In the context of Beijing’s deep involvement in the Iranian oil and gas industry, however, this media narrative is not just invalid, it’s wildly, grotesquely invalid.  China is investing heavily not just in oil and gas, but in other industries in Iran, including arms manufacturing and railway development.  The investment in the oil and gas industry is robust by itself, however.  It is also geographically interesting, and financially interesting.

All aboard for evading the sanctions

The point to begin with is that China is continuing at this moment to buy large quantities of oil from Iran and have it shipped to China.  An equally salient point is that the explanation for the cut in orders in the first month of 2012 was provided by the Wall Street Journal on 6 January:   China and Iran have been negotiating a pricing dispute.  In dealing with the state oil and gas companies of China and Russia, clients and partners run into this problem all the time.  Russia has become particularly famous for stalling on purchases and deliveries during negotiations, but China does it too.  If you want to understand how prices and deliveries will be negotiated in a world ruled by the oligarchs of the Asian powers, watch how they deal today with their global partners in the oil and gas industry.

But it’s not just that China is not on board with the sanctions against Iran.  Russia, China, and India are all continuing to trade with Iran in various lines of commerce, including oil and gas, and are settling their accounts in currencies other than the US dollar (see here as well).  They are simply avoiding the mechanisms – e.g., correspondent banks – through which the US and the EU are levying sanctions.  Japan and South Korea, other major crude oil customers, have been noncommittal on sanctions; industry analysts predict they will make symbolic cuts in their orders from Iran, on the order of 10-15%, but will not cease buying entirely.

This is much bigger than the usual evasion shenanigans that come with economic sanctions.   Frankly, Western political leaders are deceiving themselves if they believe Iran’s oil industry can be set on its heels with sanctions so porous.  It is entirely possible that Iran will not have to sell any less crude than she has to offer.  Instead of going to the EU, the oil would simply go to Asian nations.

The disadvantage for Iran in this arrangement is that negotiating non-dollar purchases with Russia and China will be a freighted political activity, as opposed to a simple marketplace transaction.  This is an important, game-changing disadvantage.  The “customer” will hold the upper hand in Iran’s economic-survival transactions.  However Iran deals with that, it will change Asia for the foreseeable future, and begin to affect conditions at Asia’s juncture with Europe and Africa sooner than we imagine.  The political consequences of that shift in power relationships will be uniformly disadvantageous to the US and our allies.

Meanwhile, however, Iranian natural gas continues to flow.  Turkey, like China, is taking advantage of Iran’s precarious position to negotiate a price reduction on Iranian gas.  But Pakistan is moving ahead with Iran on a gas pipeline project that is intended to eventually transport gas to India as well.  And although the EU has sworn off Iranian crude, BP reportedly believes that natural gas from a Caspian Sea field in which Iran has a 10% interest will be exempt from the sanctions.  Iran’s gas exports will continue to be a source of hard currency – whatever hard currency now means.

The pivot-point of change

The quiescent global regime of hard currency and the effective national independence it bolsters – for anyone who can generate robust, honest trade – are already in the process of breaking down.  Trying to isolate Iran from that regime is undermining the regime itself, because Russia, China, and India are all willing to operate outside of it in dealing with Iran.  This is a reflection not only of their resistance to the US policy on Iran, but of their assessment of the West’s prospects for stability.  The perception of safety in the US dollar and the US security regime is no longer the governing “cost” factor.  The Asian giants are willing to accept the cost of what is essentially a system of politics-based barter, because their higher priority is doing things their way from a geopolitical standpoint.

At some point, other nations will probably face a choice between making tacit agreements with the Asian giants, or sticking by the heroic gestures of Washington and Brussels – whose own monetary soundness is daily less unassailable.  A quick resolution of the Iran problem would avert that choice, but such a resolution is all but impossible, even if miracles can never be assumed away entirely.  The sanctions on Iran will either be lifted without achieving their goal, or – one way or another – they will fundamentally transform the geopolitical environment of Asia.  The latter is more likely at this point.

China’s move to occupy a central position

Russia has a significant advantage in doing business with Iran:  their shared sea-link through the Caspian Sea.  But China has been laboring to arrange for advantages of her own, and, through the oil industry, has managed to establish herself – in something of a Napoleonic move – in a central position on one of the most important borders in the region:  the southern border between Iran and Iraq.

On 22 January, Michael Ledeen highlighted a little-noticed report on an agreement recently concluded between Beijing and Tehran, which will allow China to develop oilfields in western Iran.  Besides outlining the areas where the Chinese will set up infrastructure, the report claims that the agreement provides for China to give military protection to the oilfields.  This may or may not mean that the Chinese presence will include such weapon systems as anti-air missiles, but it undoubtedly covers oilfield security detachments that could be manned by the Chinese army.

China has taken little trouble to disguise her deployment of troops into the province of Gilgit-Baltistan, in northern Pakistan – it is not by any means unthinkable for her to put troops in Iran, if she can arrange to.  The location of the areas where China will operate is equally interesting.  In addition to the Persian Gulf coast – reportedly out to 8 km (5 statute miles/4 nautical miles) seaward – the Chinese will be in an area running from Ilam province up to Marivan along the border with Iraq (see map). There is an additional concession in northwestern Iran on the Caspian Sea coast.

US Energy Information Agency graphicUS Energy Information Agency graphic

China is already developing oil and gas resources on the Iraqi side of the border, across from Ilam province (see map).  In late December, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) shipped the first oil to market from the Al-Ahdab field in Iraq’s Wasit province.  CNPC is also developing the Halfaya oilfield, southwest of Al-Ahdab in Maysan province (and is a participant in oilfield development in Rumaila, in Iraq’s southern tip).

Iran’s oil and gas deposits are located almost entirely on her western border.  But Iraq’s are more geographically diverse, and China’s choice in Iraq was to pursue oilfields near the southern border with Iran.  The oilfields where China operates – if Rumaila is included – lie on either side of the Iraqi approach through Basra province to the Shatt-al-Arab, where the Tigris-Euphrates empties into the Persian Gulf.  With positions commanding the Iran-Iraq border and the long-disputed Shatt-al-Arab, China could hardly have selected a more geopolitically significant area in which to establish a presence – and have a plausible reason to transship lots of huge things in big containers.  Meanwhile, of course, she gets oil out of it as well.

It would be wrong to think of this move as a precursor to conducting offensive war.  That is not Beijing’s objective.  What the Chinese have in mind is establishing an influence with both Iraq and Iran that would ensure China’s participation in resolving disputes, making new accords, and agreeing on principles for regional order.  China doesn’t want to fight the United States in the Persian Gulf, but she hopes to deter the US and NATO by claiming a Chinese stake in the targets we might have to attack, and the arrangements we might seek to undo.

