Recent Bush Administration plans to sell $20 billion in arms to the Gulf Arab states (while giving $30 billion plus to the Israelis) are being defended primarily within the logic of “balance of power.”
Out the window is Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy” or peace through democracy promotion. We’re back to the old policy of peace through power. One might build an essay quoting Rice against herself.
Writing in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, emeritus University of Virginia Professor R.K. Ramazani points out a singular problem with such massive arms sales and power-balancing for the Persian Gulf region – namely, such policies haven’t worked before and are likely to be counter-productive yet again:
“The Bush administration’s plan to sell $20 billion of sophisticated weapons to Saudi Arabia and five other Arab monarchies is likely to backfire and produce less regional security. Far from balancing Sunni Arab states against Shia Iran, such massive arms sales may ignite conflicts that will make the current war in Iraq look like child’s play.”
Before unpacking Ramazani’s argument, consider Anthony Cordesman’s mainstream “realist” defense of such arms sales in a recent New York Times essay. We’ve commented here at justworldnews on the ordinarily respected Tony Cordesman in the past, particularly the commentary he did last summer while embedded with the Israeli military as it pounded Lebanon.
But Cordesman is hardly a cheerleader for the Bush Administration or for the neoconservative vantage point. Yet he felt it necessary to disclose that the beltway thinktank where he works, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, receives considerable financial support from Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US Government – not to mention US military contractors. For one measured critique, see this “Werther” original by an anonymous northern-Virginia defense analyst.
While Cordesman has at times been a blunt, non-ideological critic of Bush Administration’s Iraq mis-steps, his New York Times argument in favor of the arms sales, the “Weapons of Mass Preservation,” boils down to the following points:
1. Critics of such arms sales are not operating in the “real world.” The Persian Gulf remains a critical “vital interest” to the US and the world economy. Oil must be “defended.”
2. We cannot defend oil “without allies,” and Saudi Arabia is the only “meaningful” ally available. (and oh never mind the recent “minor” reports of Saudi salafists showing up as guerrillas in Iraq. As for democracy and all that, allies like the Saudis inevitably are “less than perfect.”)
3. The chief threat then to “our” oil (e.g., to “jobs”) is Iran. (No evidence needed or presented.)
4. Announced arms sales (and gifts) to the region are really nothing new, as, after inflation, Israel may be getting less arms than before.
R.K. Ramazani, by contrast, asks a question Cordesman avoids – namely, does power-balancing in the region actually work? That is, can we demonstrate that it has produced stability and defended American interests?
(Disclosure, I helped condense this essay from a much longer draft, and even then two paragraphs were left out. Indeed, those of us who have known Professor Ramazani might recognize that this essay condenses 54 years of scholarship — and a year’s worth of advanced IR lectures.)
First, the balance of power hasn’t worked in the past; worse, it’s been counter-productive:
“For more than 50 years, the United States has obsessively played one Persian Gulf country against another, selling arms to allies to protect vital interests, primarily crude oil. Yet this balancing game has repeatedly proved counterproductive.
During the Cold War, Dwight Eisenhower sold arms to Iraq to counter Soviet support of Egypt, rendering Iraq vulnerable to an anti-Western revolution in 1958. Richard Nixon gave the Shah a blank check to bolster Iran against “radical” Iraq, but in the process catalyzed Iran’s 1979 revolution. Ronald Reagan then backed “moderate” Iraq against “fundamentalist” Iran, and, in turn, created the aggressive Saddam Hussein war machine that invaded Kuwait.
After ejecting Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, George H.W. Bush sold arms to the Gulf’s smaller Sunni monarchies to counter the power of Shia Iran. Yet the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia contributed to the rise of al-Qaeda. The subsequent destruction of the Taliban and Hussein regimes ironically eliminated Iran’s most bitter enemies, leaving Iran even stronger.”
