and they revolted in 2009. But Obama did nothing to help them. The time to encourage that movement was then, not now.
There are those who believe that Iran (at least some of the mullahs) don't care about mutually assured destruction. They have no problem with suicide bombing, this would be that on a much larger scale.
out of curiosity, what course of action would have liked Obama to encourage?
By putting Germany in a financially broken state of abject misery, the victorious allies of WW I essentially guaranteed the rise of vicious nationalists in Germany, and an eventual re-match. One could easily say that we have been doing much the same to Iran, making a permanent enemy of a country that is, in many ways, a potential natural ally.
So, yes, I think this is a rather apt comparison. Certainly much more apt than comparing Obama and Kerry's role in a 6-way negotiation to Chamberlain's summit with Hitler in Munich.
It didn't guarantee shit, that's a myth that started with dovish French and especially British commentators in the 1920's. Munich is a shitty analogy, Versailles a much shittier one. We are not treating a vanquished enemy, we are treating an enemy that surveys a regional scene it has done much to leave in disarray and sees itself in a position of geopolitical strength.
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
It's more than blaming Obama for the fact that the US is not omnipotent. And it's more than saying because the deal isn't perfect it should be rejected.
First, I think Dune's 10:43 is an excellent partial response.
Second, beyond the details of the nuclear aspects which are continuing to be rolled out, there are the non-nuclear aspects which have me questioning the deal. Why was it necessary to take Qasem Soleimari off the sanctions list when he was in no way connected to Iran's nuclear program? And if this was an insistence by the Iranian's why didn't the 4 US, for lack of a better phrase, "political prisoners" currently being held in Iran (including the CNN reporter) become a quid pro quo? It almost seems like they had a laundry list of unrelated (to the nuclear program) demands they got through and we got nothing
What I still haven't seen is an exact timetable for the release of the $150 billion in frozen Iranian funds, so
I will have to wait to comment on that.
And as far as Beinart and Congress goes, please. Anyone who thinks that there won't be 34 Senators to prevent an override of Obama's veto is delusional. This agreement will go into effect.
disputes that there are non-crazy elements in Iran, we simply dispute that they have a meaningful role in government.
And mutually assured destruction does and doesn't apply here. It would likely have the impact of preventing a willful state action to nuke Israel. It would not, however, have a significant deterrent effect regarding any other serious geopolitical dispute Iran might have, such as ongoing feuds with the Sunni states of the region. Natural restraint might, but not the certainty that the United States or Pakistan would retaliate for a warhead launched at a non-nuclear state. But the bigger issue is that Iran has proven bellicose even without a nuclear deterrent, there is no reason to suggest that they would be less so with them, when the fear of any sort of regime change or other existential threat to Tehran is essentially off the table.
This makes sense. Sounds like the bomb itself gives massive leverage that we don't want Iran to have.
I'm trying to separate the actual physical risks and concerns with the geopolitical risks and concerns (as they relate to Americans).
disputes that there are non-crazy elements in Iran, we simply dispute that they have a meaningful role in government.
And mutually assured destruction does and doesn't apply here. It would likely have the impact of preventing a willful state action to nuke Israel. It would not, however, have a significant deterrent effect regarding any other serious geopolitical dispute Iran might have, such as ongoing feuds with the Sunni states of the region. Natural restraint might, but not the certainty that the United States or Pakistan would retaliate for a warhead launched at a non-nuclear state. But the bigger issue is that Iran has proven bellicose even without a nuclear deterrent, there is no reason to suggest that they would be less so with them, when the fear of any sort of regime change or other existential threat to Tehran is essentially off the table.
This makes sense. Sounds like the bomb itself gives massive leverage that we don't want Iran to have.
I'm trying to separate the actual physical risks and concerns with the geopolitical risks and concerns (as they relate to Americans).
Certainly. And some of this is hyperbole, some of this is overblown, but some of these are issues that any reasonable analysis, whether it starts from a critical posture or a supportive one, has to contend with. First, what impact will this have on Iran's non-nuclear foreign policy? Second, what impact will this have on the Sunni states in the region and both their foreign policy and their nuclear ambitions?
1) While it is fashionable to focus on the rhetoric of a nation...that often reflects two things...what quotes you emphasize and the target of almost all comments emanating from a nation....the audience inside the nation.
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
Irans electrical power production and grid are in such bad shape that most years they ration electrical power to each city for certain number of hours per day?
They import electricity at times.
They have frequent brownouts even in Tehran.
They are not in shape to invade Kansas anytime soon
RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength.
That's a fair point, but neither strength nor weakness exists in a vacuum. Overplaying a strong hand is a form of weakness, one that led to the madness in Iraq, IMO. The fact of the matter is, like it or not, Iran is our ally in Iraq and Syria. While we each have different motivations, we both want the destruction of ISIS.
That is why I have a hard time with objections to this deal. No player in the ME is a perfect player, far from it. Our allies in one area are our adversaries in another. I hate to keep bringing Saudi Arabia into the conversation, but they are the largest state sponsors to ISIS, al qaeda, and the Taliban - the 3 groups we've most recently been at war with.
Iran, too, has played a enormous part in the instability in the region, in particular with Israel's sworn enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, but I agree with Reb that they are not as irrational as some players in the ME that we play footsy with (namely Pakistan).
Irans electrical power production and grid are in such bad shape that most years they ration electrical power to each city for certain number of hours per day?
They import electricity at times.
They have frequent brownouts even in Tehran.
They are not in shape to invade Kansas anytime soon
This and your previous post are excellent, pertinent points, but do you believe that the mullahs will put the bulk of this beneficence to use revamping the power grid or are they more likely to put it to use making good their financing pledges to Hezbollah and Hamas and fighting a proxy war in Yemen?
RE: RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength.
That's a fair point, but neither strength nor weakness exists in a vacuum. Overplaying a strong hand is a form of weakness, one that led to the madness in Iraq, IMO. The fact of the matter is, like it or not, Iran is our ally in Iraq and Syria. While we each have different motivations, we both want the destruction of ISIS.
That is why I have a hard time with objections to this deal. No player in the ME is a perfect player, far from it. Our allies in one area are our adversaries in another. I hate to keep bringing Saudi Arabia into the conversation, but they are the largest state sponsors to ISIS, al qaeda, and the Taliban - the 3 groups we've most recently been at war with.
Iran, too, has played a enormous part in the instability in the region, in particular with Israel's sworn enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, but I agree with Reb that they are not as irrational as some players in the ME that we play footsy with (namely Pakistan).
But while we do want their help against ISIS, the mere fact that they are helping us against ISIS makes it more likely that Turkey and Saudi will support (not directly of course) ISIS and comparable entities against an Iranian-led opposition?
RE: RE: Boy am I inviting a shit storm with this question... Â
but what should Neville Chamberlain have done? I'm not a pre-WWII expert (but I'm about to be forever tarred as a Chamberlain apologist). But this Slate article says that historians have forgiven him because he basically had no option. NC was advised that Britain was powerless to fight a German invasion of Czechoslovakia is Sept. 1938. The Axis already supported eachother whereas the Brits had potentially a dangerous Soviet Union, a shaky France, and no USA (legally neutral). Wouldnt necessarily have the support of the Canadians and Aussies. And a population that was weary as hell from WWI. Plus the knew Hitler was bad, but I dont think anyone in Sept. 1938 anticipated that he would be modern history's greatest monster. Or so the article outlines.
So I ask the question -- what was the alternative for Chamberlain? Go to war in 1938? Link - ( New Window )
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
Good point, Chamberlain, 'oversold' the agreement.
WW1 destroyed the 'flower of European youth', it was a
slaughterhouse. Chamberlain's attempt to avoid that
was the attempt of a 'human being' to try to avoid the
unthinkable.
