May 12, 2007

Another Vilnius Moment, This Time From the USS Stennis

Recall Richard Cheney's memorable broadside aimed at Moscow last year, from nearby Vilnius? We were just treated to something of a repeat, alas, only this time from a naval carrier in the Gulf, and aimed at Teheran.

Sanger in the NYT:

Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 150 miles off Iran’s coast as the backdrop yesterday to warn that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or “gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region.”

Mr. Cheney said little new in his speech, delivered from the cavernous hangar bay of the John C. Stennis, one of the two carriers in the Persian Gulf. Each line had, in some form, been said before at various points in the four-year nuclear standoff with Iran, and during the increasingly tense arguments over whether Tehran is aiding insurgents in Iraq.

But Mr. Cheney stitched all of those warnings together, and the symbolism of sending the administration’s most famous hawk to deliver them so close to Iran’s coast was unmistakable. It also came just a week after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had talked briefly and inconclusively with Iran’s foreign minister, a step toward re-engagement with Iran that some in the administration have opposed.

Mr. Cheney’s sharp warnings appeared to be part of a two-track administration campaign to push back at Iran while leaving the door open to negotiations. It was almost exactly a year ago that the United States offered to negotiate with Iran as long as it first agreed to stop enriching uranium, a decision in which Mr. Cheney, participants said, was not a major player.

Senior officials said Mr. Cheney’s speech was not circulated broadly in the government before it was delivered. A senior American diplomat added, “He still kind of runs by his own rules.”

For some reason T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" sprang to mind upon hearing this latest Cheneyesque bluster. Look, the Iranians are not idiots. They know we're mired in Iraq. They know, for instance, that one of the the main reasons the situation in Anbar is improving somewhat is because Sunnis there are stricken with fear a wave of Shi'a revanchism will visit them with ferocious strength, so they are increasingly looking to the Americans for protection (to stress, not out of deep affection, mind you, but because of sheer survival instinct). Iran knows too, with the situation in Baghdad still so critical (don't believe propagandists at Murdochian rags like the Weekly Standard, the situation in Baghdad is as dire as ever), and with too few troops still in Iraq (see Diyala, and likely increasingly soon, Kirkuk and Mosul), that America is barely hanging on in Iraq. Nor does the above reflect the real and growing possibility of renewed large-scale fighting with varied Sh'a militias, which would only put the American Army under even greater strain in Mesopotamia.

From this position of strategic weakness (let me not detain readers with the abysmally horrid decline in our soft power through all this period too, whether because of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, or are incapacity to lead a serious peace process forward in the Middle East), a U.S. strike on Iran (or a common perception that the U.S. has provided tacit approval of an Israeli strike there), will lead to severe repercussions throughout the globe, but first and foremost will endanger thousands of U.S. servicemen in Iraq. It would be an act of irresponsible folly, one that would enjoy little to no support from most of Congress (even this perennially castrated branch of government, at least of late, has summoned up mini-doses of free-thinking and occasional gumption in the face of varied crude foreign policy diktats emitting from 1600 Pennsylvania), nor the majority of the American people. Then too, there is the widespread international opprobrium that would result, not only from Moscow and Beijing and such, but also likely from Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, push come to shove, as saner leaders like them stopped to think through the consequences of what another military adventure in the Middle East would reap in its midst.

But regardless of the risk of war, let us think more long-term and strategically for a moment. We want Iran not to go nuclear, as we believe this will present a threat to our allies in the region (Saudi Arabia, Israel), and that it will set off an arms race (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi). Does Cheney playing pugnacious showman on the Stennis help concentrate minds in Teheran? Does it cause the Iranians to retrench from trying to go nuclear, or does it only make them more hell-bent to press on? Wouldn't more disciplined and assiduous regional crisis management, involving adoption of many of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, and even (however utopic sounding) dangling the prospect of talking to the Indians, Pakistanis and Israelis about reduction of their nuclear capacities (say, accompanied by major initiatives on Kashmir and Palestine), with the ultimate objective of a WMD free zone in the Middle East (even if decades hence), wouldn't this get Iran's attention more effectively?

