Clinton’s Emerging Persian Gulf Strategy: a Good Umbrella and Sophisticated Weapons as Effective as Lipstick on Pigs
In that speech, Clinton seemed to be on the verge of articulating a new and more sensible American strategy for the Persian Gulf. I have a few perceptive observations on all this.
More arms for the neighborhood will not do it. Selling the region’s states more sophisticated weapons make them better at fighting wars- this has been the experience so far, and I am almost certain this will continue to be the case. After all a pig with lipstick is still a pig. (Okay, make that a kosher pig).
The US umbrella has worked fine so far, and it should continue to work (just as it has done for South Korea and Western Europe). However, this umbrella must be only against external threats: it should never be aimed at propping oligarchies against their own peoples. Just as it has been in South Korea.
About whether nuclear arms will make Iran any safer. Let’s go back to, say, 2003. The Bush administration had just successfully (apparently) invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. It had a strong presence in Pakistan, and bases all along the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. Iran was surrounded on three and a half sides by massive American power controlled by neoconservatives who had just added her name to a silly sound bite of “Axis of Evil”. Ergo, the acceleration of the nuclear program: that acceleration was as much the doing of Bush and a couple of right wing “think tanks” as it was of Ahmadinejad and Khamenai’s doing.
Most likely, nay it is a near certainty, any nuclear ambitions are aimed at a balance of regional power with the West, rather than as a prelude to waging war on Israel or other states. Iran has not started a war in several centuries, and her power structure is such that no one person, not even someone like Khamenai can order the country to war.
Cheers
mhg
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