Ahmadinejad is Very Capable of Suppressing Protests in Iran

The students in Iran aren't up against a foreign backed puppet, a decadent old monarch, or an impudent oligarch. They are up against a former elite special forces leader who specialized in divide and conquer tactics, intelligence, and asymmetric warfare.


The students in Iran aren't up against a foreign backed puppet, a decadent old monarch, or an impudent oligarch. They are up against a former elite special forces leader who specialized in divide and conquer tactics, intelligence, and asymmetric warfare. Ahmadinejad was one of the founders and high ranking organizers of the cream of the crop of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Quds force. The Revolutionary Guards are the private army of the Iranian ruling party with their own navy, special forces, intelligence, and militias. The IRG is a separate loyal army that competes with the regular army for resources and gets privileged access when it comes to training, talent acquisition, and funding. This competition is analogous to how Waffen SS in Nazi Germany was the vanguard of National Socialism, competed with the regular army, and often got preferential treatment when it came to talent, recruitment, cutting edge technology, and political influence.

Although IRG has a public ideology for recruitment purposes, its main task ( of keeping the ruling party in power ) forces it into very pragmatic decision making. The Quds force is IRG's CIA/special forces equivalent and like all special/intelligence services worldwide, is completely pragmatic when it comes to alliances with ideological enemies to achieve is goals. The Quds force is not above funding itself with drug money, bribes, and covert business dealings. IRG also employs thousands of ideological youngsters in a civilian militia (Basij) through using the clergy's infrastructure.

Lets make a semi-humorous analogy of what Iranian students are up against using American Republican party in 2004 as an example. Imagine if in 2004, the Republican party had a well funded army to "preserve the Reagan Revolution." This Reagan Revolution Guards had its own bases and access to tanks, factories, aircraft, and almost as many soldiers as the regular American military. The best of the Reagan guards were in elite Freedom Corps that combined CIA, FBI, NSA, homeland security, and Green Berets. Imagine if the Reagan Guards also employed an enormous civilian militia consisting of young Baptist zealots who were called say, College Republicans. Imagine if College Republicans were given legal power to assist the police, the Reagan Guard military, and did the bidding of the top GOP chairman. Imagine if GOP also consisted of a tight alliance of oligarchs and the clergy ( ha ha ). Imagine if like ROTC, College Republicans had local headquarters in every college and sent geeky religious goons to break up drinking parties, harass couples, beat up homosexuals, organize pro-regime rallies, disrupt opposition gatherings, and had the power to call in for police reinforcement whenever they felt like it. Finally, imagine that it financially paid to be a part of the College Republicans and the Reagan Guards since the GOP party oligarchs controlled the major industries of the country and only shared the profits with supporters through job perks and higher salaries. 2004 comes along and GOP mullahs only allow George Bush and John McCain to run. They then blatantly manipulate the elections with state controlled media to swing the elections towards Bush and use College Republicans and the police to make sure there isn't any unrest.

Makes one's blood boil doesn't it? In most of the world, including United States, there are always more uneducated poor religious people than bourgeois liberals and secular intellectuals. In Iran, the uneducated and the poor have been effectively manipulated by the wealthy clergy for close to thirty years.

The IRG are there to pacify the urban areas (where the intellectuals and middle class are dominant) and to counterbalance the underfunded non-ideological military. The students are substantially split between themselves along class and education lines through the Basij student union. Ahmadinejad knows that pacification of youth is key in a country where the average age is very low compared to aging European countries. Just like Putin promoted youth organization NASHI in Russia, Ahmadinejad made sure to promote Basij as a loyal student body. How reliable they are is yet to be seen.

NASHI is organized primarily around nationalism and job perks just like Hitler youth was. Basij is also organized around nationalism and job perks but also has the religious fundamentalist element. Considering that neither NASHI, college republicans, or Hitler youth have any monopoly on nationalism, that might be the weakest bond within Basij. In terms of job perks, the current regime has not made much effort to diversify from oil and unlike Russia they don't have too many other commodities to withstand the severe recent drop in oil prices. Job perks as an incentive may increasing lay in the promise of a liberal reformist movement. That leaves fundamentalist Islam as key glue to motivate the Basij youth. As most people know the trademark of the deeply religious youths is geekyness, unsexy clumsy prudishness, and often sadistic authoritarian unpleasantness of the uneducated. Iranian youths like youths anywhere are not immune to ridicule, fashion, trend following, internet, and the appeal of a sexier more liberated society. It is not known how long Basij can exert energies against the pro Mousavi protests taking this into account.

That really leaves the job of suppression and the last line of defense in the hands of the special forces, intelligence, and IRG themselves. Ahmadinejad is relatively young, cunning, and energetic. As a pragmatic former intelligence officer, he has sharp strategic neural capacity to do problem solving. He might not be Putin level or George Bush Sr. level intellect, but the growing role of the position of the Iranian president in recent years (who isn't supposed to be in control of foreign policy), shows that Ahmadinejad is very capable at building alliances and increasing personal power. As such, it's very possible that he'll be able to find enough allies to create a believable impression that the protests are dying out, do mass swarm arrests in smaller cities to scare the key opposition leaders in Tehran, and string the world along until the bulk of the students are demoralized and dispersed. It remains to be seen whether Khomeni and Ahmadinejad have enough access to economic resources to create such a coalition.

