My Failed Prayer for Peace

Over the last few days, I've found myself in the peculiar position of praying for the success of J.D. Vance.  

I will admit to having some nontrivial differences with the current Vice President.  He's a bright fellow, but I think he's a bit more ethically flexible than is helpful in a republic.  If you can intellectually justify going from "he may become the American Hitler" to "Yes sir, whatever you say, sir," it is conceivable that your moral core needs a little toning.

Still and all, a peaceful resolution of the war with Iran is a desirable goal, and James David Vance is both an intelligent fellow and was the one doing the talking.  I got myself to thinking, as I asked the Creator of the Universe to give him success: what would the optimal outcome look like?  

What would the successful outcome we could most reasonably anticipate look like?  Golly, let's go further.  Let's stretch it out to a wildly improbable hope, something that seems so positive it borders on miraculous.  I mean, this is the Lord God we're asking, so ask big, right?

So here's what I prayed J.D. would have announced at the end of the negotiations in Pakistan: 

1. The Iranians have agreed to fully open the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic, with no tolls or coercion. 
2. We have secured, through our negotiations, a clear and verifiable commitment from Iran that they will never develop nuclear weapons;
3. For verification, following secret behind-the-scenes negotiation, we have secured the broad support of the international community in enforcing that weapons ban, including the commitment of three of our former European allies and the International Atomic Energy Commission.
4. Additionally, we've secured the support of both Russian and China, who've been persuaded to sing on to help ensure a non-nuclear Iran, and to honor the terms of this agreement.
5. In exchange and in return, we give our solemn promise to lift all sanctions on Iran, commit to ending violence between us, and give them a path to return to the community of nations.  

War?  Ended. International commerce, restored.  Iran's nuclear program, capped.  Iran's stockpile of uranium, constrained.  Trained inspectors?  On the ground.   Add in the support of allies, and the agreement of Russia?  And China?  

This would constitute a wild and triumphant success, the sort of success that silences all but the most intractable loudmouthed internet conflict entrepreneurs.  Vance would be praised as a peacemaker par excellence, and possibly a shoo-in for that Nobel Peace Prize thing.

So I offered up my small church pastor prayer to the Lord.

And then a still small and slightly annoyed voice reminded me it knew exactly what I was asking.  "You're just asking for the restoration of the JCPOA," it whispered. 

Nothing gets by the Lord.  The still small voice was right, of course, as always.

Ten years ago, this is what America had already negotiated.  Beginning in 2013, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) took 20 months of intense negotiations by teams of American diplomats, but by 2016, we'd secured all of these things.   We'd agreed to those terms, gotten the support of the international community, and pledged to honor that agreement as a nation.

In 2018, President Donald John Trump unilaterally broke that pledge.  He withdrew America from the international agreement we ourselves had negotiated, insisting that it was "defective" and that he could do so much better. 

Ten years later, this war is what Donald J. Trump's "better" looks like.  

There's a direct and causal through-line between Trump's ego-driven decision a decade ago and the bombs and missiles we're raining down on Iran.  He opened the path for the arrival of the particular blighted present we now inhabit.

But what if, I whispered in the silence of my heart, J.D. just pledged to resign that agreement, only now we'd change the name of the JCPOA to the Donald Trump Should Get the Nobel Prize Plan for the Best Possible Peace (DTSGTNPPFTBPP)?  You know, like Trump scrapped NAFTA, and then "negotiated" basically the same thing, renaming it and claiming it as a win for him?

Lord, I offered up, you know the DTSGTNPPFTBPP would pain me mightily, but it would be worth the cost in human lives and suffering.  

Evidently, given the collapse of the talks after 48 hours, that was not to be.  J.D. couldn't pull off that miracle.  I felt genuine sorrow when I read that the talks had swiftly decoalesced into a miasma of distrust and recrimination.

Sometimes the Lord says no to our prayers for peace.  Particularly if we've already chosen, as a people, to follow those who turn their backs on that path.

The Global Economy is Really Weird

Our global economy is such a peculiar thing, particularly now that it's been shaken by America's little excursion into Iran.  Here in the United States, we're grumbling about $4.00 gas at the pump, which is over a buck more than it was a month ago.  Is it worse than the oil shock of 2008?  It is not.  Is it worse than the 1973 Arab oil embargo?  Nope.  Back then, gas prices nearly tripled.  But it's unsettling.

