Pardon the incessant pink police state meme here, but it's all I can think about clearly and new wrinkles keep coming up. Consider this from Ilan Berman at AmSpecBlog:
Another setback for U.S. Iran policy, post-NIE. First, China – which had previously been edging toward support for a third tranche of UN sanctions against Iran – reversed course and signed a multi-million dollar energy deal with Iran. Now comes news that Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, is planning to expand its commercial links with the Islamic Republic.
So this would be bad news because Chinese and Russian support would keep the pressure off Iran, and when the pressure's off Iran they work on catastrophic weapons capabilities intended, no doubt, for regional hegemony and world proliferation. But let's think carefully for a minute. Isn't it funny that China and Russia both have zero ambitions in the conquest department aside from, at the maximum, a reconquest of erstwhile former territories (Taiwan, Georgia, Ukraine)? And isn't it strange that they both would very much like to conduct this reconquest cheaply and peacefully? (Who wouldn't?)
Yes, Iran is much different, culturally, geographically, and religiously speaking. But I wonder if part of the bargain involved in the pink police state is authoritarianism at home without the risks and expense of war. Usually we imagine that iron-fisted regimes need to fight wars in order to maintain their despotic rule and permit the oppressed a release valve to vent their frustrations. But if the release valve for the people who would form the revolutionary vanguard is libido and not thanatos, what then? Sweet commerce, on the Russian and Chinese model, gets you just about all the American-style empire you can handle. Why smash the bauble of the UAE when you can simply put it in your pocket? This might be bad news for the US from a certain perspective (though remember the UAE is also working furiously on perfecting its own pink police state), but it sure ain't national security.
Comments