by Ali Fathollah-Nejad*
After intense negotiations between Iran and world powers (chiefly among them the United States), November 24 saw a historic breakthrough. In a six-month interim agreement, Tehran has committed itself to a substantial freezing of its nuclear program in return for “modest relief” — according to US [...]]]>
by Ali Fathollah-Nejad*
After intense negotiations between Iran and world powers (chiefly among them the United States), November 24 saw a historic breakthrough. In a six-month interim agreement, Tehran has committed itself to a substantial freezing of its nuclear program in return for “modest relief” — according to US President Barack Obama — in sanctions. The agreement will be a first step towards achieving a comprehensive solution, with which the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program will be ensured while all sanctions against the country would be lifted.
There has been much speculation over the degree in which the decade-long transatlantic Iran strategy of coercive diplomacy was responsible for reaching this diplomatic victory. Was it the permanent threats of war or the increasingly crippling sanctions which, in the eyes of many Western observers, led Iran to “give in”?
Arguably, it rather was a shift away from that policy of threats and pressure, and towards serious diplomacy aiming at a reconciliation of interests (especially during the month of November), which rendered the deal possible. But yes, without any doubt the sanctions did have an impact.
The sanctions have severely deepened Iran’s economic malaise, considerably harmed a variety of social groups, while part of the power elite quite comfortably adjusted to the situation. Consequently, the power gap separating the state and (civil) society was even boosted.
Yet, the immense damage that sanctions have done to society does not bear much relevance for policy-makers. However, what has gone largely unnoticed by supporters of the sanctions policy is the realpolitik fact that, contrary to its stated goal, the escalation of sanctions was accompanied by an escalation in Iran’s nuclear program. When Obama entered the White House, there were not even 1,000 centrifuges spinning in Iran; today, the figure stands at almost 19,000.
The reason for this is that the West views sanctions through a cost-benefit lens, according to which it can only be a matter of time until the sanctioned party will give in. In contrast, Tehran sees sanctions as an illegitimate form of coercion, which ought to be resisted, for the alternative would be nothing less than capitulation.
Nonetheless, many commentators sardonically insist on praising the sanctions’ alleged effectiveness for aiding diplomacy. This is not only a sign of analytical myopia, but also constitutes the not-so-covert attempt to shed a positive light on the coercive diplomacy that was pursued so far.
In reality, Iran’s willingness to offer concessions is rooted within a wider context.
Firstly, Iran already demonstrated its readiness to compromise over the last three years [28], which the Obama administration did not dare to accept due to domestic political pressures (i.e., his re-election).
Secondly, and this is likely to have been crucial in achieving the agreement in Geneva, Iran’s current foreign policy is primarily not a result of pressure through sanctions. Instead, it is embedded within a specific foreign-policy school of thought which is characterized by realism and a policy of détente.
Notably, with Hassan Rouhani’s election, the “defensive realist” school of thought reasserted power, which had previously been ascendant during Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s and Mohammad Khatami’s administrations. Their prime objective was a policy of détente and rapprochement, especially with the West, but also with neighboring Arab states — specifically, Iran’s geopolitical adversary, Saudi Arabia.
In contrast to the “offensive realists” who took the lead under the Ahmadinejad administration, “defensive realists” do not view foreign policy as a zero-sum game but instead as an arena where win-win situations ought to be explored – especially with the United States. Another pivotal difference between these schools of thought is their estimation of US power.
While “offensive realists” see the superpower’s power-projection capabilities rapidly declining, the “defensive” camp rightly acknowledges that even a US in relative decline can inflict substantial damage on weaker countries like Iran. The historically unprecedented Iran sanctions regime is a prime illustration of the veracity of the latter view.
Ultimately, the nuclear agreement in its core has to be seen as a U.S.-Iranian one, which expresses the will of both sides to secure their interests in a rapidly changing regional landscape. To what extent this will affect Washington’s traditional regional allies in Tel Aviv and Riyadh will be highly interesting to watch.