With each new infusion of massive western arms, the regimes we supposedly are defending against other threats in turn are destabilized from within. For example, people dissatisfied inside Iran with the Shah of Iran’s repression naturally blamed the outside power that provided him with the massive arms that were the means, if not the source, of their misery. Pogo anyone?
Ramazani then offers, for the first time, a different insight on just why “balance of power” concepts that have been favored in the west since the 17th Century have been so difficult to apply to the Persian Gulf:
The repeated breakdown of balance-of-power strategies for the Persian Gulf stems from profound differences between the historical experiences of Europe and the Middle East. In Europe, power-balancing promoted peace after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which marked the end of wars over religion. Thereafter in Europe, power-balancing assumed that the people’s highest loyalty was to the nation state.
But in the Middle East, ties to fragile states remain subordinate to primordial loyalties to family, religion, sect and ethnicity. Power-balancing among such entities is the proverbial castle-building in the sand.
Massive American arms sales to Arab Sunnis against Shia Persians today are bound to fan flames of wider conflicts. The American invasion of Iraq has undermined the millennial Sunni order, while Shia power has increased.
Sunni Arab states now fear the rising power of Shia Iran, Shia domination of Iraq, Shia ascendancy in Bahrain, and the unrest of the Shia minorities in other Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf.
Of particular importance, the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia deeply resents the discriminatory policies of the Sunni regime. Saudi Shias are concentrated in the eastern province where most of the kingdom’s huge oil fields and export terminals are located. Unprecedented Shia empowerment in the region may yet transform the Persian Gulf into the “Shia Gulf,” home to the lifeblood of the global economy.”
How then do we stop “building sandcastles” and avoid turning the Persian Gulf into a boiling “Shia Gulf?”
“Given the failed arms sales and power-balancing strategies of the last century, American policy-makers this century should reject more schemes to divide, balance and dominate the Persian Gulf.
Instead, the United States should embrace a two-pronged approach that engages both Sunni and Shia states while simultaneously encouraging the integration of Persian Gulf societies into the larger global community and economy.
To these ends, the United Sates should commit itself to develop enlightened, multilayered plans to advance the complex processes of social, economic and political change within the gulf societies.”
Those who follow US Persian Gulf policy history may recognize that Ramazani is proposing to flip the Clinton’s Administration’s policy of “Dual Containmment” (then of Iran and Iraq) to one of “Dual Engagement” — of seeking to engage both sides of Gulf political and sectarian divides. In the process, we work with the regimes that exist, even as we seek creative means by which to improve the lot of all peoples of the gulf via increasing integration into global economic and social development.
“There is no alternative to cooperation with existing Gulf regimes. Bypassing them will not work. Sunni and Shia leaders alike see American efforts to reach around them to reformist groups inside their societies as subverting their regimes.”
And to insert the two missing paragraphs:
“As an example, the Bush Administration spends tens of millions on propaganda against the Iranian regime while trying to foster civil society development and better human rights conditions. But this approach has backfired as the regime tightens its repressive grip and reformists suffer serious setbacks.
In contrast, the twofold strategy of engagement and integration proposed here not only suggests a constructive way to interact with Persian Gulf countries, it also offers an effective way to counter terrorist acts by al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Al-Qaeda’s power grows exponentially in conditions of strife as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
In short,
“Failing to learn from experience is a recipe for disaster. A renewed arms race, including nuclear weapons, among fragile gulf regimes at each other’s sectarian throats will lead to a gulf-wide conflagration that, once ignited, would be difficult to control. America and the world would suffer from the unintended consequences of this misguided policy for years to come.”
As usual, the Arabs must pay for American weapons they cannot use while the parasite Irsraeli vampire baby gets another free bite deep into the American taxpayer’s jugular. Doesn’t the word “traitor” have something to do with putting the interests of foriegn countries ahead of one’s own?
