Child’s Play

Last week on MSNBC’s “Hardball” David Ignatius said,

President Bush in that comment that was picked up by the microphone, talks as if diplomacy is a little spigot you can turn off and on. Let‘s send Condi. Let‘s pick up the phone and let‘s have Kofi do this. It doesn‘t work that way. It requires sustained engagement over time. And that‘s been missing. We‘re paying the price for it.

Bushies don’t do diplomacy. Or, as Laura Rozen writes in Salon (ad-free at True Blue Liberal) the Bush Administration’s foreign policy “experts” — Condi et al. — seem to think “diplomacy” means only talking to people you like.

Increasingly, some former U.S. policymakers and diplomats, including self-described conservatives, are losing patience with the Bush administration’s allergy to talking, and are challenging its underlying assumption. The rationale for not talking to rogue regimes and extremist groups is that it rewards or legitimates them, demonstrates appeasement, and therefore sets back U.S. security interests.

“In diplomacy, you do not negotiate peace with your friends,” says former Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Edward Djerejian, who served as ambassador to Syria and Lebanon during the George H.W. Bush administration. “You negotiate peace with your enemies and your adversaries. That is one of the highest tasks of diplomacy.

“In the Arab-Israeli equation, people often say we have to put pressure on the parties to make peace,” Djerejian continued. “There’s some truth to that. At the same time, you have to deal with all relevant parties in order to obtain the political buy-in and chart out the common ground to make necessary compromises to come to an agreement. For that, you need dialogue and muscular diplomacy.”

Condi, for example, will not talk to representatives from Hezbollah. Instead, she wants the Saudis to talk to Hezbollah. She’s trusting the Saudis to represent America’s interests, in other words.

The Right didn’t use to hate diplomacy. For example, President Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, persuaded Reagan that it was OK to talk to the PLO. However,

In fact, it was during the Reagan administration that the schism between neoconservatives and realists on the subject of diplomacy first became apparent. As Rick Perlstein, author of a book about Barry Goldwater and a forthcoming one on Richard Nixon (and a political liberal), points out, some on the right were calling Reagan unprincipled for negotiating arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and not providing more backing for the Polish Solidarity movement. “It’s a founding narrative of the modern right,” claims Perlstein. “It is built into the right-wing characterological DNA.” With the ascendancy of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, the non-talkers seemed to have won the battle on the right.

What is it with neocons and reality? You can argue whether Reagan should get primary credit, but, in fact the Soviet Union did collapse and pass into history on just after his watch. This seems to me to be empirical evidence that Reagan’s approach vis-à-vis the Soviets was correct.

Neoconservatives like Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy see their approach as pragmatic, not ideological. “The problem with talking to rogue states is that we don’t get anywhere with them,” Clawson told me. “In particular, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad repeatedly lied to us. We go, get a promise, and then nothing happens. On [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell’s first trip to the Middle East, Assad directly lied to Powell about whether Iraqi oil products were flowing through Syria.” With “three big rogue states,” concludes Clawson, meaning Iran, Syria and North Korean, “it just doesn’t work.”

But talking can be OK, as long as it’s done with a baleful countenance, and the party across the table is suitably intimidated. “As for Syria, the question is, we want this crisis to end with a change in Lebanon, with Hezbollah under a different station than now,” says Joshua Muravchik, of the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative Washington think tank. “And I have always been categorically against appeasement or concessions to miscreants. But I don’t think talking to someone is per se appeasement or concession. If our attitude toward Syria is what I think it ought to be, more threatening than supplicating, then I am perfectly happy to talk with them.”

Does this strike you as being childish?

Yesterday Martin Woollacott posted an essay called “The New World Immaturity” on The Guardian web site. Woollacott argues that too many nations of the world, western and Muslim, are being governed by adolescents who neither accept constraint on their actions nor understand that actions have consequences. As an example of adolescent thinking he presents Newt Gingrich, “oddball theorist and burnt out American political comet,” who is certain that World War III has begun.

