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Thursday, October 27, 2005

Decisions, Decisions

Yesterday, two extremely worrisome pieces of news came out of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Early in the day, from his seat in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed young Islamic Iranians at his “World without Zionism” conference. Espousing the same stolid inhumanity of the the Ayatollah Khomeini, Ahmadinejad told the students that Israel is a “disgraceful blot” that must be “wiped off the map.” Not content to let incitations to genocide and religious intolerance stand on their own caustic legs, the Iranian president intoned that revenge for the perceived sins of the Israelis (The ‘sin’ being the beat of their heart and the blow of their breath.) shall be visited upon all who dare countenance the infidels: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.”

Later in the day, Reuters had a capital piece of reportage on, depending upon the level of credence one is wont to afford Tehran (and given item the first, no fair observer can grant any), what is either gross criminal negligence or willful support of al Qaeda and terrorism on the part of Ahmadinejad’s government. It was reported that roughly twenty-five high-ranking al Qaeda leaders, rounded up and arrested in Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and elsewhere in the blitzes against al Qaeda that America executed or sponsored following September 11, are living in houses belonging to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Iran, in effect, is letting known terrorist leaders roam free. The terrorists include three sons of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaib. The Iranian government is aware of their presence and whereabouts, has an obligation to hold them, and is instead allowing them virtual autonomy.

In light of these, whither the American big stick? To the United Nations, unfortunately, just as the case is being tugged along for intervention in Syria. No one should be optimistic that the United Nations Security Council or General Assembly will move on either Tehran or Damascus. And every American should fully expect to see his nation condemned if it ever takes unilateral action against either nation. Two things strike me about this situation. The first is that there is no allowable difference between soft support for terrorism underwritten by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, by Bashar Al-Assad’s Syria, or by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Vagaries abound in all three, and al Qaeda members know that each (formerly, in the case of Iraq) represents safe harbor when they need to disappear. The United Nations failed to act in Iraq, despite its repeated crimes against humanity and thirty years of refusal to follow UN resolutions. We now know that well-placed officials and journalists in Europe were being bribed by Saddam Hussein, but, unbelievably, such a powerful collective as the Security Council has no procedures for overcoming such malfeasance. The point is: there should be no expectation that the Security Council will be capable of taking action against other pro-terrorist nations.

The larger problem that will be revealed by Iran’s audacious moves of yesterday are manifest in the international legal infrastructure of the United Nations. It will be made very plain what was lost when collective security replaced realpolitik. That is, the ability of national security forces to react to situations, postures, vague coalitions, and aggregated threats. The United Nations as an institution espouses the idea of equality among states. Part and parcel of this wildly anti-reality notion is that every international conflict is dealt with on a basis so ad-hoc it more resembles clinical research than responsible international policy development. The threat of such tunnel vision is magnified in this age of terrorism.

As far as the United Nations is concerned, the two aforementioned events in Iran are entirely unrelated, and they do not reinforce one another or result in a summed threat larger than its constituent parts. And as far as the United Nations is concerned, the problems of Syria and Iran are entirely unrelated and cannot be conflated to identify any larger issue. The United Nations, amidst its massive bureaucracy, cannot identify situations. Only discrete events; and hardly even those.

That is a stunning contrast to the nimbleness of self-interest foreign policy. More than fifty years ago, world leaders came to the conclusion that ease of action could give way to collective security. In 2005, that is a trade-off that the United States ought to reconsider, as Americans see the international behemoth shamble along, unable to protect a soul.

Posted on October 27, 2005 01:33 AM. Permalink