MONTESQUIEU (1689-1455) PERSIAN LETTERS REVISITED

Besides asking himself "What is a Persian?" Montesquieu stated that "a nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century."

Last week, Manhattan was again transformed into the usual NASCAR race wherein official limousines and SUVs invade the town with a total disregard for rules and pedestrians. It is always sociologically revealing to observe how the more obscure hide their irrelevance in a mass of bodyguards and an entourage more interested in shopping than in listening to the mostly forgettable utterances of speakers who get their 15 minutes of Warholian exposure.  The Iranian president stole the show.  Rouhani was able to double-talk and to take the media hostage to platitudes which were only noteworthy insofar as they were polite, contrary to the raging outbursts of his pathological predecessor.

Obama and his Iranian counterpart did not meet or indulge in the "handshake of the century." Their telephone call made more news than any escort call coming from hotel suites or the Glass House on First Avenue.  I find this Rouhani fever naive. His entourage supposedly was a composite of all opposites:  the token Jewish parliamentarian is a joke and the Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (U.S. educated) is catnip for "Orientalists."  Last but not least, the Iranian President, who was chief nuclear negotiator (2003/2005), knows all too well how to let talks drag on until they collapse under the weight of their unsubstantial affirmations. Nevertheless he received star treatment.

The tactic is always the same...tire the other side and gain time for the centrifuges to multiply. The lie in the Muslim philosophical pantheon is a capital player, rolling over good faith or gentleman's agreements like a Sisyphean stone.  Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the wizard behind:  the veil wields the hard power and lets the show go on.  Obama is right to engage but the chosen moment should have been his.  Debacles in- and outside are undermining the U.S. presidency lately. The sanctions against Iran are one of the few trump cards left and should not be reversed.  Here and there one already hears of sanctions"light."  Reversing or modulating now what has proven to "have teeth" would be a monumental mistake. The convoluted American ways in Iran or towards North Korea show too often a tendency to rush towards some ad hoc form of hybrid arrangement rather than sticking to principle. 

The rhetoric which comes out of Tehran has switched into a moderato mode but otherwise nothing has changed. Assad or Hezbollah remain Iran's protectorates and the path to Iranian nuclear maturity remains wide open, notwithstanding the fairy-tale denials of the Supreme Leader who uses religion as a veil (this garment has many uses).  Netanyahu might suggest some reality checks during his meeting with Obama.

Talking is generally better than ignoring, even if it makes the air one breathes polluted, but please let us not repeat a Kim Jung Un/Dennis Rodman farce for Page 6 readership. The Gipper or Nixon were not over-intellectualizing presidents but in verifying and negotiating from a position of strength they projected instinct and drive. Obama should  listen once in awhile to the infamous Nixon tapes.  In between the less attractive passages there are insights which remain valid.  After all, even Churchill sometimes sounded more like Falstaff than Hamlet. 

Returning to Montesquieu, it is remarkable to foresee in his treatises the seeds of the thoughts of Huntington or Fukuyama:  the tension between reason and custom.  Let him have the last word: "The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed."
Bon voyage !

RENE MAGRITTE in MOMA,New York City

MOMA is opening the fall season next week with a BANG:   Rene Magritte's oeuvre comes to Manhattan.

This banal looking Belgian bourgeois has left us with many questions and few answers.  Even in his writings he remains a brilliant enigma.  Likewise his paintings are very uneven if one wants to compare his iconic works with his Periode Vache which represents a waste of time.  His almost Churchillian "Ceci n'est pas une pipe'' could be applied to him:  ''Ceci n'est pas un peintre.''  His painting is flat, like the work of some house painter. There is no brush, no life, no human input almost.  Nevertheless, we continue to be mesmerized and destabilized by works which defy gravity and logic. He confronts us with fear and alienation by sheer luck, almost disposing of inhibtions, recreating situations which collide without external damage.  The fear he conveys is one of silent movie reels, mass rallies, nightmares.  Robert Hughes spoke about this "dark" aspect with an authority few can equal.