Hitler and the Nazi's were 'True Believers'.
Chamberlain made the mistake of presuming they were humans
rather than a 'death cult' who would never live in peace
and there was no placating them.
I think of I Claudius when Caligula advises Tiberius
about the danger of Sejanus, 'If you want to get rid of
a dog, let another take care of it'.
'Sometimes, you need very bad people to get rid of
bad people'. Chamberlain was a reasonable rational human
who didn't assess the Nazi's correctly. Churchill did!
The British were carried into WW1 with little prime
motives. They shouldn't have been there. But, they feared
the Germans controlling Europe. Their response was geopolitical.
As far as what should have been done pre-WW2, hindsight
is 20/20. Like US has been fearful of a nuclear war and
rightful so, England like most her allies couldn't or
wouldn't believe that any country would be so barbaric
to return to the 'meatgrinder' of WW1.
Problem with history is 'zeitguest' there is a 'feeling'
that doesn't transcend generations. As they say, 'you
had to be there'. :)
There is only one problem with Iran and that's Moslem
fundementalism which I think may have hit it's high water
mark. Continuing in a 'state of war' only feeds into their
paranoia and makes US the demon who must be resisted.
The Shah left a bad taste in many of the Iranians and
the fact that we supported him, brought us in conflict
with Iran.
If stop fighting them, I think the craziness of the
fundementalist will recede without effort on our part.
They offer the Iranians very little. They make life in
Iran terrible.
RE: RE: Boy am I inviting a shit storm with this question... Â
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
No doubt that Chamberlain oversold the treaty, but the rest of your statement has the benefit of hindsight, a benefit Chamberlain did not have. He very likely did not know that the Panzers were not quite ready for prime time, and he almost certainly didn't know that Nazi command had been instructed to retreat at the first sign of resistance.
I look at how war weary this country was after Vietnam, even decades later, and yet people question the moves of nations most impacted by the devastating losses of WWI less than 20 years later.
RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength. If every expansionist or terrorist (or separatist) power went on the march at once, even a strong hegemon would not be able to hit them all. But if each in its rational calculation believes there is a probability of active opposition and serious consequences, it is more likely that each would decline to do act. If, however, a hegemon (regional or global) is perceived to be weak, the leaders of expansionist powers or terrorist or separatist movements may rationally decide that the hegemon is unlikely to act against them, certainly not if more than one such event is already in progress. This is why revolutions tend to happen in waves (1848, the 1860's, etc etc).
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
it was German territory. Munich allowed for the dismemberment of a sovereign country, an ally, and of course paved the way for their ultimate absorption.
1) While it is fashionable to focus on the rhetoric of a nation...that often reflects two things...what quotes you emphasize and the target of almost all comments emanating from a nation....the audience inside the nation.
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
They got 25 years of cards way worse then ours
Bill2, this is a very sound post.
Good work, man~:)
The nation lacks the coherence or a process to make and keep rational choices or allocations. It is a collection of factions in an unwritten dance. to keep all ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag each faction gets a turn at a little of what they want. To me the mullahs keep a high percent but not all of the population under control for the fascism of the Guards to proceed. The overly righteous are allowed to play outside as long as not too hard or too much.
The pious give to the thousands of local mullahs...so they get rent.
the Guards get rent
the guards and the mullahs split the oil rent
the communists, trade unionists, royalists and nationalists were fought off and eliminated by the mullahs for they tried to get rent from the same neighborhoods.
In 1920 they were all locked in a steel cage match. The mullahs changed sides and fought in different ways but never lost focus on what this generation of Ayatollahs lost their fathers over. Their rent versus the state.
And I don't buy off for one minute that we overthrew any democratic leader. the mullahs did and they did so ruthlessly and they insisted on the post overthrow propaganda. They they wiped out Tudeh by feeding them to Savak. Then they got Pahlevi.
Reading the history of the mullahs 1890 to 1920 changes a lot of perspective on the mullahs. they are not priests. expect in Qum. They are Guards of their day...control of the local neighborhood economy was the family business. The Black Hand went to church as well. Donated heavily. Black Hands are a natural selection in nations beyond national mechanisms for control
I agree that Chamberlain gets a lot of blame because he said there would be "peace in our time". But it's kind of absurd to have expected him to say the opposite: "Well we're on an island and have a good navy but no ability to stop Germany from taking part of it's land locked neighbor so we didnt do shit about it, and cant do shit if they roll into the next country". Better to be thought the fool than admit your impotence.
He might have had better options before Munich, but it seems to me that maybe there wasnt anything else that could have been accomplished there.
China does not hate us. Their elite are trying to keep domestic control anyway they can. If they think they could do that without being externally aggressive they would.
both impulses may be more alive then we wish to acknowledge right here right now.
RE: RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength. If every expansionist or terrorist (or separatist) power went on the march at once, even a strong hegemon would not be able to hit them all. But if each in its rational calculation believes there is a probability of active opposition and serious consequences, it is more likely that each would decline to do act. If, however, a hegemon (regional or global) is perceived to be weak, the leaders of expansionist powers or terrorist or separatist movements may rationally decide that the hegemon is unlikely to act against them, certainly not if more than one such event is already in progress. This is why revolutions tend to happen in waves (1848, the 1860's, etc etc).
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
1) While it is fashionable to focus on the rhetoric of a nation...that often reflects two things...what quotes you emphasize and the target of almost all comments emanating from a nation....the audience inside the nation.
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
They got 25 years of cards way worse then ours
bill2, I was actually going to post something related to your first point, and it's awesome to hear you think the same thing out loud... I wonder how much "death to america" rhetoric is related to internal Iranian politics and posturing to the population of Iran to project the appearance of strength. Is it merely propoganda? The truth probably lies in the middle. But I find it hard to believe that the Iranian negotiators actually are fully indoctrinated under that rhetoeic, and that we'd even take a seat at the table if they were.
Thanks for educating me man. Much appreciated and I look forward to your posts.
Good posts. You provided depth to a point I briefly made earlier. Even if Iran gets out from under sanctions any and all new wealth will not be funneled automatically into funding destabilizing activities. The Mullahs have their own problems to fix.
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Its good to remember that huge huge swaths of the world only see or hear what they say coming back to them. Iran does not have many people in leadership who are exposed as we are to what they look like from another perspective. Most of them have no idea their words are seen by the outside world much less analyzed.
We forget that outside of North America and Europe, 80% of the people over 45 were raised in villages of 200 people or less. Like the childs game Battleship where you cant see where the other guy is planted and have to slowly guess....many many people assume that if it was not seen...it was not heard.
RE: RE: RE: Boy am I inviting a shit storm with this question... Â
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
No doubt that Chamberlain oversold the treaty, but the rest of your statement has the benefit of hindsight, a benefit Chamberlain did not have. He very likely did not know that the Panzers were not quite ready for prime time, and he almost certainly didn't know that Nazi command had been instructed to retreat at the first sign of resistance.
I look at how war weary this country was after Vietnam, even decades later, and yet people question the moves of nations most impacted by the devastating losses of WWI less than 20 years later.
But there's another bit of hindsight that he didn't have that works the opposite way. The Czechs had some significant fixed defenses in place in the Sudetenland. Not the Maginot Line, but not a joke either. And the conventional wisdom from WWI ran that these fixed defenses would inflict significant casualties on an invading army. The invasions of Poland and France through the Ardennes hadn't happened yet. So the superiority of armor over fixed defenses hadn't been established and support for the Czech's retention of the Sudetenland might have given Hitler pause.
Even if Iran gets out from under sanctions any and all new wealth will not be funneled automatically into funding destabilizing activities. The Mullahs have their own problems to fix.