… we know from history that radical and terrorist movements can evolve into more normal political entities, with less extreme aims. This is what may have been in the process of happening to Hamas in the occupied territories. It is not out of the question that it could happen to Hizbullah. But not for Newt Gingrich, who has already cast them in the role of permanent adversaries, along with their Iranian masters.

Gingrich brings us back to the American branch of the unilateralist regression in its worst form. It can’t see difference, it can only see opposition. And, while it is drawn to the principle that the world’s leading nation has a duty to consider everybody’s interests, it is also dangerously attracted to the idea of flattening its enemies in some apocalyptic showdown. The science fiction addict Gingrich has read Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers one too many times.

And Woollacott reminds us of what worked during the Cold War:

[George] Kennan’s main point was that containment was better than war. But it is equally important to recognise that different views and plans about the future of the world can’t be blasted out of existence but have to be lived and negotiated with until, as happens often enough, they change.

Gingrich, at least, isn’t running anything but his mouth these days. Instead, we’ve got the Juvenile-in-Chief George W. Bush, as described by Eugene Robinson:

Just my luck. I go away on vacation and it happens to be the week when George W. Bush’s strategic view of the current world situation is revealed: Russia big. China big, too. World leaders boring. Lady world leaders need neck rub. Terrorism bad. Elections good (when the right people get elected). Israel good. Time to go home yet?

Might as well have chosen a President by picking out the snottiest kid in Mrs. Jones’s tenth grade homeroom.

The role of any American president and secretary of state should have been to move quickly to bring hostilities to an end. Instead, Bush all but egged the Israelis on, and Condoleezza Rice went so far as to reject the idea of a cease-fire. Belatedly, she has flown to the region with no real credibility as an honest broker. Her words of concern about the “humanitarian crisis” in Lebanon ring hollow.

But this administration doesn’t want to be an honest broker in the Middle East. Bush and Rice have staked their Middle East policy on a single incontrovertible idea — that terrorism is bad — and it has led them to the mistaken notion that Israel can achieve long-term security by creating a kind of scorched-earth buffer zone in southern Lebanon. …

… Bush, Rice et al. refuse to see that their crusade against terrorism can never be won by military action alone, because a victory in the war of arms can also be a defeat in the war of ideas. Lebanon was moving — imperfectly but unmistakably — toward becoming the kind of society we paint as a model for the Arab world, a secular democracy with a modernizing economy. Now billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure are in ruins and the country’s most promising industry, tourism, has effectively been obliterated. It will be some time before Beirut is anyone’s first choice for a holiday of sun and fun.

Condi talks about a “sustainable” cease fire. But what’s not sustainable is the use of force as the sole means of enacting policy. As Iraq should be teaching us, military resources are finite. I say should be; neocons don’t seem to be learning. Last week leading neocons Michael Ledeen, David Horowitz, and William Kristol called for American intervention against Syria and Iran. With what, dears? Sticks and stones? Last month alone the war in Iraq ate nearly $10 billion taxpayer dollars. Senator Russ Feingold said last year,

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering. According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is irresponsible at best.

We are not just wearing out the troops; we are also wearing out equipment much faster than it is being replaced or refurbished. Just days ago the Chief of the National Guard, General H Steven Blum, told a group of Senate staffers that the National Guard had approximately 75% of the equipment it needed on 9/11. Today, the National Guard has 34% of the equipment it needs. And the response to Hurricane Katrina exposed some of the dangerous gaps in the Guard’s communications systems.

What we are asking of the Army is not sustainable, and the burden is taking its toll on our military families. This cannot go on.

Neocons think of the U.S. military the way a spoiled rich juvenile thinks of Daddy’s money — it’s inexhaustible. No matter how much you waste, there’s always more. And no matter what kind of trouble you get into, Daddy’s money/use of force will get you out of it.

Like children, neocons gravitate toward simple, magic-bullet solutions that will perfectly solve problems. But as Nick Kristof said in today’s New York Times, “one of the oldest lessons in international affairs is that not every problem has a neat solution.” And children need to learn they won’t always win, and they can’t always get their way, no matter how big a tantrum they throw.