Magritte's work is hypnotic and needs to be read as much as to be seen. One shouldn't look for the sophisticated recreation of the great masters. On the contrary, this work rejects the magnifying lens and rejects proximity.  The paintings are stories which feel more at home in voyeurism than in observation. This small, predictable artist was closer to Chaplin than to Eisenstein.  His force is subversive. So was his persona, which was able to make the banal the ultimate camouflage for Freudian nightmares. The kiss between the couple, mutually inaccessible because of the cloth which separates them, is one of the most disturbing works created. Magritte could not have painted the raw horror of "Guernica" or the bacchanalia of  "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."  His small suburban house was too tiny to let the sound of war or orgasm roam through the banal neighborhood which cushioned and protected him. No, his world was closer to the novels of this other genial Belgian, George Simenon, who was diabolically able to make the soup served taste like devil's brew.

The comparison has been made between Magritte and his fellow countryman Marcel Broodthaers.
Both used the canon as a totem. The difference being that Magritte's has no ammunition while Broodthaers' was ready to fire. While I was in China I tried to have a Broodthaers installation in Tienanmen.  The Chinese refused. This proves that the subtitles of conceptual art are better understood than what many imagine.  Magritte's work is ominously silent, slow in arrested movement, shy of the ultimate deadly bite or corrosion. Those body parts, mountains, birds, looming destruction are always taken hostage before they fall apart or dissolve. He tiptoes around catastrophe and decay and leave us alone with the fury which is in waiting. We are free to look at the snapshot or to project the imminent soul quake which is a fraction of a second away. This collective work is cruel behind the banal surface and leaves no room for compassion. The floating umbrella men are no Mary Poppins, they are Armageddon. The absence of reference to the waging war remains an enigma.

Undoubtedly the images of this perverse Weltanschaung will benefit the sale of paper bags and wall paper for the innocents who in their vast majority ignore the meaning of this highly toxic wrapping. Magritte always has the last laugh.

EUROPE and AMERICA : STORMY WEATHER

I recently spent time in Europe, mostly in the EU inner circle of Dante's hell.  Brussels, where the rude info services are at their worst, is certainly not the ideal gateway to EU land.  Here and there things have improved but overall the Zeitgeist looks totally unappealing. Europe as a whole gives the impression of some arrested body in need of a bypass. Nobody seems to enjoy belonging to this club where the armchairs remain unoccupied. Besides, the EU members have to fight on many fronts, social and financial, and they are trying to hold on to what they still have, while Catalan's, Scots or Flemish have their eye on the exit door in painfully surviving states.

It did not have to be this way. The ambitions were sound but the leaders got cold feet and the common political and military goals were mothballed, pursuing a model in "reduced mode," based in a virtual capital. Members and institutions had better stay far away and  immune to the chronic Belgian compromise disease.   Anyhow, the Brussels meetings are "routine," not unlike the European Parliament, which is to be found everywhere doing almost nothing.

The United States is not in the best of conditions either. The President, "community organizer of hope," has become the "philosopher king," of doubt.  The major American institutions come up with traps instead of collaborative solutions. The debt continues on a path to nowhere. The foreign policy appears to be a patchwork of contradictory inputs. The economy does nominally better but the real unemployment is closer to 15% than to the official 7%.  Meanwhile, Congress is more a Medusa raft than a remake of ''le congres s'amuse''.  The country is in pre-electoral mood already. The absurd rules before its time.

Still, the Americans do not find themselves in dire straits like their European counterparts. They live in a cultural boom and a creative technological bubble which partially compensate for many sore points (Detroit, the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling which might very well lead to a government shutdown).  The climate is corroded but it is not mortgaged.  The United States remains Number One and the President's upcoming Asian trip is meant to indicate that the "pivot" is for real (remember the "reset"?)  Unfortunately, Obama has become a "lame duck" avant la lettre and seems unable to inspire his allies or to deter his foes. It has become personal.  

