As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes [...]]]>
As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit — the editorials, columns, and op-eds the Journal produces usually make the most coherent case for a neo-conservative position, especially as regards anything having to do with Israel and its ruling Likud Party, as any other publication, including the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Commentary’s Contentions blog. As tendentious and bizarre as these pieces often are, they also usually offer some degree of intellectual integrity.
In that respect, the “Wonderland” column published last Thursday by the Journal‘s deputy editor of the editorial page Daniel Henninger struck me as particularly lacking. I don’t read Henninger’s column very frequently; on foreign policy, he seems to be a lightweight compared to his colleague Bret Stephens, who writes the Tuesday “Global View” column. But I read this one, entitled “Rand Paul’s Reagan,” because its title raised a favorite interest of mine — the ongoing battle between the neo-con/aggressive nationalist and the paleo-con/libertarian wings of the Republican Party.
Of course, you should read the whole thing, but the part that really jumped out at me was his juxtaposition of the “Weinberger Doctrine” and his confident depiction of Ronald Reagan as a staunch and unflinching advocate of a hawkish foreign policy:
While there was never a formal Reagan Doctrine, Ronald Reagan himself said enough and did enough to know where he stood. In his 1985 State of the Union, Reagan said, “We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent.”
Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” aligned his own policy toward Soviet Communism with the idea of “rollback,” stood at the Brandenburg Gate and cried, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” increased U.S. defense spending, deployed Pershing 2 ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in Europe amid world-wide protests in 1983, invaded Grenada the same year, and gave U.S. support to anticommunist movements in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and Latin America—with many congressional Democrats in a towering rage of eight-year opposition to nearly all of it. The words Reagan used most to support all this were “freedom” and “democracy.” He ended four decades of Cold War.
Well, aside from the fact that Henninger seems to take great pride in U.S. support for such “anticommunist” and freedom-loving movements represented by the mujahadin (and future Taliban) in Afghanistan, the Khmer Rouge (de facto) in Cambodia, the witch-burning Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and the Somocista-led contras in Nicaragua (not to mention the murderous armies and security forces of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the three main sources of all those children on the southern border now — in Central America), I find this litany of “where (Reagan) stood” in the context of any discussion of the Weinberger Doctrine quite remarkable for what it omits. More precisely, Henninger fails to devote a single word to the events that gave rise to Weinberger’s enunciation of the doctrine that bears his name: the disastrous deployment of U.S. marines at the Beirut airport and the Oct 23, 1983, bombing of their barracks in which 241 servicemen were killed.
Of course, what is relevant here was Reagan’s reaction. You would think from Henninger’s depiction of “The Gipper” that he not only would have shrugged off what was the worst one-day loss of life of U.S. servicemen since World War II. He would also have spared no effort to hunt down the perpetrators*, bombed the hell out of their suspected sponsors wherever they were to be found, and then quadrupled the number of troops deployed to Lebanon in order to demonstrate to all the world his determination to “stand” his ground in the face of terrorist threats and outrages, and defeat them.
In fact, however, Reagan did nothing of the kind. Two days after the disaster, his administration launched the invasion of tiny Grenada partly, no doubt, to divert the public’s attention from Beirut. Meanwhile, most of the surviving marines were immediately deployed offshore, and by February, they had been withdrawn entirely from Lebanon, albeit not before the USS New Jersey fired off dozens of VW Bug-sized shells at Druze and Syrian positions east of Beirut. (Neither is believed to have had anything to do with the bombing.) Weinberger, who had opposed the original deployment and had wanted to lay out the principal lessons that he thought should be learned from the debacle shortly after the withdrawal, waited until November 1984 to devote a speech to the subject. One year later, that same tough-guy Reagan, who, as Henninger recalls, warned against playing “innocents abroad,” authorized the arms-for-hostages deal that formed the basis of the Iran-Contra scandal …and then claimed that he had no idea that he was indeed trading arms for hostages. This is Henninger’s Reagan.
I should stress right away that, unlike both Paul and Henninger, I’m definitely not a defender of Ronald Reagan whose presidency, I believe, was an unmitigated disaster for the country (exceeded only by George W. Bush’s, of course), not to mention the many tens of thousands of innocent people who died or were killed by the application of the “Reagan Doctrine” in Central America, southern Africa (remember, Reagan’s support for apartheid South Africa), and Indochina. And, while I agree with Henninger that “Ron Paul’s Reagan” is not an entirely accurate rendition of the 40th president’s foreign policy, Henninger’s depiction is no less flawed. In fact, I believe it is fundamentally dishonest. After all, if you’re going to attack Paul’s central point about Reagan’s alleged adoption of the Weinberger Doctrine, the very least you can do is mention the events that gave rise to it: the ill-thought-out commitment of U.S. troops into a civil-war situation and their subsequent ignominious withdrawal. As noted by none other than Reagan’s own Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman (also a member of the 9/11 Commission), ”There’s no question it [Reagan's withdrawal] was a major cause of 9/11. We told the world that terrorism succeeds.” Of course, that particular Reagan obviously doesn’t exactly fit Henninger’s idealized and highly misleading version.
* One of the great ironies is that an alleged key planner of the 1983 barracks bombing, as well as other attacks against U.S. officials in that period, was an Iranian intelligence officer, Ali Reza Asgari, who, according to Kai Bird’s recent biography of Robert Ames (the CIA officer who was killed in the suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut six months before), was granted asylum in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration in 2007 in exchange for sharing his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program. According to Bird, Asgari has been living here under the CIA’s protection since his defection. You can find Augustus Richard Norton’s review of Bird’s book for LobeLog here.
