Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.
This also [...]]]>
Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.
This also often happens when the presidency changes, though that time is also fraught with the downside of newness — what in Washington jargon is sometimes referred to as the need first to find one’s way to the washroom, in addition to getting to know and adjust to one’s new colleagues.
The foreign policies of those leaving office (especially if the party in control of the presidency also changes) are remembered as almost universally bad — the partisan spin; though within months, the old gang is understood to have not got things all that wrong, given the (necessarily) limited latitude that the US has, even as the world’s most powerful country.
Change at the top in the midst of an administration is a different thing. Even if a new team has a will to change things — note, for instance, Secretary of State John Kerry’s hyperactive efforts to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians — existing policies and practices already have momentum, or a quality of bureaucratic inertia and integration within Washington politics.
At the same time, however, members of the new team have an advantage in that they have likely already been working together, developing their relationships and learning how the government “really works.”
Thus it is with Susan Rice’s moving from her position as US Ambassador to the United Nations to National Security Advisor in the White House and her replacement, from the current National Security Council staff, Samantha Power. Both have the critical quality of lengthy (and trusted) associations with President Obama, one of the most invaluable “coins of the realm” in Washington power politics and position.
Instant commentary has largely focused on the foreign policy activism of both officials newly at the top. And that has apparently been true — up until now.
In 2011, both were reportedly in the camp, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, credited with tipping the president over the edge into supporting Britain and France in their efforts to topple Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.
While that account is most likely exaggerated, the key point is that Rice/Power’s activism for “humanitarian interventions,” as several commentators have opined, will be sharply constrained by a more basic fact of life: Obama has made clear he is not about to trade his ending US military engagement in Iraq and sharply reducing it in Afghanistan for more wars in the Middle East.
Thus Obama has resisted pressures from US hawks and Israel to make war on Iran, though he has given hostages to fortune by accepting “red lines,” of some indefinite nature, along with his continued claims that “all options are on the table”.
In other words, he has made a critical war-peace decision conditional on Iranian and Israeli restraint — never a good place for a US president to be — but so far his bet (a handful of aces or bluffing with a busted flush) has not been called.
Obama has also been so reluctant to get the US more deeply engaged in the Syrian civil war that it is unlikely that the change in personnel will produce a decisive difference. At the margins, perhaps — and in those details lurk a hundred devils.
It’s also important to understand what Obama has been about up until now. It appears, at least to this writer, that he sees his legacy as domestic; summarized in two words: economy and equality.
This is quite an agenda and one that, if considerably advanced, would mark him as a major figure in US history, a legitimate legatee of FDR and LBJ. This inference contains a lesson for engagement abroad, however: Obama should accomplish what the US has to do, but keep this from interfering with the pursuit of his domestic agenda.
This can include accomplishing abroad tasks critical to that purpose, such as working to restore confidence in the global financial system, launching a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and recognizing the growth of the Economic Beasts of Asia: China, the Greater, and India, the Lesser.
Hence the “pivot” to Asia slogan, or the less-colorful, “rebalancing”. But so far there’s only slogans with limited policy substance and certainly no coherence across the different instruments of power and influence and US domestic fiefdoms.
Keeping the world from interfering unduly with Obama’s own “rebalancing” or primary attention to his domestic agenda (which, on the economic side, is actually a demand, given the mess he was handed in 2009) — was arguably the principal job of the foreign policy team for the First Term.
Tom Donilon, the outgoing National Security Advisor, was not a foreign policy mastermind, but in the Obama scheme of things he didn’t need to be.
Helping Obama with the running down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, making sure that two more didn’t begin, maintaining a pretty tight hold on policy overall, and keeping foreign policy to the extent possible out of the 2012 presidential campaign, Donilon did his job.
But trying to put the world “on hold” has now run its course.
For more than two decades, the United States has in effect been eating its seed corn in terms of strategic assessment, thought and planning for the post-Cold War world.
Following George H.W. Bush’s two signal foreign policy achievements of wrapping up the Cold War in Europe (as well as setting the basis, followed by Bill Clinton, for writing finis to the European Civil War of 1870-1991) and showing that the US could and would use its unmatched and unmatchable military power to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, the US has been acting as though its great reserves of power and influence can substitute for thinking about a truly new construction of global relationships.
While there has been an attempt to understand that, in the new world, working with others is absolutely necessary, along with sharing the right to make the Big Decisions and melding effectively military, diplomatic and economic instruments, not much has been done to build on that basis.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been major cases in point. While “kinetic” power has largely done its job, the work of economic and political development has largely failed.
