A Foreign Policy Challenge to RedState
By David M Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I am prepared to devote a substantial amount of time and energy to the discussion. What I'm proposing is an honest—and civil—in-depth exploration of this subject, venturing well beyond the shallow waters of one-paragraph snorts and jibes.
How about it? I promise to be respectful and keep my mind open to convincing arguments. If you believe you can make an irrefutable case for the wrong-headedness of a non-interventionist foreign policy, I want to read it and be set straight.
If anyone cares to take me up on my challenge, I have just two ground rules:
(1) It must remain a two-person debate. Trying to engage several people at once becomes confusing and redundant, and tends to consume more time than is practical.
(2) Opinions (and emotions) are a dime a dozen. The key to a fruitful conversation is to make ample use of facts, analyses, historical examples, and methodical reasoning. Citations should be included where appropriate.
In light of RedState's new policy, I'll gladly host. Mine is a simple site, not exactly geared for this sort of back-and-forth, but if you will post responses as comments I will copy them to the main entry as we go along. Perhaps a better solution is the message board approach. I've created one just for this purpose.
Now then, I'll pose the following assertion to start things off:
It is in our best interests as a nation to remove our troops as soon as possible from Iraq and to implement a foreign policy which does not employ our military forces except when under clear and present danger of imminent attack or Congress has found sufficient justification to make a declaration of war.
Let's get it on.
Even Hillary! would probablyu disagree with that statement.
Besides the fact that we could all agree on the statement and still disagree about quite a few military interventions.
Perhaps you should define "clear and present danger of imminent attack." I think that even granting your premise there would be a lot of debate over what constitutes such a danger.
Some questions, if I may:
...to relinquish control of the Middle East to Iran
How is Iran going to control the Middle East?
Of course, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin would agree with your childish foreign policy initiative.
They may indeed. Iran has not, in modern history, installed military bases or otherwise occupied another nation. Russia has, and they recalibrated in the wake of their Afghan experience. Of course now they have a Chechen problem.
Your proposal looks familiar. Does it seem to you that following the same general policy as the last two decades will deliver a different result than the one we are dealing with today?
(1) Redstate 2.0 has threaded comments. Please use the Reply To This tab. It establishes continuity in the thread.
(2) "How is Iran going to control the Middle East?"
If you don't know the answer to that question, it means you have not been paying attention to, or you are unaware of, numerous intelligence reports regarding Iran, and therefore, are not equipped to discuss foreign policy or military strategy on the same level of competency we demand.
These reports should enable an expansion of your knowledge base. It's critical that you understand the real-world implications of your policy initiatives if you wish to be taken seriously here at Redstate.
Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat:
An Intelligence Challenge for the United StatesIran’s Proxy War Against America
(Note: pdf files)
How can you say my proposal follows the same general policy as the last two decades?
The foreign policy and military strategy of the previous two decades was one of appeasement and stability at Israel's expense. Following September 11, 2001, that policy changed.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
Threaded comments are much better, thank you for pointing this out.
If you don't know the answer to that question, it means you have not been paying attention to, or you are unaware of, numerous intelligence reports regarding Iran, and therefore, are not equipped to discuss foreign policy or military strategy on the same level of competency we demand.
Well.
From the House Committee report:
Threats against the United States and Israel by Iranian President Ahmadinejad – coupled with advances in the Iranian nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and resistance to international negotiations on its nuclear program – demonstrate that Iran is a security threat to our nation...
Iran's support for terror via Hezbollah is a problem for Israel, it isn't a threat for the U.S. or the Middle East in general. Support for Shi'ite militias in Iraq is a threat to our forces there, yes; it isn't a threat to our national security (as our support for Saddam was to them in the Iran-Iraq war). In any case, Iran's support of the Shi'ite factions is a far cry from control of Iraq much less the larger region. In Iraq it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the arms the U.S. has supplied to Sunni militias for anti-al-Qaeda ops to be turned against the Shi'ites.
I have no doubt that Iran intends to develop a nuclear capability. As Israeli military expert Martin van Creveld put it, they'd be crazy not to – especially after watching the U.S. invasion and regime change of Iraq. The report asserts that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious strategic threat to the United States and its allies because nuclear arms would likely "embolden the leadership in Tehran to advance its aggressive ambitions" and protect it from retaliation, thus lowering the "threshold for Iran’s use of conventional force."
