Bubble Dwellers

It is an inevitable part of growing up that you slowly lose respect for authority. Power forms a bubble around itself such that all those within its confining embrace operate in a different reality. Their topics of conversation become the topics of relevance and the more a thing is discussed, the more important it becomes. Looking in from outside, the distortions and the disconnect are often painfully obvious.

Consider the current western obsession with Iran. According to Franklin Foer of The New Republic, "Iran vexes politicians and policymakers across the political spectrum. Yes, it poses a massive threat to global security. But there's hardly any consensus about how we should manage that threat."

Iran, a "massive threat to global security" my arse.

Iran is not any kind of threat to global security unless it is made one. Almost every informed person in the middle east, not living in a bubble, knows this. The problem here is that those with power are used to using that power to get what they want and Iran is becoming harder to bully. Maybe a little reality check is in order: the invasions, surely only a pedant now considers them any thing else, of Iraq and Afghanistan have promoted Iran to a new pre-eminence such that a) Iran will have nuclear power and b) Iran can move to making a nuclear bomb if it so chooses.

I may not like these facts but my liking or disliking them makes very little difference. Likewise, the sooner the west accepts that it is not in control of these issues, the quicker we will be able to move forward and address the real problems.

WTF? Are you mad? Iran having nuclear weapons is not the real problem?

Simply put, no society can totally protect itself from those within it that want to do it harm. If one aspect of society feels sufficiently aggrieved, it will find a way to lash out. It might use nuclear, biological or some new method but where there is a will, there will be a way.

Amongst the powerful cognoscenti, the real issues with Iran are well known and all the gamesmanship we see on our news is more a delaying tactic than anything else. The US aims to maintain its military dominance through missile shields and other futuristic weaponry, hoping to delay Iran long enough to have effective systems in place. If necessary, they may embark on a limited war with Iran in order to set them back while this is done. Now that's a WTF moment if ever there was one, the guys who dreamed up a limited war with Iran thinking that they can contain such a thing. I like to believe that much of the Iran debate is high level posturing but I do get concerned about that bubble and how it creates its own reality.

The real issue with Iran is what is the best way to engage with the country and, to me, the answer is self-evident:

Stop demonising them. Stop threatening them. Negotiate and compromise.

In essence, treat them like another country with the same rights as everybody else.

Does this mean that everything will go swimmingly? No, sometimes there will be problems and sometimes things will not go the way many in the west would prefer. The primary reason why this approach is the best one is that it plays to the real strength of the west: tolerance and liberality. I know that this may not seem like a strength but it is a contagious form of freedom that leaps across cultures and is especially appealing to new generations innately programmed to challenge their authorities. Instead, the west's bubble like approach to geopolitics, enhanced by an arrogant display of power reveals a hideously intolerant underbelly to other cultures, pushing away those most inclined to be our allies.

Ruthless rotweiller businessmen, like Rupert Murdoch, like to promote the dangers of militant Islam and Iran, acting either through ignorance or malice as though these are the same thing, and it is unfortunate that such people reinforce the western centric bubble through their media interests. This bubble encourages a manichean world view, split down one arbitrary line or another, that deals in absolutes and suggests dire consequences for being on the wrong side of the divide. It is almost all crap. I am not saying that there are no dangers but the issues involved are never so clear cut.

Take the stock market crash of 1929 in America. This is a country in love with capitalism. It held as a principle that the oxymoronic free market solves all ills. The great depression proved the fallibility of rampant capitalism sixty two years before the fall of the Soviet Union made the same claim on communism. And how did America recover? They turned to socialism with Roosevelt's 100 days and the New Deal, make work programs, social safety nets and regulation. I am not advocating the embrace of socialism but it is worth noting that capitalism does not work in all cases and sometimes a different approach is needed. The same is true with most absolutist principled positions when applied to the real world. Reality bucks the neat equation and real progress rejects polarising dogma. Osmotically, it looks for common ground.

There is plenty of common ground with Iran. The younger generation wants democracy and freedom. With gentle encouragement from other countries, they will move towards such a state. Every time the west threatens or attempts to coerce the Iranian government, the hardliners are able to clamp down on any progressive movements aided by a natural nationalistic instinct within those against an external threat. Such strange bedfellows are common, allowing fractured fundamentalist groups within Islam to put aside their real differences and fight an arrogant west. We define our enemy by lumping them together and tarring them with a single brush. When we tell the world that you are either with us or with the terrorists, everyone who is not with us but would have no normal ties to so called terrorists, begins to see validity in the struggle against the west. It is through such pompous self-righteous demonstrations that we give form to an enemy that we can never defeat. This is a monster of the ID where we create the thing we fear.