Elsewhere in the world, across Asia in particular, it's not a question of inconvenience, but of actual shortage.  Emergency measures have been taken in dozens of countries impacted by the conflict, countries that don't have domestic stocks upon which they can rely.  There's the real risk that they'll have to stop manufacturing things in Vietnam and Korea and Singapore, driving up costs globally.  

There are other impacts on the global economy, ones that are even more peculiar.  

In particular, I've been struck by article after article ringing the alarm bells about fertilizer prices.  In order to keep industrial farm production chugging along, you need massive amounts of nitrogenous fertilizer, which is produced by the millions of tons using fossil fuels, natural gas in particular.   A significant proportion of that product then passes through the now notorious Straits of Hormuz, and that choke point is depriving farmers all around the world of something they've come to rely on.

It gets odder, though.  In most of those articles, one specific fertilizer is mentioned, over and over again.  The name of that substance:

Urea.

Yes, that urea.  It's exactly the same stuff that comes out of our bodies when we make-a-da-pee-pee.  It's in lesser concentrations when it flows out of us, of course, and not in a conveniently transportable granular form, thank God.  

If you take your very own urine, mix it with water at an eight-to-one ratio, and apply it to your garden, you'll have basically the same impact as spraying industrial urea on a crop.  It's not at the same purity levels, admittedly, and scaling it and stabilizing it for industrial farm use would require some effort.  Were we to do that, it would not be any more complex, ultimately, than using massive industrial plants to manufacture urea (using fossil fuels) and transport it across oceans (using fossil fuels).  

So in sum: an ill-conceived war in a far off place can prevent the machine of our complex global economy from producing and transporting a fertilizer, thus threatening crop yields across the planet.   And that fertilizer is a natural by-product of every human body.

Humans, as I will often note, are so weird.

Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Country

Are we at war?  Were we at war?  It's hard to tell.

News flows moment to moment, endlessly panicked, breathless, and reactive.  But if you step outside, and turn off your phone, there's not even the whiff of war.  America remains oblivious and untouched, except for a modest bump upwards in the price of gas.  There aren't shortages.  Sirens and alerts don't sound, and distant columns of smoke don't rise lazily upwards in the bright spring sky.

Nothing, nothing at all, is asked of us.  Not a thing.  

When republics go to war, citizens are generally expected to pitch in.  Grow a garden. Reduce your consumption, so the troops don't have to go without.  Be alert, at least.  But none of that is true.

Out in my garden, amongst my other garden flair...sleeping gnomes, umbrella-wielding Totoros, windmills, and the like...there's a sign from another time.  It's a bit of tin, upon which is printed a call to Garden for Victory, as so many Americans once did.  I do that, all the time, because it is, as the sign says, "thrifty and patriotic."   It's hard to be a patriot these days, because patriotism in a republic requires more than blind obedience.  Still, doing the right thing is doing the right thing.  

We are, for now, in the midst of our second war in less than five months.  We are overthrowing a monstrous regime,  but we're also not, and we're going to obliterate them, while letting them sell oil at huge profits to support their war effort, and we're killing and existentially threatening their leadership, while at the same time expecting them to negotiate.  

Given the gibbering incoherence of our addled leadership, a sentient citizen must come to their own conclusions.  Iran is, obviously, a war over oil, because the common-sense through-line between Venezuela and Iran is control over fossil fuel resources. 

And so, as I would if we were still a decent and honorable republic, I'm using less fuel, because that seems like the thing a citizen would do if they were patriotic.  It's what my grandparents did.

Yesterday, in the heat of a false summer, I did all of my necessary travelling on my scooter.  To church, and back, and then to celebrate a little one's birthday with some old friends.   The roads were full of traffic, heavy with Americans rushing about, as we always are, fat with SUVs and pickup trucks.  It was just an ordinary Sunday.

Because nothing, nothing at all, is asked of us, other than to keep spending money, not asking questions, and carrying on as if nothing is happening.

A Most Profitable War

So here's a thought, one that I've not seen pitched out in the bizjournals or propagated by the business-oblivious American Left.

As America starts dropping bombs on Iran, and Iran inevitably chooses to retaliate in the only way it can, there'll be disruptions to Persian Gulf shipping.  Iran's Houthi proxies will start lobbing antiship missiles at passing commerce.  Shia Iran will pitch ballistics at the wealthy Sunni petrostates, and we'll see burning refineries and damaged or sunk tankers.  

Even if we don't see that happen, the markets will price that potentiality into a barrel for a while.

So the cost of a barrel of oil will rise, as will the price at the pump.  That's not collateral damage.  I'm kinda sorta of the mind that this is a goal.  Meaning, somewhere, someone knows that war with Iran is in America's financial interest.

