The question everyone asked was how much in advance did the Chinese leaders know about the incident.  If they were indeed aware of it, did they approve such a precipitous action?  If they were not, then how far would they go in their attempts at controlling the spillover effects of North Korea’s seemingly irrational action on U.S.-China ties, and what actions would they take in order to avoid its repetition in the future?

 From North Korea’s perspective, it went to the extreme of shelling the South Korean territory (even though it was a part of disputed territory between the two Koreas), because it was annoyed at continued U.S.-South Korea military exercises.  It was highly critical of those exercises.  Another explanation is that Pyongyang raised the level of crisis a few notches because it wanted to restart the Six-Party talks and use that dialogue to “legitimize” the succession of Kim Jong-Un after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il.  From the South Korean point of view, the military exercise was not aimed at provoking the North.  Its chief intent was to keep the U.S.-South alliance vibrant, vital, and visible within the region. 

The fact of the matter, however, is that both Koreas are half right in their claims.  The military exercise did have an element of coercion of the North, which decided to act perhaps just to show its bravado that it was not intimidated by such measures.  On the other hand, Pyongyang used that opportunity to intimidate the South, knowing the limited countermeasures both the United States and South Korea would exercise in order to not worsen the situation.  More to the point, Kim Jong Il certainly wishes to restart the Six-Party Talks without unraveling his nuclear weapons program.  And this is one way to achieve his objective.

The chief problem related to the Korean conflict is that, even though it remains one of the last remnants of the Cold War conflict, at least from China’s perspective, there remains considerable doubt that it may (or should) be resolved.  Chinese leaders have demonstrated their intrinsic capabilities of operating as great chess players in their dealings with the United States, both in the regions of close proximity as well as in distant areas. 

Other than the Korean conflict, Northeast Asia is not an area of high contention between the United States and the PRC.  Through calling the East China Sea part of its “core interests,” China might be testing the extent and nature of the U.S. response.  The Obama administration’s lack of hesitation in calling China’s bluff was indeed a deft move.  By asserting its own resolve to stand by Japan in the wake of a military conflict with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island, Washington has taken up the gauntlet.  At the same time, America’s overtures toward Vietnam and Indonesia are clear-cut signals that the lone superpower is not interested in acting as the alleged “declining hegemon” of Asia.  If anything, America’s clout in East Asia is showing palpable promise of an upward move.  Vietnam is an active seeker of a nexus with America as its own countermeasures against China’s threatening maneuvers.  At the same time, Indonesia is very much in quest of a major role in East Asia.  Washington not only welcomes that role, but is poised to play a crucial role in it.  China is also interested in getting close to Indonesia, while, at the same time, doing all it can to avoid any mounting tensions in East Asia. 

Given these realities, China would deal with the Korean conflict with utmost care.  The conflict involving the two Koreas is important for several reasons. 

First, even though the conflict is old, the reasons for its high relevance are related to the fact that the United States – an ally of South Korea – and the PRC – the chief supporter of North Korea – are very much embroiled in competition for dominance in East Asia.  For the United States, that dominance has historical roots; any diminution in its modalities would be construed as flagrant evidence of already faltering American hegemony in Asia.

Second, and related to the preceding, is the fact that, despite its heavy involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the intensely future-oriented American strategic planners have already switched their focus to Asia.  The general buzz, even among civilian American strategic thinkers, has been that the mid-to-late 19th Century and the entire 20th Century represented an era of Europe-centrism.  Two World Wars were fought primarily involving European states.  The overall cynosure of the two superpowers during the Cold War years was not to allow any major retrenchment of their sphere of influence in Europe. 

The 21st Century, on the contrary, will be all about Asia, especially as the United States is struggling so massively to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wars that seem to be playing a major role in bleeding the U.S. economy toward a potential collapse, while struggling to stay ahead of China in the realm of economics and international trade.

In the absence of any major war, the United States and China will only “duke it out” on trade and other related issues in order to bankroll their military superiority and also to win allies and friends on that vast continent.  For the U.S., those maneuvers are all about sustaining its long-standing military dominance in Asia, while for the PRC, it is all about surpassing the United States in the field of military superiority (given the fact that China’s economic rise is much more impressive that the current rate of its military rise). 

 Given the nature of Sino-American competition in Asia, how the Korean conflict will be resolved is of great import to both Beijing and Washington.  If its resolution leaves North Korea armed with nuclear weapons, then China may be able to focus its attention on other heady issues.  Even then, it will have to keep the North Korean leaders under greater restraint than it has in the past.

Third, in the competition between the United States and China, countries like Japan, India, Indonesia, and to a lesser extent, middle-to-small powers like Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines will play a crucial role in deciding which superpower they will favor: the United States, a superpower that is increasingly looking like the power of a bygone era, or the PRC, which is similarly appearing to be a superpower of the future. 

In this competition, Japan and India have already cast their lot with the United States for reasons of their own.  Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, even though by and large remain pro-American, their loyalties may still be up for grabs when China decides to unleash the full power of its checkbook diplomacy.  The power of that diplomacy has already proved a formidable reality in Africa and Latin America.

 The plus side of the U.S. hegemony stems from the fact that, as a rule, it is what John Ikenberry calls a “constitutional hegemony.”  The American predilections for democracy and institution building create within the region of its dominance an order “that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit ‘“constitutional’ characteristics.”   Under this hegemony, countries are not threatened in the exercise of their sovereignty.  That certainly has been the case in post-World War II East Asia, as has also been the case in the Western Europe.   

