Iran and the Bomb, ba-ba-bomb ba-Bomb Bomb Bomb, Split from Defense Ministries OOC

To be fair, I don't even think Iran has anything that exceeds the IRBM classification.

To be fair, I don't think Iran would nuke Israel without a serious change in their current foreign policy. It's all a facade over what is otherwise a very pragmatic and semi-stable regime.

They know it's tantamount to suicide with the comparative arsenal stockpiled in the Holy Land.

Of course. Iran's strategic missile programs aren't offensive. They're a deterrent against their conventional military inferiority to every major militarized camp arrayed against them: Saudis/Sunni Muslim states, Israel, and the Americans.

Sure. I also don't buy the argument that American BMD is a good investment. American BMD is only likely to ever have to cope with an ICBM attack (or SLBM), which makes it highly unlikely that the BMD would actually succeed. But we all know the better reason to install those systems in Eastern Europe is for the command and control systems; plus the associated sensors (as opposed to the actual interceptors).

I'm pretty sketchy feeling about Japanese BMD, too, which is why its rather unlikely I invest any more money into it than the Japanese have already sunk by FY12.

Honestly? I would be shocked and amazed if Iran didn't have a nuclear program. Seriously, sit down and look at their strategic situation. Afghanistan went down in a blaze of not-quite-glory back in '01; Iraq got its teeth kicked in '03. The Arab Spring ousted a number of old governments and now Assad, Iran's only remaining (genuine) ally, is either going to wind up exiled or dead.

To make matters worse, Iran has no protection whatsoever on the UNSC. Russia talks big but, when push comes to shove, Russia won't lift a finger to stop an invasion of Iran. It simply has nothing to gain. It's much more likely to barter its veto for concessions in its Near Abroad (which America will give). China, on the other hand, will act like it's the end of the world and then, at the very last minute, abstain on the crucial vote (or work out with America a plan for America and company to go in 'rogue' or something). Why? Because China gets precisely dick from Iran right now. Some discounted oil is nice, but the quantity isn't there. Ignoring the reconstruction (which Beijing would make a killing off of), a post-invasion Iran would go down like a post-invasion Iraq. China would gamble big, buy up oil contracts early, and then go swimming in its pool made of black gold while the West is left scratching its collective head and trying to figure out what happened. And Iran, unlike North Korea, doesn't have a great power on its border. So it can't even count on support because the neighboring big wig doesn't want to deal with refugees (which is, I'm willing to bet, the sole reason China even 'backs' North Korea anymore).

All of this -- taken with Iran's stubborn refusal to kowtow to the IAEA, regardless of how unreasonable it may have been acting -- says one thing: Iran has a nuclear weapons program. How far it is along is a matter for debate, but it has the program. Not having the program would be a display of strategic foresight so poor that it would make me wonder how the government has endured this long. Especially with America ratcheting up the war rhetoric, something that should have been obvious to independent observers by '05 at the latest.

Iran's reaching for the bomb as a survival tool; Tehran's not stupid enough to think it would actually be able to use it offensively. Whether or not it'll get it before Lady Liberty dons her steel-toed boots and starts aiming for the ribs is the only real question left up in the air.

Split from the Defense Ministry OOC thread. A cookie to whoever catches the reference in the title.

To throw my $0.02 in (because hey, it's pay day where I work and I got pennies stockpiled like it's doomsday), I think that it's painfully obvious why Iran would want a nuclear weapon, partially for some of the same reasons Schwer outlined as to why he believes they have a nuclear weapons program (I presume that by "nuclear program" you mean weapons-related, of course.) For the purpose of context, it's very important to note that despite the fact that the United States had been railing against Iran having access to nuclear energy technology since the 1980s, it wasn't until 2002 (after the invasion of Afghanistan and as the US was beginning to present its case for war with Saddam) that there began to be any legitimate suspicions that Iran may have a clandestine program into weaponization of nuclear materials. Indeed, Iran had been cooperating closely with the IAEA as recently as 2001, when then-IAEA Director-Generals Hans Blix and later Mohammed ElBaradei both made numerous visits the Iran's nuclear facilities, confirming that all activities conformed to the IAEA's standards. It wasn't until post-Afghanistan-cum-Iraq that the program began to take on a more opaque nature. (Indeed, the IAEA would not release its first report stating that Iran was not complying with IAEA regulations until 2006.)

This, to me, is entirely rational. Iran, which has long had horrible relations with the United States, by 2003 found itself completely surrounded by US military forces. To a paranoid and habitually self-victimizing regime, it rationally follows that the first thing they are going to do is interpret that as a direct threat to their own survival (not without reason, mind you.) From here, Tehran had two options: rapprochement with the US or effective deterrent.

