Obama’s Nixon Strategy?

In Time magazine, the foreign affairs commentator Peter Beinart sees a Nixonian method to the President’s outreach to Iran and Syria — a way of shrinking the war on terror:

The best precedent for all this is what Nixon did in the late Vietnam years. For roughly two decades, the U.S. had been trying to contain “Communism” — another ominous, elastic noun that encompassed a multitude of movements and regimes. But Vietnam proved that this was impossible: the U.S. didn’t have the money or might to keep Communist movements from taking power anywhere across the globe. So Nixon stopped treating all Communists the same way. Just as Obama sees Iran as a potential partner because it shares a loathing of Al Qaeda, Nixon saw Communist China as a potential partner because it loathed the U.S.S.R.

Nixon didn’t stop there. Even as he reached out to China, he also pursued détente with the Soviet Union. This double outreach — to both Moscow and Beijing — gave Nixon more leverage over each, since each Communist superpower feared that the U.S. would favor the other, leaving it geopolitically isolated. On a smaller scale, that’s what Obama is trying to do with Iran and Syria today. By reaching out to both regimes simultaneously, he’s making each anxious that the U.S. will cut a deal with the other, leaving it out in the cold. It’s too soon to know whether Obama’s game of divide and conquer will work, but by narrowing the post-9/11 struggle, he’s gained the diplomatic flexibility to play the U.S.’s adversaries against each other rather than unifying them against us.

via Reading File – NYTimes.com.

Diplomatic Memo – Glittering Emissaries’ Dazzle Wears Off in the Trenches – NYTimes.com

Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Holbrooke is in any danger of losing his job; administration officials said both enjoy the confidence of their bosses. Indeed, they were hired precisely to take the arrows for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, so these leaders do not expend their diplomatic capital too soon.

Still, the last few weeks have tested the fortitude of both men. Even a proven record in peacemaking — Mr. Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in North Ireland; Mr. Holbrooke, the Dayton Accords for Bosnia — is no guarantee of success this time around.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former Middle East peace negotiator, said that while he had confidence in both men, they needed to seize greater control over the administration’s policy-making process.

“The problem is not merchandising or marketing, it’s the product,” said Mr. Kurtzer, who has advised Mr. Obama on Middle East issues. “If you don’t have a good policy, it doesn’t matter if you have a good envoy or not.”

via Diplomatic Memo – Glittering Emissaries’ Dazzle Wears Off in the Trenches – NYTimes.com.

Whither Afghanistan?

Top story of the week that hasn’t (yet) been posted deals with U.S. General McChrystal’s report on troop levels in Afghanistan.  Here is a list of wise and debatable insights from a range of perspectives on what needs to be done.  (Feel free to add your voice…) via Op-Ed Contributors – 10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com.

Also, an interesting sua culpa from former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith in WaPo on the challenges confronting the UN, NATO, and various Afghanistan “allies”– and the problems of international organizations, even when you’re ‘all on the same side’:

In early September, I got word that the IEC was about to abandon its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. After I called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing me of foreign interference. My boss sided with Karzai.

Breaking Ranks with W – Scowcroft in The New Yorker

Brent Scowcroft (middle) with President George H. W. Bush (left) and James Baker (right)

Something to think about for tonight’s lecture:

For Brent Scowcroft, the rhetoric is not matched by reality. “I believe that you cannot with one sweep of the hand or the mind cast off thousands of years of history,” he says. “This notion that inside every human being is the burning desire for freedom and liberty, much less democracy, is probably not the case. I don’t think anyone knows what burns inside others. Food, shelter, security, stability. Have you read Erich Fromm, ‘Escape from Freedom’? I don’t agree with him, but some people don’t really want to be free.”

Scowcroft is unmoved by the stirrings of democracy movements in the Middle East. He does not believe, for instance, that the signs of a democratic awakening in Lebanon are related to the Iraq war. He sees the recent evacuation of the Syrian Army from Lebanon not as a victory for self-government but as a foreshadowing of civil war. “I think it’s something we have to worry about—the sectarian emotions that were there when the Syrians went in aren’t gone.”

