Russia does not want Iran to have the bomb, however it is building one for them regardless. Russia is in the enviable position of being a world leader in both the bomb and oil. They have loads of each. By supplying Iran with technological support for their "civilian" nuclear program, the Russians are taking care of business on several different fronts. Building a bomb in Iran causes instability in the short run, and that helps support the oil prices Russia needs to maintain its own progressive economic agenda. Furthermore, Russia can mitigate the speed and scope of Iranian nuclear development, a fact not unknown to American statesmen.
For Russia, the Iranian bomb thingy is a perfect bargaining chip for use in extracting both geographic security and open markets from the Americans. If the Iranians are going to develop a bomb they figure, it might as well be with them. Its good business and it extends Russian influence into the Middle East through the regions latest hegemony.
Russia shares nuclear proliferation concerns with America, however. It is absolutely essential that the former cold war enemies contain the spread of bomb equipped nations. Each is facing crippling expense in building and maintaining vast, unnecessary nuclear arsenals. Game theory demanded an ever increasing build up in arms to maintain the deterrent value and effect. The point at which theory left and insanity stepped in is hard to discern, however contemporary leaders in both America and Russia are learning that as long as each reduces arms at a rate that does not disturb the equilibrium, both can save a bunch of time, trouble and money. The increase in nuclear states threatens to keep this threat floor artificially high, and eat into projected billions of dollars saved.
It would be tough to decide who needs oil more, America or China. Each is approaching the issue from different directions. China is quietly using its goliath state industries to buy up the resources of the earth necessary to power its future. It can do this because capitalism is becoming no match for state controlled resource acquisition. At the same time, America has been foiled in its attempt to use its super power status and invincible military machine to project influence over the most important sources of ready oil in the world. Addicted to oil, America depends solely on the strength of free markets now to keep a tenuous grip on its future supply. America needs not just oil however, but politically predictable prices for oil to defend its economy and the USD that economy supports.
America has an arsenal of bomb and bomb like technology that has become so large it has made its investment pointless. Even an untoward glance towards the button, and an economic thermal nuclear explosion would blow through every household in America. $7.00 a gallon gasoline. War making in America is approaching a trillion dollars a year and it has done nothing to protect America's most strategic asset, the oil it needs but doesn't have.
America is also friends with both the Saudis and the Israelis, each of whom are sworn enemies of each other. America exchanges military hardware and the their nuclear umbrella over the Saudis in exchange for oil, unfettered access to histories most epic sinkhole of energy, and simply scads of money. The Saudis need this protection from its neighbors, the late, great Saddam Hussein and his heretical secularist Islamic state, and the dreaded Persians. The shield is useless against a bomb laden Israel though.
Israel is justifiably nervous about the geographic reality the British left them in 1949. Israel imports absolutely everything of value, oil included. It also sits atop the most irrationally contested real estate in all of human civilization. Attacking threats without the bomb mercilessly has proven to be well worth the penalties on every occasion. That is because the penalty for attacking an existential threat that can unleash holy hell on its principle ally is several orders of magnitude greater. An Iranian nuclear response to an aggressive Israel would have ramifications that no theory of games could ever envision. Absolutely no one is in a position to imagine what may come next.
What would China do about its investment in Iran? India? How would Pakistan react to India? What would the Russians do - sit back and watch the show, the price of their massive oil supplies rocketing skyward? What on earth would the Americans do? Who can tell and what's more, who wants to find out? Nobody.
America should simply give Iran the bomb. That is the rational solution to the problem. Iran will get one regardless, and when it does it will lean on Russia for support. A nuclear Iran restores parity to the insanity of nuclear gamesmanship, and provides everybody with the same rational consequence to its foreign policy decisions. Being supported by America, an Iranian nuclear program is inoculated against a very real and probable Israeli threat. Iran would have no further use for its traditional tools of regional power like Hezbollah. This also guarantees China and India oil security, and checks the expansion of Russian influence over Iran which, incidentally, sits between Iraq and Afghanistan. America exchanges arms for oil market stability, and everybody wins.
But of course that won't happen, and for reasons that we all share intuitively, and for which we need no explanation. It simply won't. Instead, something else will happen. Something else unsustainable and inequitable, something that leaves a Versailles sized hole in it. Despite the desperate situation the earth finds itself in, where exponential growth demands exponential depletion of resources, a series of decisions will cause a series of actions that have more to do with dogma, religion, and nationalism than any kind of rational realism.
Just like it has always been, with the exciting addition of game theory and nuclear warheads. Ugh.
1 | 2