Photo: Caspar Weinberger meeting in 1982 with then-Israeli Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon Credit: public domain
]]>
by A. R. Norton
Until 1:04 PM on April 18, 1983, Robert Clayton Ames was little known outside U.S. foreign policy and intelligence circles. On that day he died, along with 62 other casualties in and around the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, then a familiar landmark on Beirut’s seaside corniche.
The building suffered [...]]]>
by A. R. Norton
Until 1:04 PM on April 18, 1983, Robert Clayton Ames was little known outside U.S. foreign policy and intelligence circles. On that day he died, along with 62 other casualties in and around the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, then a familiar landmark on Beirut’s seaside corniche.
The building suffered devastating damage when a pickup truck laden with 2,000 pounds of explosives was driven into the lobby. Ames, the influential Director of the Near East and South Asia division within the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, was on a visit to Lebanon, which President Ronald Reagan declared a “strategic interest” for the U.S. following Israel’s game-changing invasion the prior year.
A former National Intelligence Officer, Ames’ intelligence assessments carried weight in Washington where he enjoyed access to Secretary of State George Shultz. He had arrived in Beirut in April 1983 carrying the outline of an agreement that would be announced the following month. Mediated between Israel and Lebanon by Shultz, the May 17 agreement called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, but with the proviso that the Syrians would also withdraw their soldiers.
Hours before his death, Ames shared the details with Mustafa Zein, a longtime Lebanese confidante, a wielder of wasta (connections), which are far more important in Lebanon than institutions or laws. Zein urged irreverently that the agreement be printed on very thin paper so it might be used in the toilet. Ames enjoyed the joke, a hint of his own cynicism about the prospect that then-President Hafez al-Assad would yank his forces from Lebanon, particularly at a time when the high blown but mutually contentious hopes of Israel and the United States were deflating.
The agreement did accomplish one thing, perhaps its hidden motive: it helped repair a rupture in U.S.-Israeli relations that had been provoked by the clash of their rival agendas in Lebanon. Otherwise, Zein got it right.
Defective policy
One of the many virtues of Kai Bird’s impressive volume, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, is that he offers a fine-grained, if sometimes gruesome account, of the destruction of the embassy as well as the broader tableau for U.S. engagement in a Middle East that would become more vicious and venomous.
The U.S. intervened in Lebanon in support of a political order that was being upended, in significant measure as a result of the rise of the large Shi’a community. It was this community that bore the brunt of brutish Israeli behavior that bred enmity to Israel and to its protective uncle. Ames and his fellow intelligence officers were deeply skeptical of U.S. policy in Lebanon. They worried about growing dangers, but their political masters were slow to grasp the reality. At the time, I felt that the understanding in the White House of the evolving situation in Lebanon lagged months behind the reality on the ground.
President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, walk by the flag-draped caskets of victims of the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Credit: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
There were precedents for the deadly attack, including similar incidents in December 1981 when the Iraqi Embassy was demolished, and in November 1982 when an Israeli intelligence center near the southern city of Tyre was decimated. Yet, the scale of destruction came as a shock to U.S. policymakers. Bird reports that two vehicle barriers that might have impeded the April attack were gathering dust in a warehouse.
Credible evidence — reprised by Bird — points to Iran as the progenitor of the April attack as well as the even more massive bombings in October 1983 against the U.S. Marine Barracks and a building housing French Paratroopers that killed more than 300 soldiers. Bird offers new details about the role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard officials in Lebanon, including Ali Reza Asgari, who he links to both attacks.
Iran found ready partners, especially among young militants inspired by the 1979 “Islamic Revolution,” including a young man by the name of Imad Mughniyeh, born in Tayr Dibbah (Bird mangles the name of the village) in southern Lebanon.
The notorious Mughniyeh (assassinated in Damascus in 2008), while not the mastermind according to Bird, did have a key hand in the embassy bombing. He is credited with lots of deadly mischief and terrorism in the ensuing years, but details remain murky, including in Bird’s account. As one retired Agency officer wryly notes, “when in doubt, and we are always in doubt about this, blame Mughniyeh.”
A very good spy
Ames joined the CIA in late 1960. The slow-paced early chapters of the book offer glimpses of his early career as a spy and his pre-CIA service as a young draftee assigned to a secluded intelligence station in Eritrea where his fascination with Arabic and the Arab world on the opposite shore of the Red Sea emerged.
All of Ames’ Agency assignments were in challenging locales. He served in Aden, in 1968-69, in the waning days of British control and the first and violent days of the former protectorate’s independence and subsequent estrangement from the West. Even so, he proved an adept recruiter of sources, a talent for which he gained admiration around the Agency.
He subsequently served in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon — countries affected profoundly but differently by the magnetic appeal of Arab nationalism, especially from the lips of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Ames kept his emotions in his pocket, like when he witnessed a botched execution in Saudi Arabia and simply murmured to a colleague that they should leave. That was, he reasoned, how things were done in Arabia.
He was not immune to the fervor of the period though. When Nasser was felled by a heart attack in 1970, he composed a poem reading in part: “A light went out, an era ended.” And so it had. Nasser’s exit opened the way for contending Arab dreams based on state nationalism or the idealism of Islamism.
After his death, he was described by CIA Director William Casey as “the closest thing to an irreplaceable man”. In part, Casey’s tribute honored Ames for his success in penetrating the Palestinian resistance in the early 1970s, which he did largely on his own initiative, retrospectively gaining the blessing of the CIA Director. His key source was the flamboyant Ali Hassan Salameh, who Yasser Arafat trusted and entrusted with maintaining a conduit to the United States.