For Scowcroft, the second Gulf war is a reminder of the unwelcome consequences of radical intervention, especially when it is attempted without sufficient understanding of America’s limitations or of the history of a region. “I believe in the fallibility of human nature,” Scowcroft told me. “We continually step on our best aspirations. We’re humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will.”

Letter from Washington: Breaking Ranks–What turned Brent Scowcroft against the Bush Administration? : The New Yorker or try here.

In for the Long Haul? Trouble with the Coalition of the Af-Pak Willing?

The Europeans begin to tire in Afghanistan:

We are all convinced that it would be best for everyone, whoever they are, to remove our conspicuous presence from Afghanistan quickly,” Mr. Berlusconi said.

Senior elected officials in Germany and Britain have also expressed weariness with the mission as violence has increased and casualties have mounted.

via Italy Looks at Afghan Pullout After Deadly Blast – NYTimes.com.

But the larger question looms?  Is this war winnable?  If its a culture of corruption on both sides (Karzai’s government, as well as the Taliban), can a satisfactory outcome be achieved?  Is this the Balkans, the Korean “conflict,” or something else?  From a recently returned captain who served two tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, from Wed NYT Op-Ed:

I have just returned from Afghanistan, where I spent seven months as a special adviser to NATO’s director of communications. On listening tours across the country, we left behind the official procession of armored S.U.V.’s, bristling guns and imposing flak jackets that too often encumber coalition forces when they arrive in local villages. Dressed in civilian clothes and driven in ordinary cars, we were able to move around in a manner less likely to intimidate and more likely to elicit candor.

The recurring complaint I heard from Afghans centered on the untenable encroachment of government corruption into their daily lives — the homeowner who has to pay a bribe to get connected to the sewage system, the defendant who tenders payment to a judge for a favorable verdict. People were so incensed with the current government’s misdeeds that I often heard the disturbing refrain: “If Karzai is re-elected, then I am going to join the Taliban.”

Today, on Diane Rehm (NPR) was one of the most informative discussions I have heard in a while on the situation, for anyone interested in really understanding the policy nuances of this challenging issue for the US, NATO allies, and, of course, the Karzai Government.

Options for Afghanistan

The top U-S commander in Afghanistan warns that without more troops, mission failure is a possibility. Diane and a panel of experts discuss the situation there and the benefits and drawbacks of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

• Paul Pillar, is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. and a former CIA National Intelligence officer.
• Karin von Hippel, codirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program.
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor at The Washington Post

via WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio – The Diane Rehm Show.

Good Will, but Few Foreign Policy Benefits for Obama – NYTimes.com

So being popular doesn’t matter?  Think of it for Obama and his foreign relations as helpful, and even necessary–but not sufficient.

For an administration whose officials regularly boast of having what they call “the best brand in the world,” there is what Stephen Sestanovich calls growing “frustration with what other countries are prepared to contribute to advancing supposedly common interests.” Personal relations are important, said Mr. Sestanovich, a former Clinton administration ambassador with ties to the current team, but national interests still dominate. “That’s what American presidents generally discover,” he said.

James K. Glassman, who served as Mr. Bush’s last under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs and now leads the former president’s new research institute, said popularity only went so far. “I wouldn’t say it’s not important to be well liked. It is important. But there are other factors involved,” he said. “What you need to do is find out where you have mutual interests.”

via Good Will, but Few Foreign Policy Benefits for Obama – NYTimes.com.

Why Kristol Mattered to World Affairs Watchers

Much ink has been spilled on the fate of W’s neocons, but how many know of their origins on the Left?  Much of US foreign policy–especially vis-a-vis international organizations–was shaped over decades by Kristol, a major public intellectual with a fascinating background:

Irving Kristol, the writer, editor and publisher known as the godfather of neoconservatism whose youthful radicalism evolved into a historic rejection of communism, liberalism and the counterculture, died Friday. He was 89.

“His wisdom, wit, good humor and generosity of spirit made him a friend and mentor to several generations of thinkers and public servants,” said the editors of The Weekly Standard in announcing Kristol’s death on its Web site. He died of complications from lung cancer.

Kristol was the husband of critic-historian Gertrude Himmelfarb and father of neoconservative editor and commentator William Kristol, an editor of The Weekly Standard.

