open Democracy News Analysis - Russia and Iran: the rest vs the west, Paul Rogers - Comments

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:07:15 +0000

I don't find this article very persuasive. So what if Iran (or Russia, for that matter) have glorious pasts in the millenia of rich culture. Why does that entitle them to threaten and use violence on their neighbours? This defensive aggression always done in the name of "security" by this enormous nuclear power against tiny neighbours is just never convincing. The false moral equivalence made with the U.S. about its neighbours also never tracks (maybe because people flee in different directions in each case)

Given all this new moderation that OpenDemocracy is supposed to do, I do marvel at the antisemitic undertone of posts such as deteodoru.

So what if Georgia has Israeli advisors and top officials who are Jewish and have Israeli passports? Why can't a small Caucasian nation living in the shadow of a big and unstable neighbour that in fact *did* invade it in the end and grab at its territories aquire some good advice from another such small nation surrounded by enemies? There is nothing unlawful about this. It's not proof of a "Zionist plot" or "Zionist control" or any such silly stuff. If anything, the fact that even with this great Israel advice and Jewish background of its top officials, and all its American advice, it still loses, tells you -- hey, so much for that powerful conspiracy theory, eh? They lost. So that tone of malicious glee and gotcha is out of place.

McCain apparently has one aidr that received money from the government of Georgia. Yes, we know about that because...wait for it...it's legal and registered and knowable, not some scandal. Again, if these countries wish to buy advice, who can stop it? Advice is still a free market. Surely you realize Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev similarly buy advice from Beltway Bandit consultants in Washington who themselves are registered and therefore this is known and gossipped about only from political bloggers on the other side of the aisle?

What exactly *is* the plan to keep Russia's former Soviet republics free? They all gave their nuclear missiles over to Russian control in the 1990s -- remember? -- in exchange for solemn vows that they could keep their sovereignty. Now this is endangered.

As for the relationship between Russian and Iran, it's hard to accept this as merely benign industrial development given its potential, again, as threats to neighbours. It's in Russia's commercial and political interest to keep Iran in its orbit and it's been doing that, and will go on doing that, and thoughts that "we need Russia on Iran" to "stay helpful" are holding us hostage on a score of other areas, and preventing us from seeing the threat that in fact Russia's help and proximity already poses.

And all this "no oil deals" and "get out" sort of stuff really is coming to the wrong address. The U.S. doesn't gain anything tangible now in terms of energy security for shoring up Georgia; meanwhile Russia secures one more monopolized energy route.

Cathy Fitzpatrick

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/un_tethered

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/ngo_accountability

Steven Rogers on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Steven Rogers — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:31:03 +0000

This comment fails to acknowledge that this observation very much applies to the US

That may to some extent be so, but that does not change the fact that Moscow and Tehran - both of which face domestic issues that dwarf those of the US - have a powerful vested interest in maintaining tension. Neither is it terribly relevant to the point that these powers cannot credibly be said to be "rising".

I would also like to know which states of the Arabian Gulf this
commentator is referring to in his last paragraph? Dubai perhaps or
Saudi Arabia???

Dubai is not a "state", please, Dubai is a part of the UAE.

I referred to the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which by any standard could be said to be "rising". I don't necessarily approve of all their policies, but there's little doubt that oil producing nations that have chosen cooperation and economic integration are doing far better than those that have pursued a confrontational stance with the West.

Georealist on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Georealist — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:29:40 +0000

In contrast to what has been posted earlier in a message the United States response has been anything but "vehement." Georgia blindsided the US and as much is evident in Rice's strong repudiation of a number of Sakashvili's comments.
The real object lesson was aimed at the Ukraine..a highly vulnerable Russian buffer and far more important to them. Georgia will be given back to the Georgians shortly and the US will be glad to see Sakshvili go...thre Russians want to call the shots..not hold the land. Too expensive.
I certainly agree that the Russian military is 2nd rate at best. The Russians are the perennial "homeboys."
They care about their neighborhood and not much beyond..they'll stir the Iran pot because playing "you and him fight" serves keeping the Americans occupied.
Traditional diplomacy always did and always will depend on force..what the Europeans should be made to face is their weakness and ineptitude..