Salameh, who headed the organization’s intelligence apparatus, was a rival of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chieftain Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), creator of Black September. Salameh headed Force 17 (Mughniyeh had once been a member), the Fatah Special Ops unit, and he operated on the margins of Black September. He was suspected by the Israelis of involvement in the kidnapping and deaths of Israeli Olympic athletes at Munich in 1972. Bird offers an ambivalent assessment of his role.
Ames maintained an extraordinary relationship with Salameh, with whom he brokered effective security cooperation in Lebanon, including guarantees for the safety of U.S. diplomats. Ames warned the Palestinian that the Israelis were gunning for him (they succeeded in 1979). Recall that in the 1970s, the prospect of an independent Palestinian state was well beyond the pale, and the PLO was reflexively decried as a terrorist group. Within Washington circles, the usual formula for accommodating Palestinian aspirations was to be found in an arrangement with Jordan that came well short of an independent Palestinian state.
Ames is credited with ghostwriting the peace initiative announced by Ronald Reagan on September 1, 1982, which Prime Minister Menachem Begin quickly rejected. Begin had approved the June invasion of Lebanon and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s objective of crushing Palestinian nationalist aspirations. He had no intention of accepting even an autonomy scheme with Jordan.
Ames, for his part, was oddly optimistic about the initiative, which many of his colleagues viewed as a “non-starter,” a “fool’s errand”. Given the access to power that Ames enjoyed, he was grasping what was feasible in the Washington context, but in doing so he was contradicting what his deep knowledge of the Arab world would have taught him was necessary to accommodate Palestinian aspirations.
To give Ames his due, when the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel were signed a decade later, he was credited by his colleagues with opening the door that made possible the acceptance of the PLO as a respectable diplomatic actor.
Knowledgeable readers will appreciate the author’s nuanced account. General readers will find the book accessible, lucid and rewarding. There are many more nuggets to be mined and assayed from The Good Spy, but within the confines of a concise review that will have to wait.
Robert Ames worked in a murky environment populated by people with plenty of dirt under their nails and blood on their hands; not people whose moral probity stands up well to scrutiny under bright lights. He would probably appreciate the bitter irony that Ali Reza Asgari, the Iranian intelligence officer who played a key role in bringing his life to a terrible end, defected in 2009 and is now living someplace in America under an assumed identity after being drained of his many secrets. That was the milieu in which the good spy thrived and then perished.
– A. R. Norton is a professor of anthropology and of international relations at Boston University. Princeton University Press published the new edition of his book, Hezbollah: A Short History, in May 2014. This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: A view of the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after the bombing that killed 63 people on April 18, 1983.
]]>The absurdity of political campaigns in the United States added another chapter recently when New Jersey governor Chris Christie made the “Republican hajj” to Las Vegas. Ostensibly, he was going to speak to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), but the real pilgrimage was to grovel at the feet of billionaire casino mogul [...]]]>
The absurdity of political campaigns in the United States added another chapter recently when New Jersey governor Chris Christie made the “Republican hajj” to Las Vegas. Ostensibly, he was going to speak to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), but the real pilgrimage was to grovel at the feet of billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson in the hope of getting the kind of fat contribution that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich received in 2012.
During his RJC speech, Christie made the grave mistake of using a clear fact that was unacceptable to the RJC and even more so to Adelson. He called the West Bank “the Occupied Territories.” The audience’s gasps were heard nationwide. Christie was forced to ramp his groveling up to supersonic levels when he apologized to Adelson for this nearly unforgivable blunder.
Such is the role of truth when it comes to Israel in the bizarre world of Republican pro-Israel politics. And it’s not just confined to the GOP. The Democrats have also dodged this very simple fact, and it has created a political climate where the US media also rarely refers to the occupied territories as “Occupied Territories.” The politically correct term for moderates is “disputed territories.” On the right, it’s the biblical designation, “Judea and Samaria.” Nowhere else but in the United States, not even in Israel, is it controversial to call the West Bank “occupied territory.”
Christie’s apparent gaffe was surprising since you’d think the governor of New Jersey, home to a whole slew of right-wing Jewish political donors, would know better, and this speaks ill of his ability to win the GOP nod in 2016. But it’s undeniable that he stated a blatant and indisputable fact. How accurate and accepted is the term, “Occupied Territories?” Let’s look at a few examples.
- The International Court of Justice, in its 2004 advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s “security barrier,” refers specifically to the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and even further, specifically rules that the entire West Bank is under military occupation and subject to the laws regarding such a state of affairs.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 calls for “…Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict…” (emphasis added).
It’s clear that the international system is unambiguous about the status of the West Bank. But one would not expect that to mean much to the RJC or Adelson. So what about Israel? While the official Israeli stance has long been that the areas are disputed, not occupied, even the Israeli government can’t always avoid reality.
- The Israeli High Court of Justice has consistently ruled that the West Bank is not legally part of Israel and that the laws of belligerent occupation apply there.
- Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon put it bluntly in 2003: “To keep 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation–you can dislike the word, but what is happening is occupation–is in my view bad for Israel, for the Palestinians and for Israel’s economy.”
But you know, those Israelis, they feel all that international pressure. So what about some US sources that the RJC might consider reliable?
- In this video clip (about six minutes in), you can see former President George W. Bush, that noted anti-Israel liberal, saying that “Israel must stop settlement activities in the occupied territories…”
- Since 1981, when Ronald Reagan stated that Israeli settlement expansion is not illegal, the occupation has had a politically ambiguous position in US politics. Nonetheless, a 1978 determination by the State Department’s legal adviser was accepted by the Carter administration and has never been refuted. That determination clearly calls the Territories “occupied” and renders settlements illegal.
