Monopoly on Violence

To have and display a weapon represents probably 90% of its value.

The sociologist Max Weber described the sovereign state in its simplest manifestation as, "the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force". When we get in to car accidents, make large purchases, or need to settle disputes, who do we call? Ghostbusters? Batman? The local militia? Our favorite warlord? No. We call lawyers.

We call people who can act on our behalf; people who can leverage the government's monopoly on legitimate force in our favor. When there is no government, or when lawyers look more like Patrick Swayze in Red Dawn, then we turn to our friends and neighbors, and we approach strangers with extreme caution. In the absence of higher authority, some of us approach strangers more agressively than others; a select few choose murder and tryanny.

Things look pretty different when there is no Sovereign around who can lay claim to this monopoly on violence. Look back to long-standing customs and we can get a glimpse of what it must have been like to approach a stranger during this epoch. People began shaking hands and bowing to one another as a ritual of negotiation to determine that they would not draw their sheathed swords. People began to clink glasses together in a toast so that "fluid exchange" would occur, assuring that any poison in one goblet would spill in to the other. People without swords or drinks to share cowered in terror and submission every time someone new rode in to town.

Two points modify these rules for modern times.

First, the biggest weapons currently available are capable of incinerating millions of people in one round of attack.

Second, the arena in which these weapons are acquired, and (God forbid) used is one without a legitimate sovereign with a monopoly on force. It is also between states, and not individuals. Ever since the Great War, as the stakes have escalated, we've tried to create some kind of Sovereign via the League of Nations and the UN, but establishing a sovereign without a clear external adversary is a different and maybe impossible prospect. It certainly won't be the United States any time soon.

In the current impasse with Iran over nuclear weapons, we are left to the old tricks of secret handshakes, liaisons, coalitions and third-party proxy negotiators. We're left with one-on-one diplomacy. Failing that, we're left with a gentlemen's duel.

Iran is a big country full of smart people, natural resources, and history going back to the Patriarchs (and I'm not talking the Federalist Papers here). Iranian culture owes much to a long history of serving as traders and negotiators between distant and sometimes hostile societies. They have mastered the use of negotiating in the absence of a third-party protector, of getting what they want when there's nobody around and no guarantees of safety. For America, coming in to this game as a relatively young nation, we are at a severe and too often unrecognized disadvantage in understanding or successfully competing with these tactics that have been honed over scores of generations. Americans are not very good one-on-one negotiators. We're too much of a modern nation-state and not enough of a society. We expect rules to be in writing. Anyone who has ever tried to buy something from an Iranian should know what I'm talking about. All we have going for us these days is our spending (and borrowing) power.

My sense is that despite the nationalist blow-hard rhetoric, no one in Iran with any real power is serious about wiping Israel off the map. Sure, they'll send some money to Hamas and Hisbullah, but they're not interested in total isolation, or the zero-sum-game of multilateral nuclear warfare. They say all that because it sounds good-- sort of like when our leaders say stuff like the recently redacted "dead or alive", or the oft-mocked "bring 'em on". It looks good on a bumper sticker and it keeps most people from thinking about internal threats to their freedom and autonomy. Iran wants nuclear weapons because having them means that other countries would treat them with the respect and deference they demand. In a one-on-one world, this is essential for anyone who wants to hold any authority. Look where they are: they share borders with Pakistan, Russia and China, and are in ballistic spitting distance from India and Israel. To be a big nation and not to have nuclear parity with this mixed bag of cold allies and enemies would be insane foreign policy. 90% of having a weapon is not derived from using it, but rather, from the threat of its use.



I do not like the guys in charge of Iran. I do not like the inflammatory language with which Ahemadinajad routinely addresses the world. But I do not see a threat of immenent destruction from this matter, nor do I think that we are acting in a way that would affect change within Iran. We are ignoring Iran's role in the Iraqi insurgency, their role supporting terrorist groups across the world, and we are slowly allowing them to ally with other nations who want capitalism without democratic rule. By not directly engaging Iran, and confronting them on the geopolitical issues that matter to us, we are only strengthening a populist, fascistic leader's position, and creating a newly polar world in a time of scarce energy resources.

We can't stop Iran from getting the bomb, and really, it might not be so bad if they had it. Continuing under the policy that Iran must stop uranium enrichment before any discussions can take place only allows them to further thumb their noses at us, and to mock our demands. Iran is a big, powerful place. It must be treated as such, and not as some cold, rogue, remote, peninsula. We must engage Iran under any circumstances, find any leverage we can and make demands for reform of their government and civil society. Engagement works. No deals will be had that deny them this weapon. Our best bet is to change who is behind the trigger.