China’s emerging hegemony, on the other hand, is viewed with considerable anxiety by the East Asian states, especially when the PRC starts to add new issues to its list of “core interests” on which it shows little inclination for further negotiation.  However, there is that hope on the part of various Asian countries that China’s preference for a negotiated solution to the Korean conflict would also be manifested in other heady issues involving China and its East Asian neighbors.

 China did not disappoint its East Asian neighbors when it started to urge both South Korea and the United States to restart the Six Party talks immediately after North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.  The Obama administration, after showing initial hesitation, is leaning toward adopting that course.  Right now, it is insisting that Pyongyang accede to the demands from Seoul and Washington and agree to unravel its nuclear weapons program.  However, they both know that it is not likely to happen.  The only way North Korea can ensure its survival is by remaining a hermit and Stalinist state with a powerful leadership cult.  Under such a scenario, the possession of nuclear weapons serves as a major guarantee of regime survival. 

In the final analysis, the best possible option for China is also a continuation of the status quo in Pyongyang, with North Korea’s nuclear weapons intact.  Both Washington and Seoul also know that reality.  Thus, they both will have to eventually agree to the status quo, provided that North Korea remains under strict constraints – that can only be guaranteed by China – not to proliferate nuclear weapons,  and/or nuclear know-how to other countries that top America’s list of “concerned countries” – most prominently, Iran.

These cables uncover an unsuccessful U.S. effort since 2007 to transfer highly enriched uranium from a highly secretive Pakistani nuclear reactor.  Americans remain fearful that the uranium might be diverted for the production of an “illicit nuclear device,” meaning a device manufactured by al-Qaida. According to the U.S. Ambassador in Pakistan, Ann W. Patterson, that country was not even willing to schedule a meeting with the American nuclear technicians for a possible discussion, fearing that such a meeting would be misconstrued by its mass media as America’s attempt to take nuclear weapons from Pakistan. 

The unstated part of this episode is that a virtual lack of trust between the United States —which claims to be so dependent on winning its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan on its Pakistani “ally” — and  Pakistan — whose cooperation is truly vital for any American victory but is getting increasingly difficult in the making. 

One cable gets to the heart of the problem when it describes the dilemma of the Obama administration “to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners and against al-Qaida.”  There is little newsworthiness related to this American dilemma, except that stakes for America are very high this time.  It only adds to the precarious nature of the relationship between Washington and Islamabad regarding an ongoing war, which, in turn, will decide whether President Barack Obama will win a second term or will go down in the history as another “one-term” president.

As if Pakistan does not have enough trouble winning the trust of its major Western interlocutor, the United States, the WikiLeaks reports a cable when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia manifests his utter contempt of President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, who is as popular in Pakistan as the proverbial plague, but who continues his dismal role as the head of that state. 

Speaking to an Iraqi official, King Abdullah expressed his love for Iraq while, at the same time conveyed his contempt for Zardari.  He was reported to have said to that official: “You and Iraq are in my heart, but (referring to Zardari) that man is not.” The king depicted the Pakistani president as “the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress,” and added, “When the head is rotten it affects the whole body.”

It is hard to estimate how much damage the Saudi monarch’s contempt for Zardari will do to the prospects for his continued survival.  It is possible that the Saudi rulers have nurtured similar sentiments toward the past rulers of Pakistan, but continued their friendship and support for that country through generous financial assistance. 

What is different in this particular instance is that Saudi Arabia has little doubt about how irrelevant Zardari has become for Pakistan’s complex relations with the United States and to the war in Afghanistan, which remains an issue of high strategic import for Saudi Arabia, and that fact has become a part of international public knowledge thanks to the WikiLeaks.  Under such circumstances, one can state with reasonable certainty that Zardari’s days in power may be numbered.

What should worry Zardari is the fact that, with all its public commitment to democracy, the United States has unabashedly demonstrated in the world of Islam that it supports that form of government only as long as it serves its strategic purpose.  However, when it does not, America has little use for it. 

One can recall how easily the Bush administration dismissed the election of Hamas in occupied Palestine in January 2006 and showered its diplomatic goodies on Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement, which had little electoral credibility among the Palestinian populace.  Hamas refused to negotiate with Israel, while Abbas demonstrated his near eagerness to carry out negotiations with Israel, even though his organization stopped being a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in January 2006. 

Applying the “Hamas rule” to Pakistan, it is very likely that the Zardari government may come to an end, with another weak civilian government taking office.  In the meantime, the Obama administration would continue to do its real business with the Pakistani Army, which, along with Allah and America, always played a crucial role in the continued existence of Pakistan.

Iran refuses to close down its nuclear research program; and, despite all its assertions that it is not interested in making nuclear weapons, Washington believes that that is precisely the direction Iran is heading.

Iran also has a very active ballistic missile program. And the United States is afraid that it is just a matter of time before Iran will not only put all the systems together to build a bomb, but it will also be able to integrate its nuclear weapons with its delivery system.

There is also much substance to the United States’ suggestion that Iran might have already acquired a bomb-making capability and might be waiting on an appropriate time for its “breakout” announcement — a term used, in the parlance of nuclear proliferation, to describe a surprise announcement of a country whereby it renounces the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) and uses it capabilities to build a small nuclear weapon.

