China Confidential
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Obama Administration Banking on Moussavi
The Obama administration is banking on a so-called moderate Islamist, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, to win Iran's Presidential election this June. Administration officials are poised to accelerate "engagement" of Iran if the 69-year-old architect emerges as the victor.
The rival to Iran's Holocaust-denying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is committed to continuing the country's supposedly peaceful nuclear power program. But Moussavi has offered "guarantees" that Iran's nuclear enrichment effort will not be used to make bombs and warheads. That tantalizing offer, coupled with his criticism of "extremism," has made Moussavi a left/liberal darling.
A Moussavi victory is likely to strengthen U.S. President Barack Obama's argument for "tough" direct diplomacy with Iran and make it even more difficult, politically, for Israel to attack Iran's suspect nuclear sites and menacing missile installations. The United States has warned Israel against military action; and, as China Confidential has reported, the Obama administration is considering ways of punishing Jerusalem if it disobeys the U.S. There could be condemnations and sanctions.
A Moussavi win would also spur left/liberal acceptance of the oxymoronic notion of moderate, or moderating, or reformist or reforming Islamism--choose your poison. Islamist sympathizers and appeasers in the U.S. and Europe are poised to point to Iran as an example of so-called Islamist democracy--a concept akin to Nazi or Communist democracy. In reality, Iran's political system is a unique, Shiite Muslim cross between theocracy and clerical fascism. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rules; barbaric Islamic law (Sharia) is the law of the land; there are prescribed limits to freedom of expression and freedom to organize for political purposes; and a Council of Guardians decides who can run for office.
Appeasing Iran, Abandoning Israel
No matter. The Obama administration aims to appease Iran--and abandon Israel. The White House regards Iran as the key (a) to pacifying Afghanistan--about to be overrun by the Taliban--and (b) to countering nuclear-armed Pakistan, which is close to collapse. Israel is the odd man out--increasingly seen by the administration as more of a liability or a burden than a strategic ally. Iran is in. In a matter of months, at the rate things are going in Washington, Iran could even be considered cool; Israel, hopelessly hot.
In any case, prolonged nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran are in the cards regardless of who wins the Islamist presidential election. Iran is a master of dragged-out diplomacy; only its partner in nuclear/missile crime, Stalinist/Kimist North Korea, plays the talking/stalling game better than Iran.
In the meantime, the monstrous mullahocracy will make major advances in developing atomic arms and intercontinental ballistic missiles--with North Korean help and Chinese complicity.
The beat goes on. The countdown to conflict has begun. Rather than preventing war, appeasement of Iran will make war inevitable--on Iranian terms.
INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Iranian nuclear experts will travel to North Korea in connection with a new nuclear weapon test, according to China Confidential analysts. China Confidential broke the story of an Iranian delegation visiting North Korea to observe the long-range rocket test earlier this month.
Detonation of a North Korean nuclear device, which could occur this July, will divert attention from Iran and could make any proposed "package" of assurances from the Islamist nation seem acceptable.Who Lost America to China?
Following the Chinese Communist victory over the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, many American lawmakers raised the question: "Who lost China?'
Suspicion focused on the so-called China Hands--U.S. State Department Foreign Service officers during World War II who were recognized China experts. Drawing on their wartime experience with the Communists and disdain for the Nationalists, whom they accused of being corrupt and ineffective, the China Hands argued for a U.S. alliance with Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. The pro-Communist position (allegedly based on pragmatism and political realism as opposed to ideology) was supported by several influential American journalists, including Time magazine correspondent Theodore White, who wrote glowingly during the Chinese civil war about conditions in Communist-controlled territory.
So much for Cold War history. In light of the current world crisis, China Confidential believes that the time has come to ask: Who lost America to China?
The relationship between the two countries is at best symbiotic. At worst, the U.S. is in danger of becoming a Chinese dependency. Export-driven China still needs U.S. markets. And China is so deeply invested in the U.S. dollar that it needs to keep the U.S. financially afloat.
But China is also nuclear-armed North Korea's most important ally and an increasingly important ally of nuclear-arming Iran (which is allied with anti-American Venezuela).
The Bush administration hoped that supposedly peacefully rising China would develop into a "responsible stakeholder" in international relations. Instead, China has invested enormous sums to expand and modernize its military and spy on the U.S. in order to steal commercial and defense-related secrets, while making no meaningful moves to moderate Beijing's rogue allies. China's military buildup, modern-day mercantilism and imperialist-leaning foreign policy--from the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to counter U.S. influence in Asia to China's use of arms deals and political support to aid its insatiable quest for oil and other raw materials--belie Beijing's peacefully rising claim. 
U.S. taxpayers, reeling from financial meltdown and unemployment made in China and on Wall Street, seem too dazed and confused to connect the dots. A story about bailed-out, bankrupt General Motors, on taxpayer-provided life support, planning to invest in building cars in ... China ... washes over readers' heads, not even a one-day wonder. Apparently, there is a limit to the quantity of demoralizing and discouraging information most people can absorb in a given 24-hour news cycle.
The situation is bound to change. At some point, confusion and fear will morph into anger and resentment--and a desire to know what really happened. The men who lost America to China--Bill Clinton and George W. Bush lead the list--who are they? Why did they do it? How did greed and globalizing baloney--globaloney--combine to hollow out the U.S. economy? What is to be done?
China Confidential plans to focus on these questions in the coming weeks. It is time to drill deeply into the bipartisan betrayal of the national interest.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
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