Diplomatic Density

Uncle Jimbo | 9/07/2006 11:08 am | ...

I read a number of writers on the left regularly because I believe the best way to understand your own position is to test it against the ideas of the smartest folks who disagree with you. One of them is Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly, who is a member of the reasonable left. The problem I have is that even his ideas about foreign policy are dangerously weak. The left has gone from their natural distrust and dislike of military action, to the firm conviction that it is completely ineffective. They have an unwarranted belief that diplomacy is the solution to the many dangers in our world and if we just would sit down and talk with the Mullahs and Kim Jong-Il we could find some common ground. Back to Von Clausewitz 101, war is diplomacy continued by other means, but without the threat of violence and a belief by the other party that you will actually hurt them, diplomacy is useless. Let's watch Mr. Drum paint himself into a corner.

But no American president can or should tolerate the Iranian regime's acquisition of nuclear weaponry. And negotiating with theo-fascists is a mug's game. Their God does not negotiate. And they are nothing if not faithful to their God.

Nice opening and it shows that he understands who we are dealing with.

For conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between, Iran is really the crucial touchstone. It's one thing to say, in retrospect, that the Iraq war was wrong, and then to suggest that you've learned your lesson and now believe that there are more effective ways of fighting jihadism than bluster and invasion. But the rubber hits the road when you get down to cases. If you've learned your lesson, then why not apply those lessons to Iran?

Iraq was only about jihadism in that we aimed to stop state sponsors of terror from operating freely. Sadaam was a problem because he had used WMDs and would not prove he had gotten rid of them. We have made the determination that we will not allow bad guys to gear up with WMDs because they might use them or sell them to terrorists. The Iranians are probably the best example of a regime that should not be allowed nukes under any circumstances because they are very likely to use them. In this case it is less a problem of religion than intention. If Iran were a Presbyterian nation and somehow were convinced that Presbyter wanted them to turn Israel into a parking lot, it would still be a good enough to stop them from getting the bomb.

It's a funny thing. Conservatives have a peculiar habit these days of viewing the Cold War through nostalgically rose-tinted glasses. At least life was simple back then. We had one enemy, and as bad as they were, they had interests. We could talk to them.

But this is just flatly wrong. When Krushchev banged his shoe at the UN and promised to bury us, we thought he meant every word of it. And plenty of people were convinced that it was useless to negotiate with such a regime. At the time, a lot of people viewed Krushchev and the Soviets exactly the way the neocons view Ahmadinejad and the Iranians today.

Well no Kevin, Kruschev, and the Soviets, had the bomb so we were forced to deal with that. They had not used it so we based our policies on the idea that the Russians loved their children too. Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, not so much. First of all they don't have the bomb, second they have been very unsubtle about taking Israel out, third they are the most destabilizing force in the region already, they will be virtually unrestrained if they become a nuclear power.

But guess what? JFK proved them wrong. We now know that he didn't stare down the lunatic Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He negotiated a deal with them, and it worked. Likewise, in Vietnam, anti-communist paranoia blinded us to the essentially nationalist nature of the war we were fighting there. Today we know that negotiations and support for fair elections probably could have worked.

WTF? There are plenty of reasons to question our involvement in Vietnam, but the farcical notion that if we had just sat down with the Communists we could have worked out a plan for fair elections is ludicrous. We cut a deal with the Soviets about Cuba because the alternative was a war that would probably go nuke, by Drum's logic we should allow the Iranians to get nukes so we have no alternative but to deal with them rather than shutting them down.

In the 1980s, neocons were aghast that Reagan thought he could negotiate with the Soviets. He proved them wrong. Four years ago it was Saddam Hussein who couldn't be boxed in. That turned out to be wrong too. He sputtered and blustered, but in the end we found out that sanctions and no-fly zones had scared him pretty well after all.

Reagan negotiated with the Soviets to provide cover for the arms race we conducted that eventually bankrupted financially a bankrupt ideology. The only deal we ever made with the Soviets that mattered was Mutually Assured Destruction, the rest was window dressing. The statements about sanctions are stunningly wrong, is he unaware of one of the largest scandals ever Oil for Weapons? Sanctions were a joke, and made one by the very diplomats and scumbags at the UN who he assumes can sit around the pool sip some tea and solve the world's problems.

And now it's Iran, yet another country that can't be negotiated with. Why? Religious fanaticism is the excuse this time. But while the Iranians may seem scarier simply because they're today's enemy, that doesn't mean they can't be dealt with just like any other nation state can be dealt with.

Religious fanaticism is hardly an excuse, it is a cold, hard fact Kevin. I realize that secular liberalism is loathe to believe in the power of religion to motivate people to act, unless it happens to be American Christians, but Ahmadinejad is aching for his 72 goats and he and his buddies are running Iran right now.

Not every problem can be solved by diplomacy. Sometimes, as in the currently fashionable right-wing obsession with 1938, negotiation really is useless. But far more often than not, our enemies can be negotiated with, despite all the convincing reasons the hawks adduce for confrontation and war as the only possible solution. So ask yourself: With a track record this bad, why should we pay attention to the same old hysterical siren song this time? Shouldn't we send the hawks packing and instead figure out more sensible ways to react to our global problems? Shouldn't we have learned our lesson by now?

If he really believes we don't conduct diplomacy now, he is dense. Regardless he fundamentally misunderstands the need for the threat of follow-on violence for diplomacy to have any chance of success. I guess he may believe in the fundamental goodness of man and that reasonable people really ought to be able to sit down, iron out their differences and live in peace. He obviously inhabits a planet other than the one I live on. I've been around the world twice and I've seen goats float in a boat, but I have yet to run across these reasonable people he thinks will bring us world peace. I understand the need for diplomacy and I believe it is effective in some cases, but only because those involved preferred it to Tomahawk missiles.

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