The
pressures of holidays and catch up work were so
intense to keep me off the write path (nice pun,
right?) for the past few weeks. Like a weed taking
over a garden, this gap has allowed a dozen odd
stories to go uncommented upon. The following is a
compendium of news articles wherein it doesn't
appear to me that
the wider media have managed to draw coherent
conclusions, or at least thought things through
fully.
Iran and the nukes
So let's start off with one of those
old chestnuts namely the idea of nuclear power in
the hands of that (as described) crazy government
in Iran. So apparently a lot of people have been
frothing in the mouth about the dangers this poses
to the notion of stability in the Middle-East.
Oh Kay.
First let's think about
the story itself - Iran is "close" to building an
atomic device of some sort. No one seems to know -
understandably perhaps - what this mysterious
device is. Let us assume though for a second that
they do manage to detonate a nuclear device and
thereby join the nuclear club. That doesn't of
course make them a nuclear power: for that, one
needs to weaponize the device ie make it small
enough to be carried on a plane or a missile. As
far as we can tell though, Iran doesn't have
either missiles or aircraft capable of performing
this function quite yet; so arguably the threat is
a few years away. Not a few days or weeks or
months away but a few years. A lot could happen
meanwhile, of course.
I have previously
argued on these pages that a nuclear Iran is quite
likely to be a natural ally of both the US and
Israel because the existential threat for Iran
doesn't arise from either of these two countries
but rather from the Sunni-ruled states of the
Middle East. [1]
That would be the same
ones who are behind the al-Qaeda recruitment
network, and tangentially, the same folks who
murdered the American ambassador to Libya last
week.
We also know from the CIA releases
and from other sources that Pakistan has stepped
up its production of nuclear weapons; and also has
the capability to deliver them on missiles
already. There is strong evidence that part of the
Pakistani nuclear arsenal has been built on behalf
of the House of Saud - a development that would
have accelerated the Iranian pursuit of its own
nuclear deterrence, but curiously also one that
has gone completely ignored by the American and
European media reporting on this matter,
particularly the good folks who are arguing for an
American pre-emptive strike on Iran.
Maybe
its just me, but no one has yet also explained how
these Pakistani nukes sitting on missiles have
failed to incinerate anyone in particular across
the Middle East; and why an Iranian nuclear
deterrent against these Pakistani nukes somehow
changes the balance of power to the detriment of
the West.
Iran hasn't been an aggressive
state for centuries and indeed has been on the
receiving end of conquests from the time of
Alexander the Great (or was that Alexander the
Gay; I don't know what is Hollywood's current take
on the chap). Most recently, the country was
subject to the merciless chemical warfare of the
West's tame Arab dictator of choice, Saddam
Hussein, and we all know how that particular bit
of romance ended for the West.
Never fear
though, where they make one mistake they shall
make a dozen more. For that is what declining
powers always do; the dogs of war have been
summoned and the carpets will soon be flying out
of Teheran.
Leaders being AWOL
Then there is the whole bit about a
secretive leadership whose head has gone missing;
rumors abound of a terminal illness, or even a
palace coup. Right - I was thinking of the missing
mercurial leader of the Congress party in India,
Mrs Sonia Gandhi: arguably the most powerful
person in a country that likes to call itself the
world's largest democracy.
You dear reader
would of course have imagined that I was referring
to China's missing Vice President Xi Jinping (who
was equally mysteriously found last weekend, all
hale and hearty) which as non-stories go certainly
got flagged up everywhere. Yet, alongside the
global media maintains a respectful distance when
the subject matter of speculation is someone like
Mrs Sonia Gandhi, or former US Vice-President Dick
Cheney whose ill health was hidden from the US
public for many days if not weeks.
There
is of course a rich tradition of such events that
accelerates one's imagination. The Soviet Union
went through two short-lived leaders in the
post-Brezhnev era, namely Yuri Andropov and
Konstantin Chernenko. The turmoil of the short
lifespan of these leaders is argued by many
historians as a proximate cause of the unraveling
of the Soviet regime under Gorbachev.
Perhaps because of the perceived
immaturity of Western media, or perhaps due to
other factors, Chinese media enacted a Japanese
kabuki-style performance on the issue of Xi's
whereabouts. This is probably what made matters
worse; for example when asked why Mr Xi had missed
a meeting with a foreign leader, the official
response was that no such meeting had been
arranged. This would of course be easily disproved
but only outside China.
