U.S. Foreign Policy Is Not A Craps Game
U.S. Foreign Policy Is Not A Craps Game
Before getting to Robert Kagan’s call for President Obama to just go ahead already and roll the dice on Iranian regime change, a little background.
One of the most interesting articles written during the 2008 presidential campaign was Michael Scherer’s and Michael Weisskopf’s July 2008 analysis of Barack Obama and John McCain approach to gambling. “For both men,” Scherer and Weisskopf wrote, “games of chance have been not just a hobby but also a fundamental feature in their development as people and politicians“:
For Obama, weekly poker games with lobbyists and fellow state senators helped cement his position as a rising star in Illinois politics. For McCain, jaunts to the craps table helped burnish his image as a political hot dog who relished the thrill of a good fight, even if the risk of failure was high. [...]
In the past decade, [McCain] has played on Mississippi riverboats, on Indian land, in Caribbean craps pits and along the length of the Las Vegas Strip. Back in 2005 he joined a group of journalists at a magazine-industry conference in Puerto Rico, offering betting strategy on request. “Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John’s life,” says John Weaver, McCain’s former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. “Taking a chance, playing against the odds.”
When you look at candidates’ waged the rest of their campaigns, I think this turns out to have been impressively predictive. McCain the crazy craps player repeatedly went for broke with questionable risky moves, declaring himself a Georgian in response to the August 2008 Georgia-Russia conflict, selecting the unknown (and, as we now know, un-vetted) Sarah Palin as his vice-president, suspending his campaign and rushing back to Washington in an attempt to signal that he “got” the economic crisis, and trying to delay the candidates’ first debate, to which Obama the methodical poker player responded with a successful raise.
In addition to his status as a war-hero, this audacious approach to politics, particularly foreign policy, also speaks to why neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan originally identified McCain in the late 1990’s as an ideal salesman for their “national greatness conservatism,” which John Judis described in his 2006 profile of McCain’s neocon conversion as “a philosophy that linked the development of American character to the exercise of power overseas” and an “emphasis on America’s responsibility to transform the world.”
What this approach essentially boils down to is enshrining the adage “history favors the bold” as a foreign policy imperative, while ignoring its somewhat lesser-known corollary, “history frowns upon the recklessly boneheaded.” (Which one are you? You’ll find out soon!)
All of these tendencies are on display in Robert Kagan’s op-ed today, in which he gushes “President Obama has a once-in-a-generation opportunity over the next few months to help make the world a dramatically safer place… by helping the Iranian people achieve a new form of government.”
Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring anti-democratic, anti-liberal and anti-Western fanaticism for the past three decades, the toppling or even substantial reform of that regime would be second only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its ideological and geopolitical ramifications. [...]
Regime change in Tehran is the best nonproliferation policy. Even if the next Iranian government refused to give up the weapons program, its need for Western economic assistance and its desire for reintegration into the global economy and international order would at least cause it to slow today’s mad rush to completion and be much more open to diplomatic discussion. A new government might shelve the program for a while, or abandon it altogether. Other nations have done so. In any event, an Iran not run by radicals with millennial visions would be a much less frightening prospect, even with a nuclear weapon. [...]
Now the odds of regime change are higher than the odds the present regime will ever agree to give up its nuclear program. With tougher sanctions, public support from Obama and other Western leaders, and programs to provide information and better communications to reformers, the possibility for change in Iran may never be better. [...]
Were the Iranian regime to fall on Obama’s watch, however, and were he to play some visible role in helping, his place in history as a transformational world leader would be secure. Thirty years ago, the Iranian Revolution triumphed, aided by the incompetence of top Carter administration officials, some of whom, to this day, call for normalization with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal successors. Obama has a chance to reverse their strategic and ideological debacle. But he cannot wait too long.
Kagan’s argument is that the payout could be huuuuuge if Obama just quits thinking about it and puts it all on Green. I don’t disagree. They could be, if everything went just so. On the other hand, the risks are also significant, both to the Iranian reformers who could find their appeals to their countrymen and women seriously undercut by an explicit U.S. government enlistment in their cause, but also in terms of the various unknowns inherent in a Green movement “victory.” What would that “victory” look like? How would the new government consolidate its power after that victory? How much more amenable would a changed regime be toward the international community’s demands on Iran’s nuclear program? I don’t have the answers to these questions, and neither does Robert Kagan.
And neither does President Obama. Through the tumult of last year in Iran, Obama has proceeded, and should continue to proceed, carefully, methodically, with the occasional well-timed raise, but always with a deep respect for the stakes involved for both Iranians and for America and its partners.
It really continues to amaze me that the strategic and ideological debacle of Iraq does not seem to have managed to inculcate any sense of humility, or even a decent respect for the possibility of unintended or unforeseeable consequences, into so many of those intellectuals like Kagan who helped lead this country into it. Shooting craps may be a fun way to spend a weekend in Vegas, but it’s no way to run American foreign policy.
