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Thursday, April 5, 2007
Giving soft power some teeth
By DAVID HOWELL
LONDON -- "Speak softly and carry a big stick" -- that was the advice of
ebullient U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in the early part of the 20th
century. It may still have some relevance today.
The kidnapping by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of 15 British service
personnel in the Shatt-al-Arab waters at the top end of the Persian Gulf raises
once again the complex issue of how such situations should best be handled.
Whether they are released promptly, which could be happening as these words
appear, or whether they are going to be held for a prolonged period, the whole
incident provides some important lessons for the modern-day resolution of
international quarrels -- for which Roosevelt had such a concise answer a
century or so ago.
First, his advice about speaking softly is probably more relevant than ever
today in this world of globalized media coverage and instant information.
Megaphone denunciations by either side were never going to get anywhere in this
ugly incident, as British diplomats clearly realized at the outset. Only after a
few days, and with the greatest reluctance, did they release the facts showing
that the British sailors and marines were captured in Iraqi, not Iranians,
waters -- a fact that was, of course, promptly disputed by the Iranians with
counter-facts and assertions, and a hardening of positions all round.
So what about the big stick? In Roosevelt's day, and in the days of British
imperial dominance, that would of course have meant a gunboat, followed by the
might of the British Navy, and no doubt a battalion or two of soldiers and
marines to bring the kidnappers to their senses.
But that was yesterday. Today blunt military force makes no sense because the
world is such a tightknit network -- an onslaught against any part of it
produces paroxysms throughout the global system.
The Iranians no doubt appreciated that from the start, reckoning that they could
therefore proceed with impunity, discounting any direct British intervention or
even direct intervention by the United Nations -- despite the fact that the
captured personnel were actually operating under a U.N. mandate in their task of
policing Persian Gulf waters.
In this calculation they proved sadly correct. All the U.N. Security Council
could summon up, in face of an outright attack on 15 people carrying out U.N.
duties, was a slap on the Iranian wrist that Tehran could safely ignore. So
there was no big stick there.
While there may be no big stick in the old-fashioned sense, in the age of total
information and data integration there are some new big sticks that require
neither gunboats, nor megaphone protests nor U.N. resolutions, feeble or
otherwise.
Just as Iran, by being an integral part of the world trading and oil supply
system, has the power to cause global chaos (for instance, by mining the Straits
of Hormuz and thus blocking 18 to 20 percent of the world's oil supplies,
bringing both energy and financial markets to a state of crisis), so the reverse
applies.
For example, cutting off Iranian access to the global financial system London,
helped by New York and by the European capitals, could bring the Iranian economy
to its knees.
Already American and British banks have been preventing the mullahs from
collecting the revenues for their oil and gas in dollars, as part of the
pressure on Iran to comply with international rules over civil nuclear
development. It is only one small step to prevent them from selling in euros
instead, or indeed selling their oil for any hard currency.
But financial networks are not the only ones that can be closed down. The
Iranian leaders may talk about America as the Great Satan, and Britain as the
smaller Satan. But it is on American technology that their aircraft depend; it
is American, Japanese and a bit of Russian technology on which their
communications and business systems depend; it is on spare parts and components
from Western powers that their entire energy industry infrastructure depends;
and it is on the European economies, of which Britain is one of the largest
(after Germany) that Iran relies most heavily for its export markets.
In a dozen ways the oxygen that supplies a modernizing state like Iran can be
turned off and its cities paralyzed. No need to talk about force, or "taking
out" Iranian nuclear facilities or any other kind of "hard" retaliation.
Soft-power retaliation can do the trick and produce the big-stick effect in a
way that Roosevelt never dreamed of, and in a way that even today neither the
Iranian high command, nor many analysts seem to appreciate. In effect, Iran can
be closed down.
None of this invalidates the need to proceed in handling this incident, or
similar ones if they should regrettably occur, with quiet and subtle exchanges
(the soft voice) as far as possible, and as far as indignant public opinion
allows. But it is a reminder that there are still big sticks in the armory of
international affairs.
If the present incident brings that lesson home to all countries and governments
tempted to flout international law and the rules of civilized global behavior,
some positive benefit will have flowed from an ugly and dangerous crisis.
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