A Deadly Mix

Mohammed Mossadegh

The Pope speaks of the “globalization of indifference” and Bernie Sanders who recently visited the Vatican talks about a “moral economy”and one political pundit recently reiterated the old saw that “the only mistake you can make in politics is to tell the truth.” Geopolitical indifference and moral economics are like oil and water. They don’t mix any better than realpolitik and moral economics. But “geopolitical indifference” and realpolitik make a perfect and delicious cocktail if you look at life as a game in which there are winning and losing teams and you’re going to do everything in the book to make sure that your team wins. That’s the kind of thinking that caused the United States to overthrow Mossadegh regime Iran and later Allende in Chile. The Cold War was still in full swing and the theory behind these two coup d’etats was that that the United States wanted to install friendly regimes that were not potentially aligned with the Soviet Block. The doctrine of “spheres of influence” was influential during this period when a socialist regime in a country like Chile was viewed as a potential Cuba. In its zeal to create allies the United States found itself on the wrong side of the fence, just as Israel does today, when it courts favor from conservative elements in the United States in its need to strengthen its own security. You purchase a certain amount of military capital at the expense of certain principles and ideals that end up having hemispheric repercussions. In the case of Israel the courting of the right (some of whom may tacitly or overtly support the Israeli settlers) runs the risk of undermining the prospects for a Two State solution. There are always consequences and the problem with the free market or laissez faire approach to international relations which depends on a mixture of indifference and the notion of duplicity as public policy (what competitor wants to tell his opponent the truth) are the costs that accrue. The Shah was a US client in much the same way that Assad is a client of the Russia's today. Our contentious relationship with Iran has been the casualty of the same kind of mentality that continues to seek greatness and pre-eminence over a more holistic view of foreign affairs.

The Kurd is the Word

Kurdiah-occupied area generated by C.I.A. (1992)

The Times reported on Robert Kagan’s New Republic piece, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire” (5/26/14), (“Events in Iraq Open Door for Interventionist Revival, Historian Says” NYT, 6/15/14). The New Republic cover story has struck a chord, with ISIS on the outskirts of Baghdad. The Times commented “To Mr. Kagan, American action to stop the militants is imperative, but a continued military presence in Iraq and action in Syria would have avert the crisis. ‘It’s striking how two policies driven by the same desire to avoid the use of a military are now converging to create this burgeoning disaster,’ Mr. Kagan said in an interview.” But hindsight is always 20/20 and who is to say that the presence of US troops would have turned out to be anything more than an embarrassment, as it has been in Afghanistan, where all gains seem to be Pyrrhic and where the American military’s struggle against the Taliban can only be described as Sisyphean? Yes today everyone is crying for more troops and more bombs, but when we supplied troops and bombs and were getting no leverage in reforming al-Maliki’s partisan politics there was an outcry for an end to a struggle which was costing the US both lives and money. Have we forgotten the lesson of Vietnam? Every time we consider the use of force we seem to be on the event horizon of the black hole of interventionism. The US is out of touch and our real weakness is intelligence. It’s as true now as it was back in 9/11. The lack of intelligence concerning the latest ISIS surge is what the real problem seems to be and it’s truly confounding. Is a Johnny-come- lately employing airstrikes and drones going to weaken the impact of the writing of Sayyid Qutb the ideologist of pan-Islamism? What’s needed is not force, but thought. In this case clandestine intelligence, the kind that had proven so deadly to US Foreign policy in the overthrow of Mossadegh in l952, might be turned to our advantage if we place our bets on the right horse--and that horse might very well be Iraqi Kurdistan.