Josh Xiong On Defining Rational

Josh Xiong On Defining Rational

Josh Xiong at Neocon Blues is a new addition to the blogosphere. See this article about defining rational and Iran:

Obama’s talk of sitting down with American enemies such as Iran is old news. Democrats wax poetic about the need for a new course of post-Bush diplomacy, while Republicans warn of mistakenly legitimizing a norms-flouting rogue state. While the latter is probably the more accurate judgement, the debate as a whole misses a salient point: Iran’s reasoning for a nuclear bomb.
On this subject, there are only two conceivable answers (different, but not unrelated): Iran wants leverage, or Iran wants power.
The former entails a particularly benign perspective of Iran as “rational.” This is rationality that conforms to western expectations of what constitute a country’s interests - global legitimacy recognition, technology, foreign direct investment, etc. And so, realists who are unrealistically pining for a diplomatic deal at all costs and liberals who submit to their Bush-era cynicism both argue that Iran is pursuing the bomb in hopes of attaining a “grand bargain.” If only we could make them “an offer they couldn’t refuse,” they say, we’d be able to defuse the nuclear situation. But absent reneging on our desire for Iranian regime change, the U.S. and the EU3 have offered, multiple times, practically everything a “rational” government could want: membership in the WTO, lifting of economic sanctions, recognition in various other international bodies, and most importantly, a Russian supply of safe, peaceful nuclear energy. On the last point, we’ve been reminded plenty of times that perhaps Iran is simply not interested in nuclear energy. After all, why would a rational actor turn down free energy to pursue its own, with the financial and diplomatic costs associated with it? And with that in mind, perhaps Iran is not so interested in international recognition either, if pursuing the bomb means continued isolation and accepting the EU3’s offer means entrance into the boys club.

Josh is apparently a University of Toronto undergrad.