Following Up: New Evidence for Some of My Major Iran Deal Fears

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Following Up, foreign policy establishment, Iran, Iran deal, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Obama, Palestinians

On Friday, I listed several reasons for major concerns about President Obama’s deal aimed at denying Iran nuclear weapons – at least for the next decade, or decade-and-a-half, depending on what importance you attach to various of the framework’s fixed-term provisions. This morning, the Washington Post’s Dan Balz provided near-dispositive evidence for my jitteriness about the inexperience and instincts of Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

Here’s Mr. Obama’s own account, told to Balz, of how he reacted as a presidential candidate following a much-criticized (including by rival Hillary Clinton) promise he made in a 2007 campaign debate to meet with leaders of Iran and other rogue states without preconditions:

“Obama knew what the conventional wisdom was in those hours after the debate. On their way to the airport, he already could see the swirling criticism appearing on the Internet. He told his advisers, some of them nervous about the position he was in, to hold the line.

“‘I said: ‘Don’t back down. If we go down, we’re going down swinging,’  Obama later told me. ‘It was a moment where I felt confident enough to trust my instincts and also confident about the fact that I wasn’t going to be intimidated by the pundits. . . . This was a moment where I said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to make sure that whatever I do accords with what I believe.’”

“Obama’s compass on Iran might have been set at that moment.”

Again, you don’t need to put the nation’s foreign policy establishment or its punditocracy on a pedestal to note that this expression of supreme diplomatic confidence came from a politician who had served in the U.S. Senate at that time for less than two years, and was that far removed from his only other job in public life – Illinois state senator.

In fact, Kerry, a Senate veteran who chaired the foreign relations committee, has long been a pillar of the liberal wing of this establishment. Here’s what Balz writes of his outlook:

“Kerry motivation in producing an agreement with Iran is an extension of his long-held determination to affect the course of events in the Middle East. It was among his greatest disappointments in the aftermath of his defeat by then-President George W. Bush in the 2004 election that he would have no opportunity to try to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Kerry made a Middle East peace agreement a priority when he succeeded Clinton as secretary of state; he has nothing to show for it. Prospects for new negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians are nil, and relations between Israel and the United States, symbolized by the open warfare between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are at a low point in the history of the two countries.

“Kerry’s legacy as secretary of state may now rest in part on whether he can reach a final deal with Iran this summer and whether Iran lives up to the terms or whether it stalls, blocks or otherwise frustrates the international community on the implementation while continuing to sponsor and export terrorism across the region.

There could be at least four related possible reasons for Kerry’s obsession with an Israeli-Palestinian peace, none of them reassuring in the slightest:

>He (as with many other so-called Middle East experts) has no clue as to how stable – overwhelmingly in Israel’s favor – the power balance between the two is. (Click here for a reminder.)

>He believes that the Palestinian Arabs have some kind of abstract, absolute, perhaps moral right to nation-hood, regardless of strategic or other circumstances, even though history teaches no such lessons.

>He believes that he can make special contributions to this goal.

>He agrees with the dangerously fact-free claim that peace between Israelis and Palestinians will pacify most of the politically, socially, and economically diseased and indeed dysfunctional Middle East.

As I’ve written previously, no segment of the professional U.S. foreign policy community or political faction has had a monopoly on strategic ignorance and incompetence when it comes to the Middle East, or to America’s genuinely important interests in the rest of the world. The big question facing the country is how soon at least some of its leaders will start recognizing, however dimly, the conceptual failures staring them right in the face. In the meantime, unless the Iran deal proves much more effective than its American authors’ records suggest, the nation’s best hope for avoiding disaster could be a Congress that finally discovers a foreign policy backbone.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Iran Deal (So Far) Worries Me

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allies, Biden, European Union, Iran, Iran deal, Iran talks, Kerry, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Shiites, State Department, Sunnis, Susan Rice

I still haven’t yet examined all the statements made by participants about the nuclear weapons deal announced yesterday by the United States, five other major world powers, the European Union, and Iran. So I can’t comment on all of the possible loopholes created by the agreement, which include differing interpretations of its provisions by the signatories (not to mention the inevitable discrepancies among wording in different languages, plus any that might be deliberately created by the various governments involved). In fact, as far as I can tell, no actual agreement text has been made public by the Obama administration. The only official U.S. document I’ve seen is this description posted on the White House website.