deteodoru on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

deteodoru — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:16:07 +0000

I would remind Prof. Rogers that the Bush Administration has justified its pre and post-9/11 thuggery as based on "GLOBALISM." And so, I might point out, on a round globe, WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. Israel, which dominates the Georgian government with three Israeli passport holders in the Georgian President's Ministerial Cabinet, quickly realized how its influence might backfire and it withdrew it weapons and advisers immediately upon collapse of Georgian forces. The US was not so quick and I am told 6 American casualties resulted. Thuggery in a global setting invites and justifies thuggery. Bush should have learned that from his meetings with Putin. However, being chemically impaired for so long and offered advice only by his mediocre loyal "girl Friday" SecState, he suffers from a one point in time and space mind set...sort of like a Great White shark spotting a kill. The biggest tragedy is that, we now know, McCain's top advisers, registered foreign agents for Georgia, thought that encouraging Saakishvilli to act now would draw national attention away from McCain's cognitive deficiencies and to his dramatic : "we are all Georgians now" mis-stated nationalism babble-- like his POW account plagiarized from novels. The Georgians were well aware of how, when in March 2006 PM Olmert came to beg for an extra $10 billions to shore up Israel's failing economy, in return Bush demanded that Israel attack Lebanon-->Syria-->Iran, knowing full well that Israel would be deep in poop by the time it got to Iran. Then, to stave off "an Ally's defeat," Bush would make an emergency executive order to attack Iran. Though the Israeli Air Force failed to clear the way for IDF land forces (killing far more innocent civilians than Hezbollah militants) and Olmert was mensch enough to pull out and stop the hopeless killing of young Israeli men for Bush, Saakashvilli this time had the illusion that if he moved on South Ossetia with a murderous made in USA and Israel firepower assault, the US, hence NATO, would have no choice but to come in and save him before Russia retaliated. Since McCain's foreign policy advisers are nothing but neocon influence peddling arms profiteers and have no strategic understanding, they only saw this as a great chance to force the nation on the message dummy McCain was mouthing from the throat of his neocon mender ventriloquist Senator Lieberman.

All this sums up to the obvious: you can't treat the planet as a presidential campaign gimmick, even when you have a fool as a client. Events catch up with you. Now the Republican global-pay-to-play team is in damage control. But, once again, thanks to the the Republican-Right that Richard Frank so well describes in his book as the "Wrecking Crew," America is hobbled into a defeat. A defeat that is as "victory bound" as our surge in Iraq that got the Iraqis to unite on one point: GET THE US TROOPS THE HELL OUT. And all this is with: (1) NO oil deal with US but with China, (2) NO territorial deal, (3) NO Iran out of Iraq, (4) NO independence of American Command tactical decisions, (5) NO immunity for casualties from and crimes by US citizens and forces in Iraq. Meanwhile Kharzai, the Afghan President, has been damning the American blind use of air power in his country and here too we may have the SOFA pulled out from under us as in Iraq!

I guess Bush may escape prosecution by Murkese, his own ultra-Zionist Attorney General that stands with the neocons. But the Muse of History Cleo is one prosecutor Bush will never escape: even if not written on his tombstone, he will forever be remembered as the president who sought to cover incompetence with criminality. Yet, the fault is ours, the boomer generation suffering from the "ain't my kid going to Iraq [or anywhere else where there's combat] disconnect syndrome," that out of fear and in utter bravado sought to cover-up our panic by putting a cheerleader of dubious manhood as captain of the football team.

ckey on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

ckey — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:36:42 +0000

"if these powers in crisis are trying to provoke hostility in order to distract their people from the consequences of their own government's incompetence, is talk therapy likely to accomplish anything? When there is peace, people's minds turn to domestic issues, and neither Moscow nor Tehran can afford that"
This comment fails to acknowledge that this observation very much applies to the US, and in many aspects more to the US than Tehran and Moscow. Pre-emptive wars, housing crises, and overlax monetary policies that spill into a wave of speculation and inflation globally are very much a responsibility of incompetent government in the US.
And I would also like to know which states of the Arabian Gulf this commentator is referring to in his last paragraph? Dubai perhaps or Saudi Arabia??? I think it is he who is making ideological assumptions here.