I hope you are not saying that none of it will be. The question in my mind is how much, and I think it will be significant.
RE: RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength. If every expansionist or terrorist (or separatist) power went on the march at once, even a strong hegemon would not be able to hit them all. But if each in its rational calculation believes there is a probability of active opposition and serious consequences, it is more likely that each would decline to do act. If, however, a hegemon (regional or global) is perceived to be weak, the leaders of expansionist powers or terrorist or separatist movements may rationally decide that the hegemon is unlikely to act against them, certainly not if more than one such event is already in progress. This is why revolutions tend to happen in waves (1848, the 1860's, etc etc).
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
This. And Dune's response -- nonsense about how we pivoted away from the Middle East and let this happen -- ignores the limitations of our budgets, the limited threat posed by Iran relative to the cost of keeping our foot on its neck, and the other global priorities we have to address.
Moreover, Dune's response is a clear deflection and fails to address the reality that this deal is the best option under the current circumstances, regardless of who you want to blame for those circumstances.
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Just as I predicted.
I made a substantive point and posed a question, you responded with nothing. You have little to contribute to a foreign policy discussion other than fellating the current occupant of the Oval Office. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to answer that question.
RE: RE: RE: But saying you need to take a hard line everywhere... Â
If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
We can argue about why we have a weak hand in Iran. I can say we look weak because the adventurism of the last administration showed the real limits of American power. I can say GWB used up a lot of America's good will. Your argument is like if a GM said to a coach, "it's week 6 -- how do we fix the running game" and the coach responds "you should have drafted more OLs". It's all relevant to how we got here, but we're here. But sitting here in July 2015 the situation is what it is, and I havent even heard an defense of a viable alternative to making this deal.
It attribute Russia mostly to the same explanation. We shot out wad in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians saw what we had, saw that we were exhausted, war weary, and broke, and took their chance while oil prices were high. The Bush administration showed the world that ability to assert our will post Soviets/Gulf War wasnt all it was cracked up to be. What would Saint Ronald Reagan have done in response to the Ukraine invasion? Acted tough?
"I headed to the bank the other day to pay the phone bill. No sooner did I go inside when the electricity went out. The tellers politely asked the customers to go to other banks.
But the problem was that the whole neighborhood was suffering from a power outage.
This is now happening frequently and is regarded as outrageous by the people across the country, especially in Tehran, the capital.
Fars News Agency, a semi-official news website, has devoted an entire section to power outages in different parts of the country, including Bandar Abbas, a port city in the south, Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in the east, Esfahan and Shiraz in central Iran and Mazandaran province in the north.
The outage is so painful that, according to the Persian-language section of Fars News, "several lawmakers have warned the government and the energy minister on the frequent blackouts and power outages in the capital and many other cities and called for urgent action."
The energy ministry has announced that as of June 21,the media will publicize blackout timetables so that people can adjust their daily routines.
There are signs the ministry is in trouble. The newspaper Kargozaran quoted Mohammad Parsa, the head of the construction contractors' syndicate, as saying that the "the debt of the power ministry to the contractors is increasing and the contractors are on the verge of bankruptcy "
Experts say that poor maintenance of the electricity grid is also a factor in the frequent outages.
Ok...what happens to your life without electricity on a steady basis?
Getting things done becomes havoc
Food ...already in shortage...spoils at a rapid rate
Medicine and health care become difficult
Water and water treatment systems and plants become inadequate so the water supply and basic potable water is in further difficulty.
Manufacturing many many things becomes very difficult.
Among the sanctioned items...refrigeration and electrical generation and decision control systems for running water systems and electrical power plants. ( these items come from japan, Germany and the US...Russia...China...not so much).
As I said...outside of oil...this nation exports less than Finland exports lace. Somehow I don't see them rising above annoyance if we keep the Straights of Hormuz clear and they trade in dollars. I suspect those are covered in side bar agreements. And since Buffet is GE...their might be a delegation from GE Power Systems already in Tehran.
Actually, lots of WW II history accounts reflect that, early in his land grabs in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Hitler was waiting for someone to step up and stop him, and no one did, much to his surprise. So I think you';re right that if France and Britain had stepped to the defense of Czechoslovakia, it would have given Hitler pause.
At least for a while. Ultimately, the fact that he started the war when he did probably saved the world. If he had waited 5 more years before fully challenging France, Britain and Russia, during which time the German army would have become full mechanized, Russia would have probably fallen before their strategic depth and foreign aid would have allowed them to catch their breath and dig in effectively.
If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
We can argue about why we have a weak hand in Iran. I can say we look weak because the adventurism of the last administration showed the real limits of American power. I can say GWB used up a lot of America's good will. Your argument is like if a GM said to a coach, "it's week 6 -- how do we fix the running game" and the coach responds "you should have drafted more OLs". It's all relevant to how we got here, but we're here. But sitting here in July 2015 the situation is what it is, and I havent even heard an defense of a viable alternative to making this deal.
It attribute Russia mostly to the same explanation. We shot out wad in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians saw what we had, saw that we were exhausted, war weary, and broke, and took their chance while oil prices were high. The Bush administration showed the world that ability to assert our will post Soviets/Gulf War wasnt all it was cracked up to be. What would Saint Ronald Reagan have done in response to the Ukraine invasion? Acted tough?
I'm not sure that's what it demonstrated. Poor judgment, perhaps, but it didn't demonstrate our inability to project power quickly and in devastating fashion. Both conflicts did that reasonably well. They demonstrated our inability to create government and civil society de novo, they demonstrated the limits of our patience as an electorate, etc etc. And certainly they took advantage of the fact that we were otherwise occupied.
What would Saint Reagan have done? Who knows? Set up a few MIRVs west of Kiev? Maybe nothing. The Soviet tanks didn't roll on his watch though, which doesn't exactly make your point either.
Your one point is pretty much spot on, arguing over exactly how we got here is not terribly relevant except as a caution for future action. But if we want to pose a credible security deterrent, announcing a goal of 450,000 end-strength for the Army the same week as we announce that deal doesn't really do much to help things. I understand the budgetary constraints, but you can't help appreciating the timidity of our allies when it seems like the only spending program we want to cut is the DOD.
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Just as I predicted.
I made a substantive point and posed a question, you responded with nothing. You have little to contribute to a foreign policy discussion other than fellating the current occupant of the Oval Office. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to answer that question.
What question? You mean what are the Turks and Saudis going to do about ISIS now? I assumed that was rhetorical, because the answers are obvious.
They will do the same things they would have done anyway, because they will continue to pursue their national interest.
The Turks will continue to be preoccupied with protecting their flank from Kurdish separatism and a potential insurgency emanating from a nascent Kurdistan that could emerge from the vacuum left by a contracting ISIS. They will leave ISIS alone and will take what opportunities they can to undermine and hurt the Kurds whenever they can without antagonizing the U.S. -- their nominal NATO ally -- too directly.
The Saudis will continue to do what they do. They will sell a fuckton of oil. They will cater to and placate Wahhabi zealots, and allow them to funnel money to Sunni militants (including ISIS and Al Qaeda) while pretending to be our ally in the Gulf. They will continue to buy a shitload of weapon systems from us, and they will work with the other Sunni states to crush the Shiite militants in Yemen.
China does not hate us. Their elite are trying to keep domestic control anyway they can. If they think they could do that without being externally aggressive they would.
both impulses may be more alive then we wish to acknowledge right here right now.
Bill2, you hit the reply before me. Russia doesn't hate us.
They are not crazy about a lot of our culture, but the love
the 'consumer' culture. They also like our creativity
and the openess of our society.
China, the same. The ruling 'clique' is forcing on China
an idealogy they don't want. I'm a fan of Chinese, they
take care of their 'shit' and don't intefere with others.