The most striking aspect of the Obama administration is that, in the past several weeks, while it was involved in issuing its nuclear posture review and signing a new nuclear arms reduction treaty and then holding a “summit” on the issue of “loose nukes,” it never interrupted its focus on Iran.

Russia, while signing the nuclear arms reduction treaty, falsely created an impression that it was willing to side with the United States in imposing sanctions on Iran. A more correct interpretation of Russia’s attitude toward Iran is that it still wants to discuss the option of negotiating with that country, and is not at all interested in imposing the kind of harsh sanctions that the pro-Israeli elements in the United States would love to see implemented.

The same thing is also true for China. In fact, after the loose nukes summit, China has made it clear that it is not as much in the corner of the United States as the American media made it out to be immediately prior to, and in the aftermath of, that summit.

The presence of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in the thick of policy discussions on Iran becomes important when one considers his long experience in the realm of national security, and the fact that he is very much in the forefront of developing a comprehensive strategy.

However, the role of Admiral Mike Mullen remains a source of concern when one considers the fact that one of his top “informal” advisers on the Middle East is a woman by the name of Dr. Lani Kass, a holder of Israeli and American citizenship. One is befuddled by the fact that a holder of dual citizenship is given top Department of Defense clearance, while Israel’s use of such persons as spies against us is a known fact. Dubbed as “Dr. Strangelove made in Israel,” an essay written by a former CIA agent, Philip Giraldi, describes Kass as rabidly anti-Iran and an equally staunch Islamophobe.

As reported by Giraldi, Kass told her U.S. Air Force audience that, “the long war against the Islamists will end ‘when they learn to love their children more than they hate us,’ a comment originally attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.” On another occasion she said, “radical Muslims hate the western world because Europe took their dominant political position away and they want it back.” This is a diatribe that Bernard Lewis has been peddling to the Western audience in the name of his “expert analysis.”

She is also on record as being more audacious than she was in the afore-cited quotes. This time, she disposed of the nuance between Muslims and radical Muslims and included all Muslims in her fictional “expertise” on the world of Islam. Giraldi notes, “In her speech she explained that Muslims hate western culture and want to dominate the world, adding that because radical Islam has a ‘culture of death’ all those who do not submit to Islam must die, an assertion so absurd that one suspects her political analysis derives from the Free Republic website.” Not surprisingly, no one in her audience questioned the veracity of that comment or demanded any evidence.
Regarding Iran, Kass is totally sold on the use of military option. She is reported to have said, “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?” In other words, she is very much gung ho on going to war against Iran. Her comments remind one of two other women who were way ahead of even the Bush administration in their fictional belief that, between 2001 and 2003, Iraq was fully engaged in making weapons of mass destruction: Judith Miller of the New York Times and Laurie Mylroie, who coauthored a book on Iraq. A detailed narrative of the roles of these two women is provided in Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.
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The question that is uppermost in my mind is why has Admiral Mullen decided to rely on such a highly partisan source for advice on the Middle East. Don’t we already have enough of a horrible image on being extremely one-sided when it comes to the strategic affairs of that region? More to the point, why is Admiral Mullen not getting his cue from the White House, which seems bent on pursuing policy options to take into consideration, first and foremost, American interests?

If America’s miserable record of going to war against Iraq on imaginary evidence, the cherry picking of intelligence, and in some instances even deliberately relying on highly deceptive sources (see the above-cited source), the only option that stands out in dealing with Iran is to avoid the military option at all costs. The only viable option is to negotiate, negotiate, or negotiate with that country.

First and foremost, it unwittingly underscores the fact that most of the world of Islam is on fire. Just look at the trans-Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. To the east of that continent, the Arabian Peninsula has been experiencing increased amounts of turbulence in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Across the Persian Gulf, Iran does not look too stable; its two neighboring states, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are where the United States is fighting its war against religious extremism. That phrase is President Barack Obama’s euphemism for George W. Bush’s GWOT.

If you continue travelling east of Afghanistan to Central Asia, it appears serene. But don’t be fooled by that palpable serenity, and certainly don’t tell the Chinese that their neighboring states are likely to remain stable. Leaders in Beijing (with the full cooperation of the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) are being proactive in suppressing the Muslim Uighurs, who are yearning to secede from China in its Western province of Xinjiang. Continued turbulence in the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation is also making the Chinese leader very nervous.

The second aspect of the current FP issue that I noted (but remained totally unimpressed about) is what type of strategy the US government should use in its ongoing wars in Muslim lands. The Surge strategy, which has been given credit for stabilizing Iraq (even though that credit remains only partially correct), is being applied in Afghanistan. Edward Luttwak, a U.S. military strategist and historian, argues for the use of strategic bombing in Afghanistan as the best way to deal with the Taliban. He wants the United States to arm the Afghan anti-Taliban militias to the teeth, and to let them do the fighting and dying instead of U.S. soldiers. That worked in the 1980s against the Soviet Union because it was occupying Afghanistan. However, the United States is envisaged now by the Afghans as the occupying force. So, arming the Afghans to the teeth might also result in increased U.S. deaths if or when they were to turn their guns against their American masters. He has completely glossed over that fact. Regarding Luttwak’s suggestion of the use of strategic bombing, I am amazed at how callous some Western strategic thinkers remain about the insignificance of the so-called huge collateral damage that will surely stem from that measure in any part of Afghanistan. While advocating strategic bombing, he has nothing to say whether the US should continue to use the Surge strategy or completely abandon it. Obviously, arming the anti-Taliban Afghan will defeat the very rationale of General Stanley McChrystal’s Surge strategy. Bad suggestion, Ed! My advice to you is that you need to clean your foggy strategic lenses!