Not logged in Lawrence Efana on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Not logged in Lawrence Efana — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:15:18 +0000

Thank you Tony. Your picture of the situation is balance. Being a man so much on the side of peace I hope the impasses we have to overcome are not being consolidated, thinking of the future!

Lawrence Efana [Finland]

SamEllison on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

SamEllison — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:18:45 +0000

Without the high price of oil and natural gas neither Russia nor Iran could afford to be adventurous outside their own borders. The West is losing the economic war and some of our allies which belong to OPEC must choose between a market economy that has made them rich or the growing power and influence of Iran and Russia. Inflation has already started tearing apart some societies. The high price of energy will do more harm than good to "the rest".

Steven Rogers on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Steven Rogers — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:53:17 +0000

The title of this article seems strangely disconnected from the content: there is little here that suggests a crisis for the West, and still less that suggests a rise of "the rest".

The Russia-Georgia fracas certainly presents a challenge to the West, but calling it a crisis is perhaps overdramatic. In fact, if anyone in this picture appears to be in crisis, it's Russia. Mr. Rogers himself describes how the war reveals the parlous state of Russia's military, and discusses the deep-seated socioeconomic problems that plague the nation. He does not mention other stresses the war has created: the plunge in Russia's stock market and foreign exchange reserves as nervous investors and depositors move money to safer havens, and the degree to which even a moderate drop in oil prices has revealed Russia's dangerous dependence on a single source of income.

The crisis here is Russia's. If Russia responds to its crisis through external belligerence aimed at rallying the people and restoring pride, rather than attacking the roots of the problems, that will create additional challenges for the west, and those challenges could elevate to the level of crisis... but that hardly equates to "crisis of the west, rise of the rest".

Afghanistan hardly represents the rise of "the rest"... or of anyone. But again, is this a crisis? Certainly Afghanistan today is not what anyone in the West would wish it to be, but anyone who thought establishing order and functional government in Afghanistan was going to be quick, easy, or peaceful was barking at the moon to begin with. The challenges now faced in Afghanistan were always going to be part of the picture. We might more productively compare the state of Afghanistan to its state under a similar stage in the Soviet effort to manage Afghanistan. 8 years into that the mujahedin had battled the full weight of the Soviet Army to a standstill, with casualties and destruction on an epic scale. That we now describe attacks on trucks, suicide bombings, and a single assault with 10 casualties as a massive surge in violence can be seen as an indication of how far Afghanistan has come. There's a long way to go of course, but nobody sane ever said this would be easy. An enduring problem, yes, and a problem that will endure for decades to come... but not a crisis.

In Iran, too, the "crisis/rise" paradigm does not stand up to examination. Certainly the combination of Iranian belligerence and a nuclear program poses an unsettling challenge... but it's Iran that is in crisis here. While the monumental idiocy of the Bush administration has created geopolitical advantage for Iran, the equally monumental incompetence of the Iranian regime has created domestic catastrophe. Poleaxed on a trident of rampant unflation, uncontrollable unemployment, and unbearable corruption, the Iranian economy is a shambles despite record oil income. Again, this crisis is in many ways what creates a problem for the West, as the Iranian regime, with no answers to offer at home, tries to inflame hostility with outside powers to rally dwindling domestic support. Who in this picture is in crisis, and who is rising?

Rogers of course concludes his discussion with the assumption that "classical diplomacy - supplemented by understanding
(including historical understanding) of the other - offer a far better
prospect of progress". How exactly this is supposed to work Rogers does not say: if these powers in crisis are trying to provoke hostility in order to distract their people from the consequences of their own government's incompetence, is talk therapy likely to accomplish anything? When there is peace, people's minds turn to domestic issues, and neither Moscow nor Tehran can afford that.

