■"U.S. and Britain Seek Aid on Iran Arms: Support is Sought from Russia and China to Curb Weapons; A new effort aims for a declaration from the top nuclear powers," by Steven R. Weisman and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 4 December 2005, p. A9.

■"Russia planning war games with India, China: Military exercises under Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework," by Vladimir Radyuhin, The Hindu, 5 December 2005, provided by Mohamed Ibn Guadi listserv.

■"Young Iranians Follow Dreams to Dubai: All the benefits of the West and only 45 minutes from home," by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 4 December 2005, p. A9.

The U.S. is working hard to get a declaration from India, Russia, and China (3 of the top four New Core powers, along with Brazil) on Iran's pursuit of the bomb. The goal? A declaration that Iran is pursuing atomic energy for nefarious means.

Here's why it won't work: Iran is pursuing the bomb to stave off an American military invasion, pure and simple. India, Russia and China are okay with that pursuit. India and China have huge natural gas and oil relationships with Iran, and wouldn't welcome, under any circumstances, another U.S.-engineered regime change + transformation. Russia's interests are more military (the desire to sell stuff), and before you get too jacked on that score, remember who's the world's largest seller of arms.

The underlying reality here is that China, Russia and India have all been subjected, over the years (and India today) to America's desire to divide and conquer them diplomatically. To the extent we pursue all of them now in various ways WRT a global war on terrorism, we nonetheless clearly pursue India and Russia with an eye to containing China and all three of them with an eye to containing Iran.

Not surprisingly, they will get from us what they can in these efforts, while collectively seeking to contain an America that seems, from their point of view, quite reckless and aggressive under the current administration. Thus we see the move to take the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and turn it into a nascent military alliance.

That SCO was formed by Russia, China and a few Central Asian countries (Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan). India and Pakistan join as observers last July, as did . . . Iran.

Suspicious to some, self-fulfilling to more, and down-right unsurprising to thinking strategists.

I say, not surprisingly, because in each instance, we do not offer any of the three New Core pillars any better options. We should be promoting India as a regional security pillar in the Middle East, but we do not. We should be pushing hard for Russia's fully admittance into NATO and some prioritized pathway into the EU, but we do not. We should be encouraging China's use of the ASEAN group to create the genesis of an Asian Union, with us included in a special status, but we do not. Instead, we promote China's encirclement through military alliances and then express surprise that China seeks to do the same to us.

The dynamics of the 21st century security environment will inevitably push the U.S. to greater reliance upon, and alliance with, Russia, India, China and Brazil. This is simply too big of a change for the current administration, just too far of a conceptual leap. So we end up waiting out the second Bush administration, hoping that we don't fall too far behind, strategically speaking, in this process.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to look ripe for the connecting. When your best and brightest all seek to make a run for greener pastures, like Dubai just across the gulf, then it's clear the current regime is failing. We can either prop it up by obsessing over the WMD issue, repeating the same myopic focus we had with Iraq, or we can judge the case on its merits and kill that tired authoritarian regime with economic and social connectivity.

Listen to one ex-pat Iranian in Dubai: "None of the other countries near Iran have this. You have everything you have in Europe and America, but close to home."

What Dubai's role as release valve (not just people, but investment flows too) for Iran proves is that the role of regional examples of rising connectivity to the globalization process is very powerful. Serious "lead goose" stuff.