As we all know, a nuclear weapon is the only effective form of deterrent, especially under George W. Bush. The United States had, in 2003, proven that not only was it willing to undertake multiple wars simultaneously, but also that it was willing (eager, even) to invade a country, topple their government, and spend untold blood and treasure taking down a government it didn't like, without regard to their understanding of the internal dynamic of the country, regard whatsoever for international law, regard for the upsetting effects on the global economy, or even whether or not they could win. The Iraq invasion, from the perspective of regimes not friendly to the United States, was frightening precisely because of the haphazard way the US went into the war and the change in doctrine that it represented: no regime could be guaranteed safe, and anyone that may have previously thought that the US wouldn't be crazy enough to launch an invasion on their country because of how dearly the US would pay for it had reason to be very nervous. The very obvious exceptions, of course, were states with nuclear weapons. "Rogue regimes" that, by all objective standards, were and are either more ideologically motivated, more or equally as responsible for state-sponsoring of terrorist activity, and/or more inherently unstable than Iran attained a massive degree of protection and security from their nuclear programs: speaking obviously of North Korea and Pakistan. Pakistan we know to be at least as responsible for sponsoring terrorist activity as Iran is, and in virtually every case it's even been directly against US forces and directly responsible for the death of US soldiers and civilians. Meanwhile, the country's stability even during the best of times can be best described as precarious. North Korea, of course, has more of a guarantee of its security from its nuclear program than it ever could have from China, and it knows it (otherwise, why bother with a nuclear weapon in the first place?) Therefore, if Iran was going to secure an effective deterrent against US aggression, a nuclear weapon (or, at the very least, the perception of a nuclear weapon) was the only realistic option.

Rapprochement with the US also wasn't an option, and it's here that I find the US to be predominantly (though not entirely) at fault for the entire drama with Iran. US policy towards Iran since the 1979 Revolution has been nothing short of disgraceful. In the 33 years since the Shah's fall, the US has consistently waged a concerted campaign intent on bringing that regime to an end, to the point where we gave Saddam Hussein chemical weapons, encouraged their use on Iranian forces, and even after it came to light Secretary of State George Shultz was still referring to Saddam as "a close friend" of the US. Credit is due, of course, to Bill Clinton, who did attempt to reach out to Iran during his second term on a scale no President has before or since, even as he declared Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism" (not Bush) and tightened sanctions against Tehran during his first term. However, Clinton's weak overtures in his second term aside, the US has consistently maintained a policy of complete and utter non-engagement with Iran, and an overt (if not explicit) policy of regime change by any means short of direct war. President Obama missed the single opportunity he had in 2009 by not responding to President Ahmadinejad's "Grand Bargain" to normalize relations. On one hand, Iran is by no means a cooperative, conciliatory regime, but on the other, Washington's conditions in order to even sit down and discuss broader relations with Tehran have consistently been unreasonable to the point where it's only logical to conclude that the policy is deliberately designed to ensure Iran won't accept them, perpetuating the cycle.

With all of this in mind, it's logical that Iran would pursue a policy of nuclear ambiguity. The latest CIA and Defense Department reports (as in as of April 2012) have concluded that it is most likely that Iran is in the process of researching the capability to weaponize enriched nuclear elements, but has not made the political decision to do so, and I think that this is probably the most likely case. On one hand, I think that Iran wants to know that it has the technological capability to develop a nuclear weapons if it so chose to, while I don't think that it has reached an internal agreement on whether or not to actually go through with it. Certainly there are some elements in the country that undoubtedly want a nuclear weapon, but I don't think that the desire for a bomb is shared among the top echelons of the religious establishment, including and especially the Supreme Leader. We do know that the Shah in the 1970s has a nascent, clandestine nuclear weapons research program and that Ayatollah Khomeini abandoned it because he has serious misgivings about nuclear weapons from a religious perspective. I still think that, somewhat ironically, it is the most fundamentalist, religious hardliners that are most opposed to a nuclear weapons, while the mostly younger, nationalist, more pragmatic camp (led by Ahmadinejad) actually do want a Nuclear Insurance Policy^TM. Personally, I'm of the opinion that this is part of a wider power struggle between the two camps that has been going on in the country at least since the turn of the millennium.

Continued...