Putin remains a formidable antagonist but his ability is more about disturbance than about structural strategic change. The Chinese risk being more and more preoccupied with internal affairs (political and economic) than with foreign arrays. Actually, the Americans would do better looking closer to home, to Latin America, where they may have to pay a huge price for their past exploitation and their current neglect.

Both the US and the EU lack the creative bold leadership they need so badly.  Obama might still 
get hold of his former mojo if the free trade agreement between the US and the EU works out.  The EU appears unable to tackle the problems which it is faced with on all sides because it played with immigration like with fire, handled enlargement like a fairy tale, and inflicted monetary waywardness like some hide-and-seek game.

The United States had better call 911, and Europe had better regroup before it wakes up one morning not knowing whose head it finds on the pillow (thank you Mr. Churchill).   L'exception culturelle is not just a one-night stand !

At the end of the road the old lovers will reunite. The youthful eagerness will be replaced by mature necessity.

Exceptionalism versus extaordinary

President Putin has launched a direct attack against American exceptionalism.  True, the term has been "over used."  Nevertheless, the reality still stands and despite many shortcomings the American dream is alive and continues to attract immigrants by the thousands.  The Russian Federation has made many extraordinary strides lately but it remains unable to shed the stains of the past.  Since Peter the Great's intellectual thefts, from Catherine the Great and Stalin's unsavory records, Russia stands in history as the butcher of its own and but also as the unsurpassed courageous ultimate shield for Stalingrad. The Soviet Union was built around one of the most ambitious and far reaching Utopian philosophies ever.  Marxism, alas, only led to mass starvation in the USSR, as it did later in Mao's China.  It fought Nazi Germany after having embraced it for a chunk of territory.  The Russian history is the stuff only Eisenstein could grasp.  The stairs in this Bolshevik Potemkin drama or the massacre in Yekaterinburg continue to haunt us,  as does Pasternak's 'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.'

There is an anger in Putin which is real and does deserve respect. The demise of his former empire was like Prussic acid thrown at his soul.  This man is obsessed with this loss and will try anything to compensate for what he feels as a humiliation. He is more Ivan than Chekhov. The whole Russian foreign policy is rooted in this need for revenge. Moscow is trying to build networks such as in the Shanghai cooperation council or by engaging Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
This leads to uneven results while the tensions in the south Caucasus continue to cause trouble. Hence Moscow's policy versus Syria is more than about Syria.

Few people knock at Moscow's door. Russia remains in large part a country that is more remarkable for weight than levity.  The United States by comparison has of late accumulated mistakes and geo-political myopia. Since the Korean War, blunders have been plentiful.  Still, they have surpassed any other country in accumulating Nobel Prizes, patents and creativity. Their often incoherent political apparatus continues to be rooted in a most sophisticated political/ constitutional framework which stands undisputed, notwithstanding abuse and malfunction.  People of all kinds still want to get in:  from cheap labor hoping for better wages to the children of the brain drain out of Asia and other continents. America attracts (whatever the legitimate criticisms), others distract. There is so much that does not work here--infrastructure, political gridlock, gun lobby--but there is so much which fights against malfunction that one ends in a draw until the better prevails. This gives the United States an appeal which reaches further than setbacks, structural deficiencies and, let's say it, socio-aberrations in education and social welfare, where the best hardly compensates for the worst.