So like most of us, I’m somewhat hamstrung in evaluating the accord – which, to complicate matters further, is a work in progress, that everyone acknowledges leaves many critical details up in the air. Further, I’m no expert in the technology involved in producing nuclear weapons and peaceful nuclear energy.

All the same, what I know of the deal worries me as much today as it did the day before its unveiling. My main – non-technical – concerns:

>Iran is an awfully big country – the world’s 18^th largest. At more than 636,000 square miles, it’s just under 18 percent the size of the United States, and slightly less than 2.5 times bigger than Texas. A country that big will contain a great many hiding places, and will be challenging for the international community to monitor.

>All of the strategic conditions that, at least in principle, have been driving the Iranians to develop so many of the capabilities for building nuclear weapons remain firmly in place. Their theocracy represents a hated minority sect located in a region demographically dominated by its main theological rivals – which include not only large countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but unspeakably violent terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and its various offshoots.

At least as important, Iran has used force to challenge the United States, which has in recent years toppled adversary regimes in Iraq and Libya, and has worked hard to oust the Assad dictatorship in Syria. Even a small nuclear arsenal would practically ensure the Iranian regime’s indefinite survival against its most powerful foreign threat by far.

And don’t forget – Iran’s neighborhood is overwhelmingly likely to remain hostile and dangerous long after the end of the various fixed-term provisions envisioned by the framework.  Therefore, going nuclear could still just as strongly appeal even to a future Iranian regime much more moderate than today’s.

>America’s foreign policy team doesn’t even deserve to be called the JV. Secretary of State Kerry was known during his Senate career as a “showhorse,” not a “workhorse.” And even with a strong legislative record on Capitol Hill, there is no reason to consider him anywhere near a match for Iranian negotiators. Like Vice President Biden, he’s traveled extensively, and accumulated much face time with foreign leaders. Whether either of them has learned anything useful from these experiences is not entirely clear. As for national security advisor Susan Rice, she’s simply a climber devoid of any substantive accomplishment.  Her career has been nothing more than a monument to over-promotion and possibly racial tokenism. And then there’s the president himself, who of course, had amassed only a half a Senate term’s worth of national policy-making experience before winning the White House in 2008.

Has foreign policy experience been any guarantee of good results for the United States? Hardly. It was the “best and the brightest,” after all, who led the nation into Vietnam and other debacles. What’s worrisome about the current administration is that it’s a combination of down-the-line (liberal) establishment thinkers completely lacking in any meaningful private sector or other real-world experience, and the wisdom and judgment they usually nurture.

>As has widely been noted, the Obama administration is heavily invested in Iran deal’s success for many reasons. Both the president and Kerry clearly have the legacy thing on their minds – both in the positive sense of achieving an historic and enduring breakthrough, and in the negative sense of burnishing records that look decidedly bleak so far. How enthusiastic will the president and his aides be to conclude that Iran is cheating? In fact, between now and the next (June 30) deadline, how plausible is it that they’ll hold fast on the framework’s decisive conditions when firmness could blow up an enterprise on which they’ve worked so hard for so long?  

Add to these influences – to which all politicians, and other human beings, are subject – the strong tendency of the State Department, the diplomatic establishment, and their Mainstream Media enablers to value perpetuating diplomatic “processes” at least as much as achieving results. Just think of how the endless, on-and-off Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are continually described. Not that it’s out of bounds to believe that “talking is better than fighting.” But time is not necessarily America’s friend here – both because of Israeli threats to solve the problem militarily, and because of the related likelihood of continuing Iranian progress toward weapon-ization.

>America’s allies in keeping Iran nuclear weapons-free are hardly known for steadfastness. The European Union and most of its individual members have been ambivalent enough about responding to Russia’s expansionism over the last year – and that’s a threat in their own neighborhood. Economics looks like the most powerful explanation. The continent is stagnating economically, and even though Russia is no giant on the global economic stage, it’s been a major market, and fuel supplier, for many European countries – notably Germany. Growth-starved European economies are bound to be just as tempted by potential customers in Iran. As a result, it’s not just President Obama who could be reluctant to accuse Tehran of cheating. Many allies could be equally unwilling. Which means that, barring the most frightening and flagrant examples of Iranian cheating on a final nuclear agreement, the threat of promptly and completely reimposing sanctions to punish agreement violations looks ominously empty. 