To me, this all highlights how much of a failed policy towards Iran the United States has had. Consider the fact that the Iranian nuclear energy program is supported by about 98% of the Iranian people, it's patently obvious that even regime change isn't going to solve the problem. The US' complete and utter refusal to even engage in diplomatic dialogue with Iran is nothing short of shameful. Our preconditions on Iran to abandon all nuclear enrichment activities before we'll even discuss the matter of the country's right to nuclear technology just reinforces the perception that the US is seeking to castrate Iran to prevent it from attaining any measure of influence in the Middle East. And if you ask me, that perception is almost entirely accurate.

The United States is not afraid of a nuclear weapon, and I don't believe that the nuclear conflict with Iran is anything more than a convenient political cover to give our constant campaign against Tehran a cover of legitimacy. The US is not afraid of an Iranian bomb. As I said before, more unstable and more hostile regimes have already achieved nuclear weapons and we've come to terms with it (even allied with them in some cases, as with Pakistan.) No, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the US who supports nuclear proliferation, but it's not out of fear of what Iran would do with a bomb. Look, nuclear weapons are scary; frightening even. The very concept of nuclear weapons is unequivocally bloodcurdling. But nuclear weapons are scary in the same way that an alien invasion is scary; in the abstract, I'm scared to shit of an alien invasion, but I don't constantly look up at the sky screaming every time I see an airplane. Nuclear weapons, like alien invasions, are scary but I'm not scared of them, because I know that the statistic likelihood of both nuclear warfare and an alien invasion are about the same.

The United States is afraid that an Iranian bomb would irreversibly alter the power balance in the Middle East, increase Iranian influence, and force the US to find a measure of common ground an accommodation with Tehran in a way that it doesn't have to now. Containment isn't an option; Iran is not North Korea. Iran is too important to the global economy completely on its own and even without a foreign sponsor to completely cut off from the world. But a nuclear weapon would mean that the US no longer has the option to ignore the country and the achievement would reinforce the revolution so that regime change would be even more of a pipe dream than it is now. A nuclear weapon would represent the failure of the United States to effect the Middle East, something it has not had to deal with on this kind of scale to date. To me, that's the primary motivation for the US' policy. It's just incredibly stupid.

Since we're now going to have a discussion in another forum about Iran, I may as well chip in.

First, if anyone seriously doubts Schwer/Dax's point about Iran's strategic vulnerability and fear of the United States:



I would be cautious, Dax, to ascribe even as limited glory to Clinton as you do. Iran was valuable to the Americans in the 1990s because they helped circumvent embargoes in the Balkans by supporting Muslim military forces which were friendly to the United States (which brings to mind another terrible American policy: continuing the Cold War and giving the new Russia as many reasons as possible not trust Washington).

There are two further concerns I think the US has about Iran:

1. Like Saddam Hussein, the Iranian regime has shown its willingness to not denominate oil sales in US dollars, which means not only is the Iranian government religiously differing from American friends like Saudi Arabia, but the fundamental strategic reason the US likes countries like Saudi Arabia (the petrodollars for security scheme) isn't there. Another leader who has proposed plans to move oil-producing countries (like Libya) off the US dollar? The late Muammar Gadaffi. If you haven't noticed, powerful people with ideas like that tend to wind up dead.

2. Iran is big. Iran is far more likely to reduce its economic dependency on oil and become a country with a strong, diversified economy were various mitigating factors (like sanctions and American embargo) removed. It doesn't hurt that Iran wields significant influence in any Iraq not ruled by a Sunni-despot (which the Americans already took care of for them). The entire GCC still has a population roughly 30 million less than Iran. The GCC plus one of either Morocco (marginally) or Jordan (by a fair margin) would still be smaller than Iran in terms of populace. Particularly if oil production starts slowing in countries like Saudi Arabia, a "normal" Iran is potentially going to reassert itself in the Middle East. Probably not in military terms (Iran is far weaker on this front than countries like Saudi Arabia, and hasn't benefited from Western military support in decades), but economically, diplomatically, culturally?

Well, probably not culturally. Persians and Arabs don't really get along all that well historically.

Iran has nevertheless asserted influence thanks to the Shia communities in Arab Iraq, and could potentially do the same in other countries (even if their communities of Shia are minorities).

Apparently they've been stoking opposition fires for years now. If not, they should be.
Prepare a new leadership.

The US has the biggest intelligence & surveillance networks in the world.
Use them to locate the Iranian leadership.
Limited air strikes and missile strikes to decapitate the leadership of Iran, including Republican Guard leadership.

Opposition supported by the West then steps up.

Problem solved.