The mega-conflict of the 21st Century – how to deal with Islamist insurgency and how to “cure” the failing and failed Muslim states – defies any consensus on the modalities of a comprehensive solution. In the absence of that consensus, the use of “kinetic” force remains the sole tactic to fight it. However, relying on this tactic alone will not guarantee any victory for the United States.

The United States is manifesting a similar amount of eagerness about imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which has remained much more defiant than Saddam Hussein ever was in terms of challenging the America’s dominance of the Middle East. It is important to ask whether Iran will meet a similar fate as Iraq, perhaps not a direct military invasion, but other actions whose purpose would still be to bring about regime change. President Obama has already stated that his administration would consider aggressive sanctions on Iran.

Iran remains the last major state that consistently rejects any proposition of kowtowing to American diktat or its hegemony in the Middle East. It has accumulated ample clout in that region in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The United States, either for propaganda reasons or merely in order to underscore the nature of Iran’s anti-Americanism, consistently harped on the growing Iranian influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, if the U.S. assertion of Iran’s role in the political turbulence in Iraq between 2005 and 2007 was true, it can be safely concluded that Iran played a crucial role in America’s decision to actively seek an exit strategy. After all, it was largely as a result of intense political instability emanating from the violent role played by the Iraqi insurgents and Islamists groups that forced Washington to calculate that it could not stay in Iraq for long. Iran had strong ties with a number of those insurgents. That was a coup de grace from the perspective of Iran’s interests in Iraq, because the neoconservatives – working as the brains of the Bush administration – had an elaborate plan to make the entire Middle East a part of pax-Americana.

Iran’s military and material support of Hezbollah was very crucial in that organization’s ability to withstand the punishing Israeli attack on Lebanon during the short war of July-August 2006. The resultant general perception in the Arab world was that Hezbollah won that round of the battle against the Jewish state. Iran’s strategic dominance in that region was emerging as a new phenomenon regarding which neither Washington nor Jerusalem could produce effective countermeasures. Consequently, U.S.-Iran ties became even more antagonistic than before.

A major strategic shift from the Bush administration to the Obama administration in the Middle East and South Asia is that, in terms of conducting military operations, the U.S. would rely on a multilateral approach. The military operations conducted under the auspices of NATO in Afghanistan emerged as the best multilateral vehicle. However, the constraining aspect of the role of NATO is that it cannot be used anywhere without the approval of the entire Alliance; and that approval is very hard to secure. That fact ties the hands of any future American president who would develop any notion of adventurism a la George W. Bush in Iraq. That reality also prevents the United States from taking any military action against Iran, even in the wake of its intransigence about abandoning its nuclear research program.

The preceding constraint might be a major reason why the United States would heavily rely on the use of covert operations. President Obama has become the most prolific user of such operations by regularly ordering drone attacks against Islamist groups in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. One can only guess how many other covert operations involving U.S. Special Forces are being carried out presently in South Asia, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries.

Because of an inordinate technological gap between the United States and the Islamist forces in the aforementioned countries, the use of covert operations has emerged as the most convenient weapon of the strong. As long as American soldiers are not returning home in body bags, U.S. public opinion remains highly supportive of such operations. That is why the United States is likely – if it hasn’t already been doing so – to use covert tactics in Iran in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

According to a report prepared in July 2008 by the muckraking journalist, Seymour Hersh, the United States secretly allocated up to $400 million to underwrite covert operations against the Islamic Republic. Such operations “involved ‘working with opposition groups and passing money.’ The Finding provided a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong.”

The chief problem that President Barack Obama faced when he first became president is that there is no proven record of diplomatic encounters between the United States and Iran since the days of President Jimmy Carter. Even Carter – one of the most ardent promoters of justice and constitutionalism in the Middle East and the most successful former president – did his best to oust the fledgling Islamic Republic in 1980, while he was still in office. All American presidents who followed him spent a lot time and capital in their attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic, even by going to the extreme of cooperating with Saddam Hussein during his brutal aggression against Iran in 1981.

In the wake of Iran’s refusal to buckle under the pressure of the United States to abandon its nuclear research program, Obama could have made a courageous decision to abandon the covert operations that Bush had started. However, the United States’ heavy reliance on covert operations in Pakistan tells us that Obama envisions such operations as safe alternatives to any bold new measures, which still might not persuade Iran to cooperate with the United States. In the meantime, the hyperactive Israeli lobby has made sure that any actions other than imposition of harsh economic sanctions are unfailingly condemned as “appeasement” of the Ayatollahs.

It should also be noted that the Iranian leaders did nothing to make their own case in the court of the world’s public opinion when they seem to have fraudulently stolen the election from the reformist candidate, Hussein Moussavi, last June. In the aftermath of those elections, it was interesting to watch how adamant the anti-Iranian forces inside the U.S. Congress were in their insistence that the President strongly condemn the Iranian leaders for allegedly stealing the elections. One should contrast that eagerness with the deafening silence inside the U.S. government following the murder of the Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, allegedly perpetrated by Mossad in Dubai.