I understand frustrations in the short term but I know likewise that America in the future will need more bouncers to control its borders than any other country ever will. The difference being that individuals in the vast majority want to be American.  Drop the latest Apple iPad in Red Square if you want to see how a mass movement in this new century starts.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

LAST WEEK WAS EXTRAORDINARY.   FOR THE FIRST TIME PERHAPS, THE RUSSIANS WERE ABLE TO PREACH TO THE AMERICANS ON THEIR OWN TURF.  NOT ONLY COULD PUTIN DIMINISH OBAMA'S STATURE AT HOME AND ABROAD, BUT HE WAS ABLE TO STEAL THE NARRATIVE AND TO IMPOSE HIS OWN THERAPY IN THE SYRIAN SAGA. THE  "RED LINE" THREAT BECAME (UNFORTUNATELY) AN EMPTY SOPHISM. THE USE OF U.S. "PINPRICKS" AGAINST ASSAD ARE THE BUTT OF MISPLACED JOKES AND SCEPTICISM.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE APPEARS TO CONSORT WITH CONTRADICTIONS.

ALL THIS WAS DONE BY A COUNTRY WITH A DISMAL RECORD ON HUMAN RIGHTS, WHICH RESCUED A CLIENT STATE THAT HAS PERFECTED THE USE OF LIES AND TERROR, SECOND TO NONE.  ASSAD HAS GOTTEN A BOOST AND GIVING UP (?) CHEMICAL WEAPONS COMES EASY AS HE HAS AN OVERWHELMING ADVANTAGE AGAINST AN INSURGENCY WHICH IS DISTRUSTED AND INFILTRATED BY UNRELIABLE ELEMENTS.  JORDAN, TURKEY, EGYPT, LEBANON, THE GULF STATES, ISRAEL, INTER ALIA, MUST TAKE NOTICE AND ARE TAUGHT A LESSON IN CYNICAL OR INCOMPETENT JUGGLING. THE FRENCH AND THE BRITISH WILL THINK TWICE FROM NOW ON BEFORE SUPPORTING A PLIABLE ALLY.  AMERICAN PRESTIGE IS AT A LOW POINT.  THE PRESIDENT HAS ALIENATED ALMOST EVERYBODY.

THE U.S./RUSSIAN DEAL MIGHT WORK OUT IN THE END, ON CONDITION THAT ASSAD FEELS THE HEAT.  IF IT DOES WORK, THE RUSSIANS WILL HAVE CASHED IN A DIPLOMATIC COUP.  CONVERSELY, THE UNITED STATES IS ALREADY PERCEIVED WITH SUSPICION IF NOT A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF DISBELIEF. OBAMA CUNCTATOR' S WAYS START TO LOOM OVER HIS PRESIDENCY AND MIGHT DERAIL HIS SECOND TERM'S AMBITIONS.

ASSAD REMAINS IN CHARGE, THE SLAUGHTER CONTINUES.  TO IMAGINE THAT INSPECTION AND DESTRUCTION CAN GO ON IN SUCH AN ABNORMAL CONTEXT IS NAIVE. AS LONG AS IRAN AND HEZBOLLAH HAVE CARTE BLANCHE, ARMS WILL FLOW. THE RUSSIANS HAVE NO INTEREST IN ANY MOVE WHICH MIGHT JEOPARDIZE THEIR GEOPOLITICAL GAIN AND THEIR CLIENT STATE IN THE REGION. AFTER THE DISASTROUS TURN OF EVENTS IN CAIRO, WHICH EQUALLY IGNORED AMERICAN ADVICE, A VACUUM IS SLOWLY BUT STEADILY BEING CREATED WHICH IS A STANDING INVITATION FOR ANOTHER PARTY TO COME IN AND FILL THE GROWING VOID.

