The Serial Failures of U.S. Diplomacy
Having given President Bush a kick in the chops yesterday for being complicitous in the Benazir Bhutto assassination because of how he has coddled his favorite dictator and her implacable enemy, let’s take a half a step back and address one of the administration’s serial failures – its chronic inability to use diplomacy to advance America’s interests abroad.
The White House has been at sea when it comes to talking to friends and foes alike and has drearily resorted to threats of using the stick over the carrot time and again, its embarrassingly ineffectual Iran policy being a signal example.
Or, in the case of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, it has dithered while pouring tens of billions of dollars down a rat hole that has become a safe haven for terrorists while claiming that great strides are being made in heartland of the Global War on Terror.
The White House’s stroking of Musharraf aside, there isn’t a whole lot it could have done short of invading Pakistan (not an option) or walking away and making a bad situation even worse (also not an option).
Which in fairness to the Bush administration points up the difficulties that the U.S. has faced all the way back to the administration of President Teddy “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” Roosevelt in balancing its interests – benign or too often otherwise — with nations whose way of seeing things don’t coincide with Washington’s.
That noted, the Bush administration’s hard-wired default to bellicosity, the preferred means of the thuggish Dick Cheney, paired with it being the only global superpower of the moment, has exacerbated those historic difficulties. As has being played the fool by Nouri Al-Maliki in Iraq and Musharraf in Pakistan, two leaders who know that the U.S. needs them more than they need the U.S. in an era where presidential politics reliably trumps national policy.
With the exception of North Korea, the U.S. has precious little to show by way of diplomacy over the last seven years, and it has not helped that the un-Cheney — Condoleezza Rice — is a resume without a woman and the most ineffectual secretary of state in recent memory.
Beyond its blowhard approach toward Tehran, which took an embarrassing turn earlier this month when it was revealed that Iran apparently had shuttered its nuclear weapons program four years ago, there has been no bigger diplomatic failure on Bush’s watch than his quest to bring democracy to the Muslim world while forcing out the militants who are the gasoline of the jihad against the West.
As Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Meyers write today in The New York Times, the Bhutto assassination “highlighted in spectacular fashion” these twin failures.
An upshot of which is that in the wake of Bhutto’s death the U.S. is now forced to reach out to allies of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who have close ties to the very militants that Islamabad and Washington have been so ineffectual in marginalizing. Ironically, that may turn out to be not a bad thing as unaccustomed as the U.S. is to entering into dialogue with its foes.
The Bush administration (including Rice) get props for trying to broker a power sharing agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto.
But with its regional and world standing at low ebb and Musharraf more interested into holding onto power than sharing it, the deal was stillborn from the moment the opposition leader returned home to face a series of assassination attempts that in retrospect inevitably would lead to her death. No matter who actually pulled the trigger (my supposition is militants aided by Musharraf’s military), the Pakistani president bears responsibility for her death and, as I noted yesterday, Bush’s hands are anything but clean.
Juan Cole sums up the sitch thusly at Salon :
“Pakistan’s future is now murky, and to the extent that this nation of 160 million buttresses the eastern flank of American security in the greater Middle East, its fate is profoundly intertwined with America’s own. . . . If Pakistani politics finds its footing, if a successor to Benazir Bhutto is elected in short order by the PPP and the party can remain united, and if elections are held soon, the crisis could pass. If there is substantial and ongoing turmoil, however, Muslim radicals will certainly take advantage of it.”
To get through the crisis, Cole says, Bush must insist that the Pakistani Supreme Court be reinstated by Musharraf, the PPP must be allowed to elect a successor to Bhutto without the interference of the military, early elections must be held, and the country must return to civilian rule.
Scarecrow at Firedoglake lowers the hammer, asserting that the Bush administration convinced Bhutto to return to Pakistan “to save a risky policy foolishly built on a despised, repressive military dictator.”
“U.S. policy is in tatters. The administration was relying on Benazir Bhutto’s participation in elections to legitimate Musharraf’s continued power as president. Now Musharraf is finished,” says Barnett R. Rubin of New York University.
Maybe so or maybe not.
But it will take a newfound appreciation of the powers of patient diplomacy to begin to salvage the mess that an administration, more or less led by a president so deficient in the qualities of leadership, has made of its Pakistan policy. A good start would be to lock the vice president in a closet and throw away the key.
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18 Responses to “The Serial Failures of U.S. Diplomacy”
Here’s a op-ed piece from a retired military officer at military.com that shares your opinion on Condo Rice.
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,158932,00.html
This entire mess is by design and it has not Bush nor this administrations blessings.
Musharaff will simply pull a coup on himself and reestablish Military rule and take back the country and tell the world.
“I had to do it.” There is nothing the USA or anyone else can do to prevent this. Pakistan was a convenient tool for the war on terror.
I have to laugh at Obama’s assertion that we have to make Democracy work in Pakistan. But in fairness just about all the other candidates said the same thing.
Oh my Gawd after listening to the antiwar/far left for 4 years telling us Democracy will never work in places like Iraq and Afghanistan……now their darlings foreign policy consists of MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK in PAKISTAN???
Lord. Where have all the people with clues gone? Why have they deserted us and left us with Romney, Huckabee, Guilani, Hillary, Obama and Edwards.
I guess Shaun wants us to force Pakistan into another Iraq by MAKING DEMOCRACY work in Pakistan.
Just how do we do that? Anyone?
It doesn’t matter what the facts are, and never has mattered, to some, Somebody. Everything is Bush’s fault to them while their hypocrisy, such as the example you have exposed here, is no surprise.