US Energy Information Agency graphic

What, after all, will we do about oil shipments from Iran to China?  If they are contracted by China and handled by, say, a Liberian-flagged tanker owned by an Asian or Middle Eastern nation, will we go beyond issuing warnings to actually attacking oil tankers, or punishing nations with which we have good relations?  We could ask similar questions about offshore oil rigs in Iranian waters being defended by detachments of Chinese soldiers.

The naval component

China isn’t leaving the balance of naval power in the Persian Gulf region to chance: in December 2011, the Chinese were “considering” a basing offer from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean east of Africa, which would allow Beijing’s navy to improve infrastructure there and keep a larger naval force deployed continuously.  The Chinese have developed basing facilities at Djibouti, on the Red Sea, as well as having built the Pakistani port of Gwadar, immediately outside the Persian Gulf (and having conducted an intensifying series of live military exercises with Pakistan over the past 12 months).  The Chinese navy has conducted a number of port visits in Oman as well, since starting its antipiracy/shipping escort patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea in 2008.  The naval basing options to which China can have access have multiplied significantly in the last 3 years.

Russia too is negotiating a naval services agreement with the Seychelles, and has more naval force forward deployed right now than she has at any time since 1991.  Besides the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier task force in the Mediterranean, the Russian navy is keeping its antipiracy/escort task force in the Gulf of Aden – except when the Pacific fleet task force en route the antipiracy mission is conducting a maritime exercise with India.

It remains to be seen if either Russia or China will be able to deploy forces like reconnaissance or land-based bomber aircraft, which require the use of regional airfields.  They may or may not have the cooperation of South Asian nations in that regard.  But they will both have the Seychelles, for at least some purposes.

China on Iran-Iraq border. Graphic from www.gregcroft.com. Author annotations.

Again, neither nation wants to get into a fight with the US or NATO.  What they want to do is discourage the West from acting summarily on its own initiative, by putting a deterrent presence of their own in the region.  The Western nations would not have a free hand in that case, and all calculations would be different.

A watershed test of Western will

An example of what Russia and China want to be able to enforce was observed earlier this month in the Mediterranean.  Sanctions, including a prohibition on arms imports, are being enforced on Syria while the bloody Assad regime continues to slaughter its people.  With the Russian carrier task force on station – the largest aggregation of deployed naval power in the Med at the moment – Moscow conducted a significant test of the will of the US and EU.  The result was that a cargo ship carrying Russian arms was allowed to proceed to Syria, in violation of the sanctions, after giving Cypriot authorities a false assurance that its destination would not be Syria.  NATO made no attempt to intercept the arms delivery to Assad.

Russia is justified in supposing that this passivity from NATO was a result of the presence of Russian naval power.  Perhaps the decisive factor was actually the indifference of Western governments, but with this little episode, the Russians have established at the very least that naval power reinforces indifference.  That, at any rate, is the lesson they will take from it.  A similar principle can be applied in the Persian Gulf.

Western media took little notice of the Russian arms shipment to Syria, which was followed immediately by the announcement of a Russian military aircraft sale to Syria.  The Atlantic West failed this test of will, and Russia is likely to grow bolder in propping up the Assad regime.  (Note:  although Russia’s behavior is in one sense clearly immoral, it is understandable from the standpoint of Russia’s security.  The Russians cannot accept an outcome in which Turkey gets to effectively choose the new leadership of a post-Assad Syria.  Yet that is precisely the result the Obama administration is fostering.  If it is true that Erdogan is dying of cancer, Moscow will hope to keep a clamp on the status quo at least until the situation in Turkey changes.)

What about that pipeline?

Meanwhile, one other interesting development – or rather, lack of development – rounds out the evolving conditions of the post-American world.  There has long been hope for the oil pipeline being built across Oman to link the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea while bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.  The pipeline was begun in early 2009; January 2012 would seem to be just the time to inaugurate it, to the acclaim of a relieved world.  The UAE – from whose Persian Gulf coast the pipeline originates – has been promising for nearly a year that oil would start flowing through the pipeline soon.

In early January, however, unnamed sources disclosed that inauguration of the pipeline would be delayed until at least mid-2012 (see here as well).  All shareholders in the pipeline corporation reportedly declined to comment to the media – including the construction contractor for the pipeline, a subsidiary of China’s CNPC.

Why would China want to delay making the pipeline operational?  Perhaps because relief from the pressure of the Strait of Hormuz crisis would be an advantage for the US-led status quo – whereas keeping the pressure on, in the current conditions, creates incentives for the Gulf nations to seek new patronage.  Certainly China can negotiate better deals with an Iran under the gun.  Meanwhile, China’s central position as the pipeline’s contractor means that if the Hormuz crisis does come to a head, China can bargain hard with the nations under economic stress demanding to have its flow turned on.  It is not clear what’s behind the pipeline delay, but it is clear who derives advantage from it.

Americans and Europeans might recoil from an analysis like this – but readers from Vietnam or Japan probably won’t, nor will many others from the Asian-Pacific region.  This is the model of geopolitical pressure, maneuver, and intimidation on which China does business.  Russia does too, for that matter, but China has a greater advantage in stealth vis-à-vis Western knowledge and expectations.

The drama playing out across the Middle East gives us an excellent glimpse of what the world will be like without a governing hand from American power.  And if the Western nations can no longer justify using power to preserve and foster our trademark conditions of quiescent safety for national borders, commerce, travel, and intellectual exchange – instead deprecating and apologizing for any condition that has to be enforced – the world will have little use for Western leadership.  If the fate of other peoples is to be condemned to negotiate bad deals with Chinese oligarchs, from various positions of weakness, there is no advantage in being lectured by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or a parade of irritable Europeans as the iron gates swing shut.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

If the voters weren’t silly, they would understand that it has to be Mitt Romney, because, well, primary voters were silly and picked Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell over Mike Castle in Delaware, not to mention running with that goofy Sharron Angle in Nevada, and look how that turned out.  You can’t get California and you probably can’t get New York, if you’re the GOP nominee.  But you have a good shot at Pennsylvania and Ohio, Michigan and maybe even Illinois, if you’re Mitt Romney.  Newt Gingrich?  Forget it.  Gingrich can’t even win Georgia.

And the truth is, this analysis isn’t necessarily wrong.  If I had to make a bet, I’d bet that a Newt Gingrich nominated to run for the GOP in November would implode on the campaign trail.  He’d still make a better president than Obama, but his “sticking it to the media” shtick in the debates would lose its luster when he faced Obama.  He comes across as easily annoyed; the feistiness that resonates with voter sentiment in the primaries would weather time and tides poorly.  As between an irritable Gingrich and a cool, scripted Obama, I would predict without hesitation that the latter’s jokes during a debate would come off better.  All things being equal, that is.