Having been stifled by 'tradition' they when they have it
love the 'freedom' of America. We all do, except US academia
who think they know better than the rest of us.
The Chinese 'establishment' fears anarchy and chaos.
They have taken advantage of by Western Nations throughout
the 19th Century. And they don't trust our motives.
I'm a big believer of trade, 2 people negotiating,
a 'win win situations'.
Chinese and Americans are wonderful combination.
But, they are a long time culture that doesn't want to
be 'lectured' by US. If we can, allow them to take care
of their own problems, I have the 'feeling' that the
Chinese 'Communist' will evolve into something grand.
But, there are elements within both governments, that are
trying to take 'advantage'. They must be removed, by
the voters, they are adding nothing but trouble.
We got to stop 'lecturing' and they have to stop being
'heavy handed'.
We hung around in Iraq for nearly a decade, and in Afghanistan for well over a decade. Just how long do we have to occupy these dustbins of civilizational history to be deemed patient?
We hung around in Iraq for nearly a decade, and in Afghanistan for well over a decade. Just how long do we have to occupy these dustbins of civilizational history to be deemed patient?
Strangers, can't 'suppress' foreign people. They can
annhilate them, but the longer they stay, the more they
are hated.
The best strategy is to get 'others' to fight our wars,
surrogates.
Bush and his minions, a group of technocrats who were the
same people who ran the Viet Nam war, was a disaster.
But you have to ask, what was his goal. He put America
on a 'lockdown', every individual liberty was lost to
Homeland Security. We're being conned. Bush, Trump, Hillary
are disgusting alternatives, but I bet we give them 'money'
and 'power'. If we have a problem with moslem fundementalist
why are they allowed in the country.
Actually, lots of WW II history accounts reflect that, early in his land grabs in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Hitler was waiting for someone to step up and stop him, and no one did, much to his surprise. So I think you';re right that if France and Britain had stepped to the defense of Czechoslovakia, it would have given Hitler pause.
At least for a while. Ultimately, the fact that he started the war when he did probably saved the world. If he had waited 5 more years before fully challenging France, Britain and Russia, during which time the German army would have become full mechanized, Russia would have probably fallen before their strategic depth and foreign aid would have allowed them to catch their breath and dig in effectively.
Your scenario is one of a myriad of possibilities. What if Hitler hadn't waited a full 5 years? England was rearming, though at a tepid pace. But delay the Battle of Britain a year and the mainstay in the RAF would have been the Spitfire as opposed to the Hurricane, and it wouldn't have been such a close call. The Russian officer corps would have had additional time to reconstitute itself after Stalin's purges. And the predominant tank the Germans would have faced in a delayed Barbarossa would have been the T-34 as opposed to the vastly inferior machines the Red Army actually used. The Sturmovik and it's tank busting capabilities would have had a much larger presence on the battle field. And a key question in the proposition would have been the status of the US. Had Pearl Harbor happened on schedule, you would have had the juggernaut of US industrial production in place much earlier in the conflict.
But what if the Nazis had fielded thousands of Tiger tanks, and plenty of spare parts, instead of the far smaller numbers they actually did? What if they had given their troops proper winter gear and supplies? And if the US had not been supplying the Soviets (who, in that case, wouldn't have fielded nearly as many T-34s)?
What if the Nazis got the ME 262 into mass production before the war started? Or turned those heavy water operations in Norway into an actual successful atomic bomb project?
Boggles the mind. Too many variables. Fun to ponder though.
Just shocked that so many people want to enrich a country that is aggressively expanding it's influence through force throughout the region. Doesn't make sense to me.
The argument seems to be, "if we welcome Iran back into the international community, they will stop it and be nice."
Yeah right.
Eric I don't think anyone in the Obama admin believes that "if we welcome Iran back into the international community, they will stop it and be nice."
The fact is Iran has been a regional power (and many times the regional power) for over 2000 years. They intend to continue in that role and others in the region will continue to look to them to continue that role. Since nobody can come up with a rational plan for changing that fact by using conventional or economic war, dialogue and compromise seems the only alternative.
Getting nuke concessions that include a decent verification regime might at least keep that weapon at a safe remove. Instead of the threat of using nukes they will be reduced to a threat to violate the agreement and develop a nuke.
This agreement makes it at least possible that Iran may some day find it advantageous to use our less hostile relationship to play the russians (whom they also have reason to dislike and distrust) and the chinese. A more self sufficient Iran might be easier to deal with than one which is constrained by reliance on those two.
Of course Iran will continue to be a bad actor. But remember "bad actor" is a relative term in that part of the world and some of our "friends" there do not have clean hands. For that matter neither do we. And when the inevitable fall of the Saudis comes we will need at least some lines of communications to the other major power in that region.
“This explains why it took so long,” Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a private group in Washington, said of the negotiation. “I rate this as one of the most complex agreements — if not the most complex — ever to deal with nuclear issues. It’s much stronger that we expected.”
there are some fair arguments to be made against the deal from reasonable people. I have a hard time debating the merits of the deal with people that were posting "its a bad deal" 6 months before there was a deal. Listening myself to Obama's press briefing today I felt he made some good points, and some weak ones I wasn't satisfied with such as when he glossed over the assets being un-frozen "not being a game changer" in terms of fueling Iran's less than honorable intentions at times. At then end of the day for me it comes down to this- this deal is better than the alternative which is the EU pulling out of the sanctions un-freezing 60-70% of the assets any way and making our sanctions essentially toothless with no access at all to their program. The concept being floated around here that we request access and they have 3 weeks to decide is a gross mis-characterization of this agreement. We have 24/7 access to all current facilities. If we suspect a new one then we can request access. Yes they can move things around before we get there but in this day of advanced satellite imagery we have ways to smoke that out. The effectiveness of this deal will not be judged today, tomorrow or 60 days from now when it is inevitably voted down in the Senate. It will be 10-15 years down the road.
Already formed pretty strong opinions about the deal before even seeing the details.
They will need two-thirds of the House to overcome Obama's veto of their dissaproval. That will require that they win some Dem's votes. If all they do is make nasty sound bites for the evening news, then I doubt they are sincere about stopping it. After all, they have conservative allies in Europe (Cameron, Merkel) who are in favor of it. The GOP could lose alot of foreign money in their PACs (thanks Citizens United!) if it fails. Ironic.
I think it will come down closer than people think Â
in getting 66 votes in the senate to overide if they don't get them all together. There are a number of Dem senators including both New York ones especially Schumer who could very well vote against it. I think one thing that may mitigate that a bit is Hillary coming out in support of it. Otherwise the Dem senators could treat Obama like a short timer and not fear rebuking him. However they me a bit more careful in bucking Hillary as a potential POTUS.
A Boehner-Schumer alliance would be an incredible sight Â
they want to sell it to their hard-liners, and they may still have to sell it to Khamenei.
Still not sure what Congress is going to do with this. There's a chance the Senate will torpedo it, and I think some of the peripheral stuff could be the red meat that dooms it. The notion that the guy widely considered the architect of the EFP program is granted a measure of absolution by this, even though he has no obvious impact on the nuclear program and the Administration insists this is just about nukes, is going to be a very tough pill for people to swallow.
There are those who believe that Iran (at least some of the mullahs) don't care about mutually assured destruction. They have no problem with suicide bombing, this would be that on a much larger scale.
out of curiosity, what course of action would have liked Obama to encourage?
So, yes, I think this is a rather apt comparison. Certainly much more apt than comparing Obama and Kerry's role in a 6-way negotiation to Chamberlain's summit with Hitler in Munich.