I AGREE THAT THIS IS A HIGHLY TOXIC MATTER AND THAT CAUTION IS BETTER THAN GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY IN A WORLD WHICH IS GLOBAL. THE PROBLEM IS THAT LIKE IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN THE AMERICANS SEEM TO HAVE NO OPTIONS FOR PLAN B OR ANY FOLLOW UP. THE RUSSIANS CAN AFFORD TO BE CONTENT WITH THE STATUS QUO. WASHINGTON DOES NOT NEED TO ADD DEFICITS AT HOME AND ABROAD. THE PRESIDENT LOOKS LIKE A BAD ACTOR PLAYING HAMLET BUT REMEMBER THAT THE PLAY IS A MASS KILLER AS WELL. OBAMA MUST FEEL LONELY, SURROUNDED BY THE FAITHFUL WHO ARE MORE SYCOPHANTS THAN CARRIERS OF CREATIVE, CONCEPTUAL, LONG-TERM ALTERNATIVES.  PRESIDENT BUSH WAS PRISONER OF A NEO-CONSERVATIVE AGENDA BUT HE DEFENDED IT FOR BETTER AND, ALAS, FOR WORSE. HE WAS "PREDICTABLE" TO A POINT AND WAS, PARADOXICALLY SO MAYBE, AN INDISPENSABLE PLAYER ON THE WORLD STAGE. WORLD LEADERS TEND TO AVOID UNPREDICTABLE PEERS.   PRESIDENT OBAMA'S RHETORICAL ACROBATICS HAVE BECOME UTTERLY UNCONVINCING AND HE RISKS BECOMING DISPENSABLE.   WHEN CRIMES GET A FREE RIDE, PUNISHMENT BECOMES PART OF A BOOK SELDOM READ. DOSTOEVSKY DESERVES BETTER READERSHIP THAN THE KREMLIN.

THE GHENT ALTAR PIECE: THE LAMB FELL OUT OF THE FRAME IN ST PETERSBURG.

THE LAST CENTURY GAVE US SOME COLORFUL AMERICAN PRESIDENTS. WOODROW WILSON ACTED CONCEPTUALLY; THEODORE ROOSEVELT CONDUCTED FOREIGN POLICY WITH AN IMPERIALISTIC "GUSTO";  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT OUTMANEUVERED ALL HIS PEERS, BUT FOUND HIS MATCH IN UNCLE JOE (STALIN) ; HARRY TRUMAN BOMBED; DWIGHT EISENHOWER KILLED THE "FOLIE A TROIS' IN SUEZ; JOHN F.KENNEDY MADE THE RUSSIANS BLINK; LYNDON JOHNSON LED THE COUNTRY TO THE GREAT SOCIETY;  RICHARD NIXON REDIRECTED THE WORLD (MORE THAN A PIVOT ); RONALD REAGAN INVADED GRANADA WITHOUT ASKING HER BRITISH MAJESTY'S PERMISSION; BUSH FATHER AND SON OUTFOXED (GEORGE THE ELDER) OR PLAYED WITH PREEMPTIVE STRIKES (THE SON ); CLINTON BECAME THE "SAGE" STATESMAN OF WORLD AFFAIRS; IN COMPARISON, OBAMA STARTS TO LOOK PATHETIC LATELY, PLAYING WITH COLORED PENCILS IN A REMAKE OF CAPTAIN KANGAROO. HE MIGHT END UP IN A SERIES B MOUNT RUSHMORE TOGETHER WITH PRESIDENTS FORD AND CARTER.WHAT THE GREAT MAN WILL TELL THE NATION NEXT TUESDAY WILL PROBABLY NOT BE WRITTEN (YET AGAIN) IN STONE.

RIGHTLY, SYRIA IS TOO SERIOUS AN ISSUE TO BE FLIPPANT. I REMEMBER GENERAL COLIN POWELL'S WORDS "WHEN YOU BREAK IT, YOU OWN IT."  IT IS NORMAL THAT OBAMA IS CAUTIOUS. HE IS RIGHT TO BE SO. HIS EVER CHANGING TUNE PROVIDES, HOWEVER,  THE WRONG MESSAGE, WHICH FURTHER ALIENATES THE ONES HE SHOULD CONVINCE AND EMBARRASSES THE FRIENDS HE SHOULD BRING TOGETHER. THE PRESIDENT NOW SEEKING CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL MAKES AN ALREADY COMPLEX SITUATION EVEN MURKIER. THE DISTANT DISARRAY NOW RISKS INVADING THE POLITICALLY TREACHEROUS CORRIDORS OF THE HOME TERRITORY WHERE OBAMA COUNTS FEW REAL "FRIENDS" IN CONGRESS, WHICH, AS INEPT AS IT MAY BE, FEELS, RIGHTLY SO, SNUBBED BY A PRESIDENT OFTEN CONSIDERED AS MOVING IN A VIRTUAL SPHERE.

