THE ABILITY to distinguish between reality and illusion is one humans normally acquire as they mature. Imagining changes one might make following a lottery win can be a pleasant divertissement, a cosy voyage into the wonderful worlds of "what if?" But basing actual expenditures and decisions on illusory winnings is not only dangerous, it raises serious questions about one's state of mental health, writes TONY KINSELLA
Over the months of the Lisbon campaign it feels as if many of the protagonists lost, or switched off, their ability to differentiate between illusion and reality. It is therefore heartening to note two very serious outbreaks of reality, or at least of realpolitik, this past week. One took place in the modernist settings of Germany’s government buildings and party headquarters in Berlin; the other in the more traditional scene of an 18th-century villa on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was successfully re-elected, and although slightly jet-lagged after her return from the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, she looked suitably pleased. Two elements were repeated in most of the coverage. The disastrous 23 per cent score of the SDP (social democrats), and the lacklustre nature of the campaign. If the former paints part of a more complex picture, the second may well mask an altogether more profound, and more interesting, reality.
While the SDP score was humiliating, down from the almost 43 per cent it won in 1976, German voters were not overly kind to Merkel’s CDU-CSU either – giving them just under 34 per cent of the vote, down from almost 49 per cent back in 1976.
A tad over three decades ago German politics was as predictable as, and only marginally more challenging than, the incessant opening and closing of level crossing barriers on the rail lines running through the country’s then sleepy capital of Bonn. In 1976 the two big parties accounted for over 91 per cent of the votes cast. Last Sunday they collectively managed a shade under 57 per cent. Voter turnout fell from just 90 per cent to under 71 over the same period.
The big winners were the more free market Liberals of the FDP on nearly 15 per cent, the Left party’s unique and fragile blend of former social democrats and the successors to East Germany’s communists with a shade short of 12, and the Greens on just under 11.
Although negotiations for the formation of a centre-right coalition between Merkel’s Christian democrats and Guido Westerwelle’s liberals are only beginning, the chancellor has reminded people that she is the “chancellor of the centre”. There will be few significant, and no sudden, policy changes from the incoming German administration.
The electorate’s verdict could be interpreted as a basic vote of confidence in German political, economic and social policies. Their country works, although they accept that it could work even better with a few nudges in one or the other direction.
This continuity of policies and the inherent placidness of the election campaign can be contrasted with the often unacknowledged and necessarily unspoken fears in many capitals just 20 years ago, as the inevitability of German reunification became evident.
Across the border in neighbouring Switzerland, representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and EU foreign policy chief Xavier Solana met with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Sayeed Jalili to discuss Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.
The Islamic Republic has long argued that its programme is entirely civil and that its nuclear activities are fully legal within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The credibility of its assertions has not, however, been enhanced by its continuing cat-and-mouse game with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its inspectors.
Installations for enriching uranium and for manufacturing nuclear weapons are not the kind of things easily dissembled in garden sheds. Iran’s recent announcement of its new plant at Qum was made once Tehran understood that western intelligence agencies had identified its existence.
The Geneva discussions last Thursday count among the most positive in recent years both in terms of what was agreed and of who directly talked to whom. Iran has agreed to open the Qum installation to IAEA inspectors “within weeks” and to ship two-thirds, or about 1,200kg, of its uranium for further enriching into fuel rods in Russia and France. These rods will be made for Tehran’s research reactor, where they will be used to produce urgently needed medical isotopes.
Experts believe Iran has enriched, to a low level, 1,500kg of uranium. Around 2,400kg of much more highly enriched material would be required for one nuclear weapon. US officials welcomed Iran’s acceptance of foreign reprocessing as “a confidence-building measure to . . . buy us some diplomatic space”.
It was exactly into this diplomatic space that Iran’s Sayeed Jalili and US under-secretary of state William Burns strode in Geneva for the first formal negotiating encounter between their two countries in almost 30 years. The 44-year-old Jalili is a former university lecturer and a wounded veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. He is described as ultra-religious even by Iranian standards, and as being an integral element of the dominant orthodox faction.
It would be all but impossible to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons if it is really determined to do so. However, persuading Tehran that it has no need of such weapons to guarantee its security is eminently feasible. The illusion of “controlling” Iran is being sacrificed to the reality of persuading it.
We have reasons to be realistically hopeful – as long as we focus on reality.