The Iranian people are not idiots. If you attack Iran, ie them, they will back their leaders.
If you remove their leaders, without destroying the rest of the country, some might be pissed and protest and burn things, but the majority will accept it because it will bring Iran into the fold with the rest of the world.

Then with a pro-western, or at least a friendly government, you can deal with the Iranian nuclear program. Whether it's really just a civilian energy program, or whether its a weapons program.

And it's oil and gas resources will be opened up to international firms. Without costing trillions of dollars for a war.

Probably wouldn't even need more then 100 tomahawks.

That may very well be true, but truthfully, I tend to think more laterally and in terms of the broader, more strategic picture. (That's not to criticize any other schools of thought, just a reference point.) From this perspective, I frankly don't give a damn what it was that motivated Clinton and Albright to reach out to Iran to the extent that they did. Supporting the Muslim militants in the Balkans during the Yugoslav wars was a relatively low-risk policy (unlike supporting Taliban insurgents in Soviet Afghanistan) so if that was the facilitator to a potential US-Iranian detente, that's probably about as good as it gets, and the potential was there. In that instance, Tehran squandered it, but it balanced out because we returned the favor when Bush refused Iranian overtures for help in stabilizing post-invasion Afghanistan. And then with Obama in 2009.

That is also true, but it's only of marginal importance. Despite their presence in the Levant and peninsula, Arabs have not historically been the dominant power in the Levant. That title belonged to both the Turks and the Persians, to varying degrees and at various points in history. The Arab center of gravity, throughout history, has sat in Cairo. Saudi Arabia's very existence is a historical anomaly, and it's only been the past 30 years or so since Egypt was dethroned as the leader of the Arab world.

But history has a way of correcting itself, and slowly -- ever so slowly -- we're going to start to see that dynamic return. We're seeing it now with the growing power and influence of Turkey and Iran, in fact. The only puzzle piece left, really, is the inevitable Saudi-Egyptian showdown. But now we're getting into theoretical geopolitics that, while I could discuss it all day, is only tangentially related.

TheOne: Okay, I'll bite. Let's go with that plan. What happens next? What does that accomplish? The ironic thing about Iran is that it's probably the one country (and maybe Lebanon) in the entire region from Anatolia to the Hindu Kush to the Nile basin to north African Gibraltar where the government hates us but the people love us. ('Us' being the west in general.) The affinity for western culture among the Iranian civilian populace is well-documented (there's a book by Barbara Slavin, "Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies", on the subject that I particularly like.) But when it comes to Iran, phrases like "Pro-western" and "Islamic fundamentalist" are at best meaningless cliches and at worst propaganda. Consider, can an Iranian person desire a closer, more constructive relationship with the west and want Iran to be brought back into the fold of the rest of the world and yet still think that the country should have a nuclear program? Because that's approximately where a considerable chunk of Iranians sit, I'd wager. Or consider: can an Iranian citizen be frightened by the massive US military buildup directly surrounding it and the constant threat of war and genuinely want rapprochement with the US, but still think that it's vital to the country's survival to have an effective deterrent (i.e. nuclear weapon)?

Even if you killed the Ayatollah and all of the most hardline elements of the regime, there is significant evidence that suggests that it's the ultra-religious hardliners (like the Ayatollah) that are most opposed to a nuclear weapon. Even if, god willing, the Green Movement came to power, the refusal to renounce the nuclear program is a central platform of the movement. They merely have different tactics of dealing with the backlash. What of the frightening scenario of an uprising of the MEK, which has secured the support of an alarming amount of US politicians despite the fact that they are a genuine terrorist organization, in a bout of "Enemy of Thy Enemy if My Friend"-style deja vu that harks back to our days of arming the Taliban in Afghanistan.

My point was it wasn't a genuine offer of detente (that I'm aware of), but rather an "enemy of my enemy is a friend" sort of thing. Plus, Iran and Turkey could smuggle arms without getting more dirt on their hands then they already had. While Americans are shady arms dealers, they don't break embargoes for Islamic militants. Especially when a significant political lobby (Serbnet or whatever they were called) was like: "no, let the JNA win."

Not that easy. Even from a strictly military point of view using standoff weapons on leadership is tricky business once we're beyond targeting one or two guys. Hell, the Americans couldn't knock-off Saddam of all people in 2003. Trying to replicate that with better success, even faster, and against a far better enemy (asymmetric naval warfare, IADS, ballistic missiles) in more difficult terrain is seriously ambitious.

Maybe, maybe not. In reality, it's really neither here nor there. If things had played out differently, it could have been the temporary, begrudging partnership that built just enough goodwill and cooperative spirit to lead to a wider thaw (Clinton did ease sanctions). Then again, maybe not. The point is more that it was an example of one missed opportunity of many, the outcome of which we never will know and can only speculate about.