At any rate, come September, a “progress report” will report “progress” in Iraq during the last Friedman Unit — the ninth in a row — which will in turn buy the perpetrators of our ruinous national humiliation three more Friedman Units until they can skulk out of office (or, out of one office and into another, in Senator You-Know-Her’s case) at the end of twelve Friedman Units, with no one in America supposedly smart enough to observe how the never-ending sequence of Friedman Units will have added up to six years of inconclusive, bloody bungling by January of 2009.
The late general semanticist Wendell Johnson once noted how farmers train pigs to come when the farmer calls by rewarding the animal (in true Pavlovian fashion) with corn every time the pig comes in response to the call. We can measure the stupidity of the pig, Professor Johnson said, “in terms of the number of times he comes in response to [the] call after you have discontinued [supplying] the corn — and in terms of the promptness and speed, the lack of delay, with which he continues to come.” In view of this observation, then, one can measure the extent of Pavlovian conditioning among American Congressmen and Senators by observing them repeatedly come on call, year after year, for Pentagon-sponsored Potemkin tours of South Vietnam and Iraq. Obviously the American military lavishes ample rewards upon these hapless porkers to keep reinforcing the operant conditioning, as B. F. Skinner termed this training process.
Yet, how much more stupid does it make the American people look when one observes how they keep coming on call in response to Pentagon/Congessional propaganda about Vietnam and Iraq even long years of Friedman Units after no “rewards” of any measurable kind have ever materialized. From this dispiriting and desultory observation of contemporary America, one can only conclude that Americans condition even easier than pigs and retain their inculcated stupidity even longer. One doesn’t even have to feed them real corn. Not even once. Quite to the happy contrary, at least from the Imperial Pentagon perspective, one can simply feed Americans empty fantasies and Orwellian slogans — good for at least a dozen Friedman Units of abject, stupid obedience.
No flock of sheep so easily and repeatedly fleeced — by the wolves the sheep keep electing as their sheepherders — has any hope of long surviving in a world that doesn’t reward such pathetic, Pavlovian drooling at the sound of nothing but a tiny, tinkling bell.
We’ll keep the “light” on here Michael. :-} Count on it.
——————-
By the way, I neglected to mention in my essay that Ruhi Ramazani’s current essay harkens to a very similar warning he published in a special publication issue of Middle East Insight in 1991.
That 1991 pamphlet, “Future Security in the Persian Gulf: America’s Role,” (mentioned at the end of today’s Inquirer oped) includes the following in its first paragraph:
“A strong likelihood exists that by the year 2000 the Persian Gulf War will be revisited as the prospects for political change in the Middle East and foreign policy change in the United States continue to be as dim as they are in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm…. [S]o long as the American approach to the Middle East is dominated by a peculiar conception of balance of power, the United State will face instability, insecurity and war in the region in the next decade as it has in the past four and a half.”
——————-
Rather “prescient” eh? (He was writing then, as now, in the context of massive proposals to arm the Saudis and their small Arab neighbors.)
I’m hoping to find a way to get this 1991 essay posted in full somewhere soon to the internet. It’s as important today, as it was then.
Scott
Rather “prescient” eh?
I think you miss here that with huge US Politic institution and US Researchers and geopolitics’s centers with a huge amount of money spent to shape US foreign polices around the world with a lot of research and planing there is no surprise here or”Rather “prescient” eh? ” from Ruhi Ramazani’s what US doing or will doing in ME for FIFTY years ahead Scott!!
Looks Ruhi Ramazani’s your Bible for ME?
“The best decision of my life at a young age was to come to America. The reality of America is in the air I breathe. I know there are critics, but I believe that America is unique as a land of opportunity; unique in its freedom of the press and religion. This is truly a multicultural country, a melting pot if you wish. For some people it’s not what it used to be, but it still is for me. When I return from traveling and get off the plane I want to kiss the ground at Charlottesville airport.”
Truth, Wherever It May Lead
Five Decades of Studying the Middle East:
R.K. Ramazani
I leave it to Michael Murry to tell us how much truth Ramazani tell about US.
