News that doesn't surprise at all - Russian official closely linked to Putin says world should just relax a little when it comes to Iran etc etc etc. Of course - didn't see that one coming. This thought though: resisting sanctions benefits Russia and China both as regards economics and strategic influence, but one can also see how limited sanctions, sanctions that hurt but not enough to move Iran off its course, can also serve the interests of Russia and China in much the same way by making Iran more dependent on their good graces and bringing it more explicitly into their spheres of influence. It's really hard to see a scenario here that fits Obama's agenda of engagement that doesn't rely on China, Russia and Iran behaving in entirely unexpected ways, ways that seem quite at odds with their evidenced natures and reported histories.
Should we call Obama et al naive then? Blindly idealistic? Or left to the mercy of events by their proclivities and unfounded assumptions?
[you shouldn't just simply ignore that China is playing a tricky game here seeing as how it's still very much dependent on the US economy - trying to undermine the extent of American power without adversely impacting the economic component may prove a strategy with a limited future - and so probably the key question to ask is: does China's desire to maintain the autocratic status quo politically while continuing to exploit a blended, top down, state sponsored genus of capitalism, does that make China less or more likely to take unwise chances or make bad calculations viz its provisionally anti-American strategy? Dunno - but certainly a decision to hedge American power with a nuclear Iran would open itself up to concerns about whether their actions are myopically reactionary or seriously flawed in some other way and lead one to wonder that if China is so concerned about American power that it is willing to condone WMD proliferation amongst dubious nations - let's not forget N Korea - then what does that say about the long term viability of the current relationship between the two behemoths?]