As with the O’Donnell-Castle primary outcome in 2010, however, it’s not the voters who are silly.  They know that all things aren’t equal in 2012.  The voters who put Gingrich over the top yesterday believe that we can’t keep going down the same political path in the United States – and that that holds for Republicans at least as much as for Democrats, if not more.  Their perception is that the GOP leadership is invested in the current path of government: that it doesn’t want change; it is not committed to restoring liberty and limited government, but instead is comfortable with the growth of regulatory intrusiveness, and seeks merely to broker pragmatic accommodations to leftist activism as a sort of rear-guard action.

Considering that the GOP has been doing this for most of the last 80 years, the voters aren’t wrong.  They aren’t wrong about Mitt Romney: his record of enthusiastic accommodations to the left is a set of rusty, clanking weights tethered to the back of the Mitt-mobile.  Gingrich and Santorum both have some ‘splainin’ to do as well, but Gingrich has specifically repudiated some of his earlier faux pas (such as the snuggle-up with Nancy Pelosi on combating “global warming”).  He also speaks trenchantly on the issues that exercise the most voters:  federal debt, health care regulation, regulation in general, government intervention in the economy, illegal immigration.

It does matter to primary voters, moreover, that Gingrich “takes it to” the media by rhetorically denouncing the questions posed in the GOP debates.  Voters on the right perceive the one-sided political attitude of the media to be a significant problem for American politics.  And while I don’t get as excited as others do about Gingrich’s little rhetorical broadsides in the debates –responding with broadsides isn’t, per se, a component of leadership – this is another thing the voters aren’t wrong about.  Media bias is a problem, not only in politics but for our public life in general.  People believe a lot of things that aren’t so today because of the particular narratives favored by the major media.  The perception of public assent generated by the media’s formulations produces an environment for government taking actions that jeopardize our liberties.

Many voters are determined not to be ruled by federal executive agencies whose agendas are approved by MSNBC and the New York Times.  These voters are voting for the candidate they deem most likely to reverse America’s slide into precisely that method of government.  That they see such a candidate in Newt Gingrich speaks more loudly about the general state of the GOP than about anything else.  Voters are seeking to break the inertia and conventionalism of the Republican Party; this is, in fact, a power struggle, and one in which I would not bet against the voters.

The famous salvo from South Carolina in April 1861 precipitated a shooting war under old conditions that no longer prevail.  The Union had all the material advantage in that war, as it had the moral advantage in being determined to preserve the national union while ending slavery.

But today’s South is no longer under such a disadvantage.  A political salvo from the South is a different portent now.  Likewise, the Republican Party doesn’t hold a Union-like advantage over its members, nor is there any valid reason for our federal government to hold such an advantage over a law-abiding people.  Today’s “rebel” GOP voters in South Carolina aren’t the slave-regime old guard, they’re the abolitionists.  We need not be deceived that wanting to reverse the encroachments of the federal government, and defeat the plantation mentality in Washington, is evidence of irresponsibility or lawlessness.  The truth is closer to the opposite.

The people have one tool – the vote – by which to express the sentiment that things have to change.  In 2008, Mitt Romney didn’t look all that different from George W. Bush.  The Obama tenure has been a wake-up call that has put Romney in a new perspective: in 2012, he doesn’t look as different from Barack Obama as conservative voters would prefer.  Obama is less an outlier than the end-gamer of the same big-government principles embraced by both major parties over the past 80 years.  We have now seen with our own eyes where those principles lead, and the voters don’t want to go there.  It’s not the voters who need to wise up; it’s the Republican Party.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

I’m going to miss Perry.  Can’t get interested in anyone else.  The California primary is smartly scheduled to be meaningless this year, since it doesn’t occur until 5 June.  South Carolina and Florida will give us a good indication of whether the candidate, presumably Romney, will be selected by then.

Miscellaneous notes on primaries/caucuses:  Nevada caucuses on 4 February.  Washington follows on 3 March.  Super Tuesday, 6 March, will see all of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma heading to the polls.  Hawaii caucuses on 13 March, Texas votes on 3 April, New York and Pennsylvania on 24 April.  This is just a list of states we know TOC correspondents live in; your primary/caucus situation may vary.  (Feel free to mention it in the comments.)

My bet on who drops out next: Santorum.

Now on to the football.  In about 25 hours the Ravens will take the field against the Patriots.  The bottom-line question on this one: does anyone think the Ravens will win?  We note that Brady has been certified to play.  We also perceive in his career a sort of “opposite Samson effect,” in that when he keeps his hair short, the Patriots do better.  His hair has been short this year.  Just sayin’.

The NFC championship game has everyone excited, pitting the scrappy Giants against the equally scrappy 49ers.  Both have specialized this year in finding ways to win ugly.  Giants fans are hollering “Rematch!!” (assuming the Patriots win the AFC title), with visions of another underdog victory over New England in Indianapolis.  But they have to get past San Francisco first.  The Giants are accustomed to playing in the cold; we’ll see how the teams hold up under the soggy, bone-chilling conditions expected in San Fran on Sunday afternoon.  We here at TOC regard this one as a pick ‘em.  Anything could happen.

Now, here’s the question.  Why is Super Bowl XLVI being held in Indianapolis?  Nothing against Indianapolis; I can even say I’ve been there.  Drove through there years ago on the way from some place to another, and when the water pump on my funny old Granada failed, a garage in Indianapolis was able to replace it for me within 3 hours, and get me back on the road.  There was reasonably entertaining reading material in the lounge, and a 7-11 only half a block away.  I remember getting an egg-salad sandwich out of its refrigerator, and a pack of chocolate Zingers.  (I was much younger then.)

Indy is a hoot on Memorial Day weekend, or so I’m told.  On 5 February, however, it is likely to be showing another side of itself.  But I guess the days of holding Super Bowls in warm, sunny climes are past.  If it’s a New England-New York game, it will at least be pretty convenient for the fans.

Correspondent wreed has notified us that Brent Venables is headed to Clemson as the new defensive coordinator.  Wonder what the sense is in Oklahoma on how Mike Stoops will do as the Sooners’ new DC.

In other DC news, Tulsa has picked up Brent Guy, which is a coup for the small TU program.  Guy (whom OSU fans will remember as a Cowboy player) was DC at Boise State from 1998-2000 and the head coach at Utah State for 3 years.  A lot of TU’s name talent has left in the last two years, including highly productive QB G.J. Kinne, so the coaching staff has its work cut out for it in 2012.

We also note – better late than never – that former Tulsa head coach Todd Graham, who went to Pitt after the 2010 season, was recruited to the head coaching job at Arizona State last month.

Final admin note:  I’m resting my right shoulder at the moment, as it has been rather badly overstressed in the last couple of months, mainly by typing and mousing at the computer.  That’s the explanation for the low blogging productivity of late.  Have to keep computer time to a minimum.  The talking amongst yourselves is quite robust and interesting, however.  Power of the net.

