Anyone for a Little Launch?

Maybe you’ve noticed a trend in the last few years (even more than a decade or two). There are several major rifts in global politics where the only way local leadership makes points is openly and sometimes absurdly to stand up to the rational dictates of a powerful incumbent constituency – usually the United States, Japan and her western allies. Kim Jong-il (soon to be Jong-un) builds a nuclear weapons capacity, defying the rest of the world, but particularly the industrialized West and Japan, and conducts short range tests of seven long range ballistic missiles on America’s Independence Day.

Iran’s hardliner President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gloating after a “victory” in an election he really couldn’t lose, watches his religious leadership add another slap in the face to those who wished to follow a reformist path and who openly wanted better relations with the West. It wasn’t enough to beat and kill protesters, goons of Revolutionary Guards out of uniform, dragging young people who were marching down the street, pummeling them with clubs, while uniformed troops arrested protestors, politicians, professors… and detaining nine (they released five) local (non-British) employees of the British Embassy claiming that they fomented insurrection. There’s even talk of Iran’s taking over the British embassy itself.

Those embassy staff remaining in custody face a harsh future, even as the possibility of many European Union countries withdrawing their ambassadors was discussed amid a chorus of objections (so far this threat has not materialized in fact) from every corner of the world. The July 3^rd New York Times: “The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had ‘made confessions’ and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.” The Iranians evoke “confessions” with old fashioned beatings, torture… and they don’t even use water-boarding to get results. “Confessions” are often taped and played publicly to justify harsh sentences.

But might the cavalry be coming to the rescue? A highly respected clerical group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, is challenging the election and calling the incumbent government illegitimate, a direct defiance of the infallible Ayatollah Khaminei. Will this happen? Will “evil” America become less evil as time passes? Even the Brits? I’ll believe it when I see it! Hey, word has it that the Saudis will turn a blind eye to potential Israeli air force flights over the Kingdom en route to take out Iranian nuclear sites. So much for “secret” talks. If such strikes should actually occur, that should make us some new friends among the locals!

Speaking of making friends, Russia is another case in point. Creating alliances with the United States requires reversing many decades worth of anti-American sentiment that most certainly carried over even after the fall of communism. The benchmark for modern Russian success is how well that nation fares in comparison to the United States. It’s a very lethal and wasteful cross-town rivalry, and the fact that there are two de facto leaders in Russia – President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – complicates matters a great deal. As President Obama visits the Russian leaders, the mixed message is obvious. Signs of close ties with Medvedev – witnessed at recent meetings between him and Obama – contrast harshly with anti-American rhetoric and actions fomented by Russia’s strongman, Putin.

On the plus side, Russia opened up her airspace to support American actions in Afghanistan. But just as Medvedev was seemingly moving Russia towards membership in the World Trade Organization – the international body charged with enforcing fair economic trading policies among member nations – Russia, obviously under Putin’s aegis, pulled out of the talks and announced that it was forming a countervailing trade organization with neighboring Belarus and Kazakhstan. As Obama comes to discuss nuclear arms reductions with Medvedev, there is a very big question what power the Russian President actually has the power to make a deal.

In South America, bolstered by oil money (which ain’t what it used to be), we have folks like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez who probably wouldn’t have a political career if he didn’t have the U.S. to rail against. Don’t even talk to me about Cuba or Bolivia. And as much as we decry the coup in Honduras, it was our C.I.A. operatives that have installed more than one regime in these Central American “republics.” It’s kickin’ it old school for national leaders to focus on the “big, bad other” as a distraction for their own internal failures or to bolster their national egos by taking down the king of the mountain.

With the economy tanking our economic status (and we are still shouldering much of the blame for the meltdown), with the playing field changing in favor of the next generations of economic behemoths in Asia and with the proliferation of nuclear weapons (the platinum standard of defiance), the U.S. is still the most likely target. We are easy to demonize and vulnerable to boot. Efforts to extract ourselves as the “evil empire” of so many nations will take decades to reverse. There are a lot more of “them” than there are of “us” and our allies. But I sure hope Chinese leaders are watching; if it is their turn to take the top economic spot, sooner or later, it will also be their turn to earn the pragmatic enmity of political leaders in search of the obvious scapegoat.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.