And then there’s the neocons’ absolute, childlike faith in their beliefs and in themselves. As Eugene Robinson says (emphasis added):

I felt better when I thought the Decider didn’t have a worldview, just a set of instincts about freedom and democracy. But even if you set aside the president’s embarrassing open-mike performance at the Group of Eight summit, which is hard to do, events of the past week show that this administration actually thinks it knows what it’s doing. Bush and his folks haven’t just blundered around and created this dangerous mess, they’ve done it on purpose. And they intend to make it worse.

Fred Kaplan writes,

It’s not so much the blithe arrogance that’s troubling—the belief among many top Bush aides that they can ignore history and culture, that they’ve hit upon the magic formula that has eluded countless others. (After all, every president deserves a shot at making “enduring peace” in the Middle East.) It’s the stunning confidence in this belief—held so deeply that they’re willing to push ahead with their vision even at great sacrifice of political stability and human life.

So far, have the Bushies gotten anything right?

H.D.S. Greenway writes in today’s Boston Globe,

Whenever I hear the Bush administration talk about a defining moment, I tremble. For it would appear that the neoconservative ideal that Middle East violence can somehow bring about a more favorable situation for the United States and Israel has not died in the wreckage of Iraq.

Greenway (and Kaplan, and Kristof, and Robinson, and others) explains why Bush’s and Israel’s policies will make the Middle East less stable and Israel less safe in the long run. Yet the children, who cannot see the world through adult eyes, assume that those of us who don’t support Israel’s attacks on Lebanon are just bad people. The persistently immature Dennis Prager writes,

Amos Oz and James Carroll are men of the Left who have been tested and passed the most clarifying moral litmus test of our time — Israel’s fight for existence against the primitives, fanatics and sadists in Hezbollah and Hamas and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world who wish to destroy it. Anyone on the Left who cannot see this is either bad, a useful idiot for Islamic terrorists, anti-Semitic or all three. There is no other explanation for morally condemning Israel’s war on Hezbollah.

He cannot grasp that some of us are opposed to Israel’s actions because we want what’s best for Israel. And Lebanon. And us, too, for that matter. Just as, before the invasion of Iraq, our concerns about what could go wrong for the U.S. as well as Iraq (all of which turned out to be accurate) were dismissed by the all-purpose explanation: “You must be a Saddam lover.”

You can’t talk to these people. Which explains why Bushies don’t do diplomacy.

16 thoughts on “Child’s Play

  1. Great post. This whole situation drives me nuts. We are sending millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Lebanon, while at the same time sending precision guided bombs to Israel. It’s like paying a big kid to beat up a little kid. Then, throwing a towel to the little kid and telling him to clean himself up, buying him a shake at dairy queen and pretending that we were the little kid’s friend. It’s psychotic.

    When William F. Buckley Jr. is saying that Bush is a conservative failure, and that a European leader in the same situation would be forced to resign; you would think that republicans would take a step back and really look at what this guy is doing to America and the world. The fact that there are still people cheering on this carnage blows my mind.

    I hope out of all this tragedy, there may come a watershed moment for our country. Where we decide what kind of people we really want to be. More compassion, more wisdom, more understanding, more hope, less hate, less fear, and a sincere rational approach to solving the problems we face as a society and as a part of the human race.

  2. So, the solution is, no real threat of force, just talk and paper agreements, with maybe, at worst, some collection of UN troops to be the “watchers”.

    Which will dedicated provocateurs of violence respect more, fear hidden behind requested signatures on paper promises, or demonstrated pain and destruction as an unwelcome option to making paradigm shifts in how to find ways to live together.

  3. There is a time for force. There is a time for all-out war. There is also time for compromise and appreciation of mutual goals. There is more to diplomacy than signing paper promises. There is a sharing of ideas, concerns and the building of agreements on how to deal with one another. There is also trade and commerce. People who are prospering together are less likely to start killing each other. They are more likely to discuss issues to reach common ground so that they may remain prosperous.

    There has been demonstrated pain and destruction in that part of the world for over a thousand years. It hasn’t taught them ways to live together yet. Maybe there’s a better way. You think?