Note that their nuclear program isn't a threat to the continental U.S.
Second, the report is silent about what exactly are Iran's alleged aggressive ambitions.
Third, the Saudis do not appear worried about what they see as a third-rate power. Military spending in Saudi Arabia is four to five times that of Iran; the coalition of Gulf States can very probably defend themselves from Iran's conventional forces. So can Israel. Israel and Pakistan both provide a more than adequate retaliatory nuclear threat to keep Iran in check.
Your links, while interesting, do not come close to supporting your assertion that Iran has the capability to "control the Middle East", and any claim of a direct threat to the U.S. is dubious in the extreme.
Regarding the policies of the last two decades, do you believe the resentment that led to al-Qaeda's militant actions sprang fully formed from the desert dunes? We have occupied and controlled that region of the world for some time now.
"Again, how will they control the Middle East?"
Denial is not analytical. Although the links I provided contained an overwhelming collection of facts and intelligence that expressly support my position, you chose to ignore them, expect me to believe they're "not really facts" or simply don't understand how to connect the dots.
"Regarding the policies of the last two decades, do you believe the resentment that led to al-Qaeda's militant actions sprang fully formed from the desert dunes? We have occupied and controlled that region of the world for some time now."
I dismiss with prejudice the premise of your question and reject your assertion that the US military has "occupied" that region of the world.
Therefore, my original assessment, with one minor change, is correct:
"You are not equipped qualified to discuss foreign policy or military strategy on the same level of competency we demand."
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
...but with all due respect your dismissal with prejudice addresses nothing.
Although the links I provided contained an overwhelming collection of facts and intelligence that expressly support my position
The links you provided do indeed contain a collection of facts, and a broad array of assertions which, as near as I can tell, add up to three main points:
(1) Iran appears to be developing nuclear capability. Please explain why, even if Iran gets their nuke, you believe they'll be a match for Israel, or for Pakistan, India, or Russia. Please tell me why you think they would not be deterred from aggressive use of a nuke by the threat of their complete annihilation.
One parallel conclusion is that Iran's having a nuke will embolden them to become more aggressive with their conventional forces. Norman Podhoretz has made this claim, but as Fareed Zakaria points out, evidence is lacking:
Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
Iran's conventional forces are by all accounts quite modest which explains their desire for a nuclear weapon. Pretend for a moment that you are President of Iran. In every direction you look you see the presence of U.S. forces: Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, and until recently in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Following the takeover of Iraq, you perceive that U.S. political leaders do not require substantial grounds for taking another country and turning it upside down ("Freedom Agenda" I think Bush called it). So what recourse do you have to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to you?
Now we know Tehran's answer in the face of blistering U.S. rhetoric is to try to go nuclear.
It seems we have two choices - we can either ratchet down the Podhoretz-esque rhetoric, or we can press forward and start a bombing campaign of their suspected facility locations. If we do that, the only viable response for Iran will be to increase its support for groups like Hezbollah and Iraqi insurgents. We may see heretofore unfathomable alliances that unite the Islamic world against the U.S., which is exactly what al-Qaeda wants. The situation, I'd argue, would in all likelihood get much, much uglier for American troops on the ground and may reach us here at home, again.
(2) Iran has provided support to Lebanese Hezbollah in that group's challenge to Israel. Again, that is Israel's problem and I fail to see how you expect that this positions Iran for control of the Middle East.
(3) Iran appears to be giving support to Shi'ite factions in neighboring Iraq, in much the same fashion that we supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan and have apparently been supporting militant separatist groups (read: terrorists) inside Iran as well as Reply To This — User Info — #7
(3) Iran appears to be giving support to Shi'ite factions in neighboring Iraq, in much the same fashion that we supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan and have apparently been supporting militant separatist groups (read: terrorists) inside Iran as well as terrorist groups outside it, in an effort to destabilize their current regime. That Iran would like to have a hand in influencing and shaping the political situation in neighboring Iraq is not news. Even if they are able to exert some political control there, you'll have to flesh out for me how you believe this constitutes control of the Middle East region.