Romney is not a small-government, limited-government conservative.  He will not go on offense against the dangerous principles on which government is being conducted today in the United States.  This is thought by many to be behind his “electability,” but it makes him the most defensive of potential Republican candidates.

RomneyCare is only one example of Romney’s comfort with big government, but it’s an important one.  Romney has continued to defend the principle of an absolute purchase mandate, levied on anyone with an income and a pulse.  The health “insurance” purchase mandate is not like the mandate for driver’s insurance, because citizens can opt out of being drivers.  But avoiding the health-insurance purchase mandate of RomneyCare requires opting out of life (or leaving Massachusetts).

Purchase mandates are not so much a states’ prerogatives issue as an issue of the principles controlling the purpose and scope of government.  RomneyCare is wrong for Massachusetts because it’s bad government.  Of course people in Massachusetts can choose to levy such a mandate if they want, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.  It puts government in an intrusive role that not only invites but demands a spiraling level of intrusion, one that pits citizen against citizen, rent-seekers against taxpayers, and government against liberty.

The US federal government is engaged today in far too many things that promote all three of these conflicts.  Advocacy groups leverage the EPA to prevent business activities that would generate thousands of jobs.  Both unions and big businesses lobby incessantly for regulations and special laws that will ensure they don’t have to face the consequences of unprofitability.  Yet very often, the conditions that make them unprofitable are themselves produced by regulation, rather than market factors.  These sources of cost to the public purse go increasingly uncriticized; the fiscal disaster, we are told, can only be averted by taking more from the taxpayers and further modifying the taxpayers’ behavior.

Health care is, as always, a prime example of this kind of interplay.  Once the premise of public funding for health care is established, everything anyone does becomes a cost issue for the public treasury.  There are some protected categories of behavior, like those that lead to STDs and AIDS, but constituencies arise for controlling people’s eating habits and fertility, and for proclaiming everything under the sun – including the sun itself – to be a public health hazard.  The urgent necessity of controlling what people do is amplified by the centralized, spiraling cost of health-care disbursements.  Few forms of government-brokered activism are as inimical to individual liberty.

Government – not social or economic dynamics – is now the primary means of pitting citizen against citizen.  This needs to change: the scope and independence of federal agencies and the regulatory impulse need to be dramatically reined in.  We can’t afford for the federal government to continue on the premise of the last 80 years.  The basic premise must change.

This doesn’t mean that the changes need to be abrupt, but they do need to be scheduled and prosecuted with determination.  Only someone who believes that, however, will be willing to make the case, and face down the multifarious opposition to reducing the footprint of government on principle.  Reduction on principle means that government can’t come back in 10 years and start regulating again things that it was ordered not to regulate in 2013 (or tighten regulations that were loosened).  It means that the apparatus for reclaiming an over-regulatory posture won’t even be there in 10 years.

Romney is not the man who will do this.  He has coexisted comfortably with the regulatory premise throughout his public life – even during his years at Bain Capital.  He sees a need to change some regulations on the margin, but he is not an advocate of fundamentally changing the premise on which we now regulate ourselves.

Although it’s not the point of this post, I will suggest, for comparison, what a truly deregulatory posture might look like.  Besides eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, the size and charter of the EPA and other federal agencies, a key shift in principle would be requiring that Congress positively approve every new regulation.  We already have the condition in which Congress sets parameters for the regulatory charters of the various agencies – and that is what has gotten us to the current environment of wild, often incoherent overregulation.  It is a good principle to start with, that whatever forms of regulation Congress doesn’t have time to attend to directly, we don’t need anyway.

Much reduction in the footprint of regulation would flow from that.  I also like Rick Perry’s proposal to reduce the amount of time Congress spends in session.  It is shifts in principle like this that will change the basis of government.  Changing that basis is our only hope for arresting the fiscal freight train headed for the mother of all wrecks.  But Romney is not the candidate who will push for the changes we need.

That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be better than Obama.  He would.  But electing Romney will mean at least four more years of playing on defense:  trying to mitigate the score being racked up by the other side, rather than playing on offense to score touchdowns for liberty and smaller government.  That’s why so many of the voters can’t get excited about Romney.  They know we need someone to lead us in a direction of fundamental change – a shift in the principle of government, back toward the limited-government idea of the Founders, plus a very big reduction in its footprint – and they know Romney won’t do that.

I would put the other candidates (with Ron Paul as an outlier) in this order, as to how much they would push for fundamental change: Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.  All three would go further than Romney would in this regard.  If any of these candidates got a Republican-controlled Congress, we could expect some amount of actual reduction in the persistent basis for regulation.

Romney’s approach would be to tinker with it on the margins.  I will vote for Romney if he’s the choice, just as I will vote for any of the other three.  But what we need is a small-government president who will go on offense.  Defense will only stave off the eventual loss.  And as we see with the Republican apathy over Romney, in politics – unlike football – defense isn’t exciting or motivational.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

The administration appears to be doing what it thinks will avert one.  Military force is playing a quiet and relatively minor role.  There has been more “messaging” about force in the last few weeks than actual force activity.  The administration is also trying to discourage Israel from mounting an independent strike on Iran, by frequently advertising US concerns about that possibility.  Presumably the White House knows that this particular messaging campaign serves to keep Iran alerted.  Ultimately, there is more talk than anything else.  Military preparations, such as they are, are defensive in nature.  That includes the acceleration of missile-defense sales to the Persian Gulf nations.

Consider last week’s disclosures about the number of US troops in Kuwait and the announcement that a “second” carrier strike group had arrived in the Central Command (CENTCOM) theater.  News outlets across the nation reported these bits of information as evidence that the US is “boosting” our military presence in the Persian Gulf.  The direct implication is that we are doing this not only because of the Iranian threat but because of a concern in the White House that Israel will conduct a strike on her own (which would produce a backlash from Iran).

But we are not “boosting” our troop presence in the Gulf.  We decided last year to keep some of the troops coming out of Iraq in Kuwait, as a ready force to deal with contingencies.  As far as I can tell, the US administration has not explicitly implied in the last few days that the troops were “dispatched” to Kuwait, as if they had just recently deployed from North America.  But numerous news outlets are reporting the developments in exactly those terms.

The force of about 15,000 includes two Army brigade combat teams (BCTs) and a combat air (helicopter) brigade, all of which deployed in 2011 prior to the withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq.  We haven’t “boosted” our ground-force presence in the Persian Gulf; we have drawn it down a little less than originally advertised.  The forces in Kuwait are insufficient to mount an attack with; they might be used instead to help defend Gulf nations if Iran retaliated against sanctions or other Western actions with regional attacks.  (The original premise was being able to go back into Iraq for security operations.)

