Lie Down With Dogs

There is no question that Iran is pushing the envelope by capturing and continuing to hold the British sailors and marines. This event was clearly planned in advance, perhaps to give the Iranians a bargaining chip to get their own citizens currently being held by coalition forces in Iraq. Be that as it may, the rest of the world is clearly not as outraged and engaged as one would have thought they'd be. One possible explanation for the yawns from the rest of the world over this incident has been put forth by South Africa's Mail & Guardian.

In international relations, a reputation for recklessness has its advantages. Iran is governed by people who seek to make mischief for the West, and are largely indifferent to its consequences. More than that, because of Iraq (almost every twist of Western foreign policy is influenced by those fatal words) the British position is nowhere near as strong as it should be in haggling to get its people back.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows that most of the world questions the legitimacy of the Western military presence in Iraq and its claimed territorial waters. Whatever angry noises are being made by Britain, in many countries this incident is regarded with indifference, or worse. Their governments and peoples believe that British forces have no business on the Shatt-al-Arab in the first place.

Here is a new manifestation of the loss of moral authority resulting from the Iraq policies of George W Bush and Tony Blair. Iran is controlled by one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Its cruelties fall not merely on its opponents, but upon its entire female population. It is a proponent of international terrorism, committed to the illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons. Its president is a Holocaust denier.

Yet in dealing with Tehran, Washington and its allies must duck and weave. Iraq has drained from the international community any appetite for a showdown. Opinion polls show many people around the world are more fearful of Bush launching strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities than of the consequences of Ahmadinejad acquiring weapons of mass destruction. ... [Emphasis added]

While I'm not so sure that the US and Britain ever really had any "moral authority," or even that such a concept can ever be applied to nation states, it is clear the behavior of both nations leading up to the war and in its prosecution has been such that the rest of the world has no sympathy for any awkward circumstance either country may find itself in vis a vis international matters.

That both countries have earned such contempt only makes it worse.