China Mercantilism and New Global Economic Order

China is successfully getting the world embedded in mercantilist system of development by being such a large player with a strategic long term vision. This allows Western world to economically outmaneuver China instead of being sidelined by it.



Modern communication technology has allowed China to achieve a centralized bureaucracy that has a smaller chance of becoming overextended and too top heavy. The danger of parts of central government melting into regional structures with rebellious consequences is diminishing every year. The risk is not totally gone however if rapid economic growth bumps into serious stagnation and even GDP reversal. As of today, China has the creaky uneven centralization of 18th century France and is gleefully engaged in large scale mercantilist practices.

Chinese society is not yet fully urbanized and consolidated. Beijing cannot yet engage in cutting edge mercantilist practices as done by Japan and Singapore. Chinese political center only recently overcame last remnants of feudalism, warlordism, and peripheral regional integration. Having dealt with that, China is pursuing the same economic path that allowed Kaiser's Germany to rapidly grow by taking advantage of British post-mercantilist free trade period. It is very historically appropriate. There is no need for Beijing to emulate Spanish, British, or French mercantilist experiences.

For a nation of 5 year plans, it makes sense to try to skip developmental steps and leap from present macroeconomics of Kaiser's Germany to those of Japan. Today, China has done rapid neomercantilist development by the book:

1) Government imposed positive trade balance through protectionism and currency control (yuan pegged to the dollar)

2) Self sufficiency in agriculture and manufacturing of basic to advanced goods

3) Acquisition of large amounts of money and gold (around a trillion dollars worth as of 2009). Controls to prevent wealth from flowing out of the country through protectionist restrictions on imports

4) Large scale mining and infrastructural projects to increase use of domestic resources and terrain. Hamilton and Quinsy Adams would be proud of what Beijing's coastal elite have achieved in the last 20 years. China has also secured 60% of Africa's resource exports and are structurally integrating Central Asia and Siberian Russia into their resource feeding network.

5) Keeping the overall population's wages low to increase country's overall manufacturing exports. That is easily accomplished by underdevelopment of Western provinces like Tibet. One child policy is more imposed on the wealthier Mandarin ruling coalition than the periphery ethnic groups. Uneven implementation of one child policy keeps periphery ethnic groups more fertile and poorer. Coastal urban ruling peoples spend more energies on advanced wealth generating employment rather than saving to augment multiple children.

6) Keeping of imports limited to natural resources and large scale buy outs of foreign expert talent in anything from engineering, electronics, economics, and hard sciences

Current opinion and international action has just been reactive so far. Some are mainly focused on China's attempts to prevent rapid devaluing of the bought dollars (before all of them are eventually used on natural resources anyway) through creation of an international reserve currency.

Some focus on how the international recession, can be used by China, to move from less advanced manufacturing to price competing with Germans and Japanese when it comes to advanced electronics and electric cars.

Many are focused on new Chinese confidence of proactively criticizing existing international economic system and offering transformative multilateral steps such as gradual multilaterial global involvement in the IMF.

Very little attention has been paid to the implications of the world being pulled into a mercantilist arrangement. China is becoming more predictable and thus out-maneuverable. Originally, Britain became economically successful because it added free trade theory onto mercantilist practice earlier than Spain or France. It stayed one step ahead of the competition. However, the new economic hybrid has created oligarchic capitalist interests who then used liberal theory to reduce state's involvement in the economy. Wealthy exporting interests (who controlled the house of commons and people's opinion through printed media) used appeals to individual freedom to dismantle the mercantilist/free trade hybrid that made Britain powerful and wealthy to begin with. Britain coasted along but economically declined as hybrid societies were able to build up new waves of industrial assets through neomercantilist practices (Germany/ United States). As Britain declined in industrial might, it focused on its core strength of money management and that lead to the torch being passed down to Wall Street in the 20th century. The great competing banking hubs of Europe (Paris, Berlin, Moscow) were looted in the wars/revolutions. We now see what happens when banking and finance is the core strength and emphasis of the economy.

China is now in the process of moving to the final stage of manufacturing asset concentration through focus on development of advanced products like cars and computers. Rapid economic assimilation of Taiwan and Hong Kong will aid in that process. Western investment in Taiwan created a base for high technology and competitive know how. Many Taiwanese oligarchs have already basically integrated their companies with mainland ones. Ideologically, Taiwan's Kuomintang political center, can now smoothly cooperate with Chinese authorities. People forget how important socialism was in Chiang Kai Chek's original nationalist ideology.