Given the strategic environment that is marked with a high degree of hostilities and intense distrust on both sides, the chances of the resolution of the nuclear program-related crisis through peaceful means are slim, at best. The United States has even attempted to go to the extent of creating Arab endorsements for its harsh economic sanctions on Iran. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, went to Riyadh asking the government to persuade China to agree to sanctions on Iran, which Saudi Arabia wisely rejected. However, Gates was not about to give up. He proceeded on the same mission to the UAE. His chances of gaining a somewhat favorable reception from that country are pretty decent, given its long-term tensed relations with Iran. But the UAE is not Saudi Arabia. Even its endorsement of U.S. sanctions on Iran would not sway any other major Arab state.

As the United States’ diplomatic choices regarding Iran narrow, Israeli pressure for military action against that country is likely to intensify. The question is whether or how long Obama is likely to withstand it. A lot depends on whether he becomes politically stronger as a result of a potential passage of the healthcare bill in the next few weeks.

At least for now, the government of Benyamin Netanyahu has been digging a diplomatic hole for itself by allegedly orchestrating the murder of the Hamas leader in Dubai. To further deteriorate its case, Israel, during a visit of the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, announced the building of new housing projects in East Jerusalem. However, no one should underestimate the Israeli hubris concerning its strong support inside the U.S. Congress. The Jewish state has long understood the nature of its political support inside the U.S. and has assiduously worked through its tool, AIPAC, to solidify that support. Just based on that fact, chances are high that it would push President Obama hard to take military action against Iran. How wise is such an action likely to be from the viewpoint of American strategic interests in the Middle East? It would be very foolish, indeed. However, Israel has not been known to waste time thinking about what is best for America in the Middle East. Friends of Israel inside the United States incessantly, and without even giving it a second thought, confuse Israeli interests with American interests. So, the world should not rule out the high probability of U.S. military action against Iran in the coming months, which would create another hell for American strategic interests in that region.

The real test of President Barack Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will be whether he can persuade them to support U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations. Obama is reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached the topic with Russia in the recent past for the same purpose, but with little success. Iran denies wanting to join the nuclear club, but Washington has no faith in those denials.

By the same token, the United States has to think long and hard about taking military action again Iran while it is about to increase its troop deployment in Afghanistan. At the present time, American forces can become easy targets of Iranian asymmetric-war-related activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a time when the political tide in Afghanistan is already heavily favoring the Taliban, and when internal violence in Iraq appears to be escalating.  For a predominantly Shia country, Iran has shown remarkable pragmatism in cooperating with intensely anti-American Sunni Islamist groups in the past to make matters worse for American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under these circumstances, a potentially effective option for the U.S. is to heavily lobby China and Russia to support U.N. sanctions on Iran. However, in this regard, both of those countries have major strategic agendas of their own related to Iran. First, Iran is a major source of energy supplies for China. Second, it serves as a major source of hard currency for Russian nuclear technology and other military weapons at a time when Russia’s economy remains heavily reliant on income from energy sources. Third, Iran looms large in both Chinese and Russian maneuvers for the evolution of a multipolar global order. As a state that has never accepted America’s dominant role in the Middle East, and as a country that retains major clout in Iraq and Lebanon and high popularity in Gaza for its support of Hamas, Iran has been indirectly promoting the Sino-Russian agenda of challenging America’s dominance in the Arab world and multipolarity.

At least for now, the Obama administration has scored a victory when it received the backing of Beijing and Moscow for an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution that censured Iran and ordered it to halt construction of a secret uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom. China’s support for this resolution was the result of Iran’s backtracking on a deal with the five-plus-one countries (Perm-5 of the UNSC plus Germany) for removing most of its nuclear fuel stocks abroad for the import of material needed for its medical research reactor.

The vote also came at a time when the American President, during his recent trip, was more than forthcoming in assuring China that the lone superpower has no intention of containing China. On the contrary, Obama stated that his administration is fully focused on engaging it. The overall tone of the global coverage of President Obama’s trip to China had all the ingredients to boost the self-confidence of the Chinese leadership that their country has indeed arrived on the global platform as the next candidate for superpowerdom.

Under these circumstances, China has no intention of ruining its moment of glory by refusing to cooperate with the United States just to please Iran. The most understated fact of Sino-Iranian relations is that Iran needs China more than the other way around. As much as China is in need of foreign energy sources, it also knows that, given the international sanction-ridden environment, Iran is quite eager to sell its oil and gas to China. Iran has also become an observer in the Sino-Russian-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is steadily acquiring a heightened global visibility. So, China can afford to play the seesaw version of first siding with Iran, then with the United States, and then calculating the ebb-and-flow of events before decding its next move.

The support of the aforementioned IAEA resolution by the dual-headed leadership in Russia—between President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin—was somewhat surprising, because, while Medvedev appears flexible in dealing with the United States, Putin is not. The latter is more resolute in asserting Russia’s role as a wannabe superpower. In a recent speech during the United Russia Party’s 11^th Congress, Medvedev criticized its “conservative” stance on a number of issues faced by Russia, and accentuated the urgent need for political modernization. He also stated that the United Russia “needs to step up and reform itself and put a halt to ‘administrative excesses’ within.” Those comments were given global coverage because Putin is the Chairman of that party. At least for now, there have been reports of evident friction between Medvedev and Putin.