And in Afghanistan, not long after the 2014 end of the lead role for Western forces, the world’s verdict is likely to be — both there and in much-more-important Pakistan — Mission Not-Accomplished.
Much can be said about the various tasks that Susan Rice will now assume in the White House, but nowhere with more immediate importance than in regard to the Middle East (and Southwest Asia).
There, three administrations in a row have not managed to forge an integrated approach and strategy, but have tended to see the bits and pieces of the region from North Africa to the Hindu Kush as just that — bits and pieces.
As much as anything else, domestic politics has driven much of US policy in the region, in particular the US part of the long-running confrontation with Iran, and there is no indication that this will change.
The US still has not been willing to put “all options on the table” by recognizing that the legitimate security needs of three counties — the US, Israel, and Iran — all need to be considered.
The failure to create a viable strategy toward Iran and its nuclear program, short of the president’s hand being called at some point regarding military attack, was underscored this past week when he signed an executive order further ratcheting up sanctions.
He did this a mere 10 days before the Iranian presidential elections on June 14th.
If someone in Washington were trying to think up a way to ensure that the worst of the worst will be elected — to the extent we could have any impact — it would be hard to think of a more effective tactic.
(Consider, for instance, how the US electorate would have responded if, say, China or Russia had rattled sabers in 2008 just when “dovish” Barack Obama was running against “hawkish” John McCain).
Then there is Syria, in civil war, with a rolling civil war across the region, where the US has got itself smack in the middle of age-old competitions and hatreds between Sunnis and Shi’as, and where some of America’s closest Sunni allies are deeply involved in supplying weapons (and ideologies bitterly and aggressively hostile to the West) to the so-called rebels.
And at least in public, there is not even a hint that the administration has been planning what it will do if Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is removed from power…or if he stays.
In either event, there will be another product of the ripples of the religious and geopolitical rivalries that began spreading across the region when the US dropped a great big bolder on Iraq in 2003, thus ending three centuries of minority Sunni dominance over the majority Shi’as, and thus leading Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others to try righting the region’s Sunni-Shi’a balance through Syrian regime change.
When it comes to what the new National Security Advisor should do, the first step is obvious: Ms. Rice should assess the NSC team she is inheriting and ensure she has first-rate players in terms of capacity to engage in strategic thinking and relate systematically the world’s apples to its oranges.
Whether Susan Rice is herself a top-rate strategic thinker and leader, able to do what has to be done in terms of analysis and craft, is not yet clear; we must hope that she will prove to have these skills.
In any event, she needs to get the best people possible for her Senior Staff, where it is a great stretch of the imagination to argue that the Obama Administration has either sought out the best, from within and without the government, or employed them effectively.
This is at a time when the NSC staff has become bloated to being the largest ever: effective, perhaps to meet the Donilon task of having enough people-power to assert control over the rest of the foreign policy apparatus, but an oxymoron in regard to serious strategic thinking.
The rule of thumb (demonstrated when Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft were National Security Advisors) is that capacity for strategic analysis, thought, planning and policy tends to exist in inverse proportion to the number of people involved in doing it.
In sum, shifts in global power and influence mean that we must learn to think our way toward the future.
In particular, as has happened to every US president since Harry Truman, the Middle East demands that the president and his team get it right or suffer unfortunate consequences.
As the top official closest to the president, both in physical distance (a few yards) and in prior association, this buck stops with Susan Rice.
]]>via IPS News
In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.
He also announced that another longtime aide on the [...]]]>
via IPS News
In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.
He also announced that another longtime aide on the National Security Council staff who began working with Obama when he was still a freshman senator from Illinois, Samantha Power, will replace Rice as Washington’s U.N. envoy, a cabinet position.
The moves, which had been anticipated but whose precise timing was uncertain, are considered unlikely to signal major changes in U.S. policy, despite the fact that both Power and Rice have been associated with the more-interventionist tendencies within the Democratic Party.
“I don’t think this change in personnel marks a turning point in policy,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“From the get-go, foreign policy under Obama has been run from the (White House) Oval Office, and Obama’s brain trust has included primarily a small inner circle of folks that cut their teeth on the (2008 presidential) campaign. Susan Rice and Samantha Power have been part of that inner circle all along.”
“I see the move as a confident second-term president promoting people who will be more visible,” noted Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network (NSN), a think tank considered close to the administration.