The idea that an apology is warranted for calling the West Bank occupied is no more rational than demanding an apology for calling the sky blue or saying that Israel exists to the south of Lebanon. But Christie made it pretty clear why it happens in another piece of his RJC address. He said that Israelis “want America to be their unblinking, unwavering, unquestioning friend.” Implicit in that is criticism of President Barack Obama’s temerity in questioning any Israeli policy.
Sure, that’s not a whole lot different than the repeated statements that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have made in referring to the “unshakeable relationship” between Israel and the United States and the “zero daylight” that they falsely claim exists between US and Israeli goals. But “unquestioning?” Most parents don’t want that kind of devotion from their children, most spouses don’t expect it from their partner, and only an idiot would consider offering it to anyone.
We are all responsible for our own decisions, and as such, we should always reserve the right to question another’s. Most of us would accept that as a universal truth. The only exception most usually make is between themselves and their deity, which, apparently, is the relationship the RJC and Sheldon Adelson believe the United States should have with Israel.
Photo: Chris Christie addressing the 2014 CPAC convention. Credit: Gage Skidmore
]]>Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
By Greg Thielmann
st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
By Greg Thielmann
st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, former Secretary of State George Shultz suggested applying tips from former President Ronald Reagan for negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program.
In considering Reagan’s signal arms control achievement, the INF Treaty of 1987, which eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons, there are some parallels worth considering. The principal Soviet incentive for reaching agreement then was to avoid the stationing of 572 U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe. A negotiated settlement was only achieved after the missiles began to be deployed into five NATO countries within range of the Soviet Union. Similarly, serious negotiations with Iran have begun only after the imposition of crippling sanctions on Iran by the United States, the European Union and the UN Security Council.
It is also the case with the Soviet Union then and Iran now that the beginning of serious negotiations coincided with the coming to power of new reform-minded leadership in Moscow and Tehran. Creative diplomatic initiatives to achieve win-win solutions – like the 1982 “Walk-in-the-Woods” agreement of lead INF negotiators Paul Nitze and Yuliy Kvitzinskiy and the October 2009 nuclear fuel swap agreement proposed to Iran by the United States – were rejected in capitals (Moscow and Washington in 1982; Tehran in 2009).
It is an open question, however, whether substantial progress could have been made earlier in both cases. President Reagan’s initial reluctance to negotiate with the Soviet Union, which he described as the “empire of evil” and President George W. Bush’s hostility toward Iran, which he characterized as part of an “axis of evil” in January 2002, critically delayed diplomatic progress on nuclear issues.
Rather than providing the “useful guide to negotiating” recently summarized by George Shultz, the Reagan administration record actually offers far more cautionary examples of what the United States should avoid doing with Iran.
Often overriding the counsel of Alexander Haig, George Shultz, “Bud” McFarland, and Paul Nitze, Reagan’s circle of hardline advisors obviated any chance of exploiting realistic opportunities for arms control progress. It was the Pentagon of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Assistant Secretary Richard Perle and the CIA of Director William Casey, which influenced White House security policy during Reagan’s first term far more than did Secretaries of State Haig and Shultz.
Likewise, the more objective assessments of intelligence community professionals were disregarded. History has found the “Team B” assessments that drove Reagan security policies to have been consistently wrong. The ideological blinders worn by the policy principals help explain why Reagan and his advisors were so slow to recognize the opportunities presented by the new Soviet leadership team of President Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze that took over in the spring of 1985. The U.S. President even had to be persuaded by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that Gorbachev was someone with whom he could do business!
Even when he finally became convinced that a US-Soviet arms control agreement on INF could serve U.S. interests, Reagan sacrificed the chance to also secure a historic strategic arms reduction agreement under the influence of the SDI chimera. The 50 percent reductions in strategic arms proposed by Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986 would have to wait several years for Reagan’s successor to deliver.
Fortunately, President Obama appears to be following a different playbook than the Gipper’s.
This time, the president is more heavily influenced by his Secretary of State than Reagan was by Shultz. And unlike during the Reagan years, the heads of Obama’s Defense Department and State Department have usually been traveling on the same trajectory.
This time, the president is basing his policies on more objective and realistic threat assessments regarding Iran than did Reagan with the Soviet Union. And this time, the president has a better grasp of critical details of the Iran nuclear challenge than did Reagan in understanding the Soviet military.
Let us hope therefore that, this time, the U.S. will be able to seize a time-limited opportunity to enhance U.S. security through an Iranian nuclear agreement rather than squandering a chance to reduce strategic arms as Reagan did in the 1980s. Mr. President, please leave the Gipper’s negotiating playbook on the shelf where it belongs.
Greg Thielmann is a senior fellow of the Arms Control Association, and former office director for strategic, proliferation, and military affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He also served as State Department adviser to the U.S. delegation at the opening of the INF negotiations in 1981.
]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Some days, it must be really difficult to be the State Department’s spokesperson. It doesn’t seem like a bad job to have at all, but on certain questions it’s impossible to not look like an idiot. A lot of those questions are connected to de facto policies which differ [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Some days, it must be really difficult to be the State Department’s spokesperson. It doesn’t seem like a bad job to have at all, but on certain questions it’s impossible to not look like an idiot. A lot of those questions are connected to de facto policies which differ from de jure ones. And there is no better example of that than US policy on Israeli settlements.
Back in the early years after the 1967 war, the United States made it clear that the settlements were illegal according to international law. As recently as 1978, the State Department legal adviser confirmed that all Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line are illegal, and through the Carter administration, this was explicit US policy. That policy has never been explicitly revoked, but beginning with the Reagan administration, de facto policy has been ambiguous. Reagan began the trend when he stated that while the settlements were ill-advised, provocative and that further settlement was not necessary for Israel’s security “I disagreed when, the previous Administration refereed to them as illegal, they’re not illegal. Not under the U.N. resolution that leaves the West Bank open to all people—Arab and Israeli alike, Christian alike.”