It didn't guarantee shit, that's a myth that started with dovish French and especially British commentators in the 1920's. Munich is a shitty analogy, Versailles a much shittier one. We are not treating a vanquished enemy, we are treating an enemy that surveys a regional scene it has done much to leave in disarray and sees itself in a position of geopolitical strength.
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
First, I think Dune's 10:43 is an excellent partial response.
Second, beyond the details of the nuclear aspects which are continuing to be rolled out, there are the non-nuclear aspects which have me questioning the deal. Why was it necessary to take Qasem Soleimari off the sanctions list when he was in no way connected to Iran's nuclear program? And if this was an insistence by the Iranian's why didn't the 4 US, for lack of a better phrase, "political prisoners" currently being held in Iran (including the CNN reporter) become a quid pro quo? It almost seems like they had a laundry list of unrelated (to the nuclear program) demands they got through and we got nothing
What I still haven't seen is an exact timetable for the release of the $150 billion in frozen Iranian funds, so
I will have to wait to comment on that.
And as far as Beinart and Congress goes, please. Anyone who thinks that there won't be 34 Senators to prevent an override of Obama's veto is delusional. This agreement will go into effect.
And mutually assured destruction does and doesn't apply here. It would likely have the impact of preventing a willful state action to nuke Israel. It would not, however, have a significant deterrent effect regarding any other serious geopolitical dispute Iran might have, such as ongoing feuds with the Sunni states of the region. Natural restraint might, but not the certainty that the United States or Pakistan would retaliate for a warhead launched at a non-nuclear state. But the bigger issue is that Iran has proven bellicose even without a nuclear deterrent, there is no reason to suggest that they would be less so with them, when the fear of any sort of regime change or other existential threat to Tehran is essentially off the table.
I'm trying to separate the actual physical risks and concerns with the geopolitical risks and concerns (as they relate to Americans).
Quote:
disputes that there are non-crazy elements in Iran, we simply dispute that they have a meaningful role in government.
And mutually assured destruction does and doesn't apply here. It would likely have the impact of preventing a willful state action to nuke Israel. It would not, however, have a significant deterrent effect regarding any other serious geopolitical dispute Iran might have, such as ongoing feuds with the Sunni states of the region. Natural restraint might, but not the certainty that the United States or Pakistan would retaliate for a warhead launched at a non-nuclear state. But the bigger issue is that Iran has proven bellicose even without a nuclear deterrent, there is no reason to suggest that they would be less so with them, when the fear of any sort of regime change or other existential threat to Tehran is essentially off the table.
This makes sense. Sounds like the bomb itself gives massive leverage that we don't want Iran to have.
I'm trying to separate the actual physical risks and concerns with the geopolitical risks and concerns (as they relate to Americans).
Certainly. And some of this is hyperbole, some of this is overblown, but some of these are issues that any reasonable analysis, whether it starts from a critical posture or a supportive one, has to contend with. First, what impact will this have on Iran's non-nuclear foreign policy? Second, what impact will this have on the Sunni states in the region and both their foreign policy and their nuclear ambitions?
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
They got 25 years of cards way worse then ours
Too late, George Bush beat him to it.
They import electricity at times.
They have frequent brownouts even in Tehran.
They are not in shape to invade Kansas anytime soon
That's a fair point, but neither strength nor weakness exists in a vacuum. Overplaying a strong hand is a form of weakness, one that led to the madness in Iraq, IMO. The fact of the matter is, like it or not, Iran is our ally in Iraq and Syria. While we each have different motivations, we both want the destruction of ISIS.
That is why I have a hard time with objections to this deal. No player in the ME is a perfect player, far from it. Our allies in one area are our adversaries in another. I hate to keep bringing Saudi Arabia into the conversation, but they are the largest state sponsors to ISIS, al qaeda, and the Taliban - the 3 groups we've most recently been at war with.
Iran, too, has played a enormous part in the instability in the region, in particular with Israel's sworn enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, but I agree with Reb that they are not as irrational as some players in the ME that we play footsy with (namely Pakistan).
They import electricity at times.
They have frequent brownouts even in Tehran.
They are not in shape to invade Kansas anytime soon
This and your previous post are excellent, pertinent points, but do you believe that the mullahs will put the bulk of this beneficence to use revamping the power grid or are they more likely to put it to use making good their financing pledges to Hezbollah and Hamas and fighting a proxy war in Yemen?
Quote:
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength.
That's a fair point, but neither strength nor weakness exists in a vacuum. Overplaying a strong hand is a form of weakness, one that led to the madness in Iraq, IMO. The fact of the matter is, like it or not, Iran is our ally in Iraq and Syria. While we each have different motivations, we both want the destruction of ISIS.
That is why I have a hard time with objections to this deal. No player in the ME is a perfect player, far from it. Our allies in one area are our adversaries in another. I hate to keep bringing Saudi Arabia into the conversation, but they are the largest state sponsors to ISIS, al qaeda, and the Taliban - the 3 groups we've most recently been at war with.
Iran, too, has played a enormous part in the instability in the region, in particular with Israel's sworn enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, but I agree with Reb that they are not as irrational as some players in the ME that we play footsy with (namely Pakistan).
But while we do want their help against ISIS, the mere fact that they are helping us against ISIS makes it more likely that Turkey and Saudi will support (not directly of course) ISIS and comparable entities against an Iranian-led opposition?
Quote:
but what should Neville Chamberlain have done? I'm not a pre-WWII expert (but I'm about to be forever tarred as a Chamberlain apologist). But this Slate article says that historians have forgiven him because he basically had no option. NC was advised that Britain was powerless to fight a German invasion of Czechoslovakia is Sept. 1938. The Axis already supported eachother whereas the Brits had potentially a dangerous Soviet Union, a shaky France, and no USA (legally neutral). Wouldnt necessarily have the support of the Canadians and Aussies. And a population that was weary as hell from WWI. Plus the knew Hitler was bad, but I dont think anyone in Sept. 1938 anticipated that he would be modern history's greatest monster. Or so the article outlines.
So I ask the question -- what was the alternative for Chamberlain? Go to war in 1938? Link - ( New Window )
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
Good point, Chamberlain, 'oversold' the agreement.
WW1 destroyed the 'flower of European youth', it was a
slaughterhouse. Chamberlain's attempt to avoid that
was the attempt of a 'human being' to try to avoid the
unthinkable.
Hitler and the Nazi's were 'True Believers'.
Chamberlain made the mistake of presuming they were humans
rather than a 'death cult' who would never live in peace
and there was no placating them.
I think of I Claudius when Caligula advises Tiberius
about the danger of Sejanus, 'If you want to get rid of
a dog, let another take care of it'.
'Sometimes, you need very bad people to get rid of
bad people'. Chamberlain was a reasonable rational human
who didn't assess the Nazi's correctly. Churchill did!
The British were carried into WW1 with little prime
motives. They shouldn't have been there. But, they feared
the Germans controlling Europe. Their response was geopolitical.
As far as what should have been done pre-WW2, hindsight
is 20/20. Like US has been fearful of a nuclear war and
rightful so, England like most her allies couldn't or
wouldn't believe that any country would be so barbaric
to return to the 'meatgrinder' of WW1.
Problem with history is 'zeitguest' there is a 'feeling'
that doesn't transcend generations. As they say, 'you
had to be there'. :)
There is only one problem with Iran and that's Moslem
fundementalism which I think may have hit it's high water
mark. Continuing in a 'state of war' only feeds into their
paranoia and makes US the demon who must be resisted.
The Shah left a bad taste in many of the Iranians and
the fact that we supported him, brought us in conflict
with Iran.
If stop fighting them, I think the craziness of the
fundementalist will recede without effort on our part.
They offer the Iranians very little. They make life in
Iran terrible.