I said it here first, but Robert Scheer came right behind me a few hours later with this as the lead-in to his latest truthdig article “The Real Iraq Progress Report.” Again, like I said, he said:
“The parade of political tourists to Iraq in recent weeks, during which easily impressed pundits and members of Congress came to be dazzled by the wonders of the troop surge, probably ensures that this murderous adventure will continue well into the next presidency—even if the Democrats win.”
Back in the day in South Vietnam, we used to call this palpable gullibility by American politicians and and their bootlicking generals “The Five O’Clock Follies.” Yet even with all the cowardly lack of leadership by the so-called “Best and Brightest” (some of whom actually did have brains) thirty-five years ago, few of us who survived their depredations could have imagined the present troop of uninstructed chimpanzees, the Worst and the Dullest, bringing us Vietnam II in the Middle East at only the modest material cost of 12 billion dollars a month, or the equivalent seventy-two billion dollars per Friedman Unit.
What with all the mediocrity, mendacity, and madness now posing as “national leadership” in rudderless, drifting America, one can discern no path that leads anywhere but to more disintegration and disaster. The fabled and utterly self-absorbed “American Exceptionalism” often prompts Americans, like their current President, to boast: “Just ’cause we think stupid things and say stupid things and do stupid things, why, that doesn’t make us stupid.” Uh, yes it does.
Surely the real motivation for these sales is mercantile (the bottom lines at Boeing and Lockheed demand it). The deals are just dressed up with whatever foreign policy hocus-pocus is deemed necessary.
Alas Salah,…. On your first point, do you know of anyone else in 1991 who warned that another war in the Persian Gulf was likely within a decade? (surely not the standard advocates of “balance of power” strategies, beginning with Henry Kissinger)
On the second point, do you mean to suggest that anyone who has chosen to venerate his American citizenship and the ideals that America (at least the ones it used to stand for) is somehow unqualified to comment on the region of his youth? How churlish.
For the record, Salah is quoting (out of context) from a publication of the University of Virginia Law School, dated Spring of 2005:
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/alumni/uvalawyer/sp05/ramazani.htm
(RKR was the law school’s second ever S.J.D. — in international law.)
I wish I could post here a biography article I published about him six years ago. (in Journal of Iranian Research & Analysis) Therein, you’d see even more the horrendous circumstances under which he fled Iran in 1952. His wife’s more recent splendid autobiography, The Dance of the Rose and the Nightingale does it even better. (and the book is still in print)
RKR made the unusual step long before the Iranian revolution of formally renouncing his Iranian citizenship — which is rarely done by Iranian expatriates. He did this not out of malice towards his homeland, but in appreciation that his adopted land had given him true freedom to write and teach…. particularly as Jefferson laid out as a cardinal “rule” for the University of Virginia. (and that was the point of the Law School essay)
“Here we are not afraid to follow truth, wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Alas, that ideal may very well seem under seige today here in the US, from Congress, to the media, and even in the academy…..
And if that in the end is your concern, we’re in agreement.
Yet the ideal remains a rather compelling, don’t you think? (whatever one’s personal heritage or life story…. no?)
maybe we could change the pledge to flag to say “and the ideal of liberty and justice for all”
And actually, while today that “ideal” may be under siege, it took a long time to get where we are right now. It was not a wrong turn or an accident that we have two illegal wars of aggression going on, our constitution rights being stripped away, torture, kidnapping and the brink of financial collapse….. while most of the population goes shopping or watches TV.
We are a failed state.
Regarding the Anthony Cordesman article, here are unpublished comments received from Don Weadon, a veteran Washington international attorney with considerable Gulf, Mideast (and Vietnam) experience. This was written prior to the publication of the Ramazani article. (with which Don agrees.)