It is hard to conclude whether Russia’s support of the IAEA resolution was an outcome of the split between Medvedev and Putin (who is known for his strong support of providing assistance to Iran as an integral aspect of his policy of Russia’s assertiveness), or whether that country is merely signaling Iran to be more forthcoming on the nuclear issue toward Perm-5-plus-one countries.

Iran’s behavior regarding the nuclear issue has become even more complicated as a result of its June 2009 presidential election, which has raised serious questions about the current nature of domestic support for that issue.

It is a well-known fact that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the “decider” on that issue, the Supreme Leader Ali Khameini is. But why is it that the Iranian representative was authorized to negotiate with the representatives of the Perm-5 plus one, and then Iran decided to backtrack on the deal that he made at the conclusion of those negotiations? The Janus-faced foreign policy of the Islamic Republic has always been a confusing variable for Western diplomats. It has become even more confusing as Iran is facing rising domestic tensions and the usual slogans of “death to America” are increasingly interspersed with slogans of “death to dictators” (the latter being Khameini and Ahmadinejad).  The Iranian leadership may very well be afraid to offer concessions to the Perm-5-plus-one countries that might be misconstrued, both inside and outside of Iran, as a sign of its wobbliness.

To add further perplexity to an already confused situation, the world is told that Iranian authorities confiscated the Nobel medal from its Nobel Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, one of the very faces of Iran that are recognized as reasons for hope and moderation in that country. Her husband was reportedly arrested and severely beaten by Iranian authorities. Iran has denied the report about the medal, but not about Ebadi’s husband.

As Iran is steadily heading on the road to even more confusion and chaos, President Obama’s task of negotiating with that country is becoming progressively more difficult. His strategy of developing a great power consensus on denuclearizing Iran emerges as a highly thoughtful and potentially most constructive one. However, what is not clear at this point is how far China and Russia are willing to go to cooperate with the United States regarding Iran, which remains a major actor in the strategic maneuvers of both Beijing and Moscow in the evolution of a multipolar global power arrangement.

So, the question is where is the threat to the U.S. security coming from?  There is no more USSR, no more Cold War, and no more “peer competitors.”  There is only one country that even comes close to being called a peer competitor, save the People’s Republic of China.  Even that country is not interested in militarily challenging the lone superpower.

Nuclear deterrence—the doctrine that stated that only a potential use of nuclear weapons would deter both the US and the USSR against attacking each other during the Cold War years—is not relevant anymore.  The USSR has imploded and its chief successor, Russia, is not a threat of any significance to the United States.  Under these circumstances, the lone superpower is using nuclear deterrence merely as a symbol of its awesome power.  There is no country left that could challenge it by using conventional power.  And the use of nuclear power against the United States by any nation-state will surely result in massive retaliation, which no nation-state wishes to experience.

However, for countries like North Korea and Iran, the concept of nuclear deterrence carries the same meaning as it did to deter the two superpowers during the Cold War years.  Both Pyongyang and Tehran feel that if they acquire it by developing nuclear weapons of their own, their regime survival is guaranteed.  They have seen what the United States did to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, knowing full well that it had no nuclear weapons.

Consequently, Pyongyang has already become a country with nuclear weapons.  A general understanding is that it possesses somewhere between 6-10 nuclear weapons.  Thus, the United States has proven the truth underlying the doctrine of nuclear deterrence: a nuclear-armed nation-state is not likely to be attacked even by the lone superpower.

Iran, on the contrary, falls into a different category.  It has not yet developed nuclear weapons of its own, but seems to be heading in that direction, its denials to the contrary notwithstanding.  Iran seems to be operating on the same unstated premise that its regime survival will only be guaranteed if it acquires nuclear weapons.

For Iran, the fear of American intention to bring about regime change is not the result of any paranoia.  It had experienced it in 1953, when the United States and the U.K. cooperated to overthrow a constitutionally elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq.  When the presidential election of June 2009 came under global scrutiny and controversy, the top leaders of Iran reacted harshly to protestors.  The fact that the CIA and British Intelligence spent a lot of money organizing street protests in 1953–which became the chief source of overthrowing the government of Dr. Mosaddeq–was very much on the minds of the current Iranian rulers when they ruthlessly put down protestors in the streets of urban Iran.  

Even though in 2009, Iran is a power of considerably higher significance than it was in 1953, its military power is totally insignificant when compared to the United States.  Moreover, in is made in Washington to take on Iran, at least purely from the perspective of the use of military power, Iran will be a sure loser. 

Iran’s considerable power stems from what its resistance forces can do to any invading forces once the main military operation comes to an end, very much like what happened in Iraq after the fall of Saddam’s regime.

In 2009, in the aftermath of the election-related instability, if anything, the rulers of Iran are likely to be even more determined than ever before to develop nuclear weapons.  Despite President Barack H. Obama’s overtures towards Iran, the fear of potential military action by United States against their country looms large among current Iranian rulers.

As they examine the whole spectrum of options at their disposal, the idea of developing nuclear weapons still appears attractive, despite the risks of an Israeli attack or even a U.S. military action.  The only question is not whether Iran would develop its own nuclear weapons, but exactly when it would do it. 