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
No doubt that Chamberlain oversold the treaty, but the rest of your statement has the benefit of hindsight, a benefit Chamberlain did not have. He very likely did not know that the Panzers were not quite ready for prime time, and he almost certainly didn't know that Nazi command had been instructed to retreat at the first sign of resistance.
I look at how war weary this country was after Vietnam, even decades later, and yet people question the moves of nations most impacted by the devastating losses of WWI less than 20 years later.
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
They got 25 years of cards way worse then ours
Bill2, this is a very sound post.
Good work, man~:)
The pious give to the thousands of local mullahs...so they get rent.
the Guards get rent
the guards and the mullahs split the oil rent
the communists, trade unionists, royalists and nationalists were fought off and eliminated by the mullahs for they tried to get rent from the same neighborhoods.
In 1920 they were all locked in a steel cage match. The mullahs changed sides and fought in different ways but never lost focus on what this generation of Ayatollahs lost their fathers over. Their rent versus the state.
And I don't buy off for one minute that we overthrew any democratic leader. the mullahs did and they did so ruthlessly and they insisted on the post overthrow propaganda. They they wiped out Tudeh by feeding them to Savak. Then they got Pahlevi.
Reading the history of the mullahs 1890 to 1920 changes a lot of perspective on the mullahs. they are not priests. expect in Qum. They are Guards of their day...control of the local neighborhood economy was the family business. The Black Hand went to church as well. Donated heavily. Black Hands are a natural selection in nations beyond national mechanisms for control
the rest are words. imho
He might have had better options before Munich, but it seems to me that maybe there wasnt anything else that could have been accomplished there.
The nation does not hate us.
China does not hate us. Their elite are trying to keep domestic control anyway they can. If they think they could do that without being externally aggressive they would.
both impulses may be more alive then we wish to acknowledge right here right now.
Quote:
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength. If every expansionist or terrorist (or separatist) power went on the march at once, even a strong hegemon would not be able to hit them all. But if each in its rational calculation believes there is a probability of active opposition and serious consequences, it is more likely that each would decline to do act. If, however, a hegemon (regional or global) is perceived to be weak, the leaders of expansionist powers or terrorist or separatist movements may rationally decide that the hegemon is unlikely to act against them, certainly not if more than one such event is already in progress. This is why revolutions tend to happen in waves (1848, the 1860's, etc etc).
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
If you were Mexico and focused solely on what you described as a leading Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump, you could scare yourself into a froth about America.
2) ME nations do not have safety valves for nuts nor medicine nor remotely the coherence to internally enforce what they agree to.
3) It is very common for the USA to focus on the potential "threats" posed by an enemy. But we ignore the daily focus on problems of the majority of the state leaders and managers. We emphasize someone elses right bicep but ignore core sinew and real ability to project power. Iran does not have enough trucks to invade anyone. Or fuel distribution. or steady electrical production. Iran exports less non oil products in a year than Finland exports lace. We emphasize the bomb and ignore the inability to target or maintain or fire it on time. SO for example, at the height of the Cold War our own estimates of the Soviet rocketry indicated that they could launch all their missiles and only 20% would land here and within an average of +/- 100 miles. Meanwhile we could land 97% within one quarter mile of the target. In 1979. But they at the time had more tanks. But they had 1/10 the spare parts ( tanks run through spare parts at a very high rate) and had only 20% of the tanks with experienced trained tank crews and had about 60% of their army classified with drug or alcohol abuses and an daily absentism and dissertion rate in excess of 25% ( ours was less than 1%). We focused on their bombs. They focused on getting the army fed.
So it is also useful to not fear the mighty Iran. They are not a monolith or a well functioning nation.
You do know that:
They have to export their oil to other nations to refine and then buy it back?
You do know their oil production technology requires $300B in foreign capital investment per year and they average $6B to 11B per year?
You do know that they have one of the worst internal tax collection rates on the planet? Their smuggling and black market and lack of computers and lack of tax collectors and lack of honesty all adds up to over 25% of their GDP is lost to tax evasion?
You do know they have major smuggling crime syndicates importing the poppy and distributing to Europe and Russia? in fact they are the number one trafficker in opium. You know that is true despite the fact that they are also the number one nation in annual tons seized? And the number one nation in state seized and then lost from "storage"?
And a huge amount of their oil is smuggled outwards right from the fields eluding their Oil Ministry and revenues to the nation?
You know they are one of the worlds major traffickers of women and female children?
You know they are neck and neck with Russia for the worlds largest nations with the most corrupt local police, governance and justice?
You know that alcohol is banned in Iran? Did you know it smuggles $2.5M worth of alcohol per day into the nation and millions more is internally brewed?
Did you know its aquifers are draining 1.5 Feet per year for the last 15 years? That a huge percent of its land is actually sinking? That the water level has gone down 50 feet in the last 50 years?
Did you know that as a result only 12% of the land farmed in 1971 is farmed now? They import their food!!
Just how powerful are you over the long haul if you have to import your food?
Did you know that projected access to food per each person is an index called the "food security index". Did you now Irans is 12%. ( we have 100% and the highest rating by the way).
Did you know that the USA has 810 vehicles per 1000 people? Did you know that Iran has 200 per 1000 people?
I dunno....mullahs and Guards got problems.
Maybe they export their nuts like lots of countries who don't use Valium instead?
So...yeah...we need to pay attention to them and they are a nuisance and could cause temporary but not nation threatening problems.
But can we calibrate some folks sense that they are a bigger threat to us than 1941 Japan and Germany on steroids rolled into one?
They got 25 years of cards way worse then ours
bill2, I was actually going to post something related to your first point, and it's awesome to hear you think the same thing out loud... I wonder how much "death to america" rhetoric is related to internal Iranian politics and posturing to the population of Iran to project the appearance of strength. Is it merely propoganda? The truth probably lies in the middle. But I find it hard to believe that the Iranian negotiators actually are fully indoctrinated under that rhetoeic, and that we'd even take a seat at the table if they were.
Thanks for educating me man. Much appreciated and I look forward to your posts.
Quote:
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Just as I predicted.
We forget that outside of North America and Europe, 80% of the people over 45 were raised in villages of 200 people or less. Like the childs game Battleship where you cant see where the other guy is planted and have to slowly guess....many many people assume that if it was not seen...it was not heard.
Quote:
Here are the problems I see. First, it's quite true that the UK was not prepared for war. But what the article fails acknowledge is that 1938 Germany, while more prepared than the UK, was not the Germany of September 1939. The panzers were not the panzers of May 1940, and the Czechs had some relatively formidable fixed defenses. There was no guarantee that they would have swept through in a 2 week campaign.
Consider this as well. Hitler had made all his land grabs through bluff and bluster. When his troops crossed over the bridges into the Rhineland in 1936, their commanders had been told that if they saw resistance from the French who were marginally occupying the territory (IIRC no forces there but the right send troops in) they were to turn around and return to the east side of the Rhine. We will never know what calling his bluff in 1938 would have created. One thing I will posit is that if Hitler had invaded he would have been in no position to blitz the rest of Western Europe within a year and the French/British et. al. would have rearmed much quicker.
Finally, by proclaiming "peace in our time" Chamberlain oversold, badly oversold the agreement.
No doubt that Chamberlain oversold the treaty, but the rest of your statement has the benefit of hindsight, a benefit Chamberlain did not have. He very likely did not know that the Panzers were not quite ready for prime time, and he almost certainly didn't know that Nazi command had been instructed to retreat at the first sign of resistance.
I look at how war weary this country was after Vietnam, even decades later, and yet people question the moves of nations most impacted by the devastating losses of WWI less than 20 years later.
