The Perennial Fecklessness of International 'Consensus'

Iran continues to worry us as much as it has all year. We've been unmotivated to blog it because of the sheer predictability of how things are playing out. Yet that predictability itself seems worth comment this week. Have we learned nothing from Iraq under Saddam? (Or for that matter, Germany under Hitler?)

A lone actor (Iran in this case) has a clear military goal. They have declared it. They are driving towards it relentlessly. As they do so, they throw up chaff but it is we who pick the chaff out of the air and examine it under a microscope, hoping that it is truth.

Iran's enemy (the rest of the world - mostly) is too open for their own good. They (we) are too bent on consensus and rules and appearances and niceties to ever move quickly, cleverly or decisively when the cost of doing so is still modest. The U.S. and the international community - or, more accurately the process in which we that 'community' is participating, is utterly predictable. This fact allows Iran ample opportunity to concoct diversionary tactics and disrupt our orderly attempts at finding 'solutions'. The fact that we may see and reject those tactics makes little difference. They win every time we crank up the rusty wheels of international diplomacy to consider their latest move. They win ever time they slow things down or cause a few less committed individuals and nations on the margins to think maybe this isn't so bad...

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the meeting [of the U.S., Russia, China and Germany] agreed that Iran must pay a price for not complying with U.N. resolutions but did not come to terms on what form that would take.

"Pay a price". Isn't that wonderful. What on earth does it mean? Haven't we heard this before? It means everything... and therefore nothing. It is just talk. In Tehran they are laughing their collective a--es off. It is unclear from the article if France was participating in these talks or not. Either way, we don't care. Why Britain was not included is odd - to say the least. Why Germany is involved at all is simply bizarre. And why India is not involved (being as they are, a neighboring non-Muslim nuclear power and increasingly reliable U.S. trading partner and ally) is the very definition of anachronism.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Tass news agency: "All of us agreed that Iran must not have nuclear weapons." He stressed Moscow's desire to draw Iran into "fruitful" negotiations on the issue. Major power political directors will meet on Iran on Tuesday in New York and will likely meet again next week but sponsors -- aiming for unity -- have backed off a timeline for security council action, the U.S. official said. Margaret Beckett, Britain's new foreign secretary, said "No one has the intention of taking military action (against Iran). That was not discussed. It was not an issue." [emphasis added]

What an utterly meaningless pile of weasel words! Desire to draw into 'fruitful' negotiations... By my count that's four qualifiers short of the line drawn in the sand in the previous sentence ("must not have... nukes"). Is anyone connecting the dots here? Has anyone given credence to the very simple idea that there is no "talk" or "process" no matter how clever or unified, that will change Iran's behavior?

As we've said before, diplomacy is necessary and important, but its inherent weakness is that within itself, it does not contain the rules or logic for identifying when it has failed. Credible options beyond the bounds of diplomacy (with time-specific and/or impasse-specific triggers) are necessary in order for talk to be effective.

Or to put it another way: there must be a Cntrl-Alt-Del option available to an intelligent outside party to jolt the system (in this case the diplomatic system) out of an endless and fruitless loop. The UN Security Council is not that Cntrl-Alt-Del. It is, instead, the romantic idea of a Cntrl-Alt-Del. It is the phrase Cntrl-Alt-Del. It is a set of plastic Cntrl-Alt-Del keys... glued to a block of wood. Press them all you like. They will do nothing.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President George W. Bush proposing [he claimed] "new ways" to resolve their differences. But a copy obtained by Reuters showed a long [18 page] rambling treatise that focused on American wrongdoings and did not contain ideas for ending the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions... a European diplomat who works on the Iran issue but was not authorized to speak publicly called the letter "another tactical masterstroke..."

We're reminded of the Unabomber: an isolated, self-justifying megalomaniac who recognizes no "other": a manifesto that offers no hint of empathy or understanding beyond that which is necessary to explain itself still further and justify its own ambitions. And in that sense, the memo is an absolute masterstroke. What it contains is immaterial. The fact that Ahmadinejad sent it is what the average person will remember. The fact that it (ostensibly) represents the first publicly acknowledged direct communication between the enemies in 27 years is what will be remembered. It could be a list of falaffel recipes and it would have the same effect on the world media.

That effect is to cause those who aren't megalomaniacs, who aren't psychopaths and (this is important) who don't want to believe that such nasty creatures even exist (much less that they would be armed with nukes) to pause and consider: Are we doing the right thing? Is this situation really that bad? Isn't there some third way? Can't it all just end without conflict?

'Pausing' (again) is exactly what they'd like us to do - 'considering' (again) the possibility that Iran's leaders are not bent on what they're bent on. We'd like to believe those things too, but find no reason to adopt such happy delusions. We are allowing ourselves to be had - all in the interest of finding a consensus that (mark our words) will not emerge and will not be effective in stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program if it does. The world will pay dearly for our fecklessness.

UPDATE (3:20PM): The full text of the Ahmadinejad letter to President Bush can be found over at Classical Values, with a link to the pdf at LeMonde.

Dennis Prager is pointing out this afternoon that the letter lines up almost perfectly with the arguments of the left. E.g., the president is not a 'good' Christian, he is hypocritical, he is leading the world astray, etc. Very nice, except that that tactic has been tried before. See: War, Cold. Hello! The man (or rather, his publicists - or whatever they call them over there) reads the Western media. Such a letter is set up to use familiar arguments already well honed by the political opposition.

For those with less time on their hands, key excerpts from the letter can be found here. Also recommended: a succinct analysis by Clarity and Resolve noting that this kind of overture is obligatory before Iran can justify its next round of actions as holy war. I.e., draw the West into a specific rejection of the tenets of Islam. (Had we known, we would have sent Mr. Ahmadinejad an invitation to hear that here on KMaru.)

Related note: we just picked up two books at the library today: "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance", edited by Robert Spencer, and "The West's Last Chance", by Tony Blankley. Watch for reviews soon if our new dog allows us to catch up on sleep enough to stay awake reading 'em.