“Donilon’s great strength was his managerial skill and willingness to work behind the scenes. Rice’s public persona is one of her great strengths, and I’m sure the White House will use it.”
“Power will be one of the people most knowledgeable about the UN that the U.S. has ever sent to represent us there, and that’s quite a statement about the U.S. commitment to that organisation’s potential,” she added, noting that Power’s knowledge is based on her years as a journalist and author covering the world body and some of its most controversial and difficult missions.
Late last year, Rice was considered Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state but withdrew from consideration after Republicans accused her of deliberately misleading the public about events surrounding the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in last September in Benghazi.
She will be Obama’s third national security adviser. Unlike secretary of state or U.N. ambassador, the national security adviser is not subject to Senate confirmation.
Unlike Rice, Donilon, or Power, the first national security, Gen. James Jones (ret.), was never close to Obama and tended to see his work primarily as coordinating the advice of the other top national-security officials, notably the secretaries of defence and state and the director of national intelligence.
After two years, Donilon, Jones’ deputy and a Democratic political heavyweight, replaced him, moving quickly to concentrate foreign policy making in the White House and greatly increasing the size and workload of the NSC staff.
A top aide to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during President Bill Clinton’s first term, Donilon is given credit for a number of major strategic initiatives – most recently, promoting this week’s informal and potentially historic California summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Indeed, one prominent NSC historian, David Rothkopf, wrote on foreignpolicy.com Wednesday that his “greatest contribution was his strategic mindset” that led to “…a restoration of balance to the U.S. national security agenda, a move away from the conflict-dominated view of the years right after 9/11 to one that is more global and has room to consider opportunities, new alliances, and new challenges more effectively.”
If Donilon was more inclined to the more non-interventionist stance of his mentor, Christopher, Rice is best seen as the protégée of Clinton’s second-term and more-interventionist Madeleine Albright whom she has known since childhood and served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.
Haunted by Washington’s refusal to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (when she worked on Clinton’s NSC), Rice, as well as Power, has been a leading exponent of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in order to prevent genocide or mass atrocities if the otherwise sovereign state is unwilling or unable to do so.
“Power and Rice are smart, tough, and experienced. But both are firmly in the interventionist consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy for many years, and neither is going to go outside the mainstream on any controversial issues,” Stephen Walt, a prominent international-relations professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told IPS in an email message.
Citing R2P, both Rice and Power reportedly played an important role in persuading Obama to intervene in the civil war in Libya, although, significantly, Rice sided with Donilon against other cabinet officials and CIA director Gen. David Petraeus who recommended a limited military intervention on behalf of rebels in the Syrian civil war late last year, according to numerous published reports.
“Everyone knows there have been disagreements on the team, and the person who resolves them is Barack Hussein Obama. People debate this as if Obama had no opinions on these issues,” noted Hurlburt. “But second-term presidents evolve and get more active (in foreign policy). If that happens, that will be primarily because Obama wants to go there.”
One area in which there could be a major difference is managerial. While concentrating power in the White House, Donilon, a high-priced lawyer outside government, consistently ensured that relevant cabinet secretaries were continually consulted and their policy recommendations presented to the president.
Known for driving his staff particularly hard and making little secret of his unhappiness if in his judgement they failed to perform, he also maintained a deliberately low profile and a carefully calculated demeanour.
While a loyal team player – and the graceful manner in which she withdrew from consideration as secretary of state gained wide admiration and no doubt clinched her claim to her new post – Rice is flamboyant and impulsive by comparison, particularly in her preference for blunt, if colourful — sometimes even scatological — language, a habit that many of her U.N. colleagues found off-putting or difficult to get used to.
“She can be quite charming and likeable, and she is awfully smart,” CFR’s emeritus president Leslie Gelb wrote in the Daily Beast Wednesday. “And unlike Donilon, she often rushes to judgment, and then digs in. She’ll have to learn to count to 100, I mean 1000, before making up her mind, and meantime, listen to different views carefully.” He also noted that “she has a temper that needs tempering.”
Indeed, some sources who asked not to be named predicted that she faced major challenges in working out collegial relationships with Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry – both of whom are also new to their jobs and would be expected to make life difficult for her if they felt she was hogging the media spotlight or failing to consult adequately with their departments in formulating options for the president.
“No shrinking violet is she,” one insider told IPS.
In that respect, according to Rothkopf, she could be greatly aided by Donilon’s former deputy and Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy wonk in his own right and one of the very few people who are considered as personally close to Obama as Rice herself.