  4. Craig: Remember “speak softly but carry a big stick”? Once upon a time we didn’t have to threaten people because we had the overwhelming military capability to do the “threatening” for us. Now we don’t; we lost that in Iraq. People aren’t as afraid of us as they used to be. We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can force people to do what we want just because we are the only superpower on the block. We ain’t as “super” as we used to be.

    I am old enough to remember that all through the Cold War people like you didn’t see any sense in diplomacy or arms agreements or any such thing. People like you just wanted to attack China and Russia and be done with it. They made exactly the same arguments you are making now. Fortunately wiser heads prevailed. Guess who won the Cold War? Guess how?

    This situation isn’t parallel, but it’s close enough.

    Craig, your way will fail. It will absolutely fail. Your way will cause terrorism to increase and make Israel’s position much more tenuous. You can read links provided in the post for explanations, or just go to Billmon and read the last several posts.

    http://billmon.org/

  5. The sad fact is that children like Craig will continue to believe their way is the only way even as their way fails spectacularly, time and time again. You can’t tell them anything. They won’t listen, and they won’t learn. We’ve been lucky that up until recent years these deadheads were in the minority in government. All through the Cold War our presidents and most of Congress had enough sense to understand that nobody would win World War III, and they didn’t listen to the hawks. The biggest exception was Lyndon Johnson, who let political considerations persuade him that he had to send ground troops to Vietnam. I don’t think Nixon believed he could actually “win” anything in Vietnam; he kept the war going because it worked for him politically.

    Now, our luck has run out. The children are in charge. We’re bleeped.

  6. Nice example of raising the discussion to “adult” levels, Maha. Personal insults toward the opposing view.

    Thanks all for answering my serious question with rhetoric and cardboard streotypes.

    Not sure how terroristic subgroups within countries are similiar to Russia in the Cold War.

    Hasn’t Israel really beeen using a form of “talk along with that big stick” in recent years? It’s just that, unlike some who promote that theory, they are actually willing to use that stick, if need be. The “roadmap to peace” is workable only if you have true and full participation. As long as these subgroups are allowed to inject their violence into the mix at will, no amount of words or paper will resolve anything.

    Mindless violence will not work in this region. But neither will mindless diplo-talk and paper. BOTH have been proven wrong over time in this region, AND YOU KNOW IT!! (or you should, if you want to make an honest discussion of this)

    So, let me hear the solution that has evaded everyone thus far. I’m listening.

  7. Nice example of raising the discussion to “adult” levels, Maha. Personal insults toward the opposing view.

    You are a child. I speak to you accordingly.

    BOTH have been proven wrong over time in this region, AND YOU KNOW IT!!

    We haven’t, because the adult way takes a long time, and adults accept that it’s always a matter of two steps forward, one step back. Until Bush came along in many ways the Middle East was way ahead of where it was many years ago. But if you knew anything about the history of the Middle East, which you clearly don’t, you’d know that your approach has failed several times.

    So, let me hear the solution that has evaded everyone thus far. I’m listening.

    No, you’re not, and I’m not performing for you. I provided links. Read them.

  8. I almost commented to the previous post about chickenhawks that I do not understand how anyone could be “for” violence and war. That’s what makes a chickenhawk, after all: actively promoting a war, damn the alternatives, so long as no harm comes to his own person. Similarly, I don’t understand how one can look at Israel bombing the crap out of Lebanon and think, “That was a rational and appropriate response.” I support Israel’s right to exist, but it seems to me that not all alternatives to violence have been exhausted yet. How can you, Craig, be for all the violence and death that has resulted?

    And diplomacy is not all paper documents and rainbow stickers. It’s about sanctions and negotiating and finding workable solutions to very big, complex problems, solutions that don’t result in hundreds of people getting killed. The problem with the Bush administration’s response is that they look at the problem immaturely, as if everything were black and white, with clear friends and enemies, with simple solutions… none of this is the case in the Middle East.

    But rather than pursuing solutions that spare the most lives, Craig is advocating violence and mocking diplomacy. “You kids and your talk and your pieces of paper!” he’s saying to us. And that’s a mature attitude?