>Finally, the administration’s explanation of why Iran has come this far literally sounds too good to be true, especially given the existential advantages Tehran would create for itself by going nuclear. As Mr. Obama has made clear, he doesn’t believe that sanctions possible in current circumstances by themselves can change Iran’s nuclear plans. He has repeatedly stated that using force in the Middle East has usually been a disastrous mistake for the United States in recent years. Yet he credits current sanctions with, first, seriously committing Iran into a diplomatic exercise aimed expressly at eliminating any nuclear option and, second, with producing Iran’s signature onto a framework fully capable (as the president sees it) of achieving this epochal objective.

I readily concede that the sanctions have hurt Iran economically. Yet as a friend reminded me a few weeks ago, it’s a country for which levels of economic privation unknown to Americans are still a warm memory. The population’s ability to endure further hardships shouldn’t be underestimated – especially considering the national power it could bring and the pride it could foster. Indeed, Russia may be teaching Washington a lesson in economic resilience right now.

But let’s close on an encouraging note. The Wall Street Journal today reported that, as the Iran talks have proceeded, the Obama Pentagon has been upgrading its biggest bunker buster bombs – weapons that can be used in principle to destroy even heavily protected Iran nuclear facilities. Perhaps despite much evidence to the contrary, when administration officials keep saying that they’re not operating in a perfect world, they really do know it.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Delusions About the Nation-State

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21st century rules, citizenship, global norms, Immigration, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, International Trade Organization, internationalism, Kerry, League of Nations, nation-state, nationality, Obama, Open Borders, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, United Nations, Woodrow Wilson, World Bank, World Trade Organization

A New York Times essay earlier this week suggesting that the idea of the nation-state was growing ever more obsolete didn’t contain any explicit policy recommendations. And even though this omission raises the question of why the piece was published in the first place, that was actually all to the good.

Author Taiye Selasi, identified as a “writer, photographer and globetrotter,” as well as novelist with a highly cosmopolitan background, unquestionably falls into the “Open Borders” camp on immigration policy. But she seems to have (reluctantly?) realized (along with Times editors in this case?) the complete irrelevance to decision-makers of observations like “the discrimination experienced by dark-skinned [African] refugees migrating to the West and dark-skinned Italians migrating north [within Italy] is the same.” Why else would the author not explicitly have called for a country suffering its third recession since 2008 to indiscriminately admit everyone who crossed over the Mediterranean fleeing indisputably genuine poverty and hopeless in their own homelands?

To be sure, Selasi did condemn what she views as the (sometimes, in her view, unwittingly) hypocritical practice of people from countries whose national identities have continually changed due to cross-border migration flows using the idea of nationality to “justify barriers to citizenship.”

“Who better,” she asked indignantly, “than the Italian citizen, the all-American, the East Berliner, to understand that a country that has perpetually expanded to include new complexions, inflections and politics might (lo, must) expand once more?” Yet she never insisted that these countries tear down all of their physical and administrative barriers to entry, and keep them down in perpetuity.

There’s an even broader reason for Selasi’s failure to relate her other major observation to major questions before U.S. and other leaders. But unfortunately, at least when it comes to the American foreign policy establishment, it’s much less obvious. In addition to defining nationality and citizenship, the author also focused on the claim that “The idea of the modern nation-state — a sovereign state governing a cultural nation — [is] just that: an idea, 350 years old and showing its age. There [is] nothing eternal about nations, nothing biological about nationality.”

In fact, the view that nation-states are receding in importance is central to a long and deeply held beliefs among American internationalists on the right and left alike – that the political structure of the world is something that is unfinished and in a constant state of flux, and indeed moving, however unevenly and haltingly, towards ever greater degrees of integration. As a result, American internationalism holds, the nation’s diplomacy should try to nurture this process – even, at least in some instances, if it means sacrificing American interests.

As with other tenets of modern U.S. internationalist thinking, the belief in an unfinished global political structure first took meaningful form under President Woodrow Wilson in the immediate aftermath of World War I, when he sought to prevent another such conflagration by encouraging creation of a League of Nations. His own country, of course, rejected joining even the weakened version of the organization that eventually was formed, as Congress and the public feared being drawn into all manner of foreign conflicts that did not directly threaten American security. But this decision has since then been villified by internationalists as the height of disastrously narrow and shortsighted thinking, and turned into a pillar of the national conventional wisdom.

After World War II, Congress certainly learned this supposed lesson, as it strongly supported creation of the United Nations and other international organizations (nixing only U.S. membership in a proposed International Trade Organization, and thereby killing this predecessor of the World Trade Organization).

