But there’s something that’s not clear: how this America reacts now when it’s told it’s behaving weakly, indecisively, or perhaps deceptively in inadequately trying to stop Iran’s rush toward a nuclear weapon.
Which is just the argument that France’s nuclear nonproliferation experts are making. They suggest the Americans are selling likely Iranian trickery as hopeful signs, and toying with potential agreements with the mullahs that resemble the American concessions on North Korea which have led only to its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
Their warnings can be blunt: that the United Sates is playing a flabby, losing game against Iran; and even that it’s failed to arouse any nervousness in Tehran that the Americans would eventually dare acknowledge the failure of current negotiations, or subsequent sanctions, and consider a military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.
These French concerns are not feigned. Why this so-called French hawkishness?
Suppose you are researching for the U.S. negotiation team. Barring the long-term, historical readings—what summaries or quick insights can you suggest? Here’s an analysis of the P-5+1 talks with Iran by George Freeman, founder of StratFor (a geopolitical intel company), including the positions, interests, and strategies for this next negotiation:
Now, we get down to the heart of the matter: The Iranians have officially indicated that they are prepared to discuss a range of strategic and economic issues but are not prepared to discuss the nuclear program — which, of course, is the reason for the talks in the first place. On Sept. 14, they hinted that they might consider talking about the nuclear program if progress were made on other issues, but made no guarantees.
So far, the Iranians are playing their traditional hand. They are making the question of whether there would be talks about nuclear weapons the center of diplomacy. Where the West wanted a commitment to end uranium enrichment, the Iranians are trying to shift the discussions to whether they will talk at all. After spending many rounds of discussions on this subject, they expect everyone to go away exhausted. If pressure is coming down on them, they will agree to discussions, acting as if the mere act of talking represents a massive concession. The members of the P-5+1 that don’t want a confrontation with Iran will use Tehran’s agreement merely to talk (absent any guarantees of an outcome) to get themselves off the hook on which they found themselves back in April — namely, of having to impose sanctions if the Iranians don’t change their position on their nuclear program…
To this end, Russia is pleased to do anything that keeps the United States bogged down in the Middle East, since this prevents Washington from deploying forces in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltics, Georgia or Ukraine.
Other insights that you might consider…and add your own suggestion:
Roger Cohen, IHT/NYT observes “No nuclear endgame that fails to address Iran’s victim syndrome through some degree of highly monitored empowerment is conceivable to me.”
Prior experience with US/Iran engagement over Iraq from the Bush Administration representative James Dobbins.
Flynt Leverett of the New American Foundation argues that sanctions are the wrong direction, that rapproachment a la Nixon in China is the right strategic direction.
Useful analysis on Russia’s strategy from today’s NYT as well as a good overview—to see what China will do and act accordingly, keeping in mind its own regional intersts–and a good reminder as to the complicated game of 3D chess any U.S. president must master in foreign policy and multilat negotiations.
Sort of like reading last week’s assigned book chapter…only shorter (and with color photos).
With a U.S. president chairing the world’s top security body for the first time, it’s worth asking: What does the U.N. Security Council do, exactly? The answer, it turns, out, is more than you think, and less than you might hope.
The US approach to the UN varies by administration. Now the pendulum is swinging back toward engagement–linking into the larger discussion of the value of multilateral approaches. The personality at the middle is the new U.S. ambassador who has a strong national security background:
In articulating why the United Nations matters, Ms. Rice stressed her central focus as she revolved between those foreign policy posts and the Brookings Institution. “I happen to believe, as the president does, that our security and well-being as Americans are inextricably linked to the security and well-being of people elsewhere,” she said in an interview. “Indifference is costly in moral and humanitarian terms, and it’s costly in security terms.”
Ms. Rice, 44, is viewed around the United Nations as smart, hard-working and thorough, as well as prone to dispense with diplomatic niceties. In her Security Council speeches, ambassadors said, she usually jettisons the tradition of beginning by thanking all and sundry for their contributions to the previous meeting.
She said her most important accomplishment to date was persuading China and Russia last June to go along with tough new Security Council sanctions against North Korea, including an asset freeze and arms export embargo, to try to bring its nuclear weapons program to heel.
She also pushed for the United States to rejoin the Human Rights Council, which the Bush White House mocked, and where new American influence thwarted an attempt to drop the special rapporteur investigating human rights abuses in Sudan. The United States has also started paying the United Nations hundreds of millions of dollars in financial arrears, and voices more support for peacekeeping efforts.