Do I get a cookie?

No, you don't. :-P

Hmmm, Iran with Nukes or not? See its not the WMD that was worrisome for me in Iraq(or Iran now)its the notion of a government who is willing to slaughter large amounts of its own Civilians (IE Kurds in Iraq and Iran had some of its own in the early years after 1979).

It is harder to prove the actions of Iranian leaders and military, since 1979, they have had closed doors pretty much. But the reason why I say let them have them is because we can not afford or stop every nation wanting to have nuclear power or weapons. I am more concern with genocide or holocaust actions like what Hussein did in Iraq or Afganistan for harboring criminals/terrorists in its borders after 9/11.

I am a follower of Ron Paul/Gary Johnson's notion of foreign affairs, but not to the point of ignoring what actions some foreign governments do, whether in the Horn of Africa to the jungles of SE Asia to South America. We did not end a powerful regime in Germany 70 years ago and expose a horrible crime to allow it to continue today.

That is why I support the notion of limiting our foreign affairs to removing or stopping governments from slaughtering their citizens. I say end all foreign aid to allies and such. End talks to nations that have disregard to human life and freedoms. If U.S. wants to promote freedoms and rights, then we better have allies and friends that treat their citizens with these.

My two cents.

The policy of restricting interventionism to preventing crimes against humanity is potentially faulty: a WPR article argued that EU-led foreign aid to Bosnia was critical to state stabilisation there, though with their free trials exhausted I can't source it. Therefore, I'll shift onto a theoretical argument.

Nuclear weapons have the capability to cause 'holocausts', and there are an assortment of some truly batshit insane people who wouldn't shy from deploying them in such a manner (Anders Breivik, for example). These fanatics are mostly constrained by organisational structures, although there is the rare specimen of a freely operating one. Hypothetically assuming Breivik acquired the means to nuke a place, it's rational to assume he would. Although, of course, entirely rational and structured organisations may carry out similar actions in desperate circumstances. It's in the interests of the United States, economically and environmentally, to prevent future incidents of this scale (probably larger, considering advancements in armaments technology) and the circumstances that cause them.

A nuclear Iran would militarise an already unstable region: as the 'secret' Saudi-Pakistani nuclear agreement testifies. Although Chatham House experts dismiss a Turkish or Egyptian weapons programme, their only qualms about the aforementioned agreement is whether Islamabad, under American pressure, would keep its side of the pact. If Saudi Arabia is so willing to counter an Iranian deterrent, it's feasible even an expiration of its Pakistani bargain wouldn't cease such efforts.

The dire state of Iran's conventional forces, whose sole 'strength' is asymmetrical, has spurred its desire for a nuclear breakout capability as a quick-fix to mobilise its population, whose reformists are feared after the election protests of 2010. Secondly, why can't the United States stop nuclear proliferation? Of the nine nuclear weapons' state, only three aren't CTBT (yes, it hasn't entered force yet) signatories, and even that trio only have weapons as a deterrent against rivals. That's an impressive record for nuclear non-proliferation, with only a tiny minority of the world's states having nukes and none the will to use them.

Limiting foreign relations to preventing slaughters, if interpreted literally, could be catastrophic. The US Government has multiple economic relationships to maintain and administer whose expiration would have apocalyptic international consequences, owing to the current international unipolar model of relations. Thanks to this model, the only real enemies of the US are 'unglobalised' states like Hussein Iraq, Taleban Afghanistan or North Korea, and American action against this political condition is manifestly manifold. These unglobalised state are, very broadly speaking, the types of perpetuate slaughter and genocide: their modernisation is with the medicine of globalisation. One of the big reasons behind the EU's prevention of European war is that its overseeing of intricate, pan-continental trade networks has replaced the opiate of nationalism with the naturally globalist vitamin supplement of consumerism. The main reason against any Sino-American war for the next half-century is their economic interdependence: no matter the military victory, both sides lose through economic collapse and resultant disintegration of the current world order.

Post-WWII economic trends suggest a gradual development model for the world: from about the 1970s, US manufacturing outsourcing has moved from Japan/ROK to China in the 1980s and most recently ASEAN due to national-level rises in wages. The developmental legacy of outsourced industrialisation has been strong, asserting all the aforementioned states' modernisation. As the Chinese population and its labour force diminishes, it's probable Chinese companies will export labour to the few remaining hives of critical underdevelopment: Africa, Central Asia. Globalisation is manipulating capitalism into acting paradoxically in its self-interest for universal benefit. The resultant opening of consumer markets (as occurring with China now, evidenced I feel most strongly by the video game Homefront changing its anatagonist from China to a Pyongyang-led Korea to avoid upsetting the Chinese market) benefits America strongly, flooding its consumer markets and greatly enriching its citizens in fiscal terms.