It’s easy to point out that during the subsequent Cold War decades, this unfinished world thinking was reduced to boilerplate. Washington did indeed dominate the new World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and ignored the United Nations and other principles of international law whenever convenient. But it’s just as important that, nearly as soon as the Cold War ended, integrationist talk was back with a vengeance. Not only was it epitomized by President George H.W. Bush’s references to a “New World Order.” It was made concrete by Washington’s agreement to create a World Trade Organization with strong enforcement authority that regularly ruled against the United States.  And it was fueled continually by the global ideological defeat of communism, the movement of so many national economies toward free market practices and principles, the surge in global trade and investment flows that bypassed borders with remarkable ease, and the emergence of digital technologies that positively seemed to mock them.

More recently, it’s become clear that strong beliefs about benign changes that are shaping the international system have powerfully influenced President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry – and in particular muddled their initial responses to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons to suppress the revolt against his brutal rule in Syria, and to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s moves against Ukraine. Stunned that these dictators didn’t care about global norms against certain weapons of mass destruction, and didn’t agree that new, “21^st century rules“ had rendered obsolete aggression and subversion against neighbors, the president and his top diplomat were caught flat-footed.

The reason, it’s clear to me, anyway, is that Kerry and Mr. Obama went further in their minds than Selasi did in her Times article, and did try to draw dramatic policy conclusions from their related beliefs in the nation-state’s decline and the strength of integrative forces around the world. More specifically, they wildly conflated the two, and in the process overlooked a far more important reality: Whether the nation-state is fading or not, for the foreseeable future, the world’s population will continue to be divided into numerous discreet units. And because consensus on acceptable behavior (norms) will remain elusive at best, these units – no matter their appearance or composition – will find themselves trapped in a struggle for both security and prosperity.

By no means does that mean that all forms of international cooperation will be impossible, whether ad hoc or even more systematic. But it does mean that Americans leaders’ supreme challenge will long remain ensuring the nation’s safety and well-being in the here and now, in the largely conflictual world they’ll be stuck with.  As for wracking their brains on the long-range-at-best objective of trying to turn that world into something significantly more pleasant — that’s likeliest to remain a dangerous distraction.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Clueless Versus ISIS

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border security, energy independence, Immigration, Iraq, ISIS, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Syria, terrorism

If I was President Obama, I’d be thanking my lucky stars that U.S. financial markets today are looking like roller coasters because investors apparently are at last losing faith that even more free money from the Federal Reserve and other major world central banks will turn the current global recovery into something more than an embarrassment. And that Washington’s approach to fighting ebola apparently has a few more holes than officials initially let on.

Bad as that news is, it’s at least distracting the public and much of the media from growing evidence of utter administration incompetence in the battle to destroy ISIS’ terrorist army in the Middle East.

Those Americans who have continued to follow Middle East turmoil rightly worry about the ineffectiveness of the president’s strategy of combating ISIS through U.S. (and a little allied) air power plus (somehow) mustering enough ground strength from countries and insurgent forces in the region to accomplish the mission. But I’m even more worried that the administration has completely lost sight of what need to be America’s overriding goal.

As I’ve written, the endgame Washington should be seeking is marginalizing the Middle East to America’s fate through domestic measures – sealing the border and ensuring ever greater energy independence. The results would be an America substantially protected from the main actual and potential threats it faces from the Middle East: another major terrorist attack, and major disruption in world energy markets. Of course these goals will be difficult to achieve. But such successes are much likelier than indefinitely keeping the lid on terrorism overseas because nations always have more control over what happens domestically than abroad.

But because these jobs remain unfinished – especially establishing adequate control over entry into the country – for the time being, the nation must also act militarily against ISIS.

It’s good that the president has finally realized this – or has been pushed into acting as if he realizes this. But tragically there’s no reason to think that he understands what military force needs to accomplish above all until immigration and energy policies can neutralize Middle East threats. Job one needs to be preventing ISIS from consolidating firm enough control over enough territory to create a haven for bases and training camps that can support 9-11-like attacks.

Al Qaeda was granted this sanctuary when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, and destroying this capability has been the achievement that has justified that grueling effort. U.S. strategy in Iraq and Syria needs an identical focus. As the Afghan war has demonstrated, success has not required any nation-buildng progress. In fact, trying to bring Afghanistan out of the 13th century has seriously distracted allied forces from the major imperative – keeping the Taliban out of Kabul, and harassing its forces and Al Qaeda fighters sufficiently to keep them completely off balance.

