A new National Intelligence Estimate says that Iran ceased active efforts to acquire nuclear weapons technology in 2003 – damned odd timing, that – while retaining a capability to get back in the game again at some point in the future.
The future is always theoretical. You look at where you’ve come from, take stock of where you’re at. Try to connect those dots to project forward into the future.
Ecce: A brief recap of the past and present:
- Iraq – the heart of the Arab world – liberated from a brutal and fascist tyranny. The democratic election of a broadly representative government there. The forces of terrorist reaction forcefully suppressed.
- Lebanon freed from Syrian military occupation.
- Libya abandoned a long-term WMD program and is coming in from the international cold.
- The governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are allies in the fight against terror.
- North Korea has agreed to disable its nuclear weapons processing plant.
- Pro-US governments elected in Germany and France.
Gains in the international sphere are notoriously difficult to consolidate, even when progress is undeniable. Even when progress is undeniable on stubborn problems that had previously seemed intractable. Nations continuously tack to the breezes of their own interest through the use of balancing strategies, among others.
Speaking of strategy, the Persians invented chess:
Chess strategy is concerned with the evaluation of chess positions and setting up goals and long-term tactics for future play. During the evaluation, a player must take into account the value of the pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, position of pieces, and control of key squares and groups of squares (e.g. diagonals, open files, black or white squares), and the possible moves the opponent will make after any move made.
But Dubya, famously, is a poker player. Poker strategy is different:
The fundamental theorem of poker, introduced by David Sklansky, states that every time you play your hand the way you would if you could see your opponent’s cards, you gain, and every time your opponent plays his cards differently from the way he would play them if he could see your cards, you gain. This theorem is the foundation for many poker strategy topics. For example, bluffing and slow-playing are examples of using deception to induce your opponents to play differently than they would if they could see your cards.
Who knew that one side could play chess and the other poker?
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Newspaper reporters are proud to write the “first draft of history,” but like most first drafts there is a very great deal that they are going to get wrong. Based mostly on events overseas, the US news media has formed the collegial consensus that the Bush presidency has been an unmitigated catastrophe.
When a consensus model ceases to adequately explain events there are two choices: Change the model, or change the subject.
How ’bout those illegal aliens getting driver’s licenses?
Lord, I wish I could live long enough to see how future historians view what we’ve just gone through. What we’re still going through.
My only problem with your analogy is that in chess, there are no bad beats. Fundamentally, poker relies on luck, whereas every move in chess is a decided and calculated progression towards a known goal. The only reason people are able to repeat their results in poker is their ability to interpret and measure situations absolutely within the context of the information they have available to themselves; even the best laid plans in poker gang aft a-gley when the luck of the draw beats out carefully timed strategy. The only reason I make this point is because I would hate to think of our Commander in Chief as one to rely on luck for his ultimate strategic success.
~Ens Tim
I was once heard Bernard Trainor, a retired Marine General, discuss strategy during the Korean war. His exact quote was: “The Chinese were chess players. We were poker players.”
When you sit down at the table, it’s good to know what game you’re playing. We’ll see how this whole game plays itself out.
One last quote regarding poker. It’s an old truism that if you sit down at the table, and can’t figure out who the sucker at the table is after you’ve been playing for 1/2 an hour, it’s you.
I tend to think that poker is a more apt analogy than chess.
One of the reasons you can and must plan so far in chess is that you can see all the pieces, nobody can hide anything. Therefore you must be quite clever to surprise your opponent, and you have no excuse for being surprised by him.
In the real
Key point is buried down on pg 7 of the NIE:
“We assess with moderate confidence that convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult given the linkage many within the leadership probably see between nuclear weapons development and Iran’s key national security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran’s considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons. In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons—and such a decision is inherently reversible.”
which would seem to mitigate against anything but a political solution…
- SJS
Iraq the heart of the Arab world? Not a chance. Its a tertiary nation at best. Egypt or Saudi Arabia fits that role and neither of them are thriving democracies.