But there's another bit of hindsight that he didn't have that works the opposite way. The Czechs had some significant fixed defenses in place in the Sudetenland. Not the Maginot Line, but not a joke either. And the conventional wisdom from WWI ran that these fixed defenses would inflict significant casualties on an invading army. The invasions of Poland and France through the Ardennes hadn't happened yet. So the superiority of armor over fixed defenses hadn't been established and support for the Czech's retention of the Sudetenland might have given Hitler pause.
I hope you are not saying that none of it will be. The question in my mind is how much, and I think it will be significant.
Quote:
is not absurd. Saying you need to send in the tanks everywhere is absurd. Weakness is self-perpetuating, as is strength. If every expansionist or terrorist (or separatist) power went on the march at once, even a strong hegemon would not be able to hit them all. But if each in its rational calculation believes there is a probability of active opposition and serious consequences, it is more likely that each would decline to do act. If, however, a hegemon (regional or global) is perceived to be weak, the leaders of expansionist powers or terrorist or separatist movements may rationally decide that the hegemon is unlikely to act against them, certainly not if more than one such event is already in progress. This is why revolutions tend to happen in waves (1848, the 1860's, etc etc).
From what I can tell, everyone in their mother knew we had a shitty hand and that hand would only get worse in the future. Russia hates us. China isnt particularly inclined to let us dictate any order in the world. Europe didnt even like these sanctions and was publicly telling everyone that the sanctions would be eased even without a deal. Notwithstanding sanctions, people believed that the Iranians were making progress towards the bomb (indeed, the opponents of the deal were the most convinced of great progress). And Iran saw that the US didnt have such an easy time in Iraq and Afghanistan, are is still committed to some degree in those countries, and there's not good solution in Syria.
So what precisely was the USA supposed to do to convince a rationally acting Iran that we were in a position of power? What's the better play the Kerry and Obama missed, as you can see it? If it was "do nothing" then at least fairly acknowledge the problems with that strategy. I think Beinart's omnipotence thesis has a lot of validity.
This. And Dune's response -- nonsense about how we pivoted away from the Middle East and let this happen -- ignores the limitations of our budgets, the limited threat posed by Iran relative to the cost of keeping our foot on its neck, and the other global priorities we have to address.
Moreover, Dune's response is a clear deflection and fails to address the reality that this deal is the best option under the current circumstances, regardless of who you want to blame for those circumstances.
Quote:
In comment 12371930 Don in DC said:
Quote:
Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Just as I predicted.
I made a substantive point and posed a question, you responded with nothing. You have little to contribute to a foreign policy discussion other than fellating the current occupant of the Oval Office. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to answer that question.
If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
We can argue about why we have a weak hand in Iran. I can say we look weak because the adventurism of the last administration showed the real limits of American power. I can say GWB used up a lot of America's good will. Your argument is like if a GM said to a coach, "it's week 6 -- how do we fix the running game" and the coach responds "you should have drafted more OLs". It's all relevant to how we got here, but we're here. But sitting here in July 2015 the situation is what it is, and I havent even heard an defense of a viable alternative to making this deal.
It attribute Russia mostly to the same explanation. We shot out wad in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians saw what we had, saw that we were exhausted, war weary, and broke, and took their chance while oil prices were high. The Bush administration showed the world that ability to assert our will post Soviets/Gulf War wasnt all it was cracked up to be. What would Saint Ronald Reagan have done in response to the Ukraine invasion? Acted tough?
Story from the top newspaper in Tehran:
"I headed to the bank the other day to pay the phone bill. No sooner did I go inside when the electricity went out. The tellers politely asked the customers to go to other banks.
But the problem was that the whole neighborhood was suffering from a power outage.
This is now happening frequently and is regarded as outrageous by the people across the country, especially in Tehran, the capital.
Fars News Agency, a semi-official news website, has devoted an entire section to power outages in different parts of the country, including Bandar Abbas, a port city in the south, Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in the east, Esfahan and Shiraz in central Iran and Mazandaran province in the north.
The outage is so painful that, according to the Persian-language section of Fars News, "several lawmakers have warned the government and the energy minister on the frequent blackouts and power outages in the capital and many other cities and called for urgent action."
The energy ministry has announced that as of June 21,the media will publicize blackout timetables so that people can adjust their daily routines.
There are signs the ministry is in trouble. The newspaper Kargozaran quoted Mohammad Parsa, the head of the construction contractors' syndicate, as saying that the "the debt of the power ministry to the contractors is increasing and the contractors are on the verge of bankruptcy "
Experts say that poor maintenance of the electricity grid is also a factor in the frequent outages.
Ok...what happens to your life without electricity on a steady basis?
Getting things done becomes havoc
Food ...already in shortage...spoils at a rapid rate
Medicine and health care become difficult
Water and water treatment systems and plants become inadequate so the water supply and basic potable water is in further difficulty.
Manufacturing many many things becomes very difficult.
Among the sanctioned items...refrigeration and electrical generation and decision control systems for running water systems and electrical power plants. ( these items come from japan, Germany and the US...Russia...China...not so much).
As I said...outside of oil...this nation exports less than Finland exports lace. Somehow I don't see them rising above annoyance if we keep the Straights of Hormuz clear and they trade in dollars. I suspect those are covered in side bar agreements. And since Buffet is GE...their might be a delegation from GE Power Systems already in Tehran.
At least for a while. Ultimately, the fact that he started the war when he did probably saved the world. If he had waited 5 more years before fully challenging France, Britain and Russia, during which time the German army would have become full mechanized, Russia would have probably fallen before their strategic depth and foreign aid would have allowed them to catch their breath and dig in effectively.
I am not sure for I did not follow that thread of conversation within the thread
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If I had all the answers I would be doing something else professionally, and probably for more money. But what you say ignores the role that the Administration's decisions (and those of our allies, to be sure) have played in bringing this situation to bear. By "pivoting" out of the Middle East (and out of Iraq) we have made our hand, vis a vis Iran, considerably weaker. By drawing down our military considerably even as these crises have popped up we have made our hand weaker and made us look unwilling and unable to undertake significant new military commitments. Not that we should actually undertake them, rather the plausible prospect of our doing so should be there. And while we weren't going to go to war over any one act that Russia has done (and shouldn't have), our dithering and half-hearted response to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has certainly not given our Allies any renewed confidence in our willingness to stand up for them. Rotating a few National Guard brigades through Eastern Europe and the Baltic is a nice gesture but it's a little late in the game.
We can argue about why we have a weak hand in Iran. I can say we look weak because the adventurism of the last administration showed the real limits of American power. I can say GWB used up a lot of America's good will. Your argument is like if a GM said to a coach, "it's week 6 -- how do we fix the running game" and the coach responds "you should have drafted more OLs". It's all relevant to how we got here, but we're here. But sitting here in July 2015 the situation is what it is, and I havent even heard an defense of a viable alternative to making this deal.
It attribute Russia mostly to the same explanation. We shot out wad in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians saw what we had, saw that we were exhausted, war weary, and broke, and took their chance while oil prices were high. The Bush administration showed the world that ability to assert our will post Soviets/Gulf War wasnt all it was cracked up to be. What would Saint Ronald Reagan have done in response to the Ukraine invasion? Acted tough?
I'm not sure that's what it demonstrated. Poor judgment, perhaps, but it didn't demonstrate our inability to project power quickly and in devastating fashion. Both conflicts did that reasonably well. They demonstrated our inability to create government and civil society de novo, they demonstrated the limits of our patience as an electorate, etc etc. And certainly they took advantage of the fact that we were otherwise occupied.
What would Saint Reagan have done? Who knows? Set up a few MIRVs west of Kiev? Maybe nothing. The Soviet tanks didn't roll on his watch though, which doesn't exactly make your point either.
