No Good Options

A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.

- Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) Annie Hall (1977)

Alvy Singer could have been talking about totalitarian and expansionist states. Totalitarian states cannot tolerate the openness necessary for prosperity because as people emerge from subsistence living, they naturally become less tolerant of constraints on their freedoms and eventually bump up against the limits established by their leaders. We see this in China, where greater openness and burgeoning wealth are leading people to demand a greater role in their lives, which will eventually translate into greater concern about their environment and demands for greater accountability from their leaders. (Note the rapid response to the earthquake in China versus the nonresponse to the cyclone in Myanmar.) A totalitarian state can thus either remain closed and poor (Myanmar, North Korea) or open up and risk evolution or revolution. However, there are two other alternatives:

• Be lucky enough to sit upon a sea of oil, which can be sold to wealthy and developing economies at high prices which can generate enough income to support one's military and adequate levels of bribes for one's people.
• The shark metaphor: appropriate wealth from those who have it; ie expansion.

The HISH alliance (Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Hamas) has oil wealth (though because of their misguided economic policies and their relative isolation from the global economy in terms of investment, their oil industry is failing, a long term deadly problem for the Mullahs) and an overt strategic plan to expand their influence and extort or appropriate the wealth of their neighbors.

There are two additional points that always must be kept in mind when considering the ongoing and escalating war in the Middle East between the HISH alliance and the semi-allied amalgam of the Sunni states, the West, and Israel:

• Iran is closing in on a (Shia) nuclear bomb.
• Iran, to an extent not seen since the Nazis, has centered their ideology on anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews and Israel.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer has an extremely insightful post concerning the events in Lebanon, which can frame and illuminate the near term:

USA WILL HELP LEBANESE HELPING THEMSELVES

I know that makes the comparison to the 30s more all the more exact. Now, as then, we will wait and pay the price. The chances that the West will act quickly are nil. The fate of Lebanon today may be in the hands of of it's 300 Druze mountain fighters . If they stand up the way Churchill's Britain did, they may yet save their country. America will help those who prove they are willing to put on the line their "life, fortune and sacred honor."

That has been the lesson of Iraq. It, too, turned when some Iraqis began to do so and not a day before. Sorry, Arab free riders better wake up. The Iranians are hiding in plain site, their media

I am a long distance admirer of Walid Jumblatt and his Druze countrymen. They have survived in a terrible neighborhood where they have few friends, but there is a significant and sad distinction to be made between the Spartan 300 and the Druze 300. When the Spartans died in order to gain time and space for their countrymen to mobilize and stiffen their spines enough to stand off the Persians, their countrymen were already prepared to defend their nation states from the invaders; they primarily needed some evidence that their resistance would not be completely futile. The Druze are fighting for their lives surrounded by other communities that may well fight for their lives but with no overriding allegiance to the state of Lebanon. The army, with its uncertain allegiance, has not opposed Hezbollah, the March 14 democrats appear to lack the will to resist, and the West, despite their financial and emotional investment in Lebanese freedom and democracy, has thus far shown no greater willingness to assist the Druze and the March 14th forces than the West showed the Czechoslovakians in 1939.

The idea that the international community will ever mobilize to act to thwart the desires of expansionist and predatory regimes when their direct interests are not at stake has been shown to be ludicrous. The West has occasionally been able to mobilize for humanitarian interventions but, since Iraq, such intervention primarily for national security interests (considered immoral by the anti-war left) has become much less likely (though there remains a distinct possibility of an American attempt to reduce the Iranian nuclear program to ashes before the end of the current administration; Bush has nothing to lose in terms of power, prestige, or popularity.)

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution the Iranians have been consistent in aggressively expanding their writ; the Mullahs have no choice:  Iran and its allies must expand their hegemony. Their economies depend on extracting riches from the ground (oil) or their neighbors (as Syria treated Lebanon for 30 years.) They will fail as states once they can no longer expand. Having been thwarted in Southern Iraq, they have turned their eyes upon Lebanon. The Iranians are carefully walking a tightrope between pressing their strategic interest via directed violence against their neighbors and miscalculating and arousing a response from the United States. Once they have a bomb, they will no longer need to suffer such restraint and will seek to impose their will upon all of their neighbors. Iran will effectively be in control of much of the world's oil supply, enabling them to set prices (as they are already partially doing by exacting a threat premium from their buyers, keeping the price artificially high.)

One common definition of insanity has been "repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result." A corollary would be "repeatedly observing the same behavior in a person and expecting a different result." The HISH have been nothing if not consistent. The West has also been consistent; we have consistently stepped back from confrontation with the HISH (with the exception of a brief interlude following the invasion of Iraq.) There will come a time when we have no place left to step to when we step away from the brink.

There may well be no good options.

An invasion of Iran is not in the realm of possibility. We have neither the military means nor the will for such an endeavor.

An air assault on their nuclear installations and the destruction of Iran's infrastructure could delay their nuclear ambitions and may well spell the end of the Mullahcracy. It is unclear if such an n assault could succeed or if, again, the will for such an assault can be mustered.

A third option is a covert campaign for regime change. Whether such a campaign could succeed or remain covert is highly questionable.

Doing nothing and playing for time seem to be the current default position (with Condoleeza Rice apparently believing that if she can magically bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a peace that the HISH do not see as in their strategic interest, though a Hudna might be acceptable) then the Middle east will be calmed. This is inane and cannot succeed in any event.

Which leaves muddling through as our policy.  Which begs the question:  If Walid Jumblatt's 300 are our Spartan 300, where are our Themistocles and Pausanias now that we need them.