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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 5-Apr-08

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China "betrays" Iran, as internal problems in both countries mount

China "betrays" Iran, as internal problems in both countries mount

Diplomats say that China has provided Iran's nuclear weapons plans to the UN.

In a surprising move, China appears to be cooperating with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its investigation of Iran's nuclear development plans, and has provided it with Iran's nuclear plans. The exact nature of the information hasn't been made public, but it's believed to be related to the development of nuclear weapons and associated missile delivery systems.

China's change of heart may have occurred because China was caught red-handed. Documents confiscated from Iran in February by the IAEA indicate China was supplying Iran with information on manufacturing nuclear-armed weapons.

Several web site readers have written to me expressing concern that the Bush administration is about to invade Iran. These fears have been fostered by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as by paranoic journalists, led by Seymour Hersh, who believes that the American armed forces are Nazi thugs. Hersh, in particular, has been building a career for several years out of predicting an imminent American invasion of Iran.

This story of China's supposed "betrayal" of Iran gives us an opportunity to do a generational analysis of the relationship between China and Iran.

On this web site, I've done generational analyses of the strategies of different countries. In this case, we'll be attempting a comparative strategy. This exercise is of theoretical interest to generational theory because Iran is in a generational Awakening era, while China is entering a generational Crisis era.

In particular, we want to speculate on Iran's place in the coming world realignment. Readers may have noticed that I talk about a new "axis," consisting of China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and North Korea, versus the "allies," America, the UK, Russia, India and Japan, but that Iran is conspicuously missing from both the "axis" and "allies" list. We'll explore the meaning of China's "betrayal" of Iran on that question.

We will focus on the following four issues:

• China's strategy
• Iran's strategy
• Iran's relationship with China
• Iran's relationship with America and the West

China's strategy

China is entering a generational Crisis era, and has been almost coming apart at the seams for a few years. China is headed for a secular civil war, as I wrote in 2005. In March, 2007, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that China is "unsteady, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable."

It's hard to overestimate the increasing severity of China's internal problems in recent weeks and months:

• China has a growing problem: There are tens of thousands of regional "mass incidents" every year. If there were even ONE such incident in the US, it would be international news, but China has thousands of them every month. The people in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are terrified of their own people, and are the most paranoid leaders in the world today.
• The CCP's recent vicious military crackdown on pro-Tibet secessionist demonstrators is garnering worldwide criticism on human rights grounds, increasing the CCP's paranoia.
• This comes on top of international human rights pressure on China for supplying weapons to Sudan, which is fighting the Darfur civil war. This pressure increased substantially when Steven Spielberg resigned from the Beijing Olympics committee, citing China's human rights violations in Darfur.
• China's worst nightmare is that the social unrest in Tibet will spread to other provinces and other causes. The riots and demonstrations in China's southwestern border province, Tibet, have inspired some riots and demonstrations in China's northwestern border province, Xinjiang, by the Muslim ethnic group, the Uighurs. The Uighurs are also demanding the secession of Xinjiang province, forcing another CCP crackdown, and more international criticism.
• Taiwan, the most internationally visible secessionist issue for China, has not yet fully reacted to the Tibet crackdown. However, the entire Taiwanese independence movement was launched by Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and it seems likely that the Tibetan crackdown will further fuel forces advocating Taiwanese independence from China.
• Shanghai's stock market appears to be crashing, as can be seen from this graph:

  Shanghai stock market index, for five years ending April 2, 2008 (Source: MarketWatch)

  This is potentially a very explosive issue in China. Tens of millions of people have mortgaged their homes, borrowed money from friends and relatives, and invested every penny they could get hold of in the stock market, in order to take advantage of the bubble. Now they're watching their assets disappear.

  Shanghai's stock market bubble appeared close to bursting a year ago, and a brief tumble caused a mini-panic on Wall Street on February 27. The Shanghai market recovered and the bubble resumed, but now the market has fallen almost 50% from its peak, late in 2007.

