Tuesday, April 11, 2006

US & The Mid-East

I’ve taken some flack over highlighting the risks from a pre-emptive strike against Iran using nuclear weapons, without indicating what approach the US should pursue on this issue. Our middle-east policy in the current context cannot be extricated from Iraq. Until Iraq has been resolved, taking on the Iran issue is premature. We've already bitten off more than we can chew...& Iran knows it.

We need to make it clear to the Iraqi government that we’re leaving, & that it will be sooner (potentially much sooner) rather than later. The process should begin immediately (although I think it’s unlikely). If they make me dictator tomorrow, our approach would look something like the proposals advanced by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Once we’ve consulted with the Iraqi government we should invite regional countries to participate in a regional Iraqi peace process. The US should express their willingness to leave immediately or to stay for a limited period (no longer than a year) with the additional understanding that we will begin to draw down almost immediately if the government doesn’t take immediate measures to address the militias & sectarian violence.

There are people who will argue that we would be signaling failure. The blunt truth is that we don’t have to signal it. We’ve failed. There’s no way to salvage the situation militarily without a MASSIVE commitment of new troops (about a half million), there’s no chance the American people will stand for that kind of investment, the rest of the world has shown no interest in seriously supporting the effort. So if the implication is that if the country descends into civil war, while that’s not an outcome we hope for, without a dramatic increase in multinational interest, there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. Best to pull our troops sooner & mitigate the loss of American lives & spending.

A similar story holds true in Iran. Rather than saber rattling & threatening…we should be pursuing constructive engagement. The bottom line is that we couldn’t possibly sustain any kind of ground campaign, & that absent that, there is no unilateral option short of nuclear weapons that could check any ambitions that Iran might have for nuclearization. The consequences of such a unilateral action by the US would be an unmitigated disaster. We should speak very bluntly with our European allies that the US is NOT willing to carry the torch on this one alone. It will be a very long time before Iran has the technical delivery capabilities to menace the continental US. If Europe wants to play ostrich head in the stand…the brutal truth is that they’ll be in the nuclear crosshairs long before we will. If they want to get serious about shutting down the Iranian program, they need to get clear about how far their willing to go so that Europe & the US can present a united front when we sit down to do some serious horse trading with Russia & China in the UN security council.

The US has become too reliant on “hard power” or our military might & technology. While there are clearly contexts in which a military stick is important, it should be used on a VERY limited basis. Right now, the US is facing the very real danger of watching our “soft power” our economic & technological dominance that has powered our position as a superpower slip away. Constructive engagement is ALWAYS vastly cheaper than almost any kind of military conflict. The cost of one month in Iraq is more than the entire State Department budget for the year.

Our general approach should be to significantly increase (I’m talking about tripling the budget of the State Department within a year) our funding & commitment to diplomacy. We will be very aggressive militarily on issues that impact the continental US (Terrorism for example) & will continue to deploy special-forces & pursue air missions against training camps etc. (allowing the Democrats to continue to be tough on terror) But we’re unwilling to play peacekeeper for the world. Regional problems like Iraq, Iran, Taiwan, & Korea should be referred to the UN. That doesn’t mean that we won’t act outside the scope of the UN, but we will not move to solve distant regional problems unilaterally. If our international partners (Europe, Israel, Japan) aren’t on board, meaning willing to pony up the cash & send troops into harms way, then they can face the music.

We should move diplomatically to pursue negotiations with Russian & China on nuclear exports. But, perhaps most significantly, we should attack one of the crucial items that tie us to conflict ridden out of the way places. I presented a part of this in one of my comments earlier. “Declare a war on fossil fuel dependence. The reason the middle east has become so influential in our policy making is this dependence. Katrina & it’s costs are just a taste of the longer term implications of a warming planet. Propose a massive package/policy (comparable to the moon program) of tax incentives, legislative requirements (make California’s 10% zero emis. Law national, progressively stricter CAFE standards). The correct spin is that while moving away from fossil fuels won’t be great for the huge petroleum companies that have been raking in record profits it will be great for middle class jobs to support the construction of new alternatives infrastructure, maintain the systems etc. I’m talking about a massive program with billions of dollars in new incentives & direct investment.

2 comments:

DeeK said...

Really a no-brainer when you think about it. We obviously have put our foot in the ME (and our mouths) for oil, a dwindling resource. If the Iraqis want to sell us their oil they will need to work out their own problems without our help. By holding their hand we encourage them to fester in the quagmire of our mutual creation.

And the whole "big stick" approach is outdated. We already have a dominant military, but that does no mean we can cover every theater. Better to prepare ourselves to compete economically than try to bludgeon all the prairie dogs. The best way is to invest in the future, aka alternative energy sources, more efficient travel, alterations to lifestyles that cause less impact. Your thoughts echo what I was saying in my "Rethink" post. We are trying to solve the future with old methods, when we just need to be a little more clever and look for solutions that lie right under our noses.

MdH said...

Yea...& the longer we cling to seriously outdated notions, the more shocking the transitional will be when we're FORCED to change immediately. This isn't just the environment (although I think that's the elephant in the room for the next couple of years) but also for some of the truely Unbelievable thinks that are happening on the technological front. Even without the introduction of some huge paradigm shifting breakthrough (like effective nano) the move away from large industrial production is pretty obvious. We need to start thinking about our assumptions & a sane way to make the transition now.