"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html). Thus spoke Likud boss Benjamin Netanyahu, with a degree of hawkish-ness that most other civilized world leaders dare not attain to. Yet the war-hungry, bloodthirsty Netanyahu is not exactly more than a standard deviation away from the mean on the hawk scale. In fact, we are now living in the age of the warhawk.
"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html). Thus spoke Likud boss Benjamin Netanyahu, with a degree of hawkish-ness that most other civilized world leaders dare not attain to. Yet the war-hungry, bloodthirsty Netanyahu is not exactly more than a standard deviation away from the mean on the hawk scale. In fact, we are now living in the age of the warhawk.
Perhaps this began after September 11th, 2001. Perhaps it began on January 20th, 2001 when the cowboy was back in the White House. With the U.S.’ essentially unilateral invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, citing retaliation for harboring terrorists in the first case and prevention based on patently flimsy evidence in the latter, the stage has been set for aggressive invasions. The Bush administration single-handedly abrogated Article 51 of the U.N. Charter in favor of a sketchy legal framework for arbitrary action against any threat a nation state’s leadership perceives to be legitimate. The neo-con doctrine of "preventive war" was not acceptable by international law, but the neo-con’s wanted a pipeline to the Caspian Sea and a permanent staging ground for assaults on oil-rich, sovereign but comparatively weak West Asian countries.
The neo-con’s land war in Asia is not going very well, which is unsurprising. The burden-laden white man just can’t seem to win long-term land wars in Asia. In fact this counter-insurgency operation which involves poorly armed peasants, frustrated teenage boys, and mentally-handicapped girls giving the world’s most powerful military force all it can handle is a huge embarrassing failure. It isn’t just a huge embarrassing failure militarily, it’s also a huge embarrassing failure politically because it has empowered Iran to the status of regional dynamo by destabilizing its natural regional rival and it has empowered socialist paradise Venezuela by contributing to elevated oil prices which is in part a geopolitical phenomenon.
However the fact that the war "over there" isn’t going well, thanks in not-insignificant ways to the failed Rumsfeld-Franks doctrine of labor-scarce, capital-intensive oriented forces, does provide the perfect conditions for long-term engagement. Believe it or not, the Bush regime does not have authorization to continue operations of the Global War on Terror anywhere in the Milky Way in perpetuity. The U.N. resolution which "authorizes the president to ‘enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq’" will expire on December 31 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402581.html). The U.S. wants to negotiate a bilateral agreement with the al-Maliki government before even the specious, ad hoc legal basis for U.S. forces in Iraq sunsets. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said that the U.S. must present a "very clear timeline" for troop withdrawal in order for the agreement to be finalized. This pressure from the Iraqi government to get the son-of-a-Bush out is a plausible reason for the talk of "time horizon" and "aspirational goals" coming from Pennsylvania Ave. But the Bush administration could stay if it wants, citing the necessities of "national security" and that furthermore Iraqi law doesn’t apply to them, just like international law and U.S. domestic law doesn’t apply to them apparently. And if they do stay under any razor-thin justification in the same tenor as that, I believe it would serve to demonstrate their clear commitment to accomplishing neo-con objectives regardless of the cost.
The most insidious cost of their insipidity and hubris are the precedents their unsanctioned military adventures and disregard of international law or diplomatic propriety have created. One such precedent is the right of nations to invade other nations’ sovereign territory without just cause or due process. This right of invasion is being exercised presently by Russia and may potentially be exercised by Israel.
There is speculation that Georgia and the Caucasus are to Putin what Austria was to Hitler, a territory to be taken by conquest in order to ease the humiliation of defeat and economic collapse (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/world/europe/12putin.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin). Russia is in the process of annexing South Ossetia in the way that the U.S. has annexed Iraq and Afghanistan. Spreading national territories by dungeon, fire, and sword, these modern day crusaders are returning the world to a simpler time—the time of the Mongol hordes. The West is unable to leverage enough diplomatic pressure to get the Russians to cease and desist precisely because in the Bush era international law just doesn’t retain much of its power to compel. That’s why "last year, Russia suspended its compliance with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which, among other things, required that it withdraw troops from Georgia and Moldova" (Ibid.).