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Roll the dice on Iranian regime change? Eisenhower’s CIA already did that, installing the Shah of Iran. Some 25 years later that ended badly.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:49 pm[WESTERWELLE’S BOLD NEW APPROACH]
Dr. Guido Westerwelle, the German Foreign Minister, a Brilliant new German Leader, of Bold Ideas, unlike the Saber Rattling Hillary Diane Rodham-Clinton, my way or the highway, gun-boat diplomacy, has chosen to follow another direction and is unwilling to just go along for the ride, and simply say yes to everything put forward by the Empire or any other government, seeing that approach as not good German foreign policy, the German & French Alliance, nor the [EU] European Union having developed a [5] Step program in line with the [Self Supporting Security], program, and calls for the International Community to adopt a broader political approach, beyond that of using military force with the option much of forcing a square peg into a round hole. And it is also hoped that under Step [3] Three of his bold [5] Step plan not only will the Reintegration and Reconciliation of [IECF] Irregular Enemy Combatant Forces be covered but their rights, and security as [POW’s] Prisoners of War, under the brutal, dehumanizing, and cruel detention of the American-Israeli Empire.
Step Three: Reintegration and Reconciliation Program
* [An Open Peace Process]: The Peace Process must be an open process, one in which all parties are brought to the table, labels must be removed such as [Terrorist/Renegades etc.], which only serve too foster resentment, and refered to as [IECF] Irregular Enemy Combatant Forces, the peace table is made to allow the virtues of compassion and tolerance, leading to compromise leading too peace within a society and the reintegration of those who now are labeled as [Renegades, and Terrorist], but will once again be citizens of their societies. Those opting to returned to civil society. As many of the [IEC’s] joined extremist groups, not out of fanatical conviction but because of economic necessity, and by offering [IEC’s] and their families economic and social prospects a completely new approach to the root causes within a failed states or societies would be achieve with the reintegration of insurgents in society.
* [REHABILITATION FUND] A Rehabilitation Fund would be implemented to persuade enemy combatant fighters to lay down their arms, to offer enemy combatant fighters members cash if they stop fighting [ISAF] International Security Assistance Forces and/or [ISAF] government trained police, paramilitary, and military forces, renounce violence, pledge to integrate into a free society and sever contacts with all anti-reform, and extremist group/ networks. An International Law and Order Trust Fund of the [UN], paid for by a tax levied upon [UN] member nations, would not only fund the Rehabilitation Fund but the detainment of captured enemy combatants in facilities operated and controlled under [ISAF] jurisdiction.
* [Enemy Combatant Prisoner Treatment]: Shall be in accordance with the Geneva Conventions agreements of [1949], consisting of [4] treaties, and [3] Three protocols, under international law, for the humanitarian treatment of Enemy Combatant Prisoners of War.
[Entitlements of Enemy Combatant Prisoners]
Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honor, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity. Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault. Without prejudice to the provisions relating to their sate of health, age, and sex, [ALL] protected persons shall be treated with the same consideration by the Party to the conflict in whose power they are, [WITHOUT ANY ADVERSE DISTINCTION] distinction based, in particular, on race, religion or political opinion. However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war. And to these ends the following steps much be of International Mandate;
PROTOCOL ONE: The detention facility at Guantanamo, Cuba will be closed immediately and all prisoners turned over to [ISAF] jurisdiction, until such closer and relocation of all prisoners is achieved, and a list of [Black Op] prisoner detention facilities along with detainee, will be provided the [ISAF], along with all records, pertaining to such detainee.
PROTOCOL TWO: No prisoners will be subjected to enhanced interrogation, or water boarding, or other torture techniques, the names of individuals performing enhanced interrogation including water boarding of prisoners will be provide the [ISAF] for legal actions under International Law.
PROTOCOL THREE: No prisoner will be tried by Military Commissions, or kangaroo courts, or any other quasi legal system, such things as chains of evidence, habeas corpus, the right to a lawyer applied under International Law.
[EMPIRE ROGUE STATE ACTION MUST END]
Individuals can not be held in prisons without trial for indeterminate periods its not in line with international law, or common sense, the American-Israeli Empire can no long continue acting as a rogue state creating gulags such as Guantanamo, and engaging in the torture of human beings, creating kangaroo court Military Commissions with the purpose of finding the accused found guilt, can not be tolerated under International Law, and are Crimes Against Humanity.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
January 27th, 2010 at 3:58 pmHere’s a gambler’s dream: stockpile weapons in Israel, let them and their fellow travelers negotiate with “dissidents” in the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard, and see if Israel can topple the mullahs and get its Savak torture chamber and nuclear missile contracts back……oh.
January 27th, 2010 at 6:14 pm