Your one point is pretty much spot on, arguing over exactly how we got here is not terribly relevant except as a caution for future action. But if we want to pose a credible security deterrent, announcing a goal of 450,000 end-strength for the Army the same week as we announce that deal doesn't really do much to help things. I understand the budgetary constraints, but you can't help appreciating the timidity of our allies when it seems like the only spending program we want to cut is the DOD.
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In comment 12371972 Dunedin81 said:
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In comment 12371930 Don in DC said:
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Deej is spot on again. If we were any "tougher" we risked losing the rest of the P5+1. Russia is not our friend. Neither is China. And really, in some ways, neither is the Eurozone (Germany).
If we adopted a more difficult stance, we would have been left standing alone. The sanctions would have likely come down from the rest of the major powers, and our leverage would have evaporated.
This is what you and others are complaining about, and this is why you are wrong. We are not omnipotnent, and this wasn't a bi-polar negotiation. It was multipolar, and if Iran had succeeded in isolating us in these negotiations, the result would have been much, much worse for us and for Israel than the result that was obtained.
Now, you'll go and rationalize something to say in response, because you don't like Obama and always find something to kvetch about, but you really can't rebut this point, because it is reality.
You are predictable in the ends to which you will go to support anything the Administration does. This might be the right move, it might not, but trying to pretend that this was the only move we could have made is a stretch. It is at least debatable whether rewarding bad behavior is a smarter move in the medium and long term than leaving the sanctions regime in place knowing that our partners were going to erode theirs. There are second and third order effects from this decision (known unknowns) that we will be dealing with for the next decade plus, regardless of whether or not Iran succeeds in going nuclear. For instance, what are Saudi and Turkey going to do about ISIS now?
Just as I predicted.
I made a substantive point and posed a question, you responded with nothing. You have little to contribute to a foreign policy discussion other than fellating the current occupant of the Oval Office. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to answer that question.
What question? You mean what are the Turks and Saudis going to do about ISIS now? I assumed that was rhetorical, because the answers are obvious.
They will do the same things they would have done anyway, because they will continue to pursue their national interest.
The Turks will continue to be preoccupied with protecting their flank from Kurdish separatism and a potential insurgency emanating from a nascent Kurdistan that could emerge from the vacuum left by a contracting ISIS. They will leave ISIS alone and will take what opportunities they can to undermine and hurt the Kurds whenever they can without antagonizing the U.S. -- their nominal NATO ally -- too directly.
The Saudis will continue to do what they do. They will sell a fuckton of oil. They will cater to and placate Wahhabi zealots, and allow them to funnel money to Sunni militants (including ISIS and Al Qaeda) while pretending to be our ally in the Gulf. They will continue to buy a shitload of weapon systems from us, and they will work with the other Sunni states to crush the Shiite militants in Yemen.
That's what they will do.
The nation does not hate us.
China does not hate us. Their elite are trying to keep domestic control anyway they can. If they think they could do that without being externally aggressive they would.
both impulses may be more alive then we wish to acknowledge right here right now.
Bill2, you hit the reply before me. Russia doesn't hate us.
They are not crazy about a lot of our culture, but the love
the 'consumer' culture. They also like our creativity
and the openess of our society.
China, the same. The ruling 'clique' is forcing on China
an idealogy they don't want. I'm a fan of Chinese, they
take care of their 'shit' and don't intefere with others.
Having been stifled by 'tradition' they when they have it
love the 'freedom' of America. We all do, except US academia
who think they know better than the rest of us.
The Chinese 'establishment' fears anarchy and chaos.
They have taken advantage of by Western Nations throughout
the 19th Century. And they don't trust our motives.
I'm a big believer of trade, 2 people negotiating,
a 'win win situations'.
Chinese and Americans are wonderful combination.
But, they are a long time culture that doesn't want to
be 'lectured' by US. If we can, allow them to take care
of their own problems, I have the 'feeling' that the
Chinese 'Communist' will evolve into something grand.
But, there are elements within both governments, that are
trying to take 'advantage'. They must be removed, by
the voters, they are adding nothing but trouble.
We got to stop 'lecturing' and they have to stop being
'heavy handed'.
Strangers, can't 'suppress' foreign people. They can
annhilate them, but the longer they stay, the more they
are hated.
The best strategy is to get 'others' to fight our wars,
surrogates.
Bush and his minions, a group of technocrats who were the
same people who ran the Viet Nam war, was a disaster.
But you have to ask, what was his goal. He put America
on a 'lockdown', every individual liberty was lost to
Homeland Security. We're being conned. Bush, Trump, Hillary
are disgusting alternatives, but I bet we give them 'money'
and 'power'. If we have a problem with moslem fundementalist
why are they allowed in the country.
This whole 'act' is disgusting.
At least for a while. Ultimately, the fact that he started the war when he did probably saved the world. If he had waited 5 more years before fully challenging France, Britain and Russia, during which time the German army would have become full mechanized, Russia would have probably fallen before their strategic depth and foreign aid would have allowed them to catch their breath and dig in effectively.
Your scenario is one of a myriad of possibilities. What if Hitler hadn't waited a full 5 years? England was rearming, though at a tepid pace. But delay the Battle of Britain a year and the mainstay in the RAF would have been the Spitfire as opposed to the Hurricane, and it wouldn't have been such a close call. The Russian officer corps would have had additional time to reconstitute itself after Stalin's purges. And the predominant tank the Germans would have faced in a delayed Barbarossa would have been the T-34 as opposed to the vastly inferior machines the Red Army actually used. The Sturmovik and it's tank busting capabilities would have had a much larger presence on the battle field. And a key question in the proposition would have been the status of the US. Had Pearl Harbor happened on schedule, you would have had the juggernaut of US industrial production in place much earlier in the conflict.
All speculation of course.
What if the Nazis got the ME 262 into mass production before the war started? Or turned those heavy water operations in Norway into an actual successful atomic bomb project?
Boggles the mind. Too many variables. Fun to ponder though.
The argument seems to be, "if we welcome Iran back into the international community, they will stop it and be nice."
Yeah right.
Eric I don't think anyone in the Obama admin believes that "if we welcome Iran back into the international community, they will stop it and be nice."
The fact is Iran has been a regional power (and many times the regional power) for over 2000 years. They intend to continue in that role and others in the region will continue to look to them to continue that role. Since nobody can come up with a rational plan for changing that fact by using conventional or economic war, dialogue and compromise seems the only alternative.
Getting nuke concessions that include a decent verification regime might at least keep that weapon at a safe remove. Instead of the threat of using nukes they will be reduced to a threat to violate the agreement and develop a nuke.
This agreement makes it at least possible that Iran may some day find it advantageous to use our less hostile relationship to play the russians (whom they also have reason to dislike and distrust) and the chinese. A more self sufficient Iran might be easier to deal with than one which is constrained by reliance on those two.
Of course Iran will continue to be a bad actor. But remember "bad actor" is a relative term in that part of the world and some of our "friends" there do not have clean hands. For that matter neither do we. And when the inevitable fall of the Saudis comes we will need at least some lines of communications to the other major power in that region.
link - ( New Window )
They will need two-thirds of the House to overcome Obama's veto of their dissaproval. That will require that they win some Dem's votes. If all they do is make nasty sound bites for the evening news, then I doubt they are sincere about stopping it. After all, they have conservative allies in Europe (Cameron, Merkel) who are in favor of it. The GOP could lose alot of foreign money in their PACs (thanks Citizens United!) if it fails. Ironic.
Still not sure what Congress is going to do with this. There's a chance the Senate will torpedo it, and I think some of the peripheral stuff could be the red meat that dooms it. The notion that the guy widely considered the architect of the EFP program is granted a measure of absolution by this, even though he has no obvious impact on the nuclear program and the Administration insists this is just about nukes, is going to be a very tough pill for people to swallow.