It is also interesting that Rogers does not mention those of "the rest" who really do seem to be rising" East Asia, which has seem perhaps the fastest decline in poverty in human history, and the Arabian Gulf, where a few states seem to have overcome the recurring "resource curse". One wonders if this omission is because the lesson one might deduce from observing these powers is that those of "the rest" who have embraced trade, globalisation, and cooperation with the west are rising, while those who embrace confrontation and hostility flounder - and because perhaps that observation is inconsistent with the author's ideological assumptions.

vkm on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

vkm — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:54:05 +0000

The vehemence of the US protests is probably due to (a) the fact that a US-equipped and trained force was whipped by a Russian force not much larger - a Russian division is considerably smaller than its Western counterpart and the total troops on the ground probably did not exceed 10,000 (compared to Georgia's 6,500 in South Ossetia and more at Gori); and (b) the fact that US forces are so embroiled in conflicts of the US's own making that they cannot make a significant contribution (even in material terms) to the Georgian forces. The Russians destroyed Georgian equipment precisely because it knows the West is hard put to keep its own forces supplied.

postmaster on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

postmaster — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:13:56 +0000

Thank you for a reasonable & balanced view, in the face of many hysterical others .

opendemocracy on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

opendemocracy — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:43:00 +0000

I was struck here by the contra-Nietzschean theme of the weakness of the strong.

We had it yesterday in Kerry Brown's observations of China, and today in Paul's aside about Russia:
"... the very importance for the Russian leadership of securing a victory over Georgia - not least in terms of bolstering national self-perceptions and ensuring a boost in its domestic popularity - can be seen as a further indication of the country's relative weakness rather than strength: the opposite of the image Washington seems determined to attach to Russia. "

This suggests a "judo lesson" for diplomacy: - how to use the energy of the aggression of your opponent to oppose that same aggression.
Tony

Anthony Barnett on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Anthony Barnett — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:51:50 +0000

Fascinating, Paul, but it makes me feel - entirely based on your own arguments - that the reverse may be the case and what we are seeing is confirmation of Iran's intrinsic weakness and Russia's strength. To start with the latter:

Your case that Russia is much weaker than it appears is compelling. This small war took all it had, from your analysis, and its airforce was much more vulnerable than it should have been. But... it demonstrated the capity to deploy it and win. In a way it could prove Putin's 'Falklands' and he may have been aware of this potential. How do you reverse chronic alcoholism etc, except through some transformation of national morale? Alas, taking Russia back to the 19th century as Ivan Krastev argues in his beautiful analysis, may also succeed internally! The Russian regime now has a credible way of pushing through what in the UK was called (describing Thatcher) as a "reactionary modernisation". One need only look at the pictures of the, we now learn from you, elite Russian military kit, with the images of US forces in Iraq to see the technical backwardness of the Russian military. They must be even more aware of this, especially now that they have picked up a lot of up to date equipment from the bases in Georgia. I predict that the operation will be the starting point for a ferocious effort to enhance Russia's capacities economically as well as militarily, with the aim of preventing Ukraine from shutting down Russia's naval bases in the Crimea as it threatened to do.

On the other hand, while Iran must indeed to be attempting to claim what it sees as its rightful place as a Middle East power, suggesting to build six more nuclear power stations when it has plentiful oil and gas is preposterous. It shows all the signs of over-reach, surely?

Peter Presland on "Russia and Iran: crisis of the west, rise of the rest"

Peter Presland — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:16:58 +0000

Thanks for a superb analysis

Russia and Iran: the rest vs the west, Paul Rogers

david hayes — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 13:40:13 +0000

The military and political leaders of the United States and Europe could be forgiven in August 2008 for recalling the English phrase "it never rains, but it pours". For they are currently faced by a series of security problems in relation to Russia, Afghanistan and Iran, each of which is testing in its own right but which together strain their resources (and perhaps nerves) to the limit. These are only part of a chain of problems for strategists of the "west" (a category that analysts are notably feeling more and more obliged to qualify or clarify) that is highlighted in this period alone by events in Algeria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Poland.