The carrier strike group situation, meanwhile, will prove out in the coming days; we may have decided to keep two strike groups on station instead of one.  One of two carriers that are currently outside the Persian Gulf – USS John C Stennis (CVN-74), which has been on station and is due to go home to the West coast, and USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), which has just arrived from San Diego – will probably leave shortly.  A third carrier strike group, that of USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), is reportedly headed for the theater from its last port visit in Thailand, which may mean that two carriers will be within a 1-3 day transit of the Persian Gulf, even if both are not operating there continuously.

It has been far from unusual to have two carriers in CENTCOM over the past decade.  Even Pat Buchanan seems to have given up thinking it’s a harbinger of an ill-advised attack on Iran.  Two carriers are, in fact, insufficient to launch a deliberate attack on Iran – like the ground forces being retained in Kuwait.  The presence of two carriers in the theater for an extended period is evidence of a marginally heightened defensive profile.   (It also gives the president the flexibility to send one on a dash to the Eastern Mediterranean if necessary, while keeping one on station in Southwest Asia.)  The two carriers are not a signal that we are going on offense.

Notably, if we did need to apply significant force in the Eastern Med, we’d have to send assets there.  The Russians have the only aircraft carrier task force deployed in EASTMED. The US has not maintained a robust carrier presence in the Med for some years now.  (Interestingly, Britain and France are planning to jointly deploy a large naval force – including aircraft carriers – to the Med later this year.)

Meanwhile, another media narrative, about the US sending a signal of support to Israel (and pressure against Iran) at a crucial time, has just fallen apart.

The US and Israel were set to hold exercise Austere Challenge 2012 in May, followed by Exercise Juniper Cobra 2012, a missile/air-defense exercise that would place the Theater High-Altitude Defense (THAAD) system in a “defense against Iranian missiles” scenario.

The Juniper Cobra series started in 2001, and in 2009 brought the THAAD system into Israel also.  Austere Challenge is a US European Command (EUCOM) exercise series in which the command headquarters practices operating as a joint task force HQ, commanding participants among the US forces stationed or deployed in the EUCOM theater.  US reserve forces regularly deploy to Europe for the exercise, and in 2011, the US Sixth Fleet flagship, USS Mount Whitney, participated as a HQ afloat, concluding the exercise with a port visit in Haifa.

The US and Israel were planning a large-scale combination of these exercises in April-May 2012.  But reporting in the last 24 hours indicates that the exercises will not take place then.  Turkish press, quoting Israeli reporting, says that the exercises have been postponed until later in the year.  But the most recent Israeli reporting suggests the exercises have been cancelled (with budget concerns cited as the reason).

Postponement – probably to an as-yet unspecified date – is more likely.  The US gets as much out of these exercises as Israel, and has been focusing on Juniper Cobra 2012 for validating missile-defense systems and operational concepts that cannot be effectively exercised elsewhere. (UPDATE:  the latest from the Jerusalem Post confirms that the exercises will be held later in 2012.)

But the political signal is the opposite of the one originally talked up in the infosphere.  Rather than intending to send a signal about US support for Israel, one that would put pressure on Iran, the administration is, at the very least, not concerned that canceling or delaying the exercises will inevitably send a very different signal.

I’m sure the Obama administration would characterize its political posture as one of concern that holding these exercises on schedule would be seen as provocative in an already unsettled situation.  The unspoken premise is, of course, that demonstrating US-Israeli collaboration in missile defense and military operations is provocative.

And from the perspective of Tehran, and no doubt Damascus, it presumably is.  Well-intentioned people can argue honestly over whether it is a good idea to let policy decisions be governed by what our opponents consider provocative.  “Provocative” is always the flip side of “deterrent”; the question is whether, in a given situation, one thinks like a global leader determined to deter, or like a nation that hopes to avoid the need for exertion.

Regardless, it cannot be argued that the Obama posture is anything other than defensive.  Equally defensive is the administration’s emphasis on supplying Gulf nations with air- and missile-defense systems.  These systems are of obvious interest to Iran’s neighbors, but they cannot prevent Iran from launching attacks – of any kind.  They are purely passive, entailing no preemption or active deterrence.

It has been a mistake at every turn to look for evidence of the conventional use of US power in the actions of the Obama administration.  The operations in Libya demonstrated clearly that Team Obama is determined not to use US military power to secure transformative outcomes rapidly.  Obama is prepared to let conflicts continue as long as they must in order that the outcomes be achieved by other means.  His solicitude for missile defenses in the Gulf and in Israel is a signal that he expects to approach Iran on defense.  Our overall military posture in the Gulf simply reinforces that approach.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

Sunday sees a game it’s really hard to get excited about between Houston and Baltimore.  Apologies to those who care, but man, those teams put us to sleep.  We see that Houston has scored a respectable average of 26 points per game won, but it really seems like less.  Maybe the Texans’ losing slide at the end of the season created a mental prejudice.  The 12-4 Ravens did beat Houston during the season, and presumably will be favored tomorrow, although of course they sat out the wild-card weekend.

The Sunday night game will see the Giants at Packers.  Green Bay obviously has the edge, but we never count the Giants out entirely.

Here’s an interesting factoid in preparation for tonight’s All-Tebow-all-the-time coverage.  One of my younger sisters, attempting to say the word football for the first time as a toddler, came out with “feebaw.”  Get it?  Tebow?  Feebaw?

All right, the human-interest coverage is going lame very quickly, and the insightful commentary has just about dried up.  Enjoy the games.  Gotta go feed the neighbors’ dogs.

Vivian: So you don’t actually have a billion dollars, huh?

Edward:  No, I get some of it from banks, investors…

Vivian: And you don’t make anything and you don’t build anything.

Edward: No. No.

Vivian: So what do you do with the companies once you buy them?

Edward: I sell them.

Vivian: … You sell them.

Edward: Well, l… don’t sell the whole company; I break it up into pieces… and then I sell that off; it’s worth more than the whole.

Vivian: So it’s sort of like, um, stealing cars and selling ‘em for the parts, right?

Edward: [ Exhales ] Yeah, sort of. But legal.

Edward Lewis could have added:  “… and I love being able to FIRE PEOPLE!!”  Or so the soundbite-driven understanding of all this would have it.

You’d think Romney’s opponents would know that much of the base they’re trying to appeal to hates demagoguery against business.  When a business isn’t profitable, there are good reasons why it’s better to repackage and repurpose its assets for more profitable use.  Unprofitable businesses aren’t made profitable by political bailouts; they are made dependent and unsustainable.  Businesses like Bain Capital ensure that resources are being put to the most profitable, job-creating uses, given the environment of regulation and taxes that businesses have to operate in.  There’s nothing wrong with the existence of such companies; indeed, they are a positive factor in a dynamic business climate.