• Prices for wheat and rice have been skyrocketing in China, as they have in the rest of the world. The CCP is well aware that hungry people are liable to turn violently against the government.
• There have suicide bombings and other terrorist acts in Xinjiang province (mentioned above) in support of the Uighurs. These terrorists are being trained by al-Qaeda in the Pakistan tribal regions, just like the European suicide bombers.

  China has always been very closely allied with Pakistan, almost since its founding, but President Pervez Musharraf's fight against al-Qaeda terrorism is supported by both the West and China.

• All of this is taking place in the context of the Beijing summer Olympics, which has taken on monstrously symbolic importance in China. The CCP had hoped to have a flawless experience, but human rights groups are continuing to humiliate the Chinese in every way possible.
• China's major adversary in central Asia is India, and China is closely allied with Pakistan because of their common enmity to India.
• Iran's potential development of nuclear weapons is not considered to be good news by China's ally, Pakistan. Thus, China's "betrayal" of Iran can just as easily be interpreted as siding with Pakistan, which is a much more important ally than Iran.

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Everything in China is geared toward the summer Olympics games. When the games end, there will be an enormous letdown. We will have to see how China reacts to the above list of crises at a time when it no longer cares what the world thinks.

As the world approaches the Clash of Civilizations world war, China is going to be allied with Pakistan and Bangladesh against India and Russia in central Asia. It's very hard to see how Iran fits into that picture.

Iran's strategy

Unlike China, which is in a generational Crisis era, Iran is in a generational Awakening era, since only one generation has passed since the genocidal Islamic Revolution in 1979, followed by the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s. This means that Iran's "mood" is significantly different from China's "mood," which would make it very hard for them to understand each other's motivations.

As we described last year, "Iran's President Ahmadinejad is facing a growing 'generation gap,'" as he pursues an Awakening era strategy:

• Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution is seen as a major event throughout the Muslim world. Although it was a Shia/Persian phenomenon, al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamists see it as a model to follow. Thus, al-Qaeda is trying to foment a similar revolution in Pakistan, Somalia, and other countries, as well as in China's Xinjiang province, having failed to do so in Iraq and (so far) in Gaza.
• Just at the time that Sunni terrorist groups are coming together on the Iranian Islamic Revolution model, Iran itself is deeply split along generational lines. (That is, there's a "generation gap," like America in the 1960s.)

  The older generation, the survivors of the Islamic Revolution, generally favor hardline Islamic law, believing that it's the way to avoid another genocidal war.

  The younger generation, especially college students, are demonstrating and rebelling against the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Demonstrations particularly target the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, as well as the police raids on women with loose headscarves.

• Ahmadinejad and the hardline Islamic mullahs are trying desperately to restore the national unity that prevailed after the Islamic Revolution. (This is actually impossible in an Awakening era. That kind of national unity exists only during and after a generational Crisis war.)

  In order to achieve this objective, they've adopted the strategy of provoking an external attack from the US or Israel.

• Thus, Ahmadinejad has made a series of provocative statements about destroying Israel. He's also provided funding for terrorist groups -- anti-American militias in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Israel's summer 2006 war in Lebanon versus Hizbollah was enormously humiliating to Ahmadinejad, because the Hizbollah "warriors" looked like idiots, shooting off missiles and then running back to their wives. Many Iranians are furious with Ahmadinejad because he spent so much money on Hizbollah while Iran's economic situation has become disastrous.
• The Iranian people are pleased that Iran is going ahead with nuclear technology, but they blame Ahmadinejad for mishandling the situation internationally, resulting in United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran.
• Ahmadinejad strongly believes in the Mahdaviat -- the belief that the Shia Mahdi is coming to save mankind. This is a fundamentalist belief similar to the Christian belief in the imminent second coming of Christ, or the Buddhist belief that Maitreya will come soon.
• Thus, Ahmadinejad's view of his role is to bring about a major Mideast war that will destroy Israel and drive the US away, after which Iran will become the governmental and spiritual leader of the entire region.