The most high-profile security issue of the month has been the Russia-Georgia war of 8-12 August, whose unsettled and violent aftermath includes the continuing presence of Russian troops on the territory of what analysts are starting to call "Georgia proper" - that is, excluding the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This issue was a source of anguished debate at the emergency meeting of Nato in Brussels on 19 August, whose outcome was the formation of a new Nato-Georgia commission (under the rubric of the North Atlantic Council) which will focus on post-conflict reconstruction (see Vladimir Socor, "Nato's Ministerial Meeting...", Eurasia Daily Monitor, 20 August 2008)

The nature of this decision and the degree of Nato's support for Georgia at the meeting are already in dispute, however (see Julian Borger & Ian Traynor, "Russia: Miliband backs Georgia and widens Nato split", Guardian, 21 August 2008). The question of whether the formation of the commission was linked in any way to the "membership action plan" (Map) that Tbilisi is already involved in was answered differently by the Nato secretary-general (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) and the British foreign secretary (David Miliband). This reflects a wider tension within the alliance over policy towards Georgia and, more generally, of establishing a coherent strategy in relation to what it perceives as an increasingly bold and abrasive Russia.

The armed reality

The sudden outbreak of the war over South Ossetia provoked confusion in many western capitals. Russia's quick and heavy military operation after Georgia's initial assault on Tskhinvali meant that Georgia had effectively lost the war before Washington or Brussels had formed a coherent view about what was happening. Since those early days, there has been a striking vehemence in the criticism of Russia from the George W Bush administration - Georgia's main ally and military backer since Mikheil Saakashvili came to power there in January 2004. Indeed, Washington's rhetoric suggests a consistent effort to depict Russia in ways that echo the confrontation with the Soviet Union during the cold war: as a militarily powerful and expansionist state that presents a formidable threat to the west.

The Georgia crisis, in this understanding, is part of a broader and emergent geopolitical confrontation. A number of writers on openDemocracy have subjected this view to scrutiny, at least insofar as they emphasise the conflict's local roots and regional, Caucasian dimensions (see Donald Rayfield, "The Georgia-Russia conflict: lost territory, found nation", 13 August 2008) and George Hewitt, "Abkhazia and South Ossetia: heart of conflict, key to solution", 18 August 2008); others have addressed the issue of Russian strategy, but questioned whether the conflict can be understood in terms of a return to the cold war (see Ivan Krastev, "Russia and the Georgia war: the great-power trap", 19 August 2008). But to assess the thinking behind the combative American line that Russia's military campaign in Georgia is evidence of its revived aggressive intent, it is necessary also to look in more detail at its actual military performance in South Ossetia/Georgia and the resources it has mobilised in the short, brutal war and lingering occupation.

In order to occupy South Ossetia and some cognate parts of Georgia proper, the Russian army deployed some of its best-equipped elite forces - including the 76th air assault division (based in St Petersburg) and the 96th airborne division and 45th intelligence regiment (both stationed near Moscow). Its armoured forces included some of the relatively small numbers of modern T-80 and T-90 tanks Russia currently has available.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy
since 26 September 2001.

The significance of this deployment is that the Russian army had effectively to use some of its key units for a small-scale operation against a diminutive neighbouring country (see David A Fulghum, “Russian Assault Reveals Weaknesses”, Aviation Week, 20 August 2008). True, the Georgian army has been extensively equipped by the United States in 2004-08 (see Vicken Cheterian, “Georgia’s arms race”, 4 July 2007). But during the cold war, no small country on the Soviet Union's borders - such as Czechoslovakia, invaded on 20-21 August 1968, had its forces chosen to fight - could have hoped to match almost any of the divisions of the old Red Army. The Russian army today is barely a shadow of that force.

Moreover, the five-day war produced outcomes that must have surprised the Russians and were certainly unexpected among western military analysts. For example, the Georgians shot down several SU-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft and even one of the Russian air force's frontline Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers (see David A Fulghum et al, "Georgian Military Folds Under Russian Attack", Aviation Week, 15 August 2008). That plane - and almost certainly others - was piloted by a flying instructor; the Russian air force is so short of resources that instructors and test-pilots are often the only crew with enough experience to be sent into combat.

The victory of the Russian side in the war in narrow military terms is clear, even if the longer-term implications are - as Ivan Krastev writes - far less certain. But such details suggest that the impression conveyed by much of the language and commentary in Washington in particular - of a revanchist superpower eager to bully its way to restored domination of its "near abroad" - is unsupported by evidence of its real military capacity.