The problematic nature of Reagan’s statement — implying that “Arab” equals “Muslim” and “Israeli” equals “Jew”, and more importantly, citing the “U.N. Resolution”, which is not the basis for the illegality of the settlements (the Fourth Geneva Convention is) — notwithstanding, this was the beginning of the US’ refusal to label settlements illegal, terming them instead, at most, “illegitimate.”
The problem for spokespeople arises when they have to parse what that means. Last Monday, in Colombia, Secretary of State John Kerry made what turned out to be an interesting statement. “As the world, I hope, knows, the United States of America views all the settlements as illegitimate,” Kerry said. The use of the word “all” might have worked in Reagan’s day, even in Bill Clinton’s. But today, when the US has allowed Israel to assert that certain settlements are essentially guaranteed (the so-called “settlement blocs” of Gush Etzion, Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim) that little word carries heavy implications.
Israel insists that it’s okay to build in the settlement blocs and the Palestinians should have no problem with that because they’re going to keep them anyway. Israel bases its case on the fact that they have repeatedly stated this publicly without being contradicted and on George W. Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon in 2004. While that letter did not explicitly state that Israel should keep the blocs, it profoundly altered the diplomatic landscape by promising that the borders between Israel and the envisioned Palestinian state would not be the same as those that existed in 1967 and that alterations would reflect the changed demographics in those, at that time, 37 years. Israel took that to mean it would keep the blocs, and no one, other than some Palestinians (and not the lead spokespeople at the time) said otherwise.
So, when Kerry said all the settlements were illegitimate, it prompted AP reporter Matthew Lee to enter into the following exchange with spokeswoman Jen Psaki:
QUESTION: He said the United States doesn’t see all of the settlement activity as legitimate. Is it correct that – is that correct, that all settlement activity is illegitimate? And I don’t want to get into this illegitimate or illegal, because as far as I’m concerned it’s a distinction without a difference. Does the United States believe that all Israeli settlement activity along – and we can include in that East Jerusalem construction – is all of it illegitimate?
MS. PSAKI: Well, our position on Jerusalem has been clear and has been consistent for some time, which is that we believe it is a final status issue in terms of the discussion of that – of Jerusalem, right?
QUESTION: Mm-hmm.
MS. PSAKI: That is part of the discussion. We have, of course, expressed concerns about construction in East Jerusalem. That hasn’t changed. Our position on settlements we have stated a number of times, and I just stated, and that has not changed either.
QUESTION: Okay. So you do not regard the construction in East Jerusalem as illegitimate. Is that correct?
MS. PSAKI: Well, I think I just stated what we – what our longstanding position has been on construction.
…
QUESTION: But it’s not – hold on, Said. But it’s not that it’s illegitimate?
MS. PSAKI: I don’t have anything more than what I just stated.
QUESTION: Because it is a final status issue?
MS. PSAKI: It is a final status issue that we discussed and worked through.
QUESTION: So one of the questions – okay. So one of the questions that I had that Marie said she would take yesterday –
MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: – was about the 900 homes that were announced for construction in East Jerusalem. Is it fair to say you do not regard those as illegitimate?
MS. PSAKI: Well, we – in terms of those specific – that specific announcement –
QUESTION: Right.
MS. PSAKI: – you know we oppose any unilateral action. Certainly we would include this, that attempt to prejudge final status issues, including the status of Jerusalem. That’s where that building is taking place. That’s our view on it.
QUESTION: Okay. So you’re opposed to it, but you don’t say that it’s illegitimate?
MS. PSAKI: I think you know our position.
QUESTION: Okay. So in terms of illegitimacy then, this legitimacy issue, are existing settlements illegitimate in the eyes of the Administration in the West Bank? Settlements in the West Bank that currently exist now, are they illegitimate, meaning that they should not be part of Israel once there is a peace agreement?
MS. PSAKI: Well, obviously, the question of borders will be worked through and is part of the discussion that will take place and will be ongoing in the weeks and months ahead.
QUESTION: So are existing settlements illegitimate?
MS. PSAKI: Well, we have concerns about ongoing continued settlement activity.
QUESTION: Okay. Do you understand that there’s a serious problem here? Because if you talk about – if all you’re prepared to say is that you don’t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity, you are only calling illegitimate settlements that have not been announced, settlements that are, say, a twinkle in the Housing Minister or whoever’s eye. Once they are actually announced or built, you stop calling them illegitimate, and they – and you start saying that that’s a – that’s something to be decided between the parties. Okay?
MS. PSAKI: Well, this has been our position for a number of years.
QUESTION: That’s – well, right. But –
MS. PSAKI: So –
QUESTION: And I’m surprised that no one, and especially me, has picked up on this before, because you have essentially – you don’t oppose settlements at all, because once they’re built or once they’re announced, once plans for them – plans to build them are announced, you’re not opposed to them anymore, because it’s something for the parties to decide whether they’re legitimate or not.
MS. PSAKI: Well, certainly it will be – a big part of the discussion will be that process moving forward.
QUESTION: Right. Do you understand the problem? Do you understand the –
MS. PSAKI: I understand what you’re conveying, Matt. I’m happy to talk back with our team and see if there’s any more clarification we can provide.
QUESTION: Okay. So tell me, am I wrong in thinking that the United States has no position at all except that it is to be decided by the parties on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of settlements that exist in the West Bank today?
MS. PSAKI: I believe you are wrong, Matt. We’ll get you some more clarification.