I post Don’s comments here in full with his “blessing.” :-}
—————————
While I enjoy Mr. Cordesman’s military analytic work, his policy puff piece in today’s NYT is open to skepticism on a number of fronts
The assumption that we should be providing allies in the Arabian peninsula gouts of long range weapons systems has always been a controversial proposition, except for major U.S. defense contractors and their flacks. Our foreign military sales help subsidize the gilt edge systems we purchase but cannot afford, even though Congressional pork barrelers vote them through. We want to arm the world to keep the Europeans from selling their often superior and less costly systems to others, which would undercut the remaining few U.S. Defense juggernauts and bust the U.S. Defense budget, already at record levels.
The statement that “Saudi Arabia is the only meaningful military power there [the Arabian penninsula] that can help deter and contain a steadily more aggressive Iran” is open to question on two fronts. The Saudi military has been likened to “military music”, a quaint anachronism, by observers. It is no match, let alone a deterrent, to Iran. But what is Iran doing that requires a deterrent? Have they threatened Saudi Arabia or any of the folks in the neighborhood? With Maliki in Tehran cordially chatting with Ahmadinejad this month, I begin to wonder what the threat is. Have there been Iranian overflights, threats, any scintilla of a threat other than Iran happening to to be where it is?
Many of the majority shi’a ARAB populations in the penninsula chafe under minority Sunni rule of an authoritarian, not islamic, style of governance and look to Iran as an exemplar of what kind of government they would enjoy living under. In the words of the philosopher and playwright Steve Martin, “well…excuuuse me!”. Somehow with historic funding of radical islamic groups by elements within the Kingdom, Saudi representatives performing sleight of hand funding for black CIA programs of late, and internal divisions which since the Great Mosque event in 1980 grow by the day (remember, Faisal was murdered by a member of his own royal family, and the contesting factions found to have weapons caches), we may need to find other ways to keep our fragile ally together other than through pouring more gas on the fire.
But Cordesman’s analysis of the Israeli situation is even more curious. For the past few months, teams of Israelis have been spinning away in Washington, D.C. to bag more loot from the US Government. Both at Defense and more ominously on Capitol Hill they were hard at work to cobble together a durable bonanza of defense support from the United States, which includes both systems and technology, to the tune of $30 billion over the next ten years. Noting that Israel has to contend with threats, Cordesman states that Israel has “to deal with the growing possibility of an Iranian nuclear threat to its very existence”, Cordesman says that gorging its insatiable desire for more US weapons technology will keep a “weak Israel” from making pre-emptive strikes (ostensibly on Iran).
Somehow with 400 nuclear warheads in the Israeli bunker, I am somewhat underwhelmed by this analysis. A pipsqueak Israel ain’t. And it has mounted a world prevarication campaign to ensure that the US believes it has some mighty enemies in the ‘hood that warrant this flood of weaponry: while there are few of its neighbors who really like Israel due to its occupation of Palestine, few would bother even lobbing a firecracker their way. The only threat to Israel is Israel, and the huffing and puffing over Israel’s proprietary translation of Ahmadinejad’s campaign sloganeering (claiming wrongly that he threatens to “wipe Israel off the map) has been well discredited by Juan Cole and others who can read and write Farsi. Now come on. I would like to know what real threats Israel faces which merit this cornucopia of firepower. It certainly didn’t help them in “eliminating” Hezbollah when they flattened Lebanon and strew hundreds of thousands of cluster munitions near the border last year.
And since all the Israeli weapons transfers will financed through loans which at the 19 year eleventh month point will be forgiven (as they are every year at the end of December by the Congress with the Federal Financing Bank and the U.S. taxpayer being left holding the bag), Mr. Cordesman’s discussion of how Israel will “break even” is somewhat perplexing. The other ‘beneficiary’ nations of US Kisssinger era munitions diplomacy still remain on the hook for the full price, save Egypt.