Indeed, the very importance for the Russian leadership of securing a victory over Georgia - not least in terms of bolstering national self-perceptions and ensuring a boost in its domestic popularity - can be seen as a further indication of the country's relative weakness rather than strength: the opposite of the image Washington seems determined to attach to Russia.

The restoration project

The calculations that have informed the Russian campaign in Georgia are more complex than may be allowed for in any one-sided view. The decade of economic chaos and impoverishment that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 was an acutely painful period for millions of Russians - and the pain was compounded for many by what was experienced as the humiliatingly "superior" attitudes of many western politicians, advisers, and economic know-it-alls.

Vladimir Putin's presidency (2000-08) responded to and refocused this sentiment in politically very skilful ways. He accompanied the re-establishment of political authority at the centre with the resourceful use of a Russian nationalism that long predated the Soviet period and indeed could be anchored as or even more legitimately in the centuries-long experience of imperial Russia (see Geoffrey Hosking, "Russians in the Soviet Union: rulers and victims", 26 June 2006). Putin was - and is, in his new guise as prime minister and his successor Dmitri Medvedev's overseer - both clever and lucky: for his project has been indispensably aided by the bonanza Russia has accrued as a result of a long period of rising world energy prices (especially from natural-gas exports to western and central Europe).

Putin also played on Russian fears of Nato expansion and of the countervailing image of a United States determined to develop a ballistic-missile defence system. Here, the cold-war precedent is relevant in explaining Russian antagonism to such a capability (even though this is missed by most western observers). The "balance of terror" during the cold war was believed to be stable as long as both sides possessed substantial but "only" adequate strategic nuclear forces. The ability of either side also to develop defences even as offensive forces were maintained would upset the balance. Indeed, that was why the Soviet Union agreed to the bilateral anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 1972 and why the George W Bush administration's withdrawal from the treaty in June 2002 had such a bad effect.

No one pretends that United States missile-defence capacity will be able to counter Russia's nuclear forces any time between now and around 2020 (see "Behind America's shield", Economist, 21 August 2008). But that is less relevant to an assessment of the current situation than two current facts: that the US's still sees itself as the world's only great power and is determined to remain so; and that in securing this reality it is pursuing "full-spectrum dominance" (a project that has a crucial symbolic aspect as well as one of outright military capacity). Both grate on Moscow in ways that feed in to the violent and excessive conflict, and the hard rhetoric, over South Ossetia/Georgia.

But it is in more than the military sphere that the image of a resurgent and powerful Russia is less grounded in reality than its projectors often allow. Russia's economic performance is crucially (and dysfunctionally in the longer run) dependent on its energy resources, and there is a critical need for heavy investment in the oil-and-gas sector if current revenues are even to be maintained. The country also has great social problems (which are felt inside the military and have the potential to damage its standards and performance): among them a declining and aging population, rampant alcoholism, and low male life-expectancy for men (see Rebecca Kay, "'Being a man' in contemporary Russia", 7 March 2008). These factors must be part of an overall judgment of the true face of Russian power today; and taken together they suggest that Russia has far less capacity to undertake a unilateral drive to restore its great-power status than it might appear.

The trial and the test

In the same week that Georgia has continued to cause much anxiety among western leaders, events in Afghanistan have provoked even more sleepless nights. The seriousness of the escalating conflict between the forces of Nato / Isaf and the Taliban was evident again in an intense engagement between French paratroops and Taliban paramilitaries on 19 August in which ten Frenchmen were killed. The lightning visit to the country of Nicolas Sarkozy in the aftermath reflects the extent of political concern in western capitals about the endemic violence as well as the French president's hyperactive style - for high-level worries over the course of the Afghan war as it nears its eighth year include how far western publics will continue to support their countries' involvement.

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here.

Paul Rogers's most recent book is Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) - an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed.

It never rains, indeed: for if Georgia and Afghanistan were not enough, attentive policy-makers or advisers in the United States and Europe might have noticed three significant actions in recent days by Iran's government - all of which nominally concern civil rather than military programmes, yet all with implication for Tehran's tense relations with the United States in particular.