And as far as those two nations being allies-well its marriage of convience if any thing-one that can be undone just a coup de etat away…………….
each of the examples cited have a more complex set of reasons for their occurence and they are not a linear chain of events. Its an over statement to say they are all related to an invasion of Iraq. The seed corn of Arab mistrust is still there.
I recall reading that Admiral Yamamoto had trepidations about going to war with us, because he’d played poker with some of us. Russians play chess, and are very good at it. I think that they forget, sometimes, that it’s an artificial intellectual game. Poker is more like real life, in which one has uncertain knowledge of what’s going on, but has to bet anyway. Psychological intimidation helps, too.
Questions about chess, poker, and strategy in general, aside I find the timing of the NIE’s release puzzling…as in: the document itself is relatively old, so why release it at this particular moment? And, keeping in mind we’re only seeing a presumably-scrubbed summary, i.e., “Key Findings,” further muddies the water. Which I suppose brings us right back to strategy, eh?
I am truly puzzled by all of this and it’s NOT a “warm-fuzzy” kinda thing. This bears watching.
Indeed. There is a larger agenda at work with this release. It may be that a deal with Iran is in progress, or it may be that a deal with our European sometimes-allies is underway. You can be sure it is not a random event.
At the risk of being accused of being tendacious, I would suggest that the temporal proximity of events do not lead to the inexorable logical conclusion those events are related. As suggested by Skippysan, marriages of convenience last only until the convenience wears off (see, e.g., Venuzuela’s nationalization of oil exploration which was largely funded by US companies). The concessions Pakistan elicited as an “ally” are yet to play out entirely and may not be fully clear until such time as the elections promised by General Musharaff are actually held, if they do get held. The same is true of Saudi Arabia which is hardly a beacon of democracy as discussed late last month (Oh for God’s sake 11.29 and comments thereto). I don’t write to explicate a particular position but only to suggest that there are more sides to the story. Whether it is the nature of my training or the nature of my personality, I am cautious of conclusions which “rush to judgment” and especially cautious of ones which later are shown to have no factual support. Does the apparent refusal of the CIC to accept analyses which get in the way of a desired conclusion (whether in Iraq (WMD) or in Iran (WWIII)) bother anyone? Is a political solution inherently flawed (which would seem to mitigate against anything but a political solution…- SJS)? Yamamoto had misgivings about war with us because he’d gone to Harvard (IIRC). I do not doubt our military’s ability to carry the fight to the enemy. They are superbly trained, reasonably equipped, and competently led. However, if our troops are required to resort to deadly force only in a circumstance of last resort, shouldn’t out civilian leadership be governed similarly?
LAS VEGAS – David “Chip” Reese, a card star who won one of the biggest cash games in the world and three World Series of Poker championships, has died. He was 56.
Reese died in his sleep and was found by his son early Tuesday morning at his Las Vegas home after suffering from symptoms of pneumonia, said poker great Doyle Brunson, his longtime friend.
“I knew him for 35 years, I never saw him get mad or raise his voice,” Brunson said. “He had the most even disposition of anyone I’ve ever met. He’s certainly the best poker player that ever lived.”
After attending Dartmouth College, Reese was on his way to Stanford business school in the early 1970s when he stopped by a Las Vegas poker room and won big, said World Series of Poker media director Nolan Dalla.
“He just accidentally stumbled into Las Vegas and never left,” Dalla said
The senior moderator of the Asperger’s Syndrome community on LiveJournal has made his pretty good living in Las Vegas for some years now by playing poker professionally. I think he finds his “flat affect” and rather bland facial expression very helpful in that endeavor.
P.s. Oh, for people who think D. D. Eisenhower was dumb, he gave up poker around 1907 or so, because he would always clean out the pockets of anyone he played with, and thought it wasn’t fair to make all of his fellow officers starve until the next payday.