The Claremont report endeavors to make connections between many separate groups around the region and Iran, mostly through Hezbollah's dealings. This report appears to deserve a close read, but one thing is unmistakable right from the start: to the extent that Sunni and Shi'a groups, and secular others, are cooperating it is for one purpose, to oppose the West - principally the U.S - and what is seen as an existential threat to their way of life, their identity, and their right to self-determination. These people have a long memory, and from our overthrow of democratically-elected Mosaddeq in 1953 to our contemporary support for widely-reviled tyrannies in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, and other places, they see U.S. fingers in every pie, so to speak, and that is the one and only uniting element. Remove that element, and it seems certain that they will refocus once more on fighting each other.
Needless to say, I still see nothing in the material you provided to support - expressly or otherwise - your conclusion that Iran is capable of controlling the Middle East, but I'll give you another chance, prejudice and all, to respond with specifics and show lil' ol' unqualified me where I am in error.
"Needless to say, I still see nothing in the material you provided to support - expressly or otherwise - your conclusion that Iran is capable of controlling the Middle East, but I'll give you another chance, prejudice and all, to respond with specifics and show lil' ol' unqualified me where I am in error."
I respectfully decline your offer. The sources you chose to support your position, Newsweek, CNN, the Telegraph and especially the Jewish Daily Forward, tells me all I need to know about the futility of such an exercise, and further reinforces my original assessment.
We could be discussing how we defeat Islamo-Fascism on a global scale, stabilize Iraq's and Lebanon's fledgling democracies, dismantle or destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program using economic sanctions, international pressure and diplomacy or military force as the last resort, thus stopping the world's most active state sponsor of terror from its quest to create the Caliphate, and finally, how we bring the Middle East out of its oppressive past and into the 21rst Century.
Instead, I'm suppose to deem it worthy of discussion a scenario under which we could accept that "the world can live with a nuclear Iran."
And just to be clear: General Abizaid is flat wrong. The world can't live with a nuclear Iran.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
Quite right...Fareed Zakaria, former managing editor of the journal Foreign Affairs, and Martin van Creveld, world-renowned Israeli military historian...what wacky sources indeed.
We could be discussing how we defeat Islamo-Fascism on a global scale, stabilize Iraq's and Lebanon's fledgling democracies, dismantle or destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program using economic sanctions, international pressure and diplomacy or military force as the last resort, thus stopping the world's most active state sponsor of terror from its quest to create the Caliphate, and finally, how we bring the Middle East out of its oppressive past and into the 21rst Century.
I'm all ears.
Besides the fact that we could all agree on the statement and still disagree about quite a few military interventions.
Well okay, I'd like to talk about that.
Perhaps you should define "clear and present danger of imminent attack." I think that even granting your premise there would be a lot of debate over what constitutes such a danger.
I agree, it's somewhat problematic. I chose those words carefully and I realize they are subject to interpretation. That's part of what I hope will come out in extended debate.
Proceed in life from the perspective of the eyes of the one your deeds are done upon. I live in Pennsylvania. I don't know anyone who lives in Oregon, but in the same, if a foreign enemy landed in Oregon, I would react no different, so far as it being the same country, as if it had been here in PA. Many Arabs see the United States as intruding upon Muslim LAND, not necessarily a particular country.
Al Qaeda cruelly slaughters children for shock value. Would you do that?
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
No takers, I guess.
Pity. The comments from rbdwiggins came teasingly close to the frontier inhabited by specifics.
Oh well. I know where to come now for a show of sardonic quips and insults.
Dealing with you moRons here at RedState - a blog which people actually read - until we got so sick of saying the same crap over and over again that we booted you rather than have to do it anymore. I don't have any idea why you're so surprised that none of us want to come to your blog and repeat the exercise there. Hate to tell you this, pal, but you're not an important, special and unique snowflake in this universe - we've seen a million of people just like you come and go.
Oh well. I know where to come now for a show of sardonic quips and insults.
Not anymore, you don't.
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The Red Sox Republican: Burkeanism, Baseball, and Sundries.
I dismiss with prejudice your premise that "it is in our best interest" to relinquish control of the Middle East to Iran, and to abandon our allies from the former Soviet Bloc.
Of course, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin would agree with your childish foreign policy initiative.
Instead, I propose that we solidify our alliance with Iraq and establish, at a minimum, four permanent military bases, two of which would be air bases capable of supporting special operations forces, and at least one mechanized infantry base.
Your foreign policy initiative probably sounded pretty good and apparently enjoyed substantial public support... in 1936.
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“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan