Spreading Goodwill
President Barak Obama is the shining example of a cosmopolitan, easy-going, fair-minded individual. That he also occupies the White House is an anomaly. Politicians, and more particularly heads of state, have also to be imbued with a certain hard-headed recognition of realpolitik. Conveying good feelings of good fellowship universally is all very well and good, but it won't always be met with mirror-image conviviality.
Heads of state cannot afford to be too limp in their presentation of their countries' imperatives, their values, their authority. Becoming too accommodating ensures that counterparts will, as human nature has us do, become more assured of their own investment in their singular national aspirations. And very often those aspirations are functionally inward-looking, occasionally tinged with xenophobia, and a modicum of resentment and hostility.
This is where minds divert, not diverge. A position diagnosed as lack of firm resolve is interpreted as weak and therefore readily ignored. In some cultures, particularly those still very close to their tribal and clan traditions, eagerness to co-operate is seen as a distinct vulnerability bespeaking lack of identity, vision and determination. Give an inch and it won't stop at a mile.
So Washington's new vision of accommodation for the nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran resembles nothing so much as a placatory gesture, a humbling one, received disdainfully but with a full degree of empowerment by Tehran. As a diplomatic ploy for gaining trust that might eventually lead to an agreement by Iran to stop with the attainment of domestic-use nuclear, it is not likely to succeed.
Does the United States take it as meaningless bluster when the president of Iran boasts that the country is capable of attaining weapons-grade plutonium and in the second breath warns that Iran means to destroy the State of Israel? Does Barak Obama really believe that politely constructive engagement will be met with the same? Has he not studied that same engagement with North Korea's nuclear ambitions?
Assenting to Tehran proceeding with its uranium enrichment plans, while insisting on proceeding with nuclear talks serves to validate the country's progress and legitimacy in their estimation, encouraging it to continue its program, despite the many censures it has received through the UN Security Council. It's a new tack, to be certain, but appeasement has never worked, and it's highly unlikely to now.
The reaction to Iran is far out of whack with President Obama's cautious loosening of strained relations with Cuba, a country that poses no real existential threat to the United States, whose government is a mere irritant, not a threat.
Heads of state cannot afford to be too limp in their presentation of their countries' imperatives, their values, their authority. Becoming too accommodating ensures that counterparts will, as human nature has us do, become more assured of their own investment in their singular national aspirations. And very often those aspirations are functionally inward-looking, occasionally tinged with xenophobia, and a modicum of resentment and hostility.
This is where minds divert, not diverge. A position diagnosed as lack of firm resolve is interpreted as weak and therefore readily ignored. In some cultures, particularly those still very close to their tribal and clan traditions, eagerness to co-operate is seen as a distinct vulnerability bespeaking lack of identity, vision and determination. Give an inch and it won't stop at a mile.
So Washington's new vision of accommodation for the nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran resembles nothing so much as a placatory gesture, a humbling one, received disdainfully but with a full degree of empowerment by Tehran. As a diplomatic ploy for gaining trust that might eventually lead to an agreement by Iran to stop with the attainment of domestic-use nuclear, it is not likely to succeed.
Does the United States take it as meaningless bluster when the president of Iran boasts that the country is capable of attaining weapons-grade plutonium and in the second breath warns that Iran means to destroy the State of Israel? Does Barak Obama really believe that politely constructive engagement will be met with the same? Has he not studied that same engagement with North Korea's nuclear ambitions?
Assenting to Tehran proceeding with its uranium enrichment plans, while insisting on proceeding with nuclear talks serves to validate the country's progress and legitimacy in their estimation, encouraging it to continue its program, despite the many censures it has received through the UN Security Council. It's a new tack, to be certain, but appeasement has never worked, and it's highly unlikely to now.
The reaction to Iran is far out of whack with President Obama's cautious loosening of strained relations with Cuba, a country that poses no real existential threat to the United States, whose government is a mere irritant, not a threat.
Labels: Human Relations, Science, societal failures
posted by Pieface @ 7:32 PM
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