Mass development is the great crucible American hegemony rests on. Although believing the current capitalist model of development and hyperactive technological progress will eventually exhaust itself due to environmental depletion, for my lifetime, I'm in, both for my instant hot chocolate and sugary kicks and the knowledge that the children or grandchildren of the Indonesian craftsman will attend university. And, as far as I can see, this entire system rests upon America's uncontested dominance.

So, join me:
"O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

*standing ovation*
That is exactly what I'm talking about. NCM, I salute you.
However...

There's nothing paradoxical about it. Leveraging humanity's primary instinct of self-interest and harnessing individual man's natural tendency for selfishness is the very essence of capitalism. It's the precise reason why it works and communism, to use a well-known example, failed. Regardless of what any waxing egalitarian on the part of so-called 'humanists' say, humans are naturally selfish species. We're hardwired that way. We don't think in terms of community; tribe, maybe, but no further that that. Socioeconomic models like communism, then, swim against the tide of human nature.

Taking that principle to a global scale is merely the natural result of increased social and economic connectivity.

There's nothing paradoxical about it. Leveraging humanity's primary instinct of self-interest and harnessing individual man's natural tendency for selfishness is the very essence of capitalism. It's the precise reason why it works and communism, to use a well-known example, failed. Regardless of what any waxing egalitarian on the part of so-called 'humanists' say, humans are naturally selfish species. We're hardwired that way. We don't think in terms of community; tribe, maybe, but no further that that. Socioeconomic models like communism, then, swim against the tide of human nature.

Taking that principle to a global scale is merely the natural result of increased social and economic connectivity.

Thanks. I meant that globalisation was manipulating capitalist self-interest into acting almost altruistically: selfishness and altruism usually don't mix.

Personally, I'd be less worried about governments slaughtering their own people than countries which start wars and slaughter civilians in another country. Countries not unlike ours (as a Canadian -- I'm pretty sure the vast majority of our other players are Americans and Brits, which is at minimum the same story).

WWII wasn't about ending or exposing horrible crimes. That was post facto justification. And it wasn't like the Allies weren't capable of vicious brutality, either. Whether that was incinerating women and children from Dresden to Tokyo, nuking Japan into submission, and the enslavement/starvation/genocide of Germans in the post-War years. Even the "justified terrorism" argument for the bombing campaigns, nuclear attacks, and so on doesn't apply to starving, displacing, enslaving, and sometimes executing people after the War was already over.

The WWII moral superiority myth needs to die a fiery, painful death.

The surest way to prevent the slaughter of civilians abroad might just be to limit what your CIA and DoD get up to. Just a thought. Might even save some money.

It takes rationalism and structure to have mass slaughters. The 20th centuries massacres have in common (at the very least): strong sense of social cohesion amongst perpetrators, normalization of behavior, planning, and organized execution. Rationalization of processes isn't paradoxical to genocide (and associated acts); rather, it is integral to them. Hiroshima is the highest expression of the ugliest chapters of the 20th century.

I'm unconvinced that nuclear weapons are an a priori destablizing factor. It seems quite clear that nukes had a stabilizing effect on Soviet/Russian-American relations 1945-present. Direct conflict between China and the USSR didn't result in all out conflict. Pakistan and India have been relatively close to the brink in the last decade or so, but they have't fought a full-blown war in decades. One could even argue that North Korea's nuclear program has preserved peace (tenuously) on the peninsula. Do you honestly doubt American (particularly W. era) and RoK policy makers wouldn't at least seriously consider regime change over the DMZ otherwise?

On the other hand, as you point out, an Iranian program might lead to increased proliferation in the Middle East. But even then, that proliferation may not actually destabilize the situation. It might even discourage foreign meddling (whether from within or from outside the region) ...

Such a brave country picking fights with those bullies like Grenada...

Plenty of absurdities here, even without touching the "essence of capitalism" bit. For one thing, Marxism is a pretty anti-humanist strain. Marxism is easily the most popular (and influential) strain of anti-humanism. To define Marxism in terms of human nature (good or bad), is to entirely miss the point. This was precisely the problem with both "socialism with a human face" in the Eastern bloc (a performative contradiction: socialism should not aspire to any human face!), and the phenomenological-existentialist-communism espoused by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. Sadly, that last particular strain (albeit in substantially intellectually weaker form) is still somewhat prevalent amongst the fair-weather leftists.