The only way the Iranian regime’s survival is guaranteed is if the regime acquires nuclear deterrence capabilities of its own.  That seems to be the dominant thinking, especially among Iran’s hardliners.  For Iran, the acquisition of nuclear deterrence means creating a “permanent” constraint or an obstacle in the way of the United States’ desire to bring about regime change.

China and Russia are expected to cooperate with the U.S. in promoting its nuclear nonproliferation agenda at a time when the lone superpower has successfully railroaded the members of the Nuclear Supply Group (NSG) into allowing India’s access to cutting edge technology—including nuclear technology—while it remained a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  The hypocrisy involving American preferences on the nuclear issue is only too obvious to the PRC and Russia.  Whether or not they will help the U.S. regarding North Korea and Iran has everything to do with the strategic agendas that those two countries are currently promoting.

America’s efforts to keep adding economic sanctions on Iran have become a victim of deteriorating U.S.-Russia ties.  Russia is the chief supplier of nuclear technology to Iran.   In that capacity, and as one of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members, it can also veto any U.S.-sponsored sanction on Iran that it does not like.  Thus, Washington has to make sure that Russia is on its side before new sanctions are voted on in the world body.

In the days prior to the Russian military action against Georgia, Russia appeared willing to cooperate with the U.S. on Iran. However, ties between Moscow and Washington are experiencing a new downturn.  President Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to send troops into South Ossetia to forcefully reintegrate the breakaway province of South Ossetia into his country, created a harsh retaliation by Russia.  Since then, the continued enlargement of NATO has become an added source of anger in Russia.  Russian leaders are of the view that Saakashvili was given wrong signals by the U.S., whereby he believed that he could militarily challenge Russia, and Russia would back off of supporting the separation of South Ossetia from Georgia.  In view of these escalated tensions, Russia has acquired a nuanced position.  It will continue talking with the U.S. on Iran but only to bide time for the expiration of Bush’s term in office.  After that, Russia will deal with the next U.S. President regarding Iran.

When one examines Russia’s frustrations stemming from America’s resolve to enlarge NATO all the way to its borders, it is only natural that Russia would also be inclined to complicate and even undermine America’s agenda involving Iran’s nuclear aspirations.  About the only way Moscow and Washington will be able to cooperate in disciplining Iran is when Russia is convinced that such cooperation would be beneficial to Moscow on other important issues of mutual strategic significance.  At least from Russia’s point of view, the issue of the nuclear aspirations of Iran has become too obdurate an issue for the United States to resolve without cooperation from Moscow.  Of course, the United States has the option of taking military action against Iran, or giving Israel the nod to do so.  However, the conclusion that enormous instability and turbulence would stem from such actions is serving as deterrence for the Bush administration.

China has been cooperating with the U.S. on the North Korean nuclear weapons conflict.  However, the ties between Washington and Pyongyang have been so heavily characterized by acrimony, suspicion, and outright fear of nuclear annihilation by the United States that no ally or friend of North Korea can persuade that country to unravel its nuclear weapons program, and especially dismantle its nuclear weapons, merely to fulfill American demands regarding nuclear nonproliferation.  In addition, the PRC must also calculate how far it should go in pushing Kim Jong Il to accept American demands.

One must also keep in mind another important variable.  North Korea is a Stalinist state, whose destruction has been an integral part of America’s foreign policy objectives throughout the course of the Cold War.  Even though Washington no longer pursues the Cold War-related agenda in its relations with China and Russia (Russia has begun to publicly dispute that perspective in its interpretation of America’s resolve to enlarge NATO even in the 21st Century), the Cold War between North Korea and the United States has never ended.  Thus, regardless of how many security guarantees are offered to North Korea by the United States, it will not believe that it, indeed, is safe from a sudden U.S. decision to launch a nuclear attack.

Under these circumstances, no one in Washington, Seoul, Beijing, Moscow, or Tokyo wishes to face the fact that the only way North Korea’s nuclear weapons will be dismantled is when that Stalinist state collapses or implodes.  However, admitting that description as a high probability and not continuing an effort to find a political solution for the U.S.-North Korea nuclear conflict cannot become an option for the current or the next U.S. administration or the other parties to the Six-Party Talks.

Finding solutions to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear conflicts have an intricate similarity and dissimilarity.  The similarity part of the equation is that those conflicts require the cooperation of two countries (China and Russia) whose ties with the U.S. are not steady or sturdy.  For that reason, they might not fully share America’s urgency to resolve those conflicts.  Alternatively, China and Russia would want to be helpful but only to postpone, if not to avoid altogether, the implementation of potential American military action.  That appears to be Russia’s rationale for cooperating with the U.S. on the Iran nuclear conflict.

The dissimilarity involving these issues goes along the following lines.  In the case of North Korea, China has influence but not infinite influence.  In the final analysis, North Korea will decide when to even say to China, “Thanks but no thanks.”  Since North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, it can afford to tell even its major interlocutor to mind its own business without fear of military action by the U.S.