The Kremlin is asserting that by attacking and occupying Georgia it is acting to defend its citizens from the threat of the tiny nation of 4 million. Before the Bush Boys argued that Iraq was a serious national defense threat to the U.S., these sorts of assertions wouldn’t even pass the laugh test. But now the U.S. is forced into the unenviable position of having to pretend to take arguments like these seriously in order to keep up the charade, so the doors are open for unilateral bullying by the big dogs on the block. The U.S. flew Georgian troops serving in Iraq back to Georgia to defend their homeland. This could be construed as technically military assistance. Military action is becoming the default vehicle of multinational interaction these days. The N.Y. Times even speculated that, "Washington could also press to ostracize Moscow on the international stage, perhaps by kicking it out of the Group of 8" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/world/europe/12diplo.html?hp). This is something McCain said he would do if elected president, long before the Russian invasion of Georgia (http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1536962020071015?feedType=RSS&feedName=politic
sNews&rpc=22&sp=true). Russia is resistant to NATO’s political moves because it is another state empowered by exorbitant oil prices. The Russians may ostensibly cease operations, but they will likely try to permanently annex South Ossetia.
Capital flight destroyed the Russian economy just like it destroyed the American economy. Now that the American and Russian governments are deploying a little capital of their own, their Spartan contemporary may want in the action faction. With Russia moving into the power vacuum left by NATO in the Caucasus, the power vacuum left by the U.S. in Iraq may have propelled Iran to the status of regional powerhouse. Israel is unlikely to take this development sitting down.
Israel’s purported case is a bit stronger too. While Russia is trying to get the Soviet Union back for a reunion concert and the U.S. is trying to get the Texas tea flowing, Israel argues that it is confronting an existential threat. That Israel is a threatened country is not something the party-liners in Israel, or their Likudnik allies in the U.S. like Sen. Joe Lieberman will ever let anyone in earshot forget. It is important to remember though that the Israelis are not the only ones with interest in Iran.
The U.S. has already been expanding its special operations activity in Iran (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all). The Bushies were trying to stir up the Persian hornets’ nest so they could get kinetic on the issue, but they have been successfully resisted by their own national security bureaucracy...so far. One of the resistors, Adm. William Fallon has since resigned under pressure.
That same national security bureaucracy has been trying to resist Israeli aggression as well. Chairman of the JCS Adm. Mike Mullen attempted to order Israel not to strike Iran by saying, "From the US perspective . . . opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us . . . that would really be very challenging" (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf38affc-4898-11dd-a851-000077b07658.html). Normally the Children of Moses obey their cruel, white overlords. But they are apparently losing patience with the Anglo-American imperials’ provincial focus on Iraq. "Shaul Mofaz, an Israeli deputy prime minister, has warned that military action is ‘unavoidable’ while several reports from the US have raised the possibility of an Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities" (Ibid.).
The Iranians are willing to accept the conditions imposed on them by U.S. negotiations in regard to their nuclear program, but the Israelis are apparently skeptical of Iran’s sincerity. This suspicion could have been prompted by the Bush administration when they tried to undermine the significance of the NIE which said the Iranian nuclear weapons program was suspended in 2003. This was before all domestic political support for an offensive against Iran had eroded. Now the U.S. executive branch is trying to keep their Israeli attack dogs at bay so they can focus on Iraq, but even as a client state Israel has its own interests and doesn’t appear to want to handle the Iran problem diplomatically, while the U.S. does. The warhawk neo-cons may have created a Frankenstein monster they can’t contain.
The Iranian foreign policy doesn’t appear to be too aggressive to me. If my historical knowledge serves me correctly, the last time the Iranians tried to invade another country, they were defeated by the Spartans (only 300 of them to be exact). The Iranians aren’t quite so competent militarily, either. Their number one defense export is not nuclear weapons to terrorist groups, but PhotoShopped images. They are also having problems with uranium enrichment because the uranium hexafluoride they have is contaminated with an impurity called molybdenum hexafluoride which makes it difficult to separate uranium isotopes using gas centrifuges. Then again, if the Iranians were a real threat, the bullies on the block would want no part of them. Bullies all work the same way, they pick out easy targets to pick on. But the U.S., Russia, and Israel are not just rank-and-file bullies. They are bullies armed with nuclear weapons and the crazy egotism to use them. That’s why the greatest threats to the American, Russian, and Israeli peoples may be their own governments. The age of the warhawk may end soon...and it may end in a mushroom cloud.