International politics similar to professional wrestling
To some people, the themes of international politics are indistinguishable from those of professional wrestling. They see in the relations of nation states a ritualized melodrama of dominance versus submission, triumph versus humiliation. To them, every game’s a zero-sum game; millions of individual human beings are labeled “good” or “evil.” All conflicts that don’t end violently, end shamefully; compromise equates with cowardice.
So it was with the standoff between Great Britain and Iran over 15 Royal Navy sailors taken captive in the Persian Gulf. Ordinary people welcomed their release with happiness and relief. Actually, it’s tempting to say most normal people did. A perilous situation had been resolved without tragedy, and without provoking a potentially disastrous war.
Sure, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the occasion to score propaganda points. But what points? That Iran is a sovereign nation capable of defending its territory. That its leaders can act magnanimously, freeing the prisoners before Easter as a “gift to the British people.” With a characteristic lack of subtlety, Ahmadinejad all but spelled out the message: We respect your faith; maybe you should respect ours.
Although there were indications the crisis came as a surprise to Iran’s government – London’s Guardian newspaper reported that Revolutionary Guard hotheads had acted on their own – it managed to present the thing as a Persian morality play on Farsi- and Arab-language television.
For their part, the Brits reportedly waved off a series of aggressive military options suggested by the Pentagon. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Tony Blair praised his country’s handling of the crisis as “firm but calm – not negotiating but not confronting, either.”
Without addressing Ahmadinejad directly, Blair told the Iranian people, “We bear you no ill will. On the contrary, we respect Iran as an ancient civilization, as a nation with a proud and dignified history … the disagreements we have with your government we wish to resolve peacefully through dialogue.”
In the end, neither side budged from its original story about whether the sailors were captured in Iraqi or Iranian waters. Time was, Glenn Greenwald pointed out in Salon.com, when one could simply have assumed the Brits were telling the truth and the Iranians lying. But that was before Blair assumed his role as what British detractors call “Bush’s poodle.” Anyway, none of that mattered as much as the bloodless ending.
Needless to say, the peaceful resolution threw American neoconservatives into a fury. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer lamented “the humiliation of Britain,” and the “fatuousness of the ‘international community.'” Where others saw compromise, he discerned “impotence,” “capitulation” and “farce.”
If the outcome of the standoff was a success, “one hesitates to ask what would constitute failure,” wrote former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton in the Financial Times. “The only thing risen from this crisis is Iranian determination and resolve to confront us elsewhere, at their discretion, whether on Iraq, nuclear weapons and terrorism.”
Disappointment was profound among those clamoring for war with Iran. Fox News pundit William Kristol complained of U.S. passivity. He favored bombing Tehran. So did GOP presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich. He appeared on right-wing talk radio calling for the destruction of Iranian oil refineries and a blockade of the Persian Gulf – potentially doubling the price of oil and throwing the world’s economy into a tailspin.
And for what? Try to believe even Gingrich said it: To “show the planet that you’re tiny and we’re not.”
See, it’s not enough to invade Iran’s neighbors, Afghanistan and Iraq, and to fill the Persian Gulf with U.S. and British warships. Mere reality never suffices. To really make these jokers feel all virile and manly it’s necessary to kill a lot more people, and strut around the ring with the championship belt raised over our heads.
George Orwell analyzed the phenomenon in a 1945 essay called “Notes on Nationalism,” which he defined as “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.”
Writing immediately after WWII, Orwell emphasized that “(n)ationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.” It was to him a species of moral insanity. A patriot loves his country and its institutions, while “a nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige … his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. … Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.”
Did Ahmadinejad, an annoying jerk, use the British seamen badly? He did. But here’s what Iran didn’t do: No torture, no waterboarding, no being stripped naked, no 24-hour stress positions, no sensory deprivation, no sexual humiliation, no naked pyramids, no dog attacks or dog leashes. The sailors were released in two weeks, basically unharmed.
If Iran won a propaganda victory, it’s important to recognize it wasn’t British capitulation that made it easy; it was American tough guys.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.