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* Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a PhD candidate in international relations at both the University of Muenster in Germany and the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
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[Note: A version of this article will be published in the next issue of the German Middle East journal, Inamo [29]. This article was translated from German into English by Manuel Langendorf [30].]
I haven’t yet had a chance to read political scientist Colin Dueck’s recent history of post-World War II Republican foreign policy, Hard Line, but Ross Douthat summarizes its thesis in a way that makes clear its relevance for the current political moment:
Beneath the Republican Party’s various divisions [...]]]>
I haven’t yet had a chance to read political scientist Colin Dueck’s recent history of post-World War II Republican foreign policy, Hard Line, but Ross Douthat summarizes its thesis in a way that makes clear its relevance for the current political moment:
Beneath the Republican Party’s various divisions over the years, Dueck argues, there has always been an enduring unity: A commitment to American nationalism, “hawkish and intense,” that has sought the strongest possible military and the freest possible hand for American power. At the same time, though, Republicans have given their presidents a great deal of leeway to define what this nationalism requires – realism or neoconservatism, saber-rattling or negotiation, pre-emptive war in Iraq or disengagement from Vietnam and Korea.
Elsewhere, I’ve put a similar point somewhat differently, noting the ways in which neoconservatism — these days frequently portrayed either as a doctrine of unilateralism (in contrast to liberal internationalism) or democracy promotion (in contrast to realism) — in fact springs most directly from a kind of alarmist Manicheanism that can lead to a variety of concrete policy doctrines. (And which is far from averse to realist realpolitik, for instance.) In general, conservative movement politicians are characterized by hawkish nationalism, but this kind of hawkishness is just a conducive to skepticism about foreign engagements (as evinced by many Tea Partiers’ reactions to the Arab Spring) as to neocon overreach and democracy promotion.
This essential indeterminacy of “hawkish” foreign policy has perhaps reached its ultimate expression in that most indeterminate of candidates, Mitt Romney. Many observers have noted the perplexing quality of Romney’s foreign policy pronouncements: while his profile as a once-moderate Northeastern technocratic Republican — and the profile of key advisers like Mitchell Reiss — would seem to mark him as heir to realists like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, Romney’s rhetoric on the stump has sounded the kind of aggressive nationalist notes that are the stock-in-trade of ultra-hawks like his current adviser John Bolton. (Romney’s widely-ridiculed comment that Russia is the U.S.’s “number one geopolitical foe” is a notable example of such hardline Boltonesque rhetoric.)
Yet although there is certainly some value in attempting to place Romney in either the realist or the neocon camp, we should recognize the limits of the enterprise. For one thing, Romney’s vagueness on foreign policy and his reliance on boilerplate right-wing rhetoric are merely one aspect of his broader (and obviously calculated) vagueness of virtually all policy issues. For another, labels like “neoconservative” or “realist” are most useful in referring to a small subset of highly-informed and ideologically self-conscious elites. Most conservative voters — and a good chunk of Americans at large — are more likely to think of themselves in terms of vaguer descriptors: “tough,” “patriotic,” “hard-nosed,” and the like. This can help explain why, for instance, so many Americans supported the Iraq war when it was marketed as tough-minded payback for the 9/11 attacks, and turned against it when it was marketed as idealistic exercise in nation-building.
Romney’s need to win over skeptical conservatives, combined with his famous opportunism — epitomized by his adviser Eric Fehrnstrom’s instantly-notorious “etch-a-sketch” comment — make him the perfect weather vane for determining which way the wind is blowing in the Republican party at any particular time. At the moment, his rhetoric seems to indicate that he sees neoconservatism and Bolton-style aggressive nationalism as the way to the White House. But as a candidate defined above all by ideological malleability, the precise shape of Romney’s hawkishness has the potential to shift along with the balance of forces in his party.
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