    I don’t know what the solution is, but then, I’m not an expert on the Middle East. Seems to me that leaving everyone to throw bombs at each other is not really the best solution, though.

  9. Solution??? How about we move the clock back about 2 weeks. Get to the issues that sparked this killing spree. Remember those soldiers taken for a some kind of prisoners exchange. Is it too late for a prisoner exchange?

  10. I to believe the Bush cabal acts childish.

    Rice says Schavez knows what to do, Assad knows what to do, as if they are children and have already be told.

    Bush refused to shake hands with Arafat, Rumsfeld refused to shake hands with Secretary of Defense of Germany at a NATO meeting in Munich before the Iraq war.

    If foreign heads of state are good and please the spoiled kid, he will invite them home to Crawford, but only if they are good..

    Than there is the familiarity of first name use. That is ok in private if they like each other that much, but in public they should stick to a formal address as diplomatic custom requires.

    There is something to be said for good manners!!

    Also, good diplomats know the other side might have some legitimate claims too.

    I am sure Gerhard kept a distance, he was no Angela..
    .

  11. How about we move the clock back to 2000 when Bush originally stole the presidency? I bet the Middle East wouldn’t be in this situation had an adult been elected. You know that Bushco had a hard-on for taking out Saddam and stealing Iraq’s oil from day one. Although we didn’t know it at the time, 9/11 or not, that was the beginning of the end for the ME and our country.

    Bush is the guy who only has a hammer and everything is a nail.

  12. “Bush has a hammer……..”
    It serves him well politically, makes plenty of money for the military-industrial complex and attracts people like Craig.

    To do otherwise makes us unpatriotic cut and runners, etc.

    Watch Hilary remain a hammer in foreign relations and a progressive in domestic affairs. Interesting strategy.
    Where do us liberals go then?

  13. Jerri , a few points about your comment.Why move the clock back JUST 2 weeks? That “some kinda prisoner exchange” thing you spoke of….Do you understand many of those prisoners have been held without trial?Or is it better for you if you just presume them all guilty and not worthy of their day in court? As Maha tried to explain this is a complex issue.. throwing a simple “bomb the hell out of em all” solution is NO solution.. it is an excuse.

    As you said TROOPS were taken…and in exchange innocent civilians are being murdered…pay attention here because someone needs to explain to you that what Israel is doing is terrorism.Don’t take my word for it… let me define the word for you.

    Terrorism(N):The caculated use of violence(or threat of violence) against CIVILIANS in order to attain goals that are political or religious or idealogical in nature;This is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.

    We , according to bush , have so many sleeper cells in America bush has to spy on our bank activities,listen to our phone calls and even search our homes at will without even telling us.Perhaps it would be ok with you Jerri if Israel bombed us?Would it be ok with you if they dropped bombs on our innocent at will??What on earth are you thinking shrugging your shoulders at the death of innocents …TROOPS are not innocents ..CIVILIANS are…..got it???No wonder our country is such a mess.

  14. Very nice, justme.. I see the invasion of Lebanon as terrorism also. Collective punishment is something I would expect from the SS, but not from any nation with claims to decency or civility.

    Oddly enough, Bush can’t see the moral failing in Israel’s tactic.

    Bush?..diplomacy?…Nah, let’s not even go there!

  15. Statements like these from people who shold know better make me nuts:

    “You can argue whether Reagan should get primary credit, but, in fact the Soviet Union did collapse and pass into history on his watch. This seems to me to be empirical evidence that Reagan’s approach vis-à-vis the Soviets was correct.”

    First of all, the putsch that displaced Gorbachev and led to Yeltsin taking power was well AFTER Reagen took office (as was the fall of the Berlin Wall). So it didn’t happen “on his watch.”

    Second, the mere continguity of events is not proof of a relation – that’s the line the Bushies are always pushing (except when it’s regarding something bad). Several historians have looked at whether Reagan’s military acceleration actually caused the Sovet Union to collapse, and the their conclusion is that it would have collapsed anyway, and we didn’t need to bankrupt ourselves to accomplish that.

    Please, a little more rigor in our history! That kind of ill-supported gloss you provided above is what I expect of a right wing blog

Comments are closed.