The same is going
on in India about the health of Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
It is understood that a number of important
projects and initiatives have been held up due to
her absence, made all the more dramatic because on
paper at least she doesn't have any such powers
(think how many people in Europe or Asia would
consider the head of the Democratic or Republican
parties as their go-to person in the US; rather
than the president or the presidential candidate)
although in practice, everyone likes to claim
otherwise.
Maybe its just me, but in
matters of providing clarity and transparency to
media on their leadership, both Asian giants have
failed miserably. That is however not quite the
conclusion you'd draw by reading the press in the
US or Europe on this matter. As I wrote before,
the Asian giants need to take to heed the lessons
of how quickly a non-event can accelerate to a
career-threatening scandal or permanent decline.
[2]
Rent-a-mob Then there the
myriad rent-a-mob stories doing the rounds: Arab
protesters storm the US Embassy in Cairo while
their Chinese counterparts do the same to the
Japanese embassy and its staff in their country.
Apparently the Arabs are protesting against an
"American-made" film that denigrated Prophet
Muhammad. Closer examination shows that the film
was made by an Egyptian / Coptic Christian living
in California at the time and its trailer made
available on YouTube a few weeks ago. In any
event, this trend is an old chestnut, hardly
befitting a new round of outrage. [3]
In
effect, post-facto justification of the horrendous
events in Libya and Egypt where mobs of angry
folks have been unleashed as the populace vent
their deep frustrations at how badly things have
gone. In Libya, which was "liberated" by the
Americans and Europeans barely a few months ago,
the country has descended into complete chaos and
al-Qaeda seems to have taken firm root. So, good
job to the French who started the proceedings last
year on the basis of Gaddafi not buying their
precious Rafael aircraft; now the world's leading
terrorists have been handed billions in oil wealth
to continue their campaign of mayhem.
Maybe its just me, but doesn't anyone
quite draw lessons from the removals of folks like
Saddam or Gaddafi that one shouldn't venture into
the Middle East without a fair amount of
forethought on how to handle the aftermath? Not
quite what you're reading in the European or
American press, now is it?
Then there is
the Chinese rent-a-mob that managed to scale the
fences at the Japanese consular offices; in a
country where no one actually mentioned the name
of the missing Vice President Xi for a couple of
weeks, this descent into mayhem seems
uncharacteristically flamboyant and expressive. So
what did these staged events lead to: quite
simply, the idea that China has to respond to its
internal "angry young people" in order to be tough
on the Japanese position on disputed islands.
Amidst a slowing economy and potential
leadership disruptions, are the Chinese simply
keeping some powder dry just in case they need to
set off some fireworks that would distract people
from what was really going on?
Think
Vietnam in 1979 for example, where a military
confrontation came in quite handy at a time of
economic transition from the planned to a more
open market economy; a need to warm up to a new
friend especially as such friend had received a
bloody nose in Vietnam a few years prior. This
story is thus actually quite scalable, ie it could
become fairly big; but you wouldn't quite get that
by looking at the media today.
Away from
such weighty matters, there is the British press
feigning mass outrage at the decision of a French
magazine to publish topless pictures of Kate
Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and wife of
Prince William, second in line to the British
throne after his father, Prince Charles.
If only the British had not misplaced
their army in that Asian country, and hadn't had
the financial crisis which reduced their navy to a
bunch of floating rust buckets and their air force
to a farce, why they may have even called for an
invasion of France; not that technically speaking
one actually needs to invade France (2012 after
all being the 200th anniversary of the French
losing every battle they fought since Napoleon got
a bloody nose near Moscow). After all, all the
other ingredients of a good war were already at
hand: a lady's honor at the time of rampant
unemployment and economic slowdown.
Maybe
its just me but the notion of the paparazzi-ruled
British press feigning outrage at such an event is
layered with irony; especially as it involves the
lives of people whose presence in the newspapers
is the raison d'etre of the monarchy itself. In
other words, a simple case of a story being
accorded exaggerated importance in order to
perpetuate the background legerdemain that is at
the heart of (apparently) getting more views for
the media these days.
So there you have
it: a combination of sensationalist reporting and
lazy opining all accompanied by indifferent
viewing. It is no wonder that the average school
kid in the West could tell you the butt size of
Kim Kardashian but not explain what an LED is. [4]
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