QUESTION: You believe I’m wrong? Okay.
MS. PSAKI: We’ll get you some more clarification.
QUESTION: Jen –
MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: – in fact, your longstanding position, going back all the way to 1967, and through George Herbert Walker Bush when he was representative at the United Nations, and on to Andrew Young, and on and on and on, that the settlement, that Jerusalem – East Jerusalem, the West Bank, all territory occupied is contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, and any alteration stands contrary to that, that you will not support. That is your position, not to reconcile yourself to the facts on the ground, as has been suggested.
Earlier, Lee said to Psaki “Back in 1978, President Carter said that, quote, ‘We don’t see these settlements as being legal.’ Why can’t you say that they aren’t legal?” Psaki, of course, had no answer.
Ultimately, the only people making the argument that the settlements are legal are the Israelis and a handful of apologists who try to bend and twist international law into an interpretation that fits their needs. Otherwise, there is virtually universal agreement that all settlements beyond the Green Line are illegal. Technically, that is also the US position, since there has never been any official statement from a government representative charged with understanding and interpreting international law to reverse the conclusion reached in 1978. But in reality, the political upheaval that would ensue from re-stating that position makes it impossible to do so.
This was made even more interesting when, on August 12, the Washington Post’s internet edition apparently misquoted Kerry saying that the settlements were illegal, rather than illegitimate. When I saw the original version I almost fell over. Had that occurred, it would have been a major game-changer. Quickly, however, the Post corrected the error. I’m sure it was, indeed, an error, because I cannot imagine Kerry actually saying that.
Yes, I cannot imagine the US’ Secretary of State stating what remains the official legal interpretation as set forth by the State Department’s legal adviser and which, outside the US and Israel, is nearly an absolute consensus view. Interesting, even the most pro-Israel of Presidents, be it Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, has seen the settlements as a serious problem. They would all have liked to see Israel put a halt to them. But when George H.W. Bush, who, during his time as Ambassador to the UN, explicitly stated the settlements were illegal and acted to slow them, he was called anti-Israel. And we can all recall what happened when Obama asked Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlements so peace talks could continue (and, no, despite Bibi’s statements, the freeze never really happened — as Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now explains here).
These are the results of a schizophrenic policy, where the policy as enacted nearly opposes official statements of it. Good luck to Jen Psaki trying to explain it.
Photo: A new neighbourhood under construction in the West Bank’s Ariel settlement. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS
]]>“It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” declared Mitt Romney on September 4.
The deletion of a single sentence about Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, which reportedly had been vetted by officials from the American Israel Public [...]]]>
“It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” declared Mitt Romney on September 4.
The deletion of a single sentence about Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, which reportedly had been vetted by officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), generated hysterical headlines that went viral and ricocheted throughout cyberspace, arousing panic among Democrats and glee among Republicans.
Ironically, affirming Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel and the importance of relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been a largely Democratic strategy for nearly four decades, particularly when there has been an incumbent Republican president in the White House. Republicans latch on to it whenever a Democratic president is running for re-election.
Now for some historical perspective.
The Democratic party’s 1976 platform was the first to stipulate:
We recognize and support the established status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with free access to all its holy places provided to all faiths. As a symbol of this stand, the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This stance was reiterated in the 1980 and 1984 platforms. In 1983, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called for relocating of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, in a bill co-sponsored by fifty senators. When State Department officials in the Reagan administration objected that moving the Embassy would strain diplomatic ties with Arab countries, Moynihan did not press for a vote. No mention of Jerusalem whatsoever was made in the Democratic platform in 1988, in the wake of Secretary of State George Shultz’s sharp criticism of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis for suggesting that, if elected President, he would consider transferring the Embassy to Jerusalem. “It’s shocking that anybody would make such a proposal,” the Reagan administration’s chief spokesman on foreign policy told NBC’s Today show. Since Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights “are regarded as occupied territory” and are “subject to negotiations” according to Shultz, who deemed any notion of moving the Embassy a “mistake.”
But Jerusalem was back in the 1992 Democratic platform, a seeming non sequitur tacked on to the Middle East Peace plank, minus the call for moving the US Embassy:
The United States must act effectively as an honest broker in the peace process. It must not, as has been the case with this Administration, encourage one side to believe that it will deliver unilateral concessions from the other. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.
Republicans were the latecomers to the Jerusalem capital-ism game. The GOP’s 1976 platform made no mention of Jerusalem. The 1980, 1984 and 1988 Republican platforms all declared that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city with continued free and unimpeded access to all holy places by people of all faiths.” The same assertion appeared in the 1992 platform, followed by the coy sentence, “No genuine peace would deny Jews the right to live anywhere in the special city of Jerusalem.”
With a popular Democratic president in the White House, it was the Republicans’ turn to play the Jerusalem capital card. On October 24, 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Implementation Act, introduced by Republican Sen. Bob Dole (who just happened to be running for president), passed the Senate (S. 1323) in a 93-5 and the House (H.R. 1595) 374-37. President Clinton signed the bill two weeks later. The overwhelming bi-partisan support for the measure did not prevent Republicans from taking full credit, gloating in the 1996 GOP platform:
We applaud the Republican Congress for enacting legislation to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. A Republican administration will ensure that the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem by May 1999.