But then, Romney is tin-eared himself on some significant things.  He did, in fact, say that he likes to be able to fire people if they’re not performing.  That is a stupid, politically insensitive way to word a valid requirement of a healthy economy.  People sometimes have to be fired, but it’s suspicious for someone to “like” being able to do it.  There is nothing more gratifying than an employee who does well, and in particular one who improves over time, while there is nothing that makes the average boss feel as terrible as having to fire one who simply can’t seem to measure up.

Why couldn’t Romney have said instead that businesses need to be able to fire non-performing employees, even though it’s never any fun to do that?  Apparently because that’s not the way he sees it.  His phrase about liking to be able to fire people is the one that came naturally to him.  It doesn’t mean he’s a cold-hearted jerk who loves to give people bad news, but it is a personality problem for him in political leadership.  ‘80s-era pop psychologists would have said that he is very “objective-oriented”: he resonates to the idea of the goal and the achievement, and gives short shrift to the people.

Republicans do want a better climate for business, but the more abstract, data-focused perspective of a Bain Capital graduate is not necessarily what they are looking for.  I don’t actually want a president who imagines he can boost the bottom line of US companies.  I want one who understands that government policies affect people, largely through the constraints they put on business.  And I want him to respect the rights and dignity of individual people, neither trying to bribe them with goodies nor trying to herd them into programs that he sees as financially smart.  I’m not looking for a president with an opinion on whether a whole bunch of things he isn’t in charge of can be profitable.

Bringing up Bain as an issue has also turned up the fact that Bain profited from a deal in the early 1990s involving a steel company that received a $44 million federal bailout for its pension plan.  While it is demagoguery to equate this with Bain itself receiving a federal bailout, it is still a problem for Romney.  Companies like Bain have been operating in the environment of government incentives, regulations, and bailouts for quite a while now, and Romney’s record is one of being comfortable with that.  (He endorsed the TARP bailout in 2008.)

More and more of the people are not comfortable with it.  It is well and good that Romney wants the government to get off business’s back, but it’s not OK to remove only some constraints while leaving others, and continuing to bail the whole mess out.

Sadly, Romney’s opponents have wasted a superb opportunity to talk about what they think is the proper relationship between business and government.  They have simply jumped on the demagoguery bandwagon, which frankly is cheap and annoying.  If I were crafting talking points, I would address the “liking to fire people” comment graciously – something along the lines of “I’m sure this is what Governor Romney meant to say” – and focus more on Romney’s comfort with the extent to which government regulates business, profits from regulating business, and bails business out so it can keep regulating and profiting.

One last thought.  In contrast to the bloviation-fest precipitated by the Bain Eruption, consider the cool dispatch and intelligence with which the candidates knocked down the idiotic social-issue questions posed by Stephanopoulos and Sawyer in the debate on Saturday night.  The candidates were ready to talk about those issues – irrelevant as they were – with principled specifics.

On the matter of business and government, however, it’s been all big-government complacency on one side, and all mindless demagoguery on the other.  Not a hint of a principled argument about the free market and the appropriate role of government, from the perspective of either a man-and-the-state theory, or a regulation-vs.-the-market theory.

Nothing has made clear like the last 40 months that there is no longer an American consensus on these matters.  The Obama camp knows exactly where it stands.  But the GOP candidates aren’t internally motivated and prepared to make specific cases about it, as they are about social issues.  Yet that’s what the voters are waiting to hear.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

I can’t make any of the other GOP candidates look like Les Miles, however.  I can see a little Newt Gingrich in him, and maybe a little Jon Huntsman.  Perhaps just the tiniest scintilla of Mitt Romney.  But definitely no Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.  (Michelle Bachmann was never in the running – just can’t see her in a gnarly old football coach.)

So, in honor of a night on which we have the Allstate BCS Championship Game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, and even more Allstate commercials than usual, but absolutely NO Republican debates, herewith a gallery of coaches and candidates.  Choose yer poison. Lay your bets.  Will Saban/Perry tag Miles and the Tigers back, with the narrow win the oddsquad expects?  Or will Les, with a regiment of other GOP candidates perched on his shoulder, make it 2-0 on the Tide this year, sinking the Perry look-alike once again?

One thing we definitely predict:  defense will rule.  The Honey Badger (Tyrann Mathieu) will make big plays.  The offenses mostly won’t.  Let the wild rumpus begin.

Coaches v. Candidates

The strategic drivers

Once Iran is destabilized, the picture gets murkier from the standpoint of a great Asian power.  Either the US has a specific plan to re-stabilize Iran – which would probably reestablish a US presence there – or the Obama administration really doesn’t understand how alarming the prospect of a destabilized Iran is, and has no plan.  In either case, the potential outcome is worrisome or undesirable.  Asian leaders can’t just sit there and watch something develop without preparing for what might happen.

The question is not whether they will prepare, but what they will do.  India is an important factor, because whoever she aligns more closely with – Russia, presumably – will derive advantage from that.  But in terms of actively trying to shape the outcome in Iran, the actors with capability and history are Russia and China.  Both of them want to wield the major Asian influence over Iranian policy, and – perhaps more importantly – neither is willing to see the other gain the upper hand.

The basic conditions, which always have to be explained to Westerners, are geographic.  Iran naturally commands the Persian Gulf and anchors Southwest Asia.  She is the major power across the Caspian Sea from Russia.  Her population is vigorous and educated; she has a unifying national idea from out of the depths of history that no other nation in her immediate vicinity can claim.

Iran is a tremendous prize; neither Russia nor China is so foolish as to imagine ruling her directly, but obtaining her as a client is viewed by both as a major power-and-security move.  It would give them a foothold closer to the “Great Crossroads” of the Middle East-Africa-Europe juncture than either has yet obtained.

What Russia and China will not tolerate, if they can help it, is an Iran that falls either to the other or to the influence of the United States.  The Russians and Chinese have both made it clear, in numerous ways, that they are not willing participants in any global vision the US may choose to operate on.  They are no more interested in waiting for Barack Obama to reorder the world for them, through his trademark passive-aggressive approach, than they were for Bush II, Clinton, or Bush I to do it by their methods.

Potential courses of action

What can Russia and China do to respond to the toughened sanctions being imposed on Iran?  They can breach the sanctions; they can prepare for what they perceive to be US intentions; and they can seek to influence the political outcome in Iran, where the leadership is increasingly in disarray and may indeed lose its footing as the bite of sanctions intensifies.

It would not be difficult at all for Russia to continue to trade with Iran.  Russia has what no other G-8 power has:  an inland sea shared with Iran, where conventional US or NATO forces would find operations inconvenient in the extreme, both logistically, militarily, and politically.  China does not enjoy that advantage, but there are other ways into Iran, such as through Afghanistan and Iraq.  The US and NATO don’t control all the roads through Afghanistan, and the US no longer patrols the border between Iraq and Iran.