I mean, the primary goal is advancing the interests of Bibi and the Arab Petrostates, who are largely now aligned.  But as a secondary goal, rising oil prices are in the direct interest of American petroleum producers.  

Because right now, the United States of America is sitting on a huuuuuuge reserve of shale oil.  In Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, we have the largest such reserve known to humankind.  It contains within it trillions of barrels, enough resource to keep us all burning carbon unabated for nearly a century.

But using that oil is very resource intensive.  It's a highly technical process, requiring substantial research and engineering, and thus has a far higher profit threshold than old-school oil drilling.  

If the price of oil, per barrel, is less than sixty five to seventy dollars?  Some production becomes unprofitable.  The farther below seventy bucks a barrel it falls, the more the business model for shale starts to collapse.  Below fifty bucks a barrel, it's time to shut down production.  You're spending more to get it out of the ground than you're making.

Three months ago, oil was running at $58 per barrel, meaning production was getting right near the edge of viability.

Now?

Now it's soared, up to nearly $75 a barrel, comfortably above the point at which domestic shale is commercially profitable.

For OPEC nations that traditionally drill, some losses and damage to production will be more than made up for by soaring profits.  For American production, this war could be a lifesaver.

Which is just such an odd, unpleasant business.

 

Israel, Iran, and Yearning for Cyrus

As things continue to trundle inexorably towards military conflict in the Middle East...again...the inevitability of war is desperately frustrating.   As we bumble along in our aimless way, distracted by Kardashians and kontraception and zombie melodrama, America isn't paying attention.   The question seems to be not if there will be a conflict, but when.

A significant war in the region would involve someone, likely a nuclear-neo-holocaust-haunted-Netanyahu, going big-time preemptive, followed by a semi-prolonged exchange of medium-range ballistic weaponry.  Tel Aviv and Tehran would burn, but I think it'd be more than than.

There's no love between Tehran and the Arab world.  Iranians are Persian, not Arab, after all.  They share the faith of much of the rest of the Arab world, but they do so in the same way that Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland shared Christianity in the latter half of the 20th century.   If a few Ghadr-110s and Shahab-3s found their way to the massive Yanbu refinery complex in Saudi Arabia, I wouldn't be surprised.   Four dollar a gallon gas will seem a bargain then, I'd suspect.

The way to defuse conflict between two parties is to find common ground or common interest, and that ain't easy in this one.  Iran isn't the most genial of nations lately, being unpleasantly prone to oppression and all the bad things that happen when faith uses the power of the state to enforce itself.  In the face of real existential threats, Israel has chosen for herself some highly aggressive far-right leadership.  On the one hand, you don't have to worry about Netanyahu being willing to go to war.  On the other, well, if war is the primary skillset of your leadership, then that's what you're likely to get.

Still and all, there is common ground.  You just have to go waaaay back to find it.  That common ground comes in the deep past, in the person and ethic of the greatest ruler of the Persian empire.   Cyrus the Great is a remarkable figure in world history.  He was an empire-builder who spread the influence of his people.  He was a warrior-king, who lead his armies into battle not from the confines of a desk, but on the battlefield itself.  What president or prime minister does that these days?  That's not what makes him most significant, though.   Warlords were a dime a dozen back when sword and bow and horse were the tools of the trade.

What made Cyrus the Great so great was that he was a remarkably gracious ruler.  He was, in the classical sense, a liberal.  His official policy towards other peoples was to tolerate their religious practices, to permit them great latitude in their cultures, and to be generous towards them.   His approach to other peoples was rather different than that of Ahmedinajad and the ayatollahs who rule Iran today.

But Persians haven't forgotten him over the millennia.  He's a significant part of their history.  One their oppressive leadership struggles with, particularly as he was likely a Zoroastrian.  But they can't forget him and maintain their identity as a people any more than we could forget Washington and maintain our identity as a nation.

Neither has Israel forgotten Cyrus.  The Tanakh sings his praises, both in the Prophets and in the Writings.  He was, after all, the one who Isaiah celebrated, who not only liberated the Hebrew people from Babylonian captivity but also bankrolled the rebuilding of Jerusalem.   Nehemiah worked for Cyrus, after all.

Folks in the Middle East have long memories.  It's just a pity those memories are so selective, seeking out the pain and discord and not going back to places of grace and hospitality.  You'd think the fact that the greatest Iranian leader encouraged Jews to rebuild Israel would be something you'd remember.