Clinton won the 1996 election. The US Embassy stayed in Tel Aviv. Then the 2000 Republican platform became even more strident:
The United States has a moral and legal obligation to maintain its Embassy and Ambassador in Jerusalem. Immediately upon taking office, the next Republican president will begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”
Nevertheless the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, who had publicly pledged to thousands of attendees at AIPAC’s 2000 Annual Policy Conference that on his first day in office he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, did not do so after winning the election. Not on his first day, not on his last day, and at no point in between. The Republican platform in 2004 stayed low key, noting, “Republicans continue to support moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”
Democrats stuck with their tried-and-true 1992 formulation in 1996, in 2000, in 2004, and in 2008, reiterating the city’s status as Israel’s capital and the right of people of all faiths to access it. Ironically, Republicans framed their mega-affirmation of Jerusalem being Israel’s capital in 2008 with an endorsement of the creation of a Palestinian state, which went largely unnoticed by the media:
“We support the vision of two democratic states living in peace and security: Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, and Palestine…We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”
Two democratic states living side by side! Uri Friedman points out that such language “provoked a raft of amendments arguing that, in endorsing the two-state solution, the Republicans were dictating the terms of a peace agreement to the Israeli government.”
Israelis have for the most part been amused by, even cynical about, the overblown rhetoric about Jerusalem in US elections. As Douglas Bloomfield explained four years ago, when GOP presidential candidate John McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that if elected president he would move the US Embassy “right away,” not only wasn’t it going to happen — regardless of who was elected — but Israelis wouldn’t care either way:
Moving the embassy has never been a high priority for any Israeli leader in meetings with American presidents. They see it as a political football in an American game they prefer staying out of. All recent prime ministers have understood that an agreement on Jerusalem is critical to any peace settlement with the Palestinians – and that symbolic action like American politicians trying to force the embassy move can only make an agreement more elusive. But the game continues even though seasoned political observers understand it’s a sham. This year is no exception. Any politician who tells you he’s going to move the embassy before the Israelis and Palestinians come to an agreement on the city’s final status and borders thinks you’re wearing a name tag that says “chump.”
No prominent Democrat seems to know why the reference to Jerusalem was deleted in 2012 (it was reinserted on September 5). What is certain, however, is the fact that for the past 35 years the role of Jerusalem in both party platforms has had no practical effect in Israel, except perhaps to distract from — and thus implicitly condone — the unilateral Israeli tripling in size of the area within the municipal boundaries of “united Jerusalem” between 1967 and today. Politicizing the holy city has been one way that both American parties have tried to score points against the opposition, a distraction from more complex and urgent issues in US domestic and foreign policy. This year is no exception.
Meanwhile, Republicans seem to have soured on their “Embassy Sweets” commitment to moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. That the 2012 GOP platform has dropped the call for the Embassy’s relocation has gone almost totally unnoticed by the ever-distractible media, except, oddly, by the Wall Street Journal.
Apparently Romney didn’t get the memo.
]]>Others have [...]]]>
Others have also described Ross as more skeptical [than Mitchell] about the chances of peace, based on his decades-long experience with trying to bring together the parties.
I don’t want to get all new-agey, but if you think something is difficult or impossible to do, the chances of being able to do it are greatly diminished from the get-go.
So why does this Ross guy keep getting jobs that he doesn’t think are possible? I picked up Ross’ book off of my shelf here in D.C., and it amazed me how many times he says you cannot make any kind of deal with the Iranians. Then, Obama put him in charge of making a deal with the Iranians. Ross, we now learn, doubts that a peace deal can be reached in Israel-Palestine, and Obama gives him a job making peace in Israel-Palestine.
On the Middle Eastern conflict, Ross’s credentials for the job are impeccable. After all, he’s been involved in decades — decades! — of failed peace processes. Ross has worked at the Washington Institute (WINEP), an AIPAC-formed think tank, and also chaired the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israeli organization dedicated to “ensur(ing) the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization.” (The organization seems to oppose intermarriage with racist-sounding statements like “cultural collectivity cannot survive in the long term without primary biological foundations of family and children.”)
Ross was thought responsible for crafting Obama’s presidential campaign AIPAC speech — yes, the one with the line about an “undivided” Jerusalem that would spike a peace deal if implemented. Ross later reiterated the notion of an undivided Jerusalem as a “fact” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Ross was recently in the news following a secret but not-so-secret visit to the Middle East, which was fleshed out on Politico by Laura Rozen. Rozen was the reporter who carried a rather shocking anonymous allegation about Ross:
“[Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”
In an update, Rozen carried NSC CoS Denis McDonough’s defense of Ross:
“The assertion is as false as it is offensive,” McDonough said Sunday by e-mail. ”Whoever said it has no idea what they are talking about. Dennis Ross’s many decades of service speak volumes about his commitment to this country and to our vital interests, and he is a critical part of the president’s team.”
But the new Forward article, as MJ Rosenberg points out, backs up the notion that Ross was extremely concerned with “advocat[ing]” for Israel. The source is none other than Israel-advocate extraordinaire Abe Foxman (who doesn’t negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government):
“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for ‘advocate.’”
Do you get the feeling that Ross advocated for Iran? Or, as the Forward article put it (with my strikethrough), has “strong ties to Israel” Iran? Guttman writes that Ross is considered to have a “reputation of being pro-Israeli.” As for Iran? Not quite: Ross’s Iran experience seems to boil down to heading United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that pushes for harsher, broad-based sanctions against Iran (despite a stated goal to not hurt ordinary Iranians) and that has criticized Obama’s policy of engagement. Ross left the gig, as with JPPI, when he took the job with the administration.
The group also launched an error-filled fear-mongering video (while Ross was still there; he appears in the video) and a campaign to get New York hotels to refuse to host Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes to town each year for the U.N. General Assembly, which hardly lays the groundwork for good diplomacy.
Oh, and about the Iran engagement designed by Ross: The administration’s approach has been questioned by several leading Iran experts. “It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed. In December, Ross publicly defended the administration against charges that engagement was less than sincere from the U.S. side. But it is Ross himself who has apparently long held a pessimistic outlook on engagement.
