More on China and Iran

I'll dwell a little longer on the issue of a comparison between Iran today and China 1969. Richard Nixon, in a much cited article in Foreign Affairs 1967 said the following:

"Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors".

President Obama said much the same in his al-Arabiya interview right after his inauguration. Although he did it in a more pleasant way. The Muslims would not have accepted Nixons words, which the Chinese apparently did.

It is an interesting argument for the Iranians to ponder that fourty years after opening up China it is now beginning to matter in the world. With its revolution the Iranians are trying to impose its way on other people instead of blending in.

From what I have read on Iran, however, its people are more Western in their minds than the Chinese were 1969. There are also rudiments of democracy in Iran and the West have no problem with shia Islam in principle. It should be possible for President Obama to interest Iran in opening up if he can forget the Embassy debacle of 1979.

Having known what we know today. Had Nixon still liked the idea of an open China? In other words are we going to like an open Iran? Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses the problem China is going to have if they encounter growth of less than 6% (Kissinger says 7.5%) with their "fragile" system that the fast growth of the last decades have created. EIU says that growth in China is going to be 6.5% for 2009 and 7.3% for 2010 so they will be borderline the upcoming two years.

The result is therefore probably not in yet on whether we wanted an open China or not. In any case an open Iran would be easier to accomodate than would a China. The role of Iran in the Middle East is probably as important as the role of China in the world.

The discussion about Iran is whether it is possible to open it at all. Israel would say that it is futile to even discuss with them. They think in terms of hitting them hard, like they hit the Iraqi Osirak reactor, and then buy some more time. They don't think they will get repercussions from the attack since they didn't in the past.

It is surprising that so few high profile people want to open Iran. I know only Roger Cohen at The New York Times. More aggression in the area will only worsen the situation and lead down to the next major confrontation. Opening up Iran would rather move things in the right direction and offer long term peace and prosperity in the region. However, scholars that write in The Jerusalem Post simply refer to realities of the Middle East. What is futile, however, is to try to solve the Palestinian question without opening Iran.