The first was on 17 August 2008, when Iran's news media reported the launch of a Safir-e Omid ("ambassador of peace") two-stage rocket with sufficient power to put a satellite into orbit. This may have been an attempt to actually launch a satellite, or it may have carried a dummy; in any case, the rocket veered off-course at the second stage. This, plus the fact that the firing had already been delayed by a couple of months, indicates that it may have been less than an unqualified success (see William J Broad, “Iran reports test of craft able to carry a satellite”, International Herald Tribune, 18 August 2008). Washington responded by both calling the launch a failure and condemning it on the familiar grounds that an ostensibly civil programme could easily be diverted into an offensive missile with a substantial range.But whatever the precise circumstances and fallout, for Iran to get this far was a further demonstration of the country's technical capabilities.

The second action arrived a day later, when the Tehran authorities revealed a plan to develop a satellite-launch facility that would be made available to other Muslim countries. The third, also on 18 August, was an announcement by Iran's atomic organisation confirming that Iran was planning to build six more nuclear-power plants (in addition to the one that has long been under construction at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf). It is reported that contracts have been made with companies to begin site-surveys for the new sites, with the intention is to complete the reactors by 2021 (see "Iran plans to build six more nuclear plants", 20 August 2008).

The Bushehr reactor, which is being built with Russian help, has been much delayed; it is by no means certain that the additional reactors will be built; and the satellite rocket-test may well have been a failure. At the same time, these developments may matter less in the context of Iranian perceptions of their national status than that in general nuclear-power and space research are seen as strong indicators of modernity that light the way to better future for Iran. The offer of satellite-launch facilities for other Muslim countries reflects a similar impulse, reflecting the fact that Iran is intent on affirm a confident stance in the international arena. In pursuing its strategic course, Iran's leadership is drawing on a mix of available elements - including the sense of a long civilisational history, modern Iranian nationalism and the Islamist ideological solidarities of the 1979 revolution.

Iran's search for status is fuelled by its very large reserves of oil and (even more) of natural-gas, though an over-dependence here too entails a neglect of the serious economic problems facing the country. These include high inflation and unemployment (and under-employment), as well as the need for huge investment in oil-and-gas production if Iran's resources are to be used effectively to support the country's development.

The economic imperatives create reinforce internal political pressures on Iran's current leadership. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces an election in mid-2009 in which he will face a difficult challenge from rival candidates - including Mohammad Baqer-Ghalibaf, who aspires to replicate the same journey Ahmadinejad himself made from the mayoralty of Tehran to the presidency of Iran. The current project to upgrade Iran's technical prowess is a key part of the leadership's attempt to bolster its domestic popularity as well as its international standing - though whoever is elected in Iran will have the defence of perceived national interests as a primary concern.

The defiant other

To understand Iran's policy and outlook in this way is quite compatible with a recognition of potential dangers in an Iran that seeks nuclear weapons, or overreaches itself as a regional power. What is important, though, is that western diplomats have to understand that much of what Iran is doing derives from the country's perception of its millennial history and current standing in the world. A part of this national sentiment that is close to the surface is the memory of Iran's dependence on or subjugation by Russia, Britain and the United States for much of the 20th century. In its broad contours, moreover, this momentum of Iranian action is comparable to that which underpins the Russian leadership's political project as it has developed in the 2000s.

This context for Iranian (as for Russian) action may be more readily appreciated in some European capitals circles than it is in Washington (with an emphasis on the "may" and the "some"). What is more emphatically clear is that the rebarbative language directed by United States officials at Tehran and Moscow can sound strikingly similar.

The similarity of language reveals one of the core realities of the complex and shifting landscape of early 21st-century global security: that the United States is responding to the "rise of the rest" with strenuous efforts to protect its own hegemonic role. This, coupled with Washington's predilection for tough talking and even (in the case of Iran) direct threats are likely to be both ineffective and counterproductive. In relation to both Moscow and Tehran, classical diplomacy - supplemented by understanding (including historical understanding) of the other - offer a far better prospect of progress. Such a path might also prevent the August downpour becoming a November hard rain.

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