20.11.11
Within the past two weeks I read an article about excalating aggression between Israel and Iran. The Israeli minister of war was calling for military action against Iran, who was allegedly still working on getting an atomic bomb. Of course, Israel couldn't commit such a harsh move without the support of the U.S., and so the minister indicated that the time may have come for their allies to keep past promises.
If Iraq hadn't have happened, maybe Iran would be in trouble. As it is, Bush is the boy who called wolf in regards to the prevention of nuclear and chemical weapon proliferation, and one would think the world would not quickly forget his empty reasons for going to Iraq, nor the results that have come of it. On the other hand, the IAEA (international atomic energy agency) has since released information regarding Iran's atomic energy program. Evidently Iran's nuclear scientists might be up to no good.
I asked some of my students what should be done. What should the U.S. do in this tricky situation? One of them said that we should put the Iranians out of their misery and just give them a few nuclear bombs, that is, as a present, so that they don't have to figure out how to make them anymore. I laughed at this. The student has a point. An outsider who is not tied up in the religious conflict of the middle east almost can't help but sympathise a little with the Iranian government. They are understandably indignant that so many other countries in the world have nuclear capabilities, but they don't. Why shouldn't they? What makes the U.S. or Israel so much better than Iran that those countries should have such a weapon's arsenal but they not? One almost doesn't need weapons inspectors from the U.N. or whatever organization to figure out that Iran is in fact working on nuclear weapons - it all follows from simple psychological principles, applicable to any two year-old boy or girl who sees their peer with a new toy.
Now if Iran does manage to build a nuclear weapon, would they be crazy enough to use it, as some members of the Israeli administration would like us to think? Part of me really doubts it, another part isn't sure. I want to refer to another psychological principle, one that kept humanity safe throughout the cold war - that people don't do things that lead to their own destruction. However, this might not apply to Mr. A (my nickname for the President of Iran), like it didn't apply to the people who crashed planes into the World Trade Center. They were a sort of religious exception to the rule. The thing is, those people believed that there were flying to a better place, a paradise where they would be praised as heroes for killing thousands of whom they perceived as their enemy. Mr. A has gone so far as to deny established historical events, but is he crazy enough to destroy himself by attacking Israel?
Suddham Hussein was a supposedly secular guy. Maybe he was the one we really didn't have to worry about. Just like we haven't thought twice about North Korea, who tested their first nuclear weapons a few years after the start of the Iraq war (the justification of which had already been conveniently forgotten). North Korea must have been very proud of themselves, but when the rest of the world simply shrugged their shoulders, their accomplishment lost its glamour. North Korea, depsite how strange they may seem, are nevertheless smart enough to realize that they can never use their newly acquired toy against anybody. Psychology comes through again. Why can't Israel take a lesson from South Korea? Rather than show fear, maybe they should yawn and sigh when Iran gloriously declares that they have tested their first nuclear weapon. To be fair, I imagine South Korea doesn't really take North Korean capabilities so lightly, but at least you don't hear about their security woes as much as you do of Israel's.
Anyway, shouldn't Israel be more concerned with the governments that arise in the area after the Arab Spring?

27.11.11
I thought a bit more about Iraq and Iran today. Suddham Hussein, as terrible a man as people say he was, comes across like a pussy cat in comparison to Mr. A from Iran. When the west accused Hussein of hiding or building weapons of mass destruction, he held up his hands and declared that he was innocent, and I understand that he was telling the truth. Now as the west starts the same smear campaign against Iran, Mr. A replies a little more agressively. I heard that he is quoted as saying that if anyone attacks Iran, then the enemies of Islam will become history. Those are real fighting words, not something you want to hear if you don't want to be in another war.
Relations between the U.S. and Russia deteriorated a little this week as well. Over here the media is saying NATO has begun placing missile defense systems throughout Europe, in places where that they were supposed to leave alone. Russia doesn't understand how a missile defense base in Poland can serve do defend against a potential attack from Iran, as has recently been claimed by NATO. Russia is so upset over the matter, that President Medvedev has ordered some special missiles, known as Iskander, to be placed in Kaliningrad, a territorial island of Russia in Europe, on the border north of Poland. Evidently, these missiles aren't as susceptible to missle defense as ones that come from far away, so now Russia can feel as ease again, just in case they need to launch missiles at their neighbors to the immediate west.
It's not that anyone thinks such a horrible thing will happen, but you never know when you'll need to throw missiles at people, be they who they may. This is all the more the case when everyone is upset about the economy. With emotions charged all over the world, conditions are ripe for war. The formula is simple. More emotion means less logic, and in the absense of logic nations try to solve their problems militarily.
I've landed on another psychological principle. Humans are animals, particularly when they listen to their emotions. When you're emotional, it's so easy to forget that your friendly neighbor, who speaks some strange foreign language, is actually human, and has a right to live. Then all of a sudden you make up concepts like 'savage,' 'communist,' 'enemy of the state,' 'untermenschen,' and now 'terrorist' and even 'serpents of evil' (Bush was so creative), and all of a sudden war and even genecide seems like a logical step. It's a strange logic, however, that leads to the conclusion that a people doesn't have the right to live, because whomever your fighting is likely to come to the same conclusion about you. The one who is right is the one who survives. That's an animal's logic.
I'm torn about the Russian response to NATO's missile defense deployment. If things are as the media over here says they are, which is questionable (as is the news of any one media source), then I can understand the Russian reaction. If an acquaintance of yours, someone who was your sworn enemy a few weeks ago (decades on the global scale), starts to tie your hands behind your back and tells you not to worry because they would never think of striking their friends, how do you think you would react? You would not want you hands to be tied! Imagine if Russia had a developed missile defense system that they started to deploy in Cuba and Canada, justifying the move with the claim that Guatamala had been secretly developing weapons of mass destruction and the means to launch them, how would the U.S. react in such a situation?
On the other hand, the whole exchange strikes me as two sides flexing their military muscles at one another. It's a strange world where people compete with one another by means of the capability to destroy things. Why can't people show off their might by building a really efficient windmill or solar cell? Israel and Palestine should have a poetry constest. The best poem wins disputed territory. Or how about a soccer game to decide who gets what land?