Certainly, the most convenient method of trading in oil and gas products with Iran is through the network of maritime terminals set up in the south.  But with the help of an outside partner, Iran could adapt relatively quickly to a different logistic footprint.

Meanwhile, we should not discount the options Iran may have from her southern coast.  The sanctions-evasion industry that grew up around Iraq between 1991 and 2003 involved actors in Iran, the UAE, and Oman (non-government actors in the latter two, to be sure, but the governments did little to interdict their activities.  See here for an analysis from 2009 of Iran’s evasion options).  Someone in the Persian Gulf is always up for profiting from sanctions evasion, and if the contraband network involved Russia, China, India, or other interested nations as clients, its appeal would only be increased.

The banking sanctions can certainly hurt Iran a great deal in the short term, but they also create conditions in which it would be an indispensable relief for a nation like Russia or China to come in with cash under the table.  Neither Moscow nor Beijing would do that out of compassion; the purpose would be to influence the course of political events in Tehran.  Against the assumption that the mullahs would have nothing to do with them must be set the reality that economic conditions are deteriorating rapidly.  The regime has a survival problem.

Since the end of World War II, both Russia and China have sought repeatedly to secure influence abroad by bolstering miscreant regimes against the policies of the West. They have had varying degrees of success, but the point to be disproven today is not why they would attempt it with Iran, but why they wouldn’t.  We can assume without demur that both Moscow and Beijing have an active interest in “picking” the leadership that will establish itself out of a destabilized Iran.

My own view is that if the US took a more active interest in cultivating a new leadership from among the liberalizing elements in Iran, we would have a good opportunity to succeed.  Iranians have no illusions about the intentions of Russia or China.  The idea that those nations’ purposes would be more consonant with the sentiments of Iranians, whether the political leaders or the average people, is laughable.

But successful support of this kind cannot be accomplished without an overtly articulated moral and political case for it.  The best way Obama could help Iranian reformers is by stating that the US is behind them.  Reagan’s success with this approach stands out against decades of failure with the more Obama-like ambivalent rhetoric from both Democrats and Republicans.  You cannot induce at-risk nations into liberalizing by applying secret-squirrel methods inside a cone of political silence.  This is a case in which the only effective approach is to state your intentions and lead from the front.

The military aspect

Besides breaching the sanctions and seeking to foster a client regime in Iran, Russia, in particular, can be – and is – preparing to counter US/NATO military action.  That doesn’t mean China has made no “military” noises; in fact, a Chinese general has been quoted as saying that a US attack on Iran would launch World War III.  China has conducted major military exercises with Pakistan – Iran’s neighbor to the east – this past year; has a military build-up underway in Pakistan’s northern territories (namely, Gilgit-Baltistan); and has a growing and respectable capability to project power in the Indian Ocean.  (At the end of December, the Russian navy also had talks with the Seychelles about using Port Victoria for Russian naval operations.)

But Russia’s territory abuts Iran’s to the north, and the Caucasus and Central Asian ‘Stans are the southern flank of Moscow’s “near abroad.”  The Russians are worried – to the extent of moving troops to the south, near the border with Turkey, evacuating families from military posts in the Caucasus, and conducting a large military exercise in the Caspian Sea, simulating the defense of oil and gas interests against an attack by Western forces.  The oil and gas infrastructure in the Caspian Sea belongs to multiple nations; one implication of the Russian exercise is that Russia wants to be able to pursue joint commercial interests with Iran in spite of sanctions, and that the Caspian Sea is the nexus of that intention.  Supposing that Russia merely intends to “help Iran” by defending Iranian assets is too narrow an interpretation.

Russia is also building both a case and a capability to eliminate Georgia as a potential base for US operations – and to secure Georgian territory for logistic support to Russian forces in Armenia.  Multiple sources quote Russian military leaders as complaining that their logistic freedom is constrained by Georgia’s denial of a key transport route.  And in mid-December, the chairman of the Russian Security Council – not an anonymous functionary, but the chairman himself – announced that Moscow was worried about a force of terrorists supposedly being readied in Georgia for attacks on Russia, specifically attributing this to Georgian government policy.

While manufacturing a case against Georgia, Russia has also consolidated the command structure of her Black Sea naval forces and put them at the highest readiness level (see RT link above).  These are the ships that will blockade Georgia in the case of a Russian takeover.

Many readers are also aware that Russia has dispatched a naval task force to the Mediterranean, built around the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.  The naval love-fest continues between Russia and Greece:  Kuznetsov conducted flight operations in Greek waters on 5-6 January, and her escorts pulled into Tartus, Syria on the 7th.  From the Kremlin, Kuznetsov’s presence looks as much like the spearhead of a potential deterrent against US action in the Black Sea as it does anything else.  Of course, Russia intends to stake her claim on Syria and support the Assad regime, but since 2007, when Putin proclaimed a return of Russian force to the global stage, it has been wrong to interpret the strategic purposes of Russian deployments narrowly.

It’s also worth noting that Russia’s core security alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), conducted a major military exercise in September in which it simulated preventing the construction of a gas pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.  Such a pipeline could only get going with outside support from a presumably Western (perhaps Chinese) partner.  Russia is starting to put serious ideas of military force behind her strategic concern that her rivals are all up in her Kool-Aid, and the actions of the Obama administration are having the opposite of a reassuring effect.

Russia’s preparations for something that many Americans reflexively assume will not happen are both extensive and expensive.  In the wake of his inconsistent responses to the Arab Spring revolts, it is logical for Russia and other nations to read Obama as unpredictable, and to see him as dismissive of the repercussions of his policies for the rest of the world.

Obama’s lack of strategic understanding will only carry US policy so far.  Iran has more options than simply collapsing and hollering “Uncle!” under the Western sanctions.  Any of those options entails a major shift of power liaisons in the Eastern hemisphere.  Team Obama seems to be proceeding as if none of that matters.  But it does.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.

The performances are superb – Gary Oldman as George Smiley immediately makes you forget even Alec Guinness – and the script and staging range from not overly annoying to inspired.

But in the theater where I saw it, the quiet, understated delivery of the actors caused an older gentleman in the audience to shout, “Turn up the damn volume!” (He was shushed by his embarrassed wife.)  The cast does affect a certain amount of mumbling and whispering, which apparently forms an important part of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s concept for remaining true to le Carré’s trademark atmospherics.  (It could also be that his artistic hero is Ingmar Bergman; I haven’t seen any of Alfredson’s Swedish films.)