1. Be nice to them, agree with them, Understand Them.
2. Give them lots of (our) money.
I don’t believe that Iran has shuttered its nuclear weapons program- not very many of the people I know actually bought that jug of Kool-Aid. We need to be more aggressive with Iran.
Also…..the term is TERRORIST, not militant.
Its hard to see how we can in any way have a positive influence on the region by democratizing it since we
a. Have no credibility left on the issue after supporting Musharraf, Mubarek, and the Saudis.
b. Are hated so much because of our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan that any pro-US political figure like Bhutto is an instant target for assasination by terrorists. If you crush the terrorists you also end up cracking down on any pro-democracy forces.
Or “insurgent.” Don’t forget that little gem.
To get through the crisis, Cole says, Bush must insist that the Pakistani Supreme Court be reinstated by Musharraf, the PPP must be allowed to elect a successor to Bhutto without the interference of the military, early elections must be held, and the country must return to civilian rule
Why is it that the United States MUST always insist on things. We give Pakistan money. Other then that what puts us in a position to tell other countries what to do internally with their politics?
We get Oil from Saudi Arabia. Without that oil this country would go belly up. Why does Saudia Arabia not have the right to tell us how to school our children. Why dont they have a right to tell us to have early elections.
The clueless, like Juan Cole who think they have answers because they went to college and study politics have one inherant flaw in their addressing of foreign policy issues.
They approach their policy formulation with the preconceived notion that “WE have the right to tell other nations what to and not to do” based upon an ill conceived notion that the USA has the right by proxxy because we only have good intentions.
It is when the perceived lack of good intentions interferes with their policy formulation that those like Juan Cole speak up and say things like what I quoted above.
WHAT GIVES US THE RIGHT TO INSIST on anything? Because we give them the money? Where is it written that the USA can interfere legitimately in the internal affairs of another soverign nation because we dont like the way they are doing things?
This type of thinking is what has gotten us to where we are today. The left the right, the moderates. ALL foreign policy since the turn of the last century seems to have ascribed to some invisible “GOD GIVEN RIGHT” built into the the thinking of American Politicians and Policy makers.
We do not have the right. It is our responsibility to encourage and promote freedom and democracy and policy that benefits the USA but it is not OUR RIGHT to interfere with the internal affairs of other soverign nations.
The sooner all these candidates learn this lesson the sooner we will return to diplomacy instead of intimidation thru the pocketbook.
Even more clueless and ill-behaved, are the commenters to his postings. These — people, or things — vote, and their vote counts as much as yours or mine? (Now there’s something that needs correction, and never will be corrected.)
Iran wants “patient diplomacy” (long enough for it to build at least one fission bomb), best of all with money or other goodies, too.
If you’re a tough guy (or gal) who believes in exerting US power — never mind, there are just too many heavily armed people in Pakistan for anyone but Norman Podhoretz to believe that we could throw our weight around. If you believe you can bring new understanding to the world through your enlightened outlook — sorry, there are too many people in Pakistan who don’t want to be enlightened. If you believe that we’d have more influence in the world if we hadn’t squandered our resources and good will in Iraq (which I do) — well, sorry, that influence wouldn’t extend to being able to bring peace and light to Pakistan.
The above taken from Joes post today here at TMV.
This perhaps sums up what I was trying to say and have been saying. The Us just simply does not have the weight nor ever will have the weight to throw around in a place like Pakistan. We should not even try. Instead we should simply try to exert influence, apply leverage and provide incentives.
That is diplomacy. This nation has not engaged in diplomacy since Teddy Roosevelt picked up his big stick.
I see the thread now digressed into bad, bad Iran. Since others started the nonsense, guess which Librul posted this wisdom?
To say that is to begin to go astray, though it looks eerily like Iraq you are describing.
“Even more clueless and ill-behaved, are the commenters to his postings” – DLS
Confession? Freudian slip? Apology?
DLS – Take a wild guess as to who wrote the piece I included in the comment. I doubt you’ll guess, or you can just cheat and go over to BJ, not a Monika site. Even Rudi can cherrypick like the n#####s.
Somebody has a good point- the US can’t expect everyone in the world to given in to its demands. Though I think that given all that the US does in the world and it is a superpower, that countries should (and most probably do) give us support commensurate with our relationship and what we provide to them.
The problem as I see it with diplomacy today is that the Bush administration is filled with cowboys who like to do things their way. The Bush administration demands 100% loyalty from anyone in it and they feel other countries should follow the US blindly. Think of Bush’s statement, “You’re either with us or against us.” Bush doesn’t appreciate that other countries will place their own interests ahead of America’s interests. There might be certain agreements among the US and other countries- i.e. the need to fight terrorists, but those other countries may have very different ideas on how to go about it. For instance Bush invaded Iraq to fight the terrorists, but others thought it would have been more useful to actually go to the places where the terrorists were (and still are).
So yeah, as the last superpower, and given everything the US does in the world, other countries should be behind us, to the extent we actually have relations with and can influence them. But Bush should not expect the same 100% blind loyalty from other countries that he demands of the people serving in his administration (all Republicans at this point- as far as I can tell).
I’ll accept all three from you.
* * *
Someone at N.R.O.?
Of course, that cannot be used to mischaracterize the rest of us who know Iran is a threat in the Middle East and has been a demonstrable threat beyond that region.
Many of them (who were conceited conservative military-to-aid-the-transformation Wilsonians) have left the federal government because they “lost the peace” in Iraq.
There is no false dichotomy in the sense of everything is black or white, with no shades of gray. Be aware, though, that opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq efforts have been even more crude — all black (before, during, and after each decision and action by the Bush administration). Many of the anti-war and anti-Bush people make those who naively and arrogantly gambled and lost in Iraq look better in comparison.