Relentlessly harassing and indeed disrupting ISIS forces should be America’s current priority as well. And that’s why it was so discouraging to hear Secretary of State John Kerry say this week that America could afford to let the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani fall to ISIS because the top U.S. goal these days is “to rebuild some of the morale and capacity of the Iraqi army. And to begin the focus of where we ought to be focusing first which is in Iraq. That is the current strategy.”

These remarks strongly indicate that Kerry – often described as one of the adults on the Obama foreign policy team – has no clue that it doesn’t matter where ISIS consolidates control. A terrorist sanctuary that winds up being established mainly on Syrian territory would be just as dangerous to America as a sanctuary mainly located in Syria. American and coalition military actions, therefore, need to target concentrations of ISIS forces wherever they’re found.

Americans can be thankful that geography gives the nation options against threats like terrorism that most other countries lack. But they’ll never be nearly as secure as they should be unless they start electing leaders smart enough to capitalize on these advantages, not ignore them.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Dangerously Mixed Russia Signals from Kerry

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21st century rules, international norms, Kerry, linkage, national interests, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, Ukraine

Such a mixture of sense and nonsense in Secretary of State Kerry’s remarks on U.S.-Russia relations during last week’s appearance on Meet the Press. Unless this confusion is somehow resolved, American foreign policy will never be able to carry out its core mission of safeguarding the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom without incurring excessive cost and risk. In fact, this muddled thinking is likeliest to leave the American people — and possibly much of the rest of the world — worse off on both scores.

On the “sense” side: Kerry’s unwillingness to accept host David Gregory’s invitation to supply “ a clear moral conclusion [sic] about the regime of Vladimir Putin” or to declare recent weeks to be “anything other than the lowest moment between the United States and Russia in the post-cold war environment.”

Kerry was right to respond by stressing the uselessness of “just throwing names at each other and making declarations.” Of course it’s a message he needs to do a much better job sending to his boss in the White House and to his envoy to the United Nations. Kerry also valuably reminded Gregory and viewers that Washington and Moscow had been cooperating to some meaningful extent on important matters like preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons capability and depriving Syria of (at least most of) its chemical arsenal.

But Kerry was repeating a mistake all too common in American diplomacy if he was implying that Washington needed to restrain its response to Russian moves in Ukraine in order to secure and preserve such Russian cooperation. The idea of “linkage” has been touted by no less than Henry Kissinger. But it’s based on the almost childish belief that countries make major policy decisions like these even if they are irrelevant or contrary to those countries’ interests.

That is, Putin’s cooperation on Middle East issues hasn’t stemmed from Putin’s desire to do either the United States or the causes of world peace or even regional stability a favor. The cooperation first and foremost reflects Putin’s views of what’s good for Russia. The moment that analysis changes, cooperation is likely to vanish.

At the same time, Putin’s definition of Russian interests is America’s best guarantee that whatever supportive course he’s taking will be maintained. It also importantly frees Washington unhesitatingly to pursue its own interests elsewhere in the world no matter how many Russian feathers get ruffled (as opposed to major interests that are threatened).

Meanwhile, totally baffling from the standpoint of logic, common sense, and spin alike was Kerry’s answer to Gregory’s question, “What is the threat that [Putin] and Russia present to the United States and to The West?” In other words, what specific U.S. interests is Putin endangering?

Responded Kerry, “It’s not a question of the threat that they present to The West, David.”

At which point, the American people and the entire world (including the Kremlin) are all entitled to ask “Huh?” Was Kerry acknowledging that the Ukraine conflict won’t jeopardize America’s security or prosperity or freedom? It’s hard to interpret his statement any other way. And if this is indeed how Kerry, at least, views Russia’s Ukraine policies, why on earth is he spending so many of his waking hours on the subject? Not to mention American tax dollars? Was this a signal that he and President Obama really are serious about their determination to uphold “international norms” and “21st century rules” and other fantasies whether America’s fortunes are significantly affected or not?

What Kerry and the President urgengly need to underatand is that there is at least one pillar of longstanding diplomatic wisdom that’s indisputably correct: Wholly needless international conflicts can all too easily result from miscalculations. Until Kerry and President Obama start doing a much better job of identifying key American objectives and goals precisely, and spelling out the consequences for opposing them, the chances of accidental war can only rise.