Also, Israel has had a rather horrid history over the decades of illegally selling controlled US defense technology to all manner of miscreants, although they act with impunity largely due to their wondrous relations with a Congress which refuses to impose any of the sanctions which it prescribes for other offenders of the law: in the past year, Israel was cut off (but only for a mere few seconds) from US Defense technology for their misdeeds, but recently ejected Defense Policy Under Secretary Douglas Feith promptly smoothed that over. But when Secretary Condi came to deliver the still secret MOU, she was ushered out the door just ahead of the arrival of the Chinese Foreign Minister who came for a week of talks on Israeli tech transfers to China. Most of the $30 billion in arms will be partially or wholly manufactured in Israel. What controls does the US have in place for the wholesale marketing of this technology, financed by US taxpayer dollars, to China or others. So how does this $30 billion really help the US or the region? I’d sure like to hear Mr. Cordesman’s view on that.
Finally, the prescription that we have to be as generous to our Arab allies but a bit more so to Israel seems to be the conventional wisdom which dooms the United States to regional escalation and instability, rather than deescalation and stability. While the equation in the Middle East beggars fourth order calculus, I am skeptical that the same old bromides and approaches are anything other than stale and disfunctional. I would be keen to hear a new approach.
I believe Mr. Cordesman has a great deal to offer in this regard. But his tag line is interesting in that it seems to imply that some who wish to stem this self-defeating arms tsunami and not accept his policy analysis could be engaged in “posturing or self-advantage rather than a serious concern for America’s role in the world”.
And this I received this pithy observation indirectly, from a veteran US “player” in the region:
Regarding the article “Arming the Sunnis will not work,”….
“The irony is that the Saudis will not have any more effective a military after another $20 billion than they have after the tens of billions they have already spent but some US defense contractors will be richer than ever.”
Susan, along the same lines, you may also recall RKR’s last oped in the Philly Inquirer from last fall, which Helena commented upon here:
https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/002144.html
That essay was the condensed version of a long speech he gave last August at Monticello, on Jeffersonian Principles and the Middle East. I’m yet hoping he’ll have time to turn it into a full book.
Scott,
Salah,…. On your first point, do you know of anyone else in 1991 who warned that another war in the Persian Gulf
Do you thing I am an expert in US strategy or have links to US researches at 1991?
I don’t know but in 1991, I were serving in a second war Scott.
Surprisingly you miss the point that US well non of planning for 50 years ahead specially with foreign policies surprisingly enough those like RKR ”has been a long time consultant to US administrations, from Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton..has been a long time consultant to US administrations, from Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton..” surely they planned or advocates for the next US foreign policies as common in ME may be includes 2nd war in the Gulf!!!
In same taken Dick Cheney in1994 is interestingly is another “prescient” eh when he spoke about Iraq and the invasion of Iraq and the consequences that will follows specially from the EAST!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/grandtheftcountry
Back to the main point of post here, Barbara Conry, she wrote in 1997 a very detailed article and she connecting the dots of US policies and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and how US policies working with them.
Interestingly she ended his article by saying:
Instead of acting as the guarantor of Persian Gulf security, the U.S. should make clear to the southern Gulf monarchies that they, not outside allies, are primarily responsible for their own defense. Doing so would restore the incentive for the GCC states to think seriously about security cooperation–not only with one another, but perhaps with other Middle Eastern powers as well. The U.S. still would have the option to intervene in the event of a threat to its vital security interests, but American involvement in regional crises would not be automatic. Unraveling the current tangle of security commitments to the southern Gulf states would restore the full range of policy options instead of steering the U.S. into regional wars.
Persian Gulf time bomb: America’s risky commitment
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2624_v125/ai_19420098/print
If we look what comes from GCC states against Iran and compare Iran reactions about GCC states, is very clear that Iran keep threatening GCC states with distraction and other stronger words while GCC states keep saying they need to work for peaceful Arabian Gulf and some GCC states announced officially they not allowed US to use their land to launch any US military offensive against Iran.
So if Iran has her next war, who should be the target? GCC states? Or US? Here there is a funny thing hide under all this.