Very soon, China will begin manufacture of high technology goods to compete with Germany and Japan for markets in Russia, Europe, and North America (as well as lower end cheap electric cars sold to developing nations). They will be forced to utilize existing free trade international system (perhaps stabilized by IMF's Special Drawing Rights currency basket) to push these products abroad.

How would Chinese like to see the world once their products flow onto middle class Western markets? They would like to see no protectionism from Europe, Russia, Japan, or North America. They would like to see rule of law and capitalist adherence from everybody in the world. They'd be fine with North America and Europe reduced to South American-esque resource providers and vacation destinations. We can see that if China takes on Japanese level importance in high technology exports, they'll be able to then finally consolidate nationally and relax the amount of force needed to keep social stability.

In a few decades, the communist leadership in Beijing will then be able to claim that not only did they bring the nation out of poverty but they:

1) beat Westerners at their own game like Japan did (but without a period of war over resources)
2) created real feeling of nationalism, inter-ethnic peace, and modern nation state like Chiang Kai Chek wanted
3) avoided Soviet Union's mistakes when undergoing Perestroika while properly utilizing communist fruits of mass literacy and emphasis on science/engineering
4) took the torch from United States as the Global role model when it comes to free trade, peaceful co-existence, lack of harmful interference in other societies' business, isolationism, respect for borders of small states, and business cooperation
5) built more for the developing world than the financially oriented English speakers by swapping resources for real engineering construction projects
6) helped create a stabilizing one world currency for more even international development

Such claims will allow Communist party to win election after election for a number of decades even if they allow political pluralism. Many Asian states continued to have one party rule for decades even after democratizing. Cultural collectivism and emphasis on agreement allows power elites to work smoothly together. Taking into account Britain's experience, China can easily continue to pragmatically evolve, build a financial center through Hong Kong, bring new resources (such as Helium 3 from space exploration), and guide humanity by being its center of progress.

History has shown that leading global elites will not allow such unimpeded ascendancy. Cutting off resources and containment is too blatantly hostile. Japan and Imperial Germany have demonstrated that. Advanced hybrid of mercantilism and free trade (from a society strong enough economically and technologically) will be the only way to counterbalance Chinese ascendancy. Only European Union with English and Russian speaking allies has what it takes to effectively compete and prevent formation of a long term hegemon that is culturally and psychologically uncomfortable for Westerners.

Earlier in the article it was mentioned how Chinese bureaucracy has a small chance of being destabilized again. There is precedent for this happening at numerous times in China's history with horrible civil wars and revolts from poorer less developed periphery. China's gini index (that shows country's income inequality between the rich and the poor) demonstrates that China is even more economically unequal than United States. Today, Beijing's authoritarian rule keeps the lid on trouble from elites from either the oligarch coastal factions, rural/regional factions, and urban West emulating liberals.

European Union's job to deal with the near future involves:

1) Being proactive rather than reactive to Chinese, American, or Russian moves

2) Acquiring valuable allies to augment influence. That means working first with Russia to kick American/British influence out of central Europe and then with England to diminish American influence inside NATO. NATO can then be ended/transmogrified and America approached as an equal power to work with.

3) Being pragmatic and not looking at human rights when acquiring resources from other nations. Europe still has time to lock onto substantial amounts of resource exports from the third world, especially Africa. It can join Russia in developing the Arctic energy reserves and help Russia outbid Chinese resource extraction/exploration companies in Central Asia.

4) Consolidate EU structures such as the European Parliament so more coherent action can be undertaken with more popular trans European legitimacy.

5) Use advanced collective protectionist methods to keep an edge in high technology products to stay a step ahead of China. Contribute even more constructively to global currency formation through IMF where Westerners still dominate.

6) Work with United States and England to manage the geopolitical, social, and economic decline of United States peacefully and productively. Invite young American professionals to European Union to displace social pressures from relying on less assimilative Muslim immigrants. Become the stable adult co-equal mediator between Russia and United States so the two former superpowers can productively contribute and provide nuclear protection. Open borders to young educated Westerners from around the world to counterbalance aging of Europe.

7) Develop strong ties to regional powers like Japan and India to counterbalance Chinese cultural influence. To do that, rapidly expand economic cooperation with them in the sphere of building climate change infrastructure, energy, military, and space

8) Comprehensively educate the public on climate change and loss of technological edge to China in non-confrontational terms. Take the lead in recognizing petty-infighting (like Poland's mistrust of Russian cooperation in Europe) and offer tangible economic and developmental incentives to major actors to overcome them.

Brussels has enough time and communication technology to still effectively consolidate before China does. It will require the same long term vision, developmental eye, and good historical sense as the one possessed by their Chinese politburo counterparts. Europe is more economically egalitarian than China. It has more power elites with a global reach and cutting edge professionals. It must find a way to be protected by Russo-American nuclear umbrella (without being controlled by them) so not too much money is spent on integrated European defense. Together, Western peoples of the world got close to a billion people and have as much of a shot as Chinese (less than half the Chinese speak the ruling dialect of Mandarin). Western civilization has the qualitative expertise to provide solid competition that will benefit all of humanity.