This little audience-reaction vignette sums up beautifully the movie’s basic disconnect.  Tinker works very hard to be true to le Carré, whose classic Cold War spy novels were contemplative and brooding, generous and patient.  Le Carré is a writer of unequalled talent in his sphere, giving his name to an enduring, identifiable mood about the fictional business of international espionage.   But for that mood to grip an audience’s short hairs when the story is told on screen, something more is needed than a faithful rendition of le Carré’s style.  What is needed is a Cold War audience.  What is needed is the Cold War.

Le Carré didn’t do cinema-ready chase scenes in his Cold War spy novels.  He isn’t a mystery writer or a spinner of fantastic tales about resurgent Nazi cabals or Nazi breeding programs in Latin America.  His fascination has been with character, moral decisions, and the tension between professionalism and human weakness.

Frederick Forsythe, by contrast, another great action-fiction writer from the same era, gave his readers a sort of documentary insight into spycraft, constructing stories around criminal plots, suspense, and danger.  Robert Ludlum, for his part, built his name on fast-paced action, stock characters, shocks and surprise twists.  Ludlum’s Bourne series has been translated effortlessly into a modern franchise, and the film adaptation of Forsythe’s Day of the Jackal, released in 1971, holds up for 21st century audiences who have barely heard of Charles De Gaulle, because the story is about the respective crafts of assassination-for-hire and police sleuthing.  When the tale was reset in the United States for the 1997 Bruce Willis vehicle The Jackal, it worked as a film of its own because the story is a generic classic: rumpled, wily law enforcement official pursues preternaturally brilliant international criminal.

But le Carré was the Greek-tragedy hymner of Spies in the Cold War.  His genius was to sketch stories against the background of the common angst, fears, and assumptions of that strange, twilight conflict.  He didn’t have to explain why a fanatical Soviet spymaster who had never heard of compunction was a figure both frightening and fascinating – because everyone knew why.  The tanks that rolled into capital cities in Eastern Europe, the nuclear weapons that were pointed at everyone in the northern hemisphere 24/7, the grainy videos of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, eyes shadowed under their Russian-style swaddlings, the mental water-torture of endless coups and insurrections and wars – Soviet spymasters were connected with these lurking threats, these things that could actually hurt us.  These things that could end life as we knew it.

The necessary but somewhat ironic outcome of winning the Cold War has been that we no longer viscerally understand le Carré’s world without having it explained to us.  What Soviet communism was in the Cold War world is something that does not even exist today.  We have no common perception now of a threat figure like the storied Soviet spymaster, because there is no threat like the predatory Soviet Union.

The specific threat environment within which the humans do their shabby maneuvering is a surprisingly important component in a le Carré tale.  A diabolical plot, car-chase, or shoot-out can be reset almost anywhere, but the towering existential threat and moral exhaustion of the Cold War are sui generis.  Without a prior sense of them in the hearts of the audience, the conflict at the core of Tinker’s narrative comes off as flat and uncompelling.  Ho-hum, we think.  Another bunch of cynical spies, unable to trust each other.  And why is this lumbering story of teletype messages and old paper files moving along in such a jerky fashion?

The 1979 TV adaptation of Tinker, featuring Alec Guinness as Smiley, did less homage to le Carré’s style, but it fit squarely within the cultural expectations of Cold War fiction, and in that way was less self-conscious than the 2011 movie.  It was suited to its time, with Guinness as a memorable Smiley.

But Oldman is a wonderful George Smiley in his own right.  If there are more adaptations of Smiley novels, I predict that all future performances will be compared to his.  Oldman hits off le Carré’s ordinary, understatedly noble functionary perfectly.  He carries the movie, which I think would otherwise be rather tedious and inexplicably dour for under-40 audiences with no tribal memory of the Cold War.  Virtually all the performances are excellent, although some of the actors, like the wonderfully effulgent Ciaran Hinds, have too little to do.  Hinds plays Roy Bland, one of the top British spy leaders suspected of being a mole, and manages with just a few close-ups to keep those who don’t already know the story interested in the possibilities of his guilt.

Tom Hardy (Inception, The Take), as lower-class thug Ricky Tarr, almost steals the movie out from under the tremendous older cast.  He manages to convey a feral audacity without being coy or grating.  Other stand-outs are Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC’s 2010 Sherlock Holmes) as Smiley’s sidekick Peter Guillam, and Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes, The Young Victoria) as Jim Prideaux.  The Prideaux character is shortchanged somewhat in the film, but Strong grabs attention for it anyway.

One of the most poignant moments of the story occurs when Prideaux – after being sneaked back into Britain from his supposed assassination in Hungary – finds himself in a rural classroom with a group of young students.  An owl emerges like a wild dervish from the schoolroom’s chimney, precipitating an explosion of feathers and char over the assembled children.  Prideaux, who was tortured by the KGB before he was returned to the Brits, kills the bird quickly and professionally with a stick, administering one deadly, jolting whack that leaves the owl emitting terrible cries in its death throes on the classroom floor.

We are meant to see in this jarring vignette the seared conscience of a beaten-down, used-up spy – and back when spies seemed terribly necessary, in a world rent by a grotesque ideology married to weapons of global destruction, the irony and sorrow of such a moment had a power to pierce the heart.

But more heart-rending today is the fact that they no longer do.  We may appreciate the owl’s scene as a narrative device, but it doesn’t make us secretly long to hug a spy for all the moral sacrifices he makes to keep us safe.  We simply don’t live in a world anymore in which his services seem indispensable, or like the center ring of a global struggle for civilization.

It is this passing of an era that does in Colin Firth’s turn as Bill Haydon, another of the potential moles among the senior leadership of the British spy service.  Firth’s performance is terrific – in his last scene with Oldman you can hardly bear to look at him – but the elephant in the room is the stark recognition that it just doesn’t matter anymore.  Without the Cold War context – of politics, of ideology, of threats to the future of mankind and to our very existence – the hubris and manipulation and cynicism and betrayal look small and pathetic, like something way too inconsequential to build a story around.

I suspect that today’s generations will have an existential-conflict narrative of their own soon enough.  We who remember every assumption and slogan of the Cold War don’t by any means wish it back.  But we are in a peculiar hiatus now from the civilizational compulsions that attend a life-and-death struggle, and nothing – no fiction, no poetry, no art – that requires a context of that kind to grip our minds and hearts has a hope of tasting the way it once did.  For such a savor, we will have to await the next brush with existential brinkmanship.

Addendum:  For more poignant Cold War reminiscing, be sure to check out Rick Richman’s superb review of The Iron Lady, the late-2011 indie film in which Meryl Streep portrays Margaret Thatcher.  Rick makes the case that, whatever the narrative intentions of the film’s producers, the movie’s result is to spotlight the remarkable strength, grace, and admirable quality of Thatcher’s character and legacy.  If I were to sum up Rick’s thesis, I would put it this way: No matter what you try to say about Margaret Thatcher, she’s going to have the last word.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at Hot Air’s Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, and The Weekly Standard online.