Ignatius hits the bull’s eye on Iran
Friday, May 26, 2006 at 4:48PM OP-ED: “It’s Time to Engage with Iran,” by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 26 May 2006, p. A21.
This is damn near a perfect op-ed, so good I desperately wish I would have written it myself--that’s how much I covet it.
I will quote at length. It begins with:
“Only connect.” That was the trademark of E.M. Forster’s great novel, “Howard’s End.” And it’s a useful injunction in thinking about U.S. strategy toward Iran and the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world.We are in the early stages of what the Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid, calls “the first war of globalization, between openness and closed societies.” One key to winning that war, Abizaid told a small group of reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, is to expand openness and connection. He calls al-Qaeda “the military arm of the closed order.” The same could be said of the extremist mullahs in Tehran who are pushing for nuclear weapons.
America’s best strategy is to play to its strengths--which are the open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched military power. The need for connection is especially clear in the case of Iran, which in isolation has remained frozen in revolutionary zealotry like an exotic fruit in aspic. Yet some in the Bush administration cling to the idea that isolation is a good thing and that connectivity will somehow weaken the West’s position. That ignores the obvious lesson of the past 40 years, which is that isolation has usually failed (as in the cases of Cuba and North Korea), while connectivity has usually succeeded (as in the cases of the Soviet Union and China).
A telling example was the decision to engage the Soviet Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. At the time, some conservatives argued that it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might interpret as a symbol of weakness. But the CSCE provided a crucial forum for dissidents in Russia and Eastern Europe, and with astonishing speed the mighty edifice of Soviet power began to crumble. Similar warnings about showing weakness were voiced when President Richard Nixon went to China in February 1972.
I cite this Cold War history because the moment has come for America to attempt to engage revolutionary Iran…
Brilliant, as the Brits say.
Here’s a zinger I love:
Ahmadinejad’s letter clearly had the backing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the American context, that’s like having the support of Vice President Cheney for a peace feeler.
Ouch! Another bull’s eye! Ayatollah Cheney. I love it!
Best line (my italics):
My own Iranian sources say there is broad consensus in Tehran that it is time for talks with the United States. “Iran wants to start discussions the same way the Chinese wanted discussions” with Nixon, an Iranian businessman name Ale Ettefagh told me in an e-mail this week. “Great Satan doesn’t sell anymore. More than half the population was not born 27 years ago, and the broken record does not play well.”
The bundles of goodies we need to offer Iran “should stress connectivity--more air travel to Iran, more scholarships for students, more exchanges, Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization.”
An Iranian analysts with the International Crisis Group “noted in Senate testimony last week that opinion polls show 75 percent of Iranians favor relations with the United States.”
The killer ending: “Openness isn’t a concession by America, it’s a strategic weapon.”
Again, couldn’t have said it better myself--not that I won’t keep trying.
Ignatius rules the day on Iran, and Abizaid’s standing as head grand strategist on the GWOT within the military is demonstrated once again. I don’t think anybody gets this conflict better inside the military than Abizaid, and no one articulates it better among the pundits that Ignatius. They show the way at a time when the U.S. public is desperate for such strategic vision.
Reader Comments (11)
"Openness isn’t a concession by America, it’s a strategic weapon."
Nice. It's usefully repurposed for immigration policy to boot.
Tom, your problem is Iran just told us to take it and shove it.
Iran rules out talks with U.S. over Iraq
Reuters, The Associated Press
FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/26/news/iraq.php
Is it possible that any serious headway with negotiations will remain dormant until the 2009 changing of the executive guard? It would appear that the Bush posse is anathema to the Tehran clerics and imaginable that they will stand their holy ground over principle, if anything, until a new administration incarnates in the US.
No, my problem is that this administration makes clear throughout that it wants Iran both to not have the bomb and to undergo regime change. I find that overt linkage to be strategically stupid, as in, Duh! Of course they're linked in Tehran's mind.
By pursuing this go-nowhere linkage, we empower the hardliners and make reasonable their reach for the bomb, getting us what we want in neither realm.
Dishonest offers yielding unsurprising rejections don't prove anything except this administration's lack of strategic imagination. I scream a racial epithet at someone, only to have one tossed back at me, doesn't prove that the other guy is a racist. It just proves I'm a jerk.
Since when is Iran a "closed" society? There are trade restrictions with the U.S. but aside from that, Iran is relatively open. As to things such as "student exchange/scholarship," what evidence do you have that that makes them more pro-western? From what I have read for other middle eastern students an education in the West does might even make them more anti-western.
The full Ignatius Op is here;
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=24757
Also, an interesting LA Times Article about GOP leaders pressuring Bush to talk with the Iranians;
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-usiran27may27,1,2095211.story?coll=la-news-a_section
I haven't believed your idea of co-opting Iran through diplomacy and connectedness had much of a chance. Strange, the more you talk about it and flesh it out, I find myself starting to agree.
If Abizaid gets it why doesn't he share it with Rummy and Bush?
To: Jim Glendenning--Because GEN Pace is no George Marshall. See Ralph Peters below.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0606.peters.html#byline
Jim: my humble opinion: Rummy and Bush don't listen to their 'underlings' too well...
Pilgrim:
Thanks for the link. Interesting essay. I admire Ralph Peters,he's mostly right in his analyses. However, what I don't get is that he fails to mention Tommy Franks account of how things went during the runup to the Iraq War. Gen. Franks felt he was listened to and given every opportunity to speak his piece. Many officers disagreed with his strategy; thought it way too risky. But it worked. I read "Cobra II." The authors seem to believe that Franks and his boys made every mistake in the book and then some. In fact, after reading it, I felt as if I had read an analysis of a losing campaign.
The problem was I think everybody in the administration believed that the Iraqis would quickly take up the task of rebuilding their country. In fact both Blair and Bush said as much in their recent press conference. It took them about a year to understand how strong the opposition was and that's a slow learning curve for sure. Also, who suspected that the doggoned country was a veritable munitions dump? Too danged much firepower, easily available to the terrorists, cached all over the country.
If Rummy wasn't listening to the officers on the ground in Iraq, only a few have chosen to speak out. If it's true, I can certainly identify with their frustration from my experiences in Vietnam with the "Whiz Kid," McNamara.
I still don't grasp the details of their dispute with Rumsfeld. Did he deny them manpower, material, money, or did he insist on stupid tactics.......what?? The complaints all seem to be that he is arrogant. I saw General Zinni, one of the dissidents, on C-SPAN and all he said was that Shinseki was right; they should have put in 300,000+ immediately. That may have been the right thing to do, but that's "Monday Morning Quarterbacking." What counts is what we do from here forward. He had no ideas about that or, if he did, did not express them.
Sean:
You may be right. For the good of the military and our country I hope your opinion is wrong.
"Ouch! Another bull’s eye! Ayatollah Cheney. I love it!"
Yah, cheap-shot zingers against "their guys" by "our guys" are always a rush.
But if Ignatius thinks the letter was a "peace feeler", then he hasn't read it. (I know it's long and rambling, and time is short for columnists and strategic visionaries, so investing the time to read an 18-page diatribe against the West and call to convert to Islam might be something there just isn't time for).
It does deserve a response, though. One like this:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Njc0MjdjMzAzNzRjMGU4NDk3NGM3NDIzNDZlMjY0YWE=
Reagan would have done it. Bush lacks the vision. And of course Kerry or Gore would be spending too much time understanding the Mullah's points about how liberal democracy has let us all down write such a response, and would agree that a search for alternatives that the international community (including Iran) could form a consensus around would be a good thing. Iran as a consensus-builder!