Or still, if Iran going nuclear becomes increasingly certain in the next decade, shouldn't we be spending more time systematically building a regional security architecture to better contain Iran holding the region hostage, rather than gin up some hastily conceived anti-Iranian Sunni bloc that might end up, rather than helping in any meaningful fashion stave off an Iranian bomb, instead spur on the dissolution of the Iraqi nation-state, as Sunni states arm up their local proxies, and Iran does the same with her Shi'a ones? (Not to mention, today's good Sunni "muj", after all, can become tomorrow's baddies, as Afghanistan circa 1980s might serve to remind our varied policy-making notables in Washington).

And strategy aside, on a tactical level, Cheney's bluster unfortunately makes Condi Rice's half-hearted quasi-rapprochment around the Middle Eastern conference tables of late look even more halting, reluctant and disingenuous. But no, you say, this is all deliberate. The Iranians must be fearful, they must respect us, before they might come to the table to make a deal, before they might consider suspension of uranium enrichment. Sure, we can let Ryan Crocker talk the Iraq dossier w/ some Iranian diplomats, but big picture, they must realize the Gulf isn't some Persian pool in their backyard, that we won't tolerate them going nuclear, that we have the will and staying power and cojones to attack them too if we deem fit.

Sounds quite grand and macho, but it's mostly rubbish, I'm afraid. Why? In the main, because we've little to no credibility. After all, we've handed the Iranians at least four huge gifts these past few years, first sacking the Taliban (justifiably), then getting rid of Saddam, then cheerleading for elections in Palestine that put Hamas in power, and finally giving carte blanche to the Israelis to attack Lebanon with a half-assed "war strategy" (if we dare mention the word strategy in these heady post-Winograd days). In short, we've been so blunderingly dumb and presented Iran so many presents on mounted platters, that a theatrical broadside from a naval carrier is seen as little more than unconvincing Wyoming bombast, rather than some significant strategic threat, so piss-poor has been the policy execution these past years.

In short, the Putin quip about Cheney's speech in Vilnius--that it was akin to an "unsuccessful hunting shot"--well, it might well describe too this showboating in the Gulf that is ultimately so hollow. Putin was right, no? A good hunter shoots straight, and consistently. When Cheney was hypocritically carping on about Russia's anti-democratic behavior (from such a poorly chosen venue, George Kennan would have been mortified at the cheaply provocative nature of it), he might have picked a better time than when he was about to traipse over to toast Nazarbayev.

As the IHT put it at the time:

Still, however much we agree with the content of Cheney's remarks, the unavoidable reaction is to question their motives, provenance and usefulness. There was a time when a strong statement from Washington in support of human rights and democratic behavior carried real authority. But of late the human-rights record of this U.S. administration has seriously eroded its moral authority, and Cheney is closely associated with some of its most offensive policies. Straight from Vilnius, Cheney travels to oil-rich Kazakhstan to make nice to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a leader with an awful human-rights record whose recent re-election was fraudulent. A week ago, President George W. Bush received a similar autocrat, President Ilham Aliyev of oil-rich Azerbaijan, in the White House. Given the global scramble for energy, there is an obvious self-interest for Washington on courting these secular leaders of Muslim nations. But spearing Russia while flirting with its even more undemocratic neighbors does confuse the message, to put it mildly, especially when done by a vice president closely identified with oil interests.

And now, after pronunciamentoes about "delivering justice to the enemies of freedom" from the deck of the Stennis (what emptily messianic hogwash), and from a character who's done his utmost to put the authoritarian back in the Executive, it's off to Riyadh to talk turkey with the freedom loving Royals there! The hypocrisy is rich. I could tolerate it frankly, if the varied pharisaism (the galling impieties this Administration visits on our grand religion "freedom"!) were being enlisted in the pursuit of an intelligent policy that actually bolstered the U.S. national interest. But not when it's just ham-handed fist-thumping with no strategic direction or gravitas. Six years of that has been quite enough, thank you. Basta. Posted by Gregory at May 12, 2007 06:36 PM