The best that can be said about Ahmadinejad's policies is that they've been irrational. There is absolutely no way that the Sunni Arabs or Taliban will ever permit themselves to be governed by Shia Iran. Hamas is willing to take Iran's money and Iran's weapons, but when choices must be made, Hamas will never choose Iran as their leaders. In other words, Ahmadinejad is simply wasting his money.

Nonetheless, Iran remains a dangerous wild card in the Mideast, as Ahmadinejad becomes about as unpopular in Iran today as Richard Nixon was in the 1960s and 1970s America.

Iran's relationship with China

Comparing the strategies of two countries that are at different points in the generational timeline has been an interesting exercise from a theoretical point of view, because it illustrates how incongruous the "moods" of the two different countries are.

• Iran has what might be called a "young" mood, just one generation past the end of their last crisis war, indicating a generational Awakening era. A country renews itself after a crisis war, so the description as "young" is apt. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a new generation leader, and has to prove that he can boldly lead the country and aggressively apply the "lessons learned" from the last crisis war. As a country, Iran has no fear.
• China has what might be called an "old" mood, three generations past the end of their last crisis war, the Communist Revolution that brought Mao Zedong to power. All the "lessons learned" have now unraveled and, as a country, China is paranoid and anxious, ready to panic at any time.

If you read through the strategies of China and Iran in the previous sections, it very quickly becomes clear that they have almost no strategic goals in common -- except a general wish to oppose the United States ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend").

The contrast between Iran and China can be demonstrated by both countries' relationship with Pakistan:

• Fearless Iran is funding al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, hoping that any regional war will leave Iran as the regional superpower.
• Anxious, paranoid China is allied with Pakistan's government and its effort to oppose al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, for fear of terrorist acts in China's Xinjiang province.

Now add a potential Iranian nuclear weapon into this mix, and you really see the problem: Iran would like to have nuclear capabilities in order to be a regional superpower, and paranoid China would fear that Iran will give nuclear weapons to al-Qaeda terrorists.

So, China didn't really "betray" Iran, because there are really no common interests to betray. China was willing to support Iran's nuclear development as long as doing so simply annoyed the West, but that support stops when China's own interests are at risk.

Iran's relationship with America and the West

Whenever I've talked about Iran on this web site, I've always mentioned how the country is an internal contradiction. The government and mullahs are anti-American and anti-Israel, while the people, especially the young people, are much more pro-Western, and really don't have anything against Israel. In fact, young Iranians are probably much more politically opposed to the Iranian government than to the American government.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, when I analyze any country, I always have to focus on the attitudes and behaviors of the great masses of people, not on the attitudes of a small group of politicians. And so I have to conclude that since young Iranians are generally pro-Western, it follows that Iran is going to be pro-Western when a choice is forced upon them. This is not a sure thing at this point, but the trend is definitely in that direction.

As the "Clash of Civilizations" world war approaches, and Iran is forced to choose sides, their initial choice will be to stay out of it as long as possible. This means that they'll avoid the use of their own army, and they'll try to keep the war off Iranian soil. If a choice is forced, I think it's more likely to be an alignment with the West.

What about the original question: Is America about to attack Iran?

I read the same news stories that everyone else does, and I see no evidence of it. If there were any preparations going on, the New York Times and the BBC would be all over it.

When writing about China in the preceding sections, I used words like "paranoia," "anxiety" and "panic" in describing China's mood.

The same words can be used to describe America's mood and Israel's mood. On the one hand, you have the paranoic reporters talking about an imminent invasion. On the other hand, you have the possibility that anxiety and panic will lead to some kind of bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, just as panic led Israel to declare war on Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

We can't predict the actions of individual politicians, so the most we can say is this: The reasons given by those reporters who are claiming that an attack is imminent are completely wrong; if an attack does occur, it will be a panicked reaction to Iran's perceived nuclear buildup.

That's speculation. What is certain, however, is that China's so-called "betrayal" of Iran reveals cracks in their relationship that will not be healed any time soon. (5-Apr-08) Permanent Link
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