Jonathan Power

by Jonathan Power

How is the ordinary mortal able to make up his mind on whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or not, and if so whether this poses a serious threat to Israel or other neighbours? After all, as Hans Blix, the UN's former chief nuclear weapons inspector, famously said about Iraq's supposed nuclear armoury, there was nothing to stop Saddam Hussein hanging up a sign "Beware of the dog", even if there was no dog.

Moreover, even if Iran does have, or almost have, the capability to build a few nuclear weapons, who would it use them against in a real-life situation, as opposed to the make-believe scenarios that game playing strategists love to create? Against Israel, Europe or the US? These putative antagonists all have enough submarines, hardened silos and nuclear missiles to ensure a second strike ability that would wipe Iran off the face of the planet.

by Jonathan Power

Credit should always be given where credit is due: US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have come to terms with the Shiite ascendancy in Iraq. This was never on their agenda. At the outset of their war, they naively believed that the secular بmigrبs would grab the reins. Gracefully, they are bowing before the results of democracy.

The Shiites of Iraq are now facing the consequences of democracy as well. Unlike in Shiite Iran where democracy plays second fiddle to the religious authorities, the Shiite religious leaders of Iraq, in particular Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, seem ready to take a back seat. Like Bush and Blair, the Shiites are being compelled by the Iraqi voters to come to conclusions they may not at first have contemplated. They have won at the polls, but they have to deal with their rivals if it is to mean anything in the long run.

Islamic democracy gets a bad press in the West, yet the democratic impulse runs deep in the Muslim world. Although the democracy cause cannot point to any precise words of Islam's founder, the Prophet Mohammad came close to defining the concept when he gave the injunction to Muslim believers to consult among themselves, which led to the Islamic tradition of Shura. Christ, in as much as he addressed the subject at all, baldly told Christians to "render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's", at a time when his country was ruled by the Roman dictatorship.

by Jonathan Power

Mark Palmer, the US State Department's former top "Kremlinologist", has proposed the world democracies set themselves the goal of ridding the world of its 43 remaining dictators over the next 20 years. Surely this is something liberals and neoconservatives can agree on. One would wish it so, but unfortunately the means separates them.

President George W. Bush said the other day that "the reason I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace."

This is a great philosophical leap forward for conservatives. Not so long ago, they poked fun at the human rights obsessiveness of former president Jimmy Carter and did everything they could to stymie his efforts in Latin America in particular to quicken the pace of democratic evolution. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter, he gave short shrift to human rights goals, and in Central America he backed the caudillos against the ballot box, Armalite against the vote.

By Jonathan Power

from the Jordan Times (used w/permission)

THE WHITE House and Downing Street have been caught off balance - not so much by the sudden success in capturing Saddam Hussein but by something more subtle. Rather than having to gradually introduce democracy to an unwelcoming body politic in Iraq, they are being paced to introduce it sooner rather than later by none other than the powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Al Sistani. So much for notions that Islam, and especially the Shiite clergy (who hold sway in Iran's theocracy), are infertile ground for the ideas of the European and American Enlightenment.