]]>Martin Dempsey is not a popular man in the halls of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office these days. The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff incurred the wrath of Benjamin Netanyahu by pointing out the obvious: an Israeli attack on Iran would have dire consequences.
[...]]]>Martin Dempsey is not a popular man in the halls of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office these days. The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff incurred the wrath of Benjamin Netanyahu by pointing out the obvious: an Israeli attack on Iran would have dire consequences.
Dempsey said “I don’t think a wise thing at this moment is for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran…” and such a strike “would be destabilizing” and “not prudent.”
Well, Bibi can’t have any of that. Imagine a US military leader talking sense about the potential of a military operation that would have global consequences. How dare he? Israel must respond to such an outrage, lest it fail in its effort to have the United States carry out this foolish attack on Israel’s behalf.
Israeli officials rushed to the visiting US National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon with their complaints about Dempsey’s statements. According to Ha’aretz, a senior Israeli official told Donilon that “The Iranians see there’s controversy between the United States and Israel, and that the Americans object to a military act. That reduces the pressure on them.”
The objection is overstated by a wide margin, and there’s a lot more going on here than the Israelis are talking openly about.
The “pressure” reduction Israeli officials are concerned about is only significant if the US is clearly opposed to an attack. This is not the case, either in the White House or in Congress. It is true the President sees an immediate attack as premature, but the threat of attack remains, even if the US and Israel are debating the timing.
Iran may see that the US doesn’t interpret the situation exactly as Israel does. However, the pressure remains high despite this because the threat of force from both countries is unchanged. The Israeli response is another example of what has become typical hysteria from the Netanyahu government.
In his four months in office, Dempsey has not been inclined to make a great many public statements about strategy and tactics with regard to Iran. That he did so now was not an accident.
We’re all well aware of the intense amount of debate going on in both the US and Israel over the question of an attack on Iran. Lines have been drawn on this issue, and many different pieces have come into play.
One of those pieces, in Washington, is the concern that if the US doesn’t strike Iran, Israel will, and that an Israeli strike would have even greater consequences for regional stability than an American one. This is certainly the case made to Donilon, and it is one that Defense Minister Ehud Barak has reinforced again recently.
There is also a bill, introduced in the Senate last week, S.Res.380, which is intended to greatly increase the pressure on President Barack Obama to take military action.
These are coordinated actions, with Israel not only using the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as a go-between, but with Bibi and Barak also directly mobilizing their friends on Capitol Hill.
S.Res.380 is being pushed hard by AIPAC, and it is a bill that is much more dramatic than it might seem at first blush.
The official description of the bill is telling: A resolution to express the sense of the Senate regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.
The idea here is to move the red line for US military action from imminent Iranian acquisition of a nuclear device to Iran’s capability to build such a device, a level of nuclear technology that has other uses and that nations are entitled to pursue under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. From reports about Iranian capabilities, that could well be a threshold that it has already passed.
Here is how the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) put it, in an excellent critique of the bill:
The Secretary of Defense stated in January 2012 that an Iranian attempt to actually build a nuclear weapon is the United States’ “red line” that Iran must not cross. But this resolution does not reflect or reinforce the “red line” articulated by the United States – it further confuses them. As currently drafted, the resolution blurs the critical distinction between nuclear weapons capability and nuclear weapons acquisition. Nuclear capable is an imprecise term with no clear definition. By some accounts, Iran could already be described as “nuclear capable,” as Iran already has the capability and expertise to build a nuclear weapon. It should continue to be the goal of the U.S and international community to use all non-military means at our disposal to put concrete constraints on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, with the ultimate objective of ensuring Iran does not actually acquire a nuclear weapon.
This, just as much as an independent Israeli strike, is what Dempsey was trying to counter.
Within the Israeli leadership as well, there is considerable opposition to an attack on Iran. Some reports indicate that a majority of the military leadership is opposed to an attack, and there are signals that evenNetanyahu is not convinced.
There had been speculation that Iran hawk Yohanan Locker would be appointed the head of the Israeli Air Forces. But Netanyahu chose Amir Eshel, who is considered to be more cautious about an attack on Iran, leading to speculation that Bibi is not yet convinced that Israel should take this initiative.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seen as leading the charge toward war,. However, both he and Netanyahu seem to be of one mind that the Obama Administration can and should be pushed toward a more aggressive stance against Iran.
The two-pronged attack, with Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, publicly attacking Dempsey while their friends on the Hill lead a charge toward making war harder to avoid, abetted by AIPAC pushing hard on potentially vulnerable senators in an election year, will not be an easy one for rationality and sober analysis to withstand.
