Glenn Greenwald wrote this morning about Obama’s new message to Iran. I absolutely agree that reconciliation and the development of peace is desirable, with any nation, but one note of his post struck me as slightly off:

But whatever else is true, it is a weak, decaying and insecure nation that beats its chest and relies on ugly threats to establish its “toughness” and “credibility” with the world, while the mark of a strong and confident nation is the willingness to take a first step like this one towards its adversaries.

This is true in many respects, most especially in our modern society. But it’s that temporal qualifier that makes the sentence true, a qualifier Greenwald excludes. At the height of the Byzantine Empire‘s reign, it was a military force to be reckoned with, sacking the cities of any nation that dared cross its border. But as its power and wealth dwindled, new invaders like the Saracens exploited that weakness. Ultimately, unable to defend themselves they resorted to buy-offs, providing their enemies with millions of pounds of gold to maintain their territory. As their star faded, much of their power was retained via political back channels, using conspiracies to wage their enemies against each other, and ceding territory for the sake of peace. But their true power was gone¹. It’s true that the truly great emperors of the Byzantine Empire also ruled justly, but that does not belie their military acumen and its use.

I don’t mean here to criticise President Obama’s policies, in fact I agree with his tact regarding Iran, for the most part. But it is a tact of its time. Which is a good thing. Our world is changing, the solutions of the future are not the solutions of the past, and America now has a President that understands that.

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Footnotes

1. I apologize if I’m grossly wrong about any of the history of the Byzantine Empire; I’m mostly working off of memory for this, and even then my knowledge and analysis is mostly cursory. [↩]