Ross’s 2007 book, “Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World“, is fascinating in light of where Ross has come from, and where he’s taken Iran policy. I was struck at a five-page section of the first chapter called “Neoconservatism vs. Neoliberalism,” in which Ross writes, “[Neoconservatism's] current standard-bearers — such as Richard Perle, David Frum, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan — are serious thinkers with a clear worldview,” (with my links).
Later, in several long sections about the run-up to George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Ross notes that Paul Wolfowitz was highly focused on Iraq before and after 9/11. He also mentions “political difficulties” in the push for war: “Once [Bush] realized there might be a domestic problem in acting against Iraq, his administration focused a great deal of energy and effort on mobilizing domestic support for military action.”
But Ross never acknowledges that some of his neoconservative “serious thinkers” — such as Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine — were involved in the concerted campaign to mislead Americans in an effort to push the war… just as the same figures are pushing for an attack on Iran. Frum, who does seem capable of serious thinking, was the author of the “axis of evil” phrasing of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. The moniker included both Iraq and Iran, despite the fact that the latter was, until the speech, considered a potential ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. (Marsha Cohen chronicled an Israeli effort to squash the alliance, culminating in Frum’s contribution to the Bush speech.)
Ross never mentions that neocon Douglas Feith, a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), was responsible for cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq within the administration, and whose office was feeding cooked information to the public via Scooter Libby in Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office. Through Libby, the distorted information made its way into the hands of the Standard and sympathetic journalists like ideologue Judith Miller at the New York Times. In August of 2003, Jim Lobe wrote (with my links):
[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA [the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia bureau] and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. …
Other appointees who worked with… both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.
Ross has personal experience with many OSP veterans, working with them at WINEP and signing hawkish reports on Iran authored by them.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross was a member of a task force that delivered a hawkish report apparently co-authored by two veterans of OSP, Rubin and Michael Makovsky. (Ross reportedly recused himself as the presidential campaign came into full swing.) Lobe, noting Ross’s curious involvement, called the report a “roadmap to war with Iran,” and added, a year later, that the group that put out the report was accelerating the plan, calling for a military build-up and a naval blockade against Iran.
After taking his position within the Obama administration, Ross released a book, co-authored with David Makovsky, that was skeptical of the notion that engagement could work. Nathan Guttman, in a review of the book for the Forward, wrote:
The success of diplomatic engagement, according to Ross, is not guaranteed and could be unlikely. Still, he and Makovsky believe that negotiations will serve a purpose even if results are not satisfying. “By not trying, the U.S. and its refusal to talk become the issue,” said Makovsky in a June 1 interview with the Forward. “What we are saying is that if the U.S. chooses engagement, even if it fails, every other option will be more legitimate.”
The attitude of Ross and Makovsky seems closer to that of the Israeli government then to that of the Obama administration.
OSP, Feith, the Makovsky brothers, and Rubin are not listed in the index of “Statecraft,” nor have they appeared in the many sections that I’ve read in full.
In his book, Ross does have many revealing passages about concepts that have been worked into the Obama administration’s Iran policy. One such ploy, which has not been acknowledged or revealed publicly, is using Israel as the crazy ‘bad cop’ — a potentially dangerous game. Ross also writes that international pressure (through sanctions) must be made in order to cause Iran “pain.” Only then, thinks Ross, can concessions such as “economic, technological and security benefits” from the U.S. be offered:
Orchestrating this combination of sticks and carrots requires at this point some obviously adverse consequences for the Iranians first.
This view does not comport with the Obama plan for a simultaneous dual-track policy toward Iran — which holds that engagement and pressure should occur simultaneously — and serves to bolster critics who say that engagement has not been serious because meaningful concessions have not been offered. But it does hint at another tactic that Ross references at least twice in the book: the difference between “style” and “substance.” With regard to Iran, he presents this dichotomy in relation to public professions about the “military option” — a euphemism for launching a war. But publicly suppressing rhetoric is only used as a way to build international support for pressure — not also, as one might expect, a way to assuage the security fears of Iran.
But those aren’t the only ideas from the 2007 book that seem to have made their way into U.S. policy toward Iran. In “Statecraft,” Ross endorses the use of “more overt and inherently deniable alternatives to the use of force” for slowing Iran’s nuclear progress. In particular, he mentions the “fragility of centrifuges,” which is exactly what is being targeted by the Stuxnet virus, a powerful computer worm thought to be created by a state, likely Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., according to the latest revelations.
Some critics of this website complain that the level of attention given to neoconservatives is too great, but they should consider this: Look at Dennis Ross. He works extensively with this clique, and no doubt has the occasional drink or meeting with them. And, most importantly, he writes approvingly about neoconservatives, noting that their viewpoint affects political considerations of “any political leader.” Because of these neocon “considerations,” he writes, this is how we should view the Islamic Republic: “With Iran, there is a profound mistrust of the mullahs, and of their perceived deceit, their support for terror, and their enduring hostility to America and its friends in the Middle East. … No one will be keen to be portrayed as soft on the Iranian mullahs.”
This from the man that formulated a policy that has offered “adverse consequences” but so far no “carrots.” Ross’s predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy — and since he gets the big appointments, he gets to fulfill them. Taking reviews of his book with Makovsky, the Bipartisan Policy Committee report, and “Statecraft” as a whole, I’m not at all surprised that little progress has been made with Iran.
But, at least, that was his first try. He’s a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. With Iran, I had to put the pieces together, whereas with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, his record is right there for all to see. Putting Ross in charge of peace-making between the two seems to perfectly fit Einstein’s definition of insanity.
]]>