A Trotskyist in the 1930s, Kristol would soon sour on socialism, break from liberalism after the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and in the 1970s commit the unthinkable — support the Republican Party, once as “foreign to me as attending a Catholic Mass.”

He was a New York intellectual who left home, first politically, then physically, moving to Washington in 1988. He was a liberal “mugged by reality,” his turn to the right joined by countless others, including such future GOP Cabinet officials as Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett and another neoconservative founder, Norman Podhoretz.

via The Associated Press: Political writer Irving Kristol dead at 89.

One major contribution came through his work as an editor and publisher:

At a time when neoconservatism is so wildly resented on the left, it’s worth remembering the noble tradition that Kristol founded most notably through The Public Interest, the small journal he introduced to the world in 1965 with Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Daniel Bell. Later, Nathan Glazer would replace Bell. The journal brought appropriate skepticism and rigor to the prevailing faith in government that held sway at the apex of the Johnson administration and Nelson Rockefeller’s big government rule in New York. The magazine asked important questions about whether programs really worked and what were the limits of public action. If you were a serious student of public policy you could disagree with the magazine but you couldn’t ignore it.

Will the Real Dick Cheney Please Stand Up? (Note: He Is Still Standing.)

There are the policies, and then there is the Man. Soon there will the biography that may shed light on both.   What makes former Vice Prsident Cheney so fascinating is his unabashed defense of his oft-controversial positions such as bombing Iran or supporting interrogation that appears to be considered as “torture“, as well as his apparent gusto in proffering them.
What can we learn about free exchange and debate of policy ideas, as well as leadership from this loved/hated “Darth Vader” of recent American history?  He is still as relevant as ever–on Iran, fighting terrorism, supporting gay marriage and on America’s role in the world–but is he right?

Though much attention is given to Cheney’s energetic support of torture, less has been drawn to his apparent willingness to start yet another Middle East war, this one with Iran. Asked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace why the Bush administration didn’t “take out the Iranian nuclear program,” Cheney replied: “It wasn’t my decision to make. … I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues.”

It would be easy — too easy — to dismiss Cheney as a cranky old man, a political has-been or just a budding author out to sell some books. He is all these, and more. He represents the thinking of a significant number of conservatives who still believe that the United States is a unique and unrivaled global power that can bomb, invade, occupy and torture its way to security. The ancient Romans believed much the same.

The influence of this vocal group within the Republican Party means that any of its presidential contenders will have to answer to it. So if the fanciful prospect of a Cheney presidential candidacy is too laughable to give it much thought, ponder the distinct possibility of Sarah Palin relying on this crowd for her foreign policy tutorials.

via RealClearPolitics – Cheney Plays to His Own Crowd.

New Direction for Russian/Polish Relations?

As Russia tries to pry Poland away from its western allies, an apology for a past pact may work:

The relative warmth stood in contrast to Polish frustrations with the United States; Mr. Tusk has taken pains to play down the fact that President Obama was represented at the memorial ceremonies by his national security adviser, which many Poles saw as a snub.

Poland’s traditionally close relations with Washington are already being tested by reports that the Obama administration is reviewing the Bush administration’s plan to deploy parts of its antiballistic missile shield in Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, two Eastern European states eager for the American presence, particularly as Russia has grown more aggressive internationally.

via Putin Praises Poland for Bravery in World War II – NYTimes.com.

To give you a sense of the past antipathy among both nations, consider this article from 2005, where an advisor to Putin believes “Poles talk about Russians the way anti-Semites talk about Jews.”

New U.S. Ambassador to China Predicts Broad Engagement – NYTimes.com

What’s the plan for U.S. relations vis-a-vis China?  Ask former Utahn, now U.S. Ambassador to China:

“I suspect we have more on our plate than ever,” he said. “But it comes at a time when China is a stakeholder. And arguably, it wasn’t in the past.” …

His deep knowledge of the country has won him praise from China experts in the West and also from Chinese analysts.

“He was a governor, and that will put him in a unique place,” said Victor Zhikai Gao, director of the China National Association of International Studies and a former interpreter for Deng Xiaoping. “And his understanding of Chinese will help. He can directly engage with Chinese leaders, bypassing the translator.”

via New U.S. Ambassador to China Predicts Broad Engagement – NYTimes.com.