Vic Socotra

30 December 2008

Ripples

(Chinese Helicopter comes aboard DDG-169 Wuhan, Indian Ocean- China Daily news, photo by Xinhuanet)

We have got this poor bedraggled year by the short hairs, we do. One more day for tax purposes, three weeks to the Big Change, and end of the Long Goodbye to Mr. Bush.

There are stirrings out there in the wide world that do not quite penetrate the pickled holiday miasma. The timing of the days is such that reality will not really come to hand until the 5th of January. I know there is a mass of hysteria that will burst out then in my little corner of the workspace, and am studiously avoiding serious thought about it.

We all seem to be taking a brief avoidance moment, but it is time to rouse from the stupor and consider what is in progress right now. Israel has responded to the cheeky Hamas bastards who violated their self-imposed cease-fire and began to lob stupid rockets into the Jewish state again, using their brothers and sisters as shields against the inevitable wrath of the Israeli Air Force.

Hundreds are dead, few in Israel and most in Gaza. This will likely resolve itself with another temporary pause in the new few weeks, before the new President has to make any decisions, but the next pause will simply result in the stockpiling of more dumb rockets provided by meddling Iran.

Regardless of savagery imposed on the civilians of both sides, the al Quds Force from Tehran will see to it that stockpiles of nastiness are replenished for the next time. I can see no solutions in this now, and hope Mr. Obama’s advisors are considering a new breed of rabbit to be pulled from the diplomatic hat, something that will forestall the inevitable hard decision about what Israel feels it must do about Iranian nuclear weapons, and the tight collar of Hamas and Hezballah and Syria.

Could it be that the collapse of oil prices will moderate Iranian opportunism? Could there be an imprint of the invisible hand of market forces on the theocracy?

The market is meddling everywhere, ripples spreading in surprising places. Divorce in America, fueled by the prospect of equity bounty in the housing bubble, has likewise collapsed. Couples now no longer fight on who gets to keep the house; rather, they fight about who gets stuck with the stinky mortgage. Some embattled former spouses are forced to stay under the same roof, swords drawn, since there is nowhere else to go.

What are the full consequences of this melt-down, now rippling far from Wall Street and lapping at the foot of former marital beds?

The ripples carry Chinese warships to the Indian Ocean to combat the resurgent pirates of the Gulf of Aden. The Guided Missile Destroyer Wuhan (DDG-169), accompanied by another destroyer and a replenishment ship, plows west in the pale blue waters. It is the same course once sailed by Zheng He, the Chinese Eunuch Muslim Admiral, and celebrated in dance as prologue in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.
It is not a massive presence, three ships. It is dwarfed by the routine presence of a single American aircraft carrier group, but still. It is the beginning of something that has strong roots in the past, and a future foretold in the dance of thousands.

It is not an East of Suez moment, not yet. It is not 1967, when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that the Royal Navy would no longer patrol the Persian Gulf, and the army would be coming home from Malaysia, Singapore and Aden.

The Americans took up protection of the sea-lanes, and they are there still, at least for now.

But as the ripples spread, I cannot but think of Kipling’s words in his poem Mandalay:

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;

There are thirsty people out there, in places that are no longer states and no longer have law, except that which is imposed. The ripples have not reached the furthest extremity of their course. Japan is looking startled at the prospect that its unarmed merchant ships will be guarded by the People’s Liberation Navy.

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