Israel Iran Flare-up Tests Diplomacy Amid Regional Instability
Well, they announced that the recent flare-up between Israel and Iran demonstrates the region’s instability, which I suppose makes sense if you don’t think about it too long, which is probably the idea. It is a curious thing, this business of “instability.” It seems to be the one condition in the Middle East that everyone agrees on, much like the weather in Oklahoma, except the weather doesn’t send out press releases explaining why it is raining.
The diplomats in Washington and Tehran are currently engaged in a delicate dance, or so they tell us. They speak of “diplomatic negotiations” and “regional destabilization” as though these were abstract concepts, like interest rates or the price of cotton, rather than things that involve people getting shot at. I have always found that when a man has never been shot at, he has a peculiar talent for explaining peace. He can sit in a comfortable chair, with a glass of water within reach, and discuss the nuances of security with the same detachment one might use to discuss the merits of a new brand of flour. But the folks back home, and certainly the folks in the Middle East, do not live in the abstract. They live in the concrete, and the concrete is currently quite hot.
The situation, as they call it, tests international diplomatic influence. This is a polite way of saying that the people who make the decisions are trying to figure out if they can still tell the people who live with the consequences what to do. It is a test of authority, certainly, but it is also a test of common sense. And common sense, I have found, is a scarce commodity in high places. It tends to evaporate the moment a man puts on a suit and steps into a room with a microphone.
There is a great deal of talk about Iran’s negotiating hand. Some say it is strengthened; others say it is weakened. To me, it looks like a poker game where the dealer has forgotten the rules, the players have forgotten the stakes, and the house is betting with money that doesn’t belong to it. The extent to which Iran’s position is strengthened is a matter of perspective, much like the extent to which a politician’s promise is sincere. If you look at it from the top, it looks like strategy. If you look at it from the bottom, it looks like a gamble with other people’s chips.
The effectiveness of external diplomatic efforts is another matter of great debate. The experts say the talks are productive, which in diplomatic language usually means everybody went home with the same opinion they arrived with, only now they have it in writing. It is a remarkable achievement, really. To spend weeks traveling, eating expensive dinners, and shaking hands, only to end up exactly where you started, is the human capacity for busywork. It is like a man who spends all day digging a hole and then filling it in, claiming he has improved the landscape.
The stakes, as they are described, involve the strength of Iran’s position in future negotiations. This is a circular argument of the highest order. The instability is caused by the negotiations, and the negotiations are necessary because of the instability. It is a snake eating its own tail, and the snake is wearing a very expensive suit. The people running things seem to believe that if they just talk long enough, the talking will somehow replace the doing. But talking is not doing. Talking is what you do when you are afraid to do.
I am not saying that peace is impossible. I am saying that the current method of achieving it is designed to keep the experts employed. The gap between the people who make the decisions and the people who live with the consequences is not a bug in the system; it is a feature. It allows the decision-makers to remain comfortable while the consequences are handled by others. It is a division of labor, if you will. One group thinks, and the other group bleeds. And the thinking group is very good at explaining why the bleeding is necessary for the thinking to continue.
The folks back home are watching this with a mixture of boredom and concern. They are bored because they have seen this movie before. They are concerned because they know that when the movie gets loud, the tickets get expensive. The instability in the Middle East is not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. It is the natural result of treating human beings as pieces on a chessboard, rather than as people who want to go home to their families.
The shrug is not indifference. It is recognition. It is the acknowledgment that the powerful are playing a game that the rest of us cannot afford to play, and that the rules of the game are written in a language that no one understands except the people who wrote them. And those people are currently arguing about who gets to write the next rule. It is a spectacle, certainly. But it is not a solution. It is just another day in the life of diplomacy, where the only thing that is stable is the instability.