Community is only a useful word when we extend it as a continuum, once we place restrictions on it like you do for no apparent reasons other than to satisfy cognitive dissonance (a tribe isn't a community, orly?). And how is anyone to know at what arbitrary point (this nicely relates to my arguments re: atomism later on in this post) human community goes from a continuum to a quantum. Surely one of the giant lessons of World War II is that the idea of massive communities (especially when aided by modern technology), founded on seductive ideas like ethnicity (including marks of "health"), national soil, shared language, and culture (including moral taste) has enormous practical political relevance. Like, orgy of horrific ethnic cleansing and 70 million-plus people dead kind of relevant. We can drawn even more contemporary examples, too. Much of the planet's post WWII ethnic cleansing has still been along, old, unstable imperial fault lines where these identities clash (Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Armenia, Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq; a decent argument is that some aspects of the Vietnam and Afghan Wars fit this narrative, too)

Its one thing to consider the consumerism of the post-war world (and not universally, even globalized countries like Japan are fairly good at controlling this impulse) which has neutered so many other passions as a good thing, it is completely another to take its efficacy at face value.

Hell, in my grandfather's own family there was political hierarchy of siblings (all from same parents, by the way) based effectively on signs of "belonging" to the national community. Thus, an internal political family dynamic was reflective of and structured around the idea of conformity to ethnic standards and thus belonging.

The more interesting issue though, is what I'll quote below, and what I feel ought to be disrupted chronologically for sake of importance.

From a very broad perspective, I wouldn't contest anything you say here, on a factual level. I would of course put in my little reminder that centrally-planned socialist economies wreaked environmental degradation that gives Exxon execs wet dreams. In any event, I'm not at the moment willing to pin much ecological blame on capitalism (or at least, not economically), there's a much broader cultural problem at hold.

But I am completely skeptical of capitalist globalization as a whole. Globalization promises immense material advancement for most humans, and also has spread structures (political, cultural, linguistic, religious, etc.) worldwide. One of globalization's most alluringly seductive promises is to universalize the American dream, which includes the political dimension. Democracy, free speech, relatively impartial legal systems.

I could contest this notion (as I have above, showing counterpoints to propositions). Some, on the left, have made an attempt to discredit globalization by showing how it widens the gap between rich and poor, more people today starve then ever before, and so on. That is an utterly bankrupt strategy, and one I'd rather avoid here. The shameless empiricism of it all is excessively reductionist, and worse still, threatens to reduce discourse to something that only entrenches power. Such a strategy is (irrespective of success or failure) little different than a perverse legitimization of our existing understanding of global social order: by presenting a critique that "plays by their rules" it endorses the measures always-already present within the social systems as they stand. Worse still it allows the matter to be "settled." Any coherent, powerful criticism must aggressively resist its categorization (as Dax has done with his communism/capitalism dichotomy), and be willing to fail.

The willingness to absorb failure, present new ideas, and always have willingness to come to terms with those failures ("I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure." -- Slavoj Zizek). I've spent enough time, I think, elucidating what possibilities I see unworthy of pursuit, and vague ideological hoping. So, to the meat of the thing.

Globalization, as a process, is engaged in fierce dialectic with itself. These tensions run much deeper than the simple "private vice for public virtue" characteristic of capitalism Dax highlights. For one thing, lets look at US foreign policy.

Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System (the gold-backed USD) the American dollar has remained our global, universal currency. The American dollar since the early-'70s has nevertheless retained a form of backing -- in black gold. The US Government has agreed to back various governments worldwide in exchange for their continued denomination of oil sales in US dollars (Saudi Arabia being the most salient of these countries). This creates both massive demand for US currency, as nations need it to import oil (and, simultaneously, this allows for the US to print a lot of dollars to pay for the very wars and deficits needed to keep the system running -- without devaluing the dollar too much), and means that these "petrodollars" keep ending up in the hands of a few countries (another example, Kuwait) who agree to reinvest that currency in the US. As a result, the global economy is backed by relatively universal commitment to greenbacks and crude oil; paradoxically, both are preserved by American agreements to protect "particular" (in the sense of universal/particular) nation-states (sometimes not even nations, really). In this aspect of global order, globalization has brought us all closer at the cost of giving disproportionate and massive leverage to a few states (often otherwise idiosyncratic with globalization), rather than equalizing and balancing power (as the China-America trade relationship has).

