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2 If you so dumb, how come you ain't
poor? By Spengler
I
wish there were a way to express in English the
words Mephistopheles uses - herzlich
schlecht, or "heartily miserable" - to
describe the state of men. Herzlich,
literally "hearty", conveys something comfortable
and amiable - making "heartily miserable". The
phrase should pass into the political lexicon
along with such German expressions as
Schadenfreude. It qualifies wonderfully
America's current position in Iraq.
For
the past three years I have argued that the inner
logic of ethnic decline would shape the United
States' Iraq policy, rather
than
the messianic social engineering that temporarily
turned the Bush administration's brains into
pulled pork. Civil war and partition, de facto or
de jure, would turn Iraq's potential for violence
inward. [1] Unpleasant as this might be for Iraq,
it would be good for US interests, as I wrote on
January 21, 2004:
A devilish thought is forming in the
back of the American mind: which is better, to
have Iraqis shooting at American soldiers, or at
each other? During the Cold War, Moscow stood to
gain from instability, and Washington sought to
stabilize allied regimes (Iran being the
exception that proved the rule). Now, with no
strategic competitor, America can pick up the
pieces at its leisure. As in finance, volatility
favors the player with the most
options.
Last week was not a good one
for America's detractors. The price of oil fell to
US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that
swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have
forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the
world should ask George W Bush is, "If you so
dumb, how come you ain't poor"? The US economy and
US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As
I wrote last week (Jeb Bush in 2008?,
January 3), the whole Iraq debacle might disappear
from the public's radar screen in time for
America's next presidential election.
Not
being privy to the Bush administration's Iraq
policy debate, I do not know how Washington will
present its intentions. But the facts on the
ground speak for themselves. A full-dress civil
war in Iraq and an incipient civil war between
Fatah and Hamas in Palestine promise a period of
bloodshed of indefinite duration - and America's
strategic position will be stronger as a result,
provided that it can neutralize Iran. On the
assumption that Iran had a reasonable shot at
obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons by late 2007
or 2008, I forecast last year - wrongly - that
Western powers would attack Iran. There is a
consensus among the major powers' intelligence
services that Iran will not have nuclear weapons
until 2010, and more likely 2012. Neutralizing
Iran may be easier than I anticipated.
Last week I conjectured that Washington
would obtain Russian and Chinese cooperation in
preventing Iran from exploiting Iraq's chaos to
create a new Shi'ite empire. A report in the
January 7 Los Angeles Times indicates that the US
already has succeeded in choking off a great deal
of financing and technology for Iran's critical
oil sector. [2] It appears that the US has
obtained at least some degree of Russian and
Chinese cooperation in delaying energy development
agreements in Iran. European banks, including the
major Swiss banks, are refusing new business from
Iran at the request of the US Treasury, the Los
Angeles Times reports.
Iran now spends 15%
of gross domestic product on energy subsidies,
paid out of net oil exports that are likely to
fall to zero over the next 10 years. If the US
continues to tighten the tourniquet around Iran's
energy sector, the result may be political chaos
in Iran, including disaffection among the Turkic
(Azeri) minority that comprises a quarter of
Iran's population.
There has been an
inordinate amount of nonsense written about US
decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs
to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq.
The reality could not be more different. Neither
Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see
the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for
two reasons. The first is that America's presence
in the region ensures that little wars will remain
little. The second is economic. America's economy
and particularly the appetite of American
consumers for imports remains the locomotive of
the world economy, most emphatically of China's.
China's trading relationship with the United
States is an irreplaceable pillar of national
prosperity, and the means to generate the national
savings China requires to establish what President
Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society".
If, hypothetically, the Persian Gulf were
to go up in flames and the price of oil were to
double, the US economy would tumble into
recession. China's even more oil-sensitive economy
would experience a double blow, in the form of
higher energy costs and reduced exports to its
major markets in the industrial world. By the same
token, if Central Asia were to slide into chaos,
the biggest loser would be Russia.
Russia
and China will bargain hard in return for
providing cooperation to the United States, as I
wrote on January 2, but their interests ultimately
overlap with America's sufficiently to create a
concert of nations to contain Iran. If economic
pressures do not succeed, the option of a military
strike remains ready.
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