doing everything in its power to urge China and Russia to heavily discourage any such move. China and Russia — strong Iranian trade partners (and to some extent ideological partners) — already have a strong interest (energy and resources) in resisting regime change in Tehran.

But this is all part of a greater game: America and the West are locked in a proxy war with the Eurasian autocracies (Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China — for short, the PRICs) for both Eurasia’s huge resources and manpower, and global military and financial supremacy. American policy is to retain the petrodollar-standard, and continue enjoying the free lunch such a system yields.

Iran’s fall could give America — as heavily indebted and zombified as America is — a significant boost toward retaining primacy in years to come, and scare the other autocracies into compliance. For that reason, Russia and China — who have gained a very strong position through accumulating American currency, and become hubs of global trade — will not be keen to see further American encroachment into their back yard.

Forward-thinking readers are urged to get a copy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s masterpiece The Grand Chessboard, and study it.
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Jeffrey Goldberg Calls For War With Iran?

Jeffrey Goldberg, foreign policy hawk, is making the case for some more “liberal” interventionism.

From Bloomberg:

An Iran with nuclear weapons may be unbearable for Israel. It would further empower Israel’s terrorist enemies, who would be able to commit atrocities under the protection of an atomic umbrella. It would mean the end of the peace process, as no Arab state in the shadow of a nuclear Iran would dare make a separate peace with Israel. And it isn’t too much to imagine that some of Iran’s more mystically minded leaders, mesmerized by visions of the apocalypse, would actually consider using a nuclear weapon on Israel — a country so small that a single detonation could cripple it permanently.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who once told me he believes that Iran is led by a “messianic, apocalyptic cult,” is correct to view Iran as a threat to his country’s existence.

[President Barack Obama] has said, repeatedly, that an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable to the U.S. Many Israelis, and many Americans, think Obama is soft on such matters. But I believe, based on interviews inside and outside the White House, that he would consider using force — missile strikes, mainly — to stop the Iranians from crossing the nuclear threshold.

We’ve been here before.

From Goldberg’s 2002  New Yorker piece calling for American intervention in Iraq:

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power … There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon … There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

The trouble is, no evidence was ever found that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass-destruction. But that didn’t stop the military-Keynesians who steamrollered into Baghdad before embarking on almost a decade of wasteful, expensive occupation at cost to the American taxpayer.

In a late 2002 debate in Slate, Goldberg described Hussein as “uniquely evil” and advocated an invasion on a moral basis:

There is consensus belief now that Saddam could have an atomic bomb within months of acquiring fissile material. … The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

Yes — profound morality.

Because, of course, war, imperialism, torture and mutilation are “profoundly moral” acts.

For those with strong stomachs, here’s some more explicit pictures of that “profound morality” guiding American “liberal” interventionism.

Goldberg was wrong about Iraq, and he’s wrong about Iran. Far from plunging the middle east into the throes of war, an Iranian nuclear weapon could very well stabilise the region under the shadow of mutually-assured destruction — the same force that stabilised relations between the Soviet Union and America.

The big difference, though is that with Iraq there was no threat that any “liberal” interventionism would spill over into a wider regional war.