Any teacher that taught high school or received students
that came from high school can tell you a story or two about the bully that was
too cowardly to personally interfere with the lives of others, and so did his
thing in a somewhat different fashion. Instead of pulling the pranks himself,
he identified and recruited the one or two naive individuals who agreed to
carry out his plans while he sat in the shadows, and stayed above suspicion.
This is how things used to be in the schools long ago, but
having retired from teaching, I cannot say whether or not they continue to be
the same today as they were then. What I can say, however, is that this is the
way I see things happening today in the places where the adults used to run the
show – and run it in a mature fashion. It seems to me that the adolescents of a
bygone era have grown physically but have remained stunted mentally, and have
taken over the ship of state, which they now run like a schoolyard.
And there is another difference between the old days and
today. It used to be that knowing what will happen to them if they got caught,
the bullies of the past did what they did discretely so as not to get caught.
The same cannot be said today because what used to be forbidden is now done by
everyone, and has thus become the new normal. And when something is normal, it
is not forbidden anymore. You can see an example of this in the article that
was written by Ray Takeyh under the title: “The U.S.
undercuts its own power in Iran
nuclear talks” and published in the Washington Post on February 17, 2014.
Like the cowardly high school bully of a bygone era, Takeyh is
here trying to recruit nerdish America
to take on the job of rendering life miserable for Iran . To do this, he adopts an air
of disdain as he describes what is about to happen on the international scene.
He puts it this way: “In an all-too-familiar ritual of diplomacy...” A scorn of
this kind is a signal to the nerd that he will soon be called upon to act on
something.
But what is it that the bully is scornful about? It is this:
“There will be lofty rhetoric about mutual understanding and mutual
compromise.” This is to describe a situation that ought to be viewed as
irksome, according to our bullying author. He is mocking it as if he were
saying: “What is this lofty, shlofty thing they talk about, anyway?” It is as
if he is warning that America is giving Iran the same respect it gave the old
Soviet Union when in reality, Iran is nothing more than a “middling” power that
must be “coerced” till brought down to its knees.
He goes on to denigrate Iran
by telling how much undeserved deference it is given by “some analysts” who
have been pleading a false case with Washington .
And this is the point at which the bully pulls the ace card from his sleeve and
plays it. This is a trick that always works on a nerd – wherever he stands on
the spectrum between being extremely naïve and sophisticated.
It is that the bully plays on the ego of the nerd by
explaining to him this piece of information: “Such postulations misunderstand
the lure of U.S. commerce
and the primacy of U.S.
power.” In plain English, Takeyh is saying to America :
You are so big and so powerful; to refrain from confronting Iran is to show a weakness that is
beneath your greatness. And this is a motivational jab that never fails to move
a listener.
That is to say America
must continue to squeeze Iran
even though things look better with the election that brought the moderate
Hassan Rouhani to power. But the real power, says Takeyh, is in the hands of
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the hard liner to whom the most important issue is not
even the nuclear issue. Rather it is to prevent the moderates from regaining
power in Iran .
If this sounds like a paradox, there is an explanation.
It is that there is a Machiavellian quality to the
situation. Khamenei allowed Rouhani to win, says Takeyh, to calm things down in
Iran
because he is as much a prudent pragmatist as he is a hard liner. Thus, Takeyh
predicts that “faced with real threats to his power, Khamenei will retreat from
well-delineated positions.”
And this is why: “Given the display of power between the United States and Iran ,
Washington
has an opportunity to craft a durable accord while preserving its coercive
leverage.” And so, the bully that started the conversation by talking coercion
is ending it by talking coercion. It is high school time again in America 's
foreign policy.