These are considerable political pressure being brought to bear. Virtually none of it is based on US strategic interests (which do include preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon, yes, but also include maintaining some stability in the Gulf region.) It is also not coincidental that the rhetoric and political jockeying are swelling noticeably just before the annual AIPAC convention, when Netanyahu will again be meeting with Obama and which will be a stage show for the push to war with Iran.
And, as is too often the case, Iran does opponents of war no favors with yet another episode just yesterday ofrefusing to cooperate with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and giving a double-talking excuse as to why.
Though I have never subscribed to the notion that the Israel Lobby was not a significant factor in policy formation, neither do I believe it is as decisive as some make it out to be. I found merit in the arguments of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, but absolutely and frequently disagreed with their charge that the invasion of Iraq was largely the work of the Lobby and was, in essence, a war for Israel.
I still disagree with them on that score. But if the US goes to war with Iran, that will indeed be a war for Israel, and one that Israel, and its Lobby here engineered, not through some nefarious means, but by playing the political game in Washington and the diplomatic game on the global stage very well.
And, folks, we’re just letting it happen.
As a Jew, as an American, as someone who cares deeply for Israel and who also cares about a better future for my child, I have to call this out. I hope you’ll join me.
]]>2.) His speech also highlights the Obama administration’s total and complete blindness to the domestic politics, sociology, and economic dynamics within Iran. From Donilon, we get anecdotes of a “regime … increasingly divided within and under great stress”, yet without any context at all. It increasingly looks like the administration essentially surfs the Internet for Iran analysis and has no real “deep bench” on what is actually happening in the country. This may be a result of the Dennis Ross syndrome, but now that Ross has departed, the black hole on Iranian domestic dynamics has no sound reason to remain as such. For a better more nuanced picture of internal Iranian dynamics, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s latest piece in the Guardian is a timely read. Unlike some of the histrionics behind contemporary Iran analysis, Adib-Moghaddam actually uses facts and numbers – which unfortunately is a novel concept to the larger Iran debate. Money Quote:
But that narrative [Iran’s economic crisis] does not correspond to the facts. The World Bank set the economic growth of Iran at 3.0% in 2010, and the IMF says nominal GDP grew from $330.5bn in 2009 to $360bn in 2010. The IMF recently wrapped up a visit to Iran and commended the government for early successes with the subsidy reform programme and the advances in the financial sector, which is boosted by a buoyant stock market. The argument that Iran is economically isolated does not hold either. According to the most recent UNCTAD report, foreign direct investment to the country has increased exponentially from $1.6bn in 2008 to $3.6bn in 2010. This does not mean that there are no serious economic problems in the country; there are many and they range from corruption to structural inefficiency. It means that there is another side to the Iran story that is subdued for ideological reasons. Ultimately, the US and to a lesser extent the European Union are disqualifying themselves from the Iranian market during a period of intense economic calamity. China and Russia say “thank you”.
I would only add that Iran’s main economic dilemma for the short term is inflation control, which is currently quite onerous on society. Moreover, Donilon, in typical Washingtonian doublethink, does not understand that when you put pressure on a country, politically speaking, you help the far-right and reactionary forces and undermine reformists. Very seldom do governments, if ever, domestically reform, particularly in the realm of human rights and political participation, under sanctions and threats of war. If Donilon or the administration had one iota of concern for what Iranians “deserve”, they would do all they can to lessen tension over the country. Their opening to Burma (regardless of how some have described the move as a Machiavellian anti-China approach), has slowly but steadily opened the political space in the country, which has created the space and possibility for democratic reform. Like so many others, I find it implausible that US officials don’t understand this dynamic, and taken together with US support for regimes that surpass Iran in human rights abuses (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, etc.). Donilon’s crocodile tears for Iranians are foolish, cynical, and ultimately, self-defeating.
3.) Finally, and most worryingly, is the utter delusion of regional politics that Donilon, and by extension, the administration, seems to possess. Throughout his speech, Donilon kept referring to a crude zero-sum gain framework to regional politics (i.e. If Iran gains, US loses and vice versa), when in reality ‘losses’ and ‘gains’ to US and Iranian interests are quite intertwined, creating, at times, points of contention and convergence. While Donilon claims that the “regional balance of power is tipping against Iran”, all he offers to support this absurd claim is boilerplate jingoism. From claiming that Iran wanted to “shape Iraq into a client state in its own image”, to totally mischaracterizing Iran’s relations with the GCC, to the impact of the potential downfall of the Al-Assad government in Syria, to plunging again into anecdotal Arab public opinion on Iran, Donilon’s picture of Iran’s strategic situation can be summed up by mixture of triumphalism and wishful thinking.