The internet has brought us together, but created contradictions with intellectual property law which always relied on obvious "divisions" which have been increasingly irrelevant in the face of a digital age which regularly submits traditional material barriers to the formulation of a "massive consciousness," a giant set of human synapses which are extremely difficult to reduce to obvious physical barriers without collapsing the discussion into meaninglessness. The music industry standardized and "mass-produced" music, but now material limits against standardization and reproduction have so eroded that art is increasingly simulacrumatic (and perhaps this is precisely where our fascination with reality TV lies: it as once mass-produced and widely shared while simultaneously personal, and unique in ways a "script" can't be -- reality TV lets the postmodern subject have their cake and eat it, too). So in art, we have something like infinite identical atomic objects.

Another contemporary and extremely relevant example of this sort of dialectic of globalization* (that is between: reproduction and atomization): the EU crisis. The EU has (nobly) made the specter which really haunted Europe (war) more artifact than reality. It has brought nations together, improved the lot of all "individual" sovereigns. Notably, countries still retain their own fiscal policy; but the Euro makes monetary policy universalized. Internal contradictions in the system have made Europe tremble from economic chaos. It seems, to resolve this internal contradiction, Europe will either have to increasingly "deuniversalize" (like a two-tier Euro, one North, one South; or perhaps just withdrawal or exclusion of select states) or universalize, by imposing more control from Brussels on fiscal policy (such as: don't spend shitloads of money on stuff you can't afford; also, rich people can't just dodge taxes whenever they feel like it). Europe will have to degrade its own unit, or come into great unity and thus slowly remove those original nation-states and place them under one(-ish) sovereignty (sounds a little like Rome/Holy Roman Empire/Napoleon/Hitler/Soviet hegemony, doesn't it?).

Identifying these select internal contradictions (or other select fault lines)in our state of affairs isn't enough, though (here, for me, is where Zizek fails, though I haven't read his new book, its entirely possible his thousand page Hegel tome goes where I sorely wish he would -- but I doubt it). The absolutely crucial element to all this is that globalization's "progress" is utterly totalizing (even more so, in any practical sense than any prior ideological edifice). To totalize, though, it must dissolve the various particularities of the existing social order and thus eliminate the very choice (freedom), diversity, and "tolerant" peace which its champions (and the machinations of the thing itself) promote. The stakes are not that globalization will make us all eat McDonald's, wipe out some indigenous languages no one cares all that much about, and have us all watching Hollywood movies (or their successors in India and China). This is another asinine rejection.

The real stake is that its very universalizing power compels us under one ideological edifice, one absolute regime as it were. Difference is trivialized (indeed, it already has been), replaced by a bemused nihilism. This very idea of global benefit (and greed, too) is a particular one. Fukuyama was (somewhat) wrong. Grand narratives aren't dead. The American Dream is alive and well everywhere on Terra Firma.

The drums of keyboard war herald the clash of typed exchange,
Oh hardy are the braves who fight battle again and again.
With sturdy substance and harsh word,
In drunken stupor and hard slur
In all's despair and all's pride,
In immortal claxon, the braves arise,
To the battle cry,
"Roll the dice!"

Once my heroin-like Warcraft habit is abatted with level 50 and the nearing prospect of Outland, I'll properly respond. I need your help Dax, this man's read more on Marx than my Beginner's Guide. I fear the necessary quoting. Lastly, the posting of the American anthem was wholly self-deprecating sarcasm, as I'm aware my arguments are more pro-American than Washington and Jefferson multiplied by two kilo-Tocquevilles. I'm of course aware the American state is, like its counterparts, wholly a rational structure.

Crap, I'm edging into a response here and the Plaguelands are calling. Lastly, I'm aware capitalism - and globalisation by extension - is far off even chaotic good, as I'll outline later.

Didn't realize people still played that game.

My point wasn't that the American state is extraordinarily rational, but rather that the worst slaughters rely on a kernel of (extreme) rationality. This is also one of the most significant differences (for certain anti-communist zealots) between the Holocaust and the Great Purges. The Holocaust actually had a giant pretense of rationality, guilt, and science in terms of evaluation of victims. The Great Purges, on the other hand, were much more an irrational (paranoid) outbreak of violence. Both probably still fall under the categorization of the passage a l'acte, but there are crucial differences (e.g. the purges were much closer to being laid utterly bare for what they were as they occurred).

Oh, I totally forgot to add an explanation for my * in my last post. *was because my coinage was an obvious allusion to Adorno and Horkheimer.

BTW, happy birthday NCM.