According to Condoleezza Rice the United States has no intention of invading or attacking North Korea over Monday's nuclear test. No surprise there. Of course she threatened more sanctions, “unlike anything that they have faced before.” That probably has Dear leader sleepless at night. All of the might of the world's military hegemon was not enough to dissuade North Korea and now, after the fact our impotence in Asia is clear for all to see.
Iran has not missed this observation. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday concerning Iran's nuclear program "Our policy is clear: Progress, offering transparent logic and insisting on the rights of the nation without retreat."
US foreign policy is much better geared to deal with fantasy rather than reality. A nuclear North Korea is now a reality, a Nuclear Iran is yet to be. We are better at chasing ghost and phantom WMD's across war-torn Iraq than we are at facing squarely a regime that calls our bluff. Even Saddam before 2003 was more conciliatory than Dear Leader in terms of meeting our demands. But that did not stop the invasion and the potential that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of our chasing ghosts and false intelligence.
While we have been busy spending our blood and treasure on the failed and flawed attempt to bring democracy to Iraq the rest of the world has continued apace. If Iran is truly the enemy we want to engage the only upside of our invasion of Iraq is that we have been engaged in a proxy war with Iran for at least two years.
But what of a direct confrontation with Iran. Certainly this event has been building over the last several months but North Korea complicates that greatly. Some theorize that Israel -with US consent - will now soon deal with Iran unilaterally. I find that improbably unless Iran we about to actually develop and test a weapon, even then such an action would be extremely problematic.
The Middle East before 2003 was stable in only the way that a region balanced by two poles can be. Nixon was correct when he asserted that the best policy was to pit Iraq against Iran. Our invasion created a power vacuum and has allowed Iran to rise to predominance in the region, Iran will be there long after the clumsy giant leaves.
No comments:
Post a Comment