However, unlike what administration officials think, the picture is far more nuanced. Did Iran really want to turn Iraq into a client state or were they more worried by the permanent presence of US bases, which could potentially be used to stage attacks inside Iran? An objective reading supports the latter notion. More so, while Iran’s relations with the GCC are not on the best of terms, to this day, Iranians and GCC citizens still trade and interact with each other, while their governments have formal relations at the highest levels. On Syria, Iran’s leaders, though traditionally supportive of Al-Assad, are not blind to the reality in that country. Obviously, they understand that the same pathologies that existed in Ben-Ali’s Tunisia, in Mubarak’s Egypt, and in Al-Khalifa’s Bahrain, also exist in Al-Assad’s Syria. What makes Syria accommodating to Iran is the fundamental structural conflict it has with Israel in the region, chiefly the dispute over the Golan Heights. As long as that dispute remains unresolved (a certainty considering the type of regime in Israel at the moment), the structural conditions will eventually force Syria, regardless of its political system, to have some type of understanding with Iran. And it is quite fanciful to think that Iran would not have reached out to the Syrian opposition by now, the same way that they reached out to the Libyan opposition – regardless of official denials.
Finally, the most comedic insinuation of Donilon’s speech were the references to Arab public opinion. While it is undeniable that Iran has suffered a major blow to its image, what Donilon does not talk about is the consistent negative opinion that Arab societies have of the US. Furthermore, under the Obama administration’s stewardship, Arab public opinion is actually more critical than during George Bush’s tenure, a mind-numbing achievement considering what the Bush doctrine did to the Middle East. Incoherent efforts by Donilon and other US officials to present the Arab Spring as an anti-Iran phenomenon is simply laughable, as the overwhelming majority of governments are now under pressure and/or are collapsing within the region as pro-US client regimes. Thus, if 2011 is really 1989 redux, it is the US that is playing the Soviet role, not Iran.
On wider Iran-US relations, whatever the Obama administration claims about reaching a diplomatic outcome, it is evident that the failure to consider Iran’s security concerns (which are deep and systemic in the region) while consistently putting pressure on the country, may eventually lead to a conflict that the US says it is trying to avoid.
Regardless of what one feels about the current political system in Iran, its human rights issues, economic efficiency, or regional behavior, nothing the US has done has actually alleviated the aforementioned for the better. On the contrary, it has directly and indirectly led to more negative effects.
The Iranian authorities are not happy. They’re dismissing the protesters as “rioters” before they’ve even had a chance [...]]]>
The Iranian authorities are not happy. They’re dismissing the protesters as “rioters” before they’ve even had a chance to march peacefully. Permits have been denied, and warnings issued.
The U.S., meanwhile, is preemptively speaking out on behalf of demonstrators. On Saturday, Pres. Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon, released this statement:
By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians. We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that’s being exercised in Cairo.
This was two days before the protests took place.
]]>Guardiano, a contributor to neoconservative blogs and former Marine, derides Donilon’s ability to competently focus on Iran:
Donilon may not know [...]]]>
Guardiano, a contributor to neoconservative blogs and former Marine, derides Donilon’s ability to competently focus on Iran:
Donilon may not know much, but he possesses the surefire cockiness of a lifelong pol; and he is determined to set policymaking in a far-left direction.
Thus, according to the New York Times, Donilon “has urged what he calls a ‘rebalancing’ of American foreign policy to rapidly disengage American forces in Iraq and to focus more on China, Iran and other emerging challenges.”
But of course, China isn’t killing our soldiers and Marines; Iraqi Islamic extremists are. Iran also has American blood on its hand; however, there is absolutely no reason to think that Donilon has even the foggiest notion about how to address this problem. And, if the past is prologue — and it is — his dovish instincts are not reassuring; they are cause for alarm.
Other publications and journalists think little will change.
Ben Smith, Glenn Thrush, and Laura Rozen write at Politico:
Former and current administration officials say that that Jones’s long-anticipated departure won’t have much impact because Donilon and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough — who has just been elevated to Donilon’s old job — were running things anyway.
At Slate, Fred Kaplan added that “Donilon has been de facto national security adviser for many months now, while Jones has been, to a startling degree, a West Wing wallflower.”
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