Paging through press reports it is less than comforting to hear the chorus of Western leaders indulge in their asinine game of brinksmanship with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is well scripted when he says Canada would back:
“whatever actions are necessary to deal with what is a tremendous threat to international peace and security."
Harper would have us believe that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a “tremendous threat” and offensive, when in fact they are most certainly defensive and to do with its sovereign right to protect itself in a very dangerous neighborhood.
The arrogant G-8 countries like to heap disdain on Iran’s position but let’s play the devil’s advocate and look at the situation from the Iranian viewpoint. Its neighbor Iraq has just been destroyed by a decade of sanctions and a war that made it a colony of the US. Yet another neighbor, Afghanistan is being pummeled into submission by the US and its ever so accommodating NATO allies, all, supposedly, in the name of establishing a democracy but only those living in la la land would believe this. Iran’s leaders realize their one hope to escape a similar fate is to establish a nuclear deterrent.
This really is jackboot neo-imperialism. Colonization is the game and resources and strategic positioning are the booty.
Leaders, such as the ever astute Mr. Harper, fail to consider that Iran is clearly in Israel’s nuclear sights and that the West has an enduring bias toward Israel so much so that that the accusation has been made that Israel runs US foreign policy. Outlandish as this claim may appear to some there is considerable truth to it. Iran is clearly motivated in its nuclear ambitions to offset the nuclear threat that looms over it from Israel. If the West had a more even handed foreign policy in this region this in itself would do much to appease Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Indeed, when the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes before the UN and shouts down the West and Israel it would never occur to the diplomats scurrying for the exits that he is really appealing for a more even-handed foreign policy and something called a fair shake- and; for them to show some spine.
The behavior of Western leaders is insolent and reader’s comments in the pages of the online press bear testimony to the hypocrisy and intellectual cowardice of Western leaders. Readers easily see through the transparent deceptions at play.
This game of brinkmanship is being played out against a larger tapestry where the US is indulging in serial warfare in the region, where security threats are promiscuously exaggerated to justify compulsive militarism, and where NATO and Western leaders are mere toadies to US imperialism. The credibility of Western leaders is in tatters as they resort to clichéd brinksmanship when a more resolute, enlightened and balanced diplomacy should be embraced.
“We are committed to demonstrating that international law is not an empty promise, that obligations must be kept and that treaties will be enforced….”
So says US President Barack Obama even though the US has a long history of defying and breaking international law, and scraping arms limitation agreements. It is currently renewing its own nuclear arsenal (as is Britain on the verge of doing so) when the need for nuclear weapons is more questionable than ever. Nuclear weapons are not going to win the spurious War on Terror, nor are they going to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan nation. The question then arises who are they going to be used against? Are the regional wars we see now mere prelude to larger wars against Russia and/or China? Then too this might just be a compulsive addiction to a hugely obscene military redundancy and a wholesale squandering of resources urgently needed to be directed elsewhere.
The current slate of Western leaders has failed to internalize one of the great lessons of the Cold War and nuclear politics of the 20th Century. Nuclear weapons can only be used as a deterrent. To actually use them risks an uncontrollable and potentially catastrophic chain of events. Yet we continue our addiction to the wholesale production of these weapons that can never be used in quantities capable of blowing the earth off its axis.
We also overstate the threat of so called rogue states possessing such weapons. Where they are portrayed as wanting to have them for aggressive purposes they most certainly want them for defensive purposes. Rogue states can no more use nuclear weapons than the major members of the nuclear club. For a rogue state to use nuclear weapons would be a death wish as the retaliation would be devastating and replete. A major power using nuclear weapons risks MAD- Mutually Assured Destruction.
Nuclear weapons will continue to dog our existence as long as those most responsible fail to take responsibility for their dubious existence. They are a relic of the 20th century which we have failed repeatedly to come to grips with.
So too is this asinine game of brinksmanship a relic of the 20th Century. The stand off with Iran is testimony to the belligerence of the West and the utter failure of Western countries lead by the United States to pursue more enlightened and balanced foreign policy. The designation of so called rogue states is no more than a fabrication for obsessive militarism-a lame excuse for uninspired and corrupted foreign policy all in the name of a ruinous neo-imperialism. There is a huge peace dividend to be rendered yet blinkered Western leadership refuses to pursue such a conspicuous notion.
Western leaders now face multiple challenges: economic reform, the ravages of excessive militarism and a need for more enlightened multilateral approaches in international relations. To date they get failing grades on all counts.
Robert Billyard © 2009
Robert Billyard is an artist and writer living in the bucolic hinterlands of British Columbia Canada. He reads widely on history, politics and social issues, and has at various times been politically active.
Stumble It!
Milton