TODAY EVERYBODY, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF ASSAD & Co, FEELS FRUSTRATED. THE BRITISH P.M. DAVID CAMERON WAS HUMILIATED.  HOLLANDE, WHO ALREADY HAD DREAMS OF AN ALTERNATIVE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE USA, IS LEFT STANDING IN THE RAIN. THE REBELS ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE AMERICAN OVERKILL. THE ARABS ARE A DIVIDED LOT WHEREIN THE "BETTER ONES" MAY START TO CONSIDER CHANGING INSURANCE BROKER.  RUSSIA COULD MEANWHILE RECLAIM ITS ZONE OF INFLUENCE, SECOND TO NONE.

OBAMA SEEMS AFRAID OF LIGHTING A MATCH WHERE OTHER U.S. COMMANDERS-IN- CHIEF NEVER HESITATED TO ACT AS THE HEIRS OF MARS.  NOBODY WANTS A REPEAT OF PAST BLUNDERS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, NOR DOES ANYONE LIKE TO HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE THAN TO WATCH SOME RWANDAN REPEAT. ALREADY THE U.S. INTERVENTION HAS BEEN REDUCED IN SCOPE AND PURPOSE BY THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF WHO BECAME RED LINE COLORBLIND. ALL OUTCOMES APPEAR BAD. KOSOVO LOOKS LIKE A BYGONE AREA AND THE OLD LADY (NATO) IS SLOWLY BECOMING OBSOLETE.

IF THE DEATHS OF 1400 INDIVIDUALS IN A CHEMICAL ATTACK, COMBINED WITH THE HELLISH DIASPORA, REMAIN UNANSWERED, WE SET THE CLOCK OF HISTORY BACK TO MUNICH TIMES.  I, FOR ONE, HOPED FOR A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION INVOLVING ALL PARTIES BUT, IF ONE DECIDES A PRIORI THAT THE UNINVITED WILL REMAIN SO AD INFINITUM, THE EFFORT BECOMES FUTILE. ISRAEL MIGHT STILL INTERVENE BY PROXY,
BUT THIS MIGHT LEAD TO BRINGING THE DIVIDED ONES BACK TOGETHER AND FURTHER SPLIT THE OTHER SIDE, WHICH IS LICKING ITS WOUNDS IN PARIS AND LONDON. OBAMA ENDED UP BEING A VERY LONELY "LAMB" IN ST. PETERSBURG. PUTIN WAS IN MACHIAVELLIAN MODE AND HIJACKED THE AGENDA, LEAVING OBAMA LOOKING ISOLATED.  I JUST LOVE TO SEE PUTIN'S WOLFISH SMILE. A REPRESENTATIVE DIPLOMATIC GATHERING OF NATIONS, LARGER THAN THE ARCANE, UNGLAMOROUS G-20 (WHERE THE HOST COUNTRY HAS A TACTICAL ADVANTAGE) AND INCLUDING ALL MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE MIDDLE EAST (ASSAD AS WELL), WOULD HAVE MADE IT MORE ARDUOUS FOR RUSSIA AND CHINA TO PLAY "DEVIL"S ADVOCATE"  WITH IMPUNITY.

TOO MANY FRACTURES SHOW A US FOREIGN POLICY LIMPING AND THE TRADITIONAL AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM FRACTURING.  THE AMERICAN LEADER NO LONGER HAS A FLOCK, SOON HE MAY ALSO LOOSE HIS FROCK..