Back to Arm sale to GCC states you need to remember in same time that Israel have the major arm deal of all, as for GCC states, its really a fact you should know they do not have any skills to use and control $20 billions new US arm technology that’s mean US army men need to work their to use that $20Billions arm weapons and in another side as leaked from Yamama Arm deals those Princes and Sheiks get their share from $20billions deals so its all simmers very fishy and funny and I agree totally this arm deals will not have any more effective a military after another $20 billion to Saudis or other states in the gulf and the prove was 1991 war when Saddam went to Kuwait.
Talking about those Princes and Sheiks bribes and share another interesting discovery:
It’s a picaresque story involving crooked Kuwaiti and Emirati businessmen with codenames like “Mr. and Mrs. Pastry.” In 2004 and 2005, according to the complaint, Cockerham, his wife and his sister, took $9.6 million in bribes, kept in safe-deposit boxes in a number of Persian-Gulf cities, in exchange for contracts for things like drinking water.
U.S. Uncovers Iraq Bribe Case
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082102106_pf.html
Salah, yet again, some of your points are lost amid puzzling sentence structure. Unless I’ve mistranslated your post, I think you’re still trying to suggest that Ramazani somehow is responsible for the policies of the past fifty years in the US. (simply because he either doesn’t condemn his own adopted country or because he’s been a consultant to various Administrations, from Carter through Clinton — but NOT the current one)
What kind of ignore-the-obvious logic is that? If anything, he has been about as consistent a critic of US policies (e.g. “Kissingerism”) ever since his dissertation in 1953. (the one on the oil nationalization crisis — w/ the overthrow of Mussadiq’s government)
Yet he’s also managed to do it in a way that until recently still earned him the “ear” of various players within the foreign policy apparatus….
Still, that one consults with various agencies inside an Administration hardly means that the government actually, in the end, pays heed to such advice! eh?
And just how or when was it that the various administrations have actually followed Ramazani’s advice NOT to rely on balance of power strategies for Gulf & ME security?
For the record, he’s also been consulted by numerous governments in the Gulf region, including on the Arab side of the Gulf, No matter. You’d end up blaming him for their failures too.
Yet thanks, by the way, for the Cato article from Conry. (Presume you know that Cato Institute is a venerable “libertarian” think tank.) But I didn’t see much in that article that Ramazani hadn’t written years before then — or for that matter, in a much discussed book he published about the same time on the Gulf Cooperation Council. (You might especially wish to look at the chapter on the internal catalysts that at long last led to the formation of the GCC)
As for the GCC-Iran dynamics, you take a rather one-sided view of who starts what…. No doubt there are many serious and delicate issues at hand, as RKR would readily agree.
But simply arming the Gulf players to the teeth has done little to help resolve them.
fyi — compelling oped in tomorrow’s CSMonitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0823/p09s01-coop.html?s=hns
How to Challenge Iran’s militancy w/o Using Arms.
Ignore the misleading CSMonitor subtitle — (perhaps the editors missed the gist of the essay that follows)
This isn’t another neocon/Michael Ledeen style call to subvert the Iranian government by “reaching out” to the Iranian people or opposition…. (precisely what Ramazani counsels “wont’ work”)
Instead, this is a call to implement the Iraq Study Group — to offer the unthinkable (to a neocon)…. to try serious diplomatic and economic incentives to avoid confrontation.
That would indeed be popular — in Iran — and I might venture, among Americans. (well, maybe not the rabid Christian-Likudist folks)
cheers
escott
Scott, first you should not putting your words in my mouth, secondly I did not said what your mind tells you instead of put your accuses on my poor English.
Anyway instead of keeping rolling around from the main point that you raised about Ruhi Ramazani (Mr. ME Nostradamus)
The main point I made about him here he worked with different administrations and he knew what’s going on so this not a magic Scott.
This guy worked very close to tope administration guys and advisors, he knew a lot what going behind the curtains either by his advocates or other, telling us he is Nostradamus of ME just not fit Scott.