The complex interplay between war and peace–a la Tolstoy–as well as the constant list of challenges (see previous post) might lead to disillusionment, dispair, or fatalism. Such a view is misguided, according to John Horman at Slate:
If war is not inevitable, neither is peace. “This past year saw increasing threats to security, stability, and peace in nearly every corner of the globe,” warns the SIPRI 2009 Yearbook. Global arms spending—especially by the United States, China, and Russia—has surged, and efforts to stem nuclear proliferation have stalled. An al-Qaida operative could detonate a nuclear suitcase bomb in New York City tomorrow, reversing the recent trend in an instant. But the evidence of a decline in war-related deaths shows that we need not—and should not—accept war as an eternal scourge of the human condition.In fact, this fatalistic view is wrong empirically and morally. Empirically, because war clearly stems less from some hard-wired “instinct” than from mutable cultural and environmental conditions; much can be done, and has been done, to reduce the risks it poses. Morally, because the belief that war will never end helps perpetuate it. The surer we are that the world is irredeemably violent, the more likely we are to support hawkish leaders and policies, making our belief self-fulfilling. Our first step toward ending war is to believe that we can end it.
This doesn’t mean the threats–such as nuclearn proliferation-are not dire. A new multimedia learning module from CFR offers polished video intros on the nature of that particular threat, as well as timelines, key issues, and recommendation–all in a non-wonky, accessible format.
The downward slide of peacekeeping effectiveness has paralleled the decline of resources, support and member-state contributions. Should the Security Council aspire to do less–see Congo as the most recent setback–as to manage expectiations? Or should this noble but overwhelmed initiative be revamped?
“Peacekeeping has been pushed to the wall,” said Bruce Jones, the director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, which is working with the United Nations on reform efforts. “There is a sense across the system that this is a mess — overburdened, underfunded, overstretched.”
Although Iraq and Afghanistan seem distant to some, we are still fighting two wars as well as terror groups. Phillip Bobbitt, whose books are must reads for insight, historical depth, and perspective, argues that “War on Terror” isn’t a misnomer:
The “war on terror” is not a nonsensical public relations slogan, however unwelcome this conclusion may be to Pentagon planners or civil-liberties advocates. The notion of such a war puzzles us — after all, who would sign the peace treaty? — because we are so trapped in 20th-century expectations about warfare. But success in war does not always mean the capitulation of an enemy government (as we have seen in Iraq); rather, it varies with the war aim.
But its not a defense of Bush ad infinitum. In fact, he urges a major strategic shift. “Mexico could be our Pakistan,” he muses. (Also, “Pakistan is our Pakistan.”) Bobbitt suggests ‘stockpiling laws’ for emergency situations by legislators, innovative partnerships with the private sector, and engagement and reshaping of international organizations:
We must use available international institutions — like the International Criminal Court, to which pirates and other terrorists could be rendered — whenever possible. Yet we must not shrink from augmenting them, for example, by creating a global body similar to NATO including other democracies, by enlarging the United Nations Security Council to include other great states, and by giving new security responsibilities to the Group of Eight.
Another question is ‘how scared should we be about an attack inside the United States? Peter Bergen suggests “close to zero.”
[The] Bush administration has made Americans safer with measures like the establishment of the National Counterterrorism Center, where officials from different branches of government share information and act on terrorist threats. As a result of such measures, scores of terrorism cases have been aggressively investigated in the United States. But despite the billions of dollars invested in all these efforts and the thousands of men and women who get up every day to hunt for terrorists, the resulting cases have almost never involved concrete terrorist plots or acts.
Iran is vying for a seat on the SC. Yale historian Paul Kennedy writes in the WSJ today that for every other small or mid-range country, historical perspectives are lacking across the table. They do not belong on the this austere committee.
Countries that can’t hack it fall back upon that all-too-vague phrase “and to other purposes of the Organization,” but on inspection most such claims look weak. Austria, also a current contender, argues that its housing of International Atomic Energy Agency boosts its claim. Iceland, out of luck on that front, is showing pictures of Third World countries participating in its geothermal training program!…
Does this mean that no small-to-medium-sized countries should bid for a turn as a rotating member of the Security Council? Certainly not. But they should be prepared to prove their qualifications, and that means by actions not mere words. And they should learn a little bit of history.
The reason: They must be able to back up their major decisions with economic or military might, else the institution loses its credibility.
Find out the tricks of the trade employed by Iceland in trying to attempt to beat out Austria and Turkey for a seat on the UN Security Council.
Electric moments have become rarer around the United Nations Secretariat in recent years, but a hotly contested Security Council vote still creates buzz. Even as members grumble about the declining relevancy of a Security Council designed circa World War II, more and more nations seek to wield the influence gained by winning a seat at the Council’s iconic horseshoe-shaped table.
“It is one of the major plum goals for foreign policy in any country,” said Colin Keating, a former New Zealand ambassador who runs Security Council Report, a nonprofit organization that tracks the body. “It is a place of real power; it is the only international institution that exists that has the legal power by majority vote to compel the international community to do something.”