Iran, on the contrary, is not in a similarly advantageous position.  Since it does not possess nuclear weapons, it is dependent on Russian (and Chinese) support to ensure that the watered-down versions of any economic sanctions are passed, if at all.  Alternatively, following the North Korean example of dealing with the PRC, Iran may tell Russia to mind its own business, but then it remains vulnerable to a U.S. or Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Ironically, this very reality makes the case for those who have always argued that the only way one can stand up to the United States is to possess nuclear weapons.  That also was one of the motivating factors—even though not the dominant one—in the thinking of India’s development of nuclear weapons.  A nuclear-armed Kim Jong Il can afford to remain defiant of the United States.  A non-nuclear Iran cannot.

The United States is an old practitioner of nuclear brinkmanship, a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.  Under this practice of diplomacy, pressure tactics and ambiguous threats to use nuclear weapons—short of firing a nuclear weapon—were used to bring about results to America’s liking.  Its detractors called this exercise pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster.  The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, likened it to a “game of chicken,” whereby one party is forced to “chicken out.”

In a similar situation, the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush exercised more of a policy of carrots and sticks than of nuclear brinkmanship against North Korea.  The chief reason for that was a general understanding that Kim Jong Il already possessed nuclear weapons.  In the case of Iran, the nuanced use of carrot and stick is intermittently present, with a constant and unambiguous iteration of the mantra, “all options are on the table.”  That, in essence, is what America’s nuclear brinkmanship against Iran is all about. 

This new report regarding the availability of nuclear weapons design promises an intensification of that brinkmanship.  The chief reason is the fact that the Bush administration’s time clock is ticking.  It seems to be working under self-induced pressure (and constant urging from Israel) to take military actions against Iran before its term runs out.

The latest report about the global availability of nuclear design, even if it has not triggered loud alarm bells, has certainly captured the world’s attention.  The recently discovered blueprints resemble a nuclear weapon developed and tested by Pakistan.  The Pakistani officials maintain that Dr. A. Q. Khan—Pakistan’s “father” of their nuclear weapons—did not have any access to that country’s nuclear design.

However, there is little doubt that blueprints of nuclear weapons have been in the possession of Libya, North Korea, and even Iran.  There is no confusion about the major role played by the so-called “Khan network” of global nuclear smuggling in the sale and dissemination of nuclear know-how.  The least known aspects of that issue are how much the government of Pakistan has been involved in those activities; and, more to the point, how much of that network still maintains access to even more advanced information regarding nuclear weapon designs.

The Pakistani government has been least cooperative in allowing the IAEA—the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency—access to Dr. Khan, who has recently retracted his previous confession of involvement in the proliferation of nuclear weapon know-how, claiming that he was forced to make such statements under pressure from the regime of General Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan’s major problem related to this issue is a serious lack of credibility.  Dr. Khan’s role in providing North Korea the knowledge of nuclear weapons design has to have at least a tacit endorsement of the government in Islamabad.  One only has to recall how much of the ballistic and cruise missile technology has been transferred from North Korea to Pakistan in the past.  The least Pakistan could have done, in return, was to pass on to the North Koreans the bomb designs and advanced centrifuges.  This type of nuclear quid pro quo has been around for a long time among countries that have mastered nuclear weapons technology. 

The United States lent a helping hand to the U.K. and to France in their emergence as nuclear weapons states in the 1940s and 1950s.  France played a crucial role in the highly secretive nuclear weaponization of Israel in the 1960s.  Israel, in turn, had a clandestine role in the nuclear weaponization of the former apartheid government of South Africa.  Happily, South Africa abandoned its nuclear weapons program before handing over political power to its rightful African majority.

The American fear is that Iran has already acquired advanced knowledge of nuclear weaponization and, under appropriate international circumstances, would surprise the world one day by declaring that it possesses nuclear weapons, as North Korea did in February 2005. 

That is one reason the Bush administration has intensified its nuclear brinkmanship on Iran during President George W. Bush’s so-called farewell tour of Europe.  During that tour, the United States let the world know that it has established a bilateral front of nuclear brinkmanship with France against Iran.  For now, the focus of that activity is issuing of further economic sanctions.  However, the threat of the use of force is going to be repeated with purposeful ambiguity.

So, from Iran’s point of view, this new disclosure of dissemination of nuclear weapons design has come at a very inappropriate time. The fact that the technological information about bomb designs significantly shortens the time needed to build the weapons has pretty much nullified the previous intelligence reports that Iran might be ten or more years away from developing nuclear weapons.  What should also be kept in mind is that similar types of estimates were bandied about regarding Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons during the early 1990s.  Then it was found out that Saddam Hussein was considerably closer to developing those weapons than was widely reported.

The general expectations are that the Iranian leaders are not likely to cease and desist their nuclear research program.  It is a matter of conjecture whether the Bush administration will take the decision of limited military action against Iran within the next few weeks or months, thereby forcing its successor to commit strongly to remaining in Iraq.  The advantages for the lone superpower of not blinking against Iran—an important tactic of nuclear brinkmanship of the 1950s—are not in doubt.  The U.S. has an enormous military superiority over Iran.  However, there is no doubt that, if attacked, Iran will launch its asymmetric war against the U.S. troops in Iraq and against Israel, who remains the foremost cheerleader for attacking Iran before Bush’s time in office runs out. 

In the realm of asymmetric warfare, Iran might have some unknown advantages against the lone superpower.  But the exercise of brinkmanship by a nuclear weapons state against a non-nuclear power is certainly not likely to make West Asia a stable region anytime soon.