Back in May 2009—before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election—we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed”. In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have undermined the promise of his encouraging rhetoric about Iran” and was already “backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic, Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran”. We also identified the policies that would soon displace Obama’s rhetorical expressions of interest in “engaging” Iran—including a quixotic effort to rope other major international and regional powers into intensifying economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic and a delusional push to unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a U.S.-led coalition to contain a rising Iranian “threat”.
Notwithstanding the denials of “friends” of the Obama Administration at the time, we are now seeing public confirmation that U.S. policy is now going exactly in the direction we said it would. On the sanctions front, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in a speech at the École Militaire in Paris late last week that China faces “diplomatic isolation” if it does not support the Obama Administration’s proposals for tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. We have argued for a long time that the Obama Administration’s approach to dealing with China regarding Iran is incoherent, divorced from Beijing’s interests, and grounded in an assessment of the balance of power between China and the United States that no longer reflects reality. But Secretary Clinton’s speech put these deficiencies in the Administration’s approach in graphic relief, for all the world to see.
Secretary Clinton’s statement about China facing “diplomatic isolation” if it did not tow the American line on sanctions came during the same week that China’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, called in the U.S. Ambassador in Beijing, John Huntsman, to note that the Obama Administration’s decision to move forward with major new arms sales to Taiwan “constitutes a gross intervention into China’s internal affairs, seriously endangers China’s national security and harms China’s peaceful reunification efforts”. Huntsman was told that the United States would be responsible for “serious repercussions” if it did not reverse the decision . Additionally, China cancelled a number of planned military-to-military exchanges with the United States. And, just in case the Obama Administration failed to pick up on those signals of Chinese unhappiness, Beijing also announced that it was considering imposing sanctions on the Chinese operations of American companies involved in supplying products for the arms sales to Taiwan.
The folly of Secretary Clinton’s proposition that China will face “diplomatic isolation” if it does not fall in line with American proposals for new sanctions against Iran—which include bans on new energy investments in and gasoline exports to the Islamic Republic—was demonstrated in her own comments following her speech in Paris. Addressing the Chinese in absentia, she said
We understand that right now, that is something that seems counterproductive to you, sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs…But think about the longer-term implications.
In fact, the Chinese seem to take the longer-term implications of their decisions about relations with the United States and with the Islamic Republic very seriously, as we have explored in great depth both on this blog and in a longer monograph published by the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced Interational Studies in September 2009. Moreover, from a longer-term perspective, China’s economic and financial leverage over the United States is rapidly increasing. Under these circumstances, why should Beijing feel compelled to support the imposition of sanctions on Iran—sanctions that would hurt Chinese interests—simply to isolate a country that Washington, some of its European allies, and Israel have, for their own reasons, declared to be an outlaw state?
This point was made extremely well in a blog post this weekend by Daniel Larison (who was himself commenting on an opinion piece in Newsweek by Nader Mousavizadeh ). Larison rightly expresses his dismay with what now “passes for a statement of administration policy towards Iran: making empty threats against a major power on which we have become financially and economically dependent”. But he puts the problem in an even bigger and more strategic context:
Obama has followed his predecessors in continuing U.S. foreign policy much as it has been carried out since the end of the Cold War, but he is faced with a world that neither wants nor has to put up with it as often as it once did. The best approach for a real, sustained engagement policy begins with recognition of the way the world is now. There are multiple centers of power, their interests will sometimes diverge from ours, and the issues that we have declared to be global issues in which all states have common interests often do not matter to other major powers or these conflict with their interests in a significant way. In the future, other powers will become even more capable of advancing their interests and ignoring our demands. This means that Washington has to begin reassessing which interests are genuinely vital to U.S. security and prosperity, and which are extraneous or left over from the Cold War and the last twenty years of activist policy…
Too many Americans in and outside the political class remain wedded to a model of global order in which Washington proposes and the rest of the world is supposed to fall in line. Anything other than this is viewed as capitulation, weakness or appeasement. Eventually, Washington will be unable to ignore that the world does not work this way, but that may not be before our government plunges into yet another disastrous conflict or embarks on dead-end policies that will continue to strengthen all the “rogue states” it is trying to punish.
This is an important insight, with profound implications for understanding the “race for Iran”. Clearly, other power centers are competing for influence and to establish economically and strategically beneficial relationships with the Islamic Republic. But the United States, in effect, continues to believe it can, in effect, refuse to take part in the race for Iran, because it does not view the Islamic Republic as an “acceptable” focus of geopolitical attention. From the American perspective, Iran must be diplomatically isolated and pressured economically, until it is somehow transformed into a state that Washington might deem “worthy” of strategic engagement. This is, truly, a perspective which could only be indulged by political elites in a declining “imperial” power, who resist seeing their country’s strategic situation as it really is.
Another increasingly important aspect of the Obama Administration’s evolving approach to Iran—a drive to forge an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition to “contain” the Islamic Republic—has also been on prominent display recently. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that “the Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales” that it had inherited from the George W. Bush Administration “and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran”. These initiatives are described as “part of a broader push that includes unprecedented coordination of air defenses and expanded joint exercises between U.S. and Arab militaries”. The Post story notes that “Gulf states fear retaliatory strikes by Iran or allied groups such as Hezbollah in the event of a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States or Israel”.
Those officials in the Obama Administration who have struck us as being more forward leaning than most of their colleagues in their understanding of the importance of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement for the American position in the Middle East have privately suggested that, if engagement “failed” and the policy debate came down to a choice between military action against Iranian nuclear targets and containment, they would push hard for the latter as a way of avoiding the former. That seems to be precisely what is happening now. But this approach ignores both the risks associated with a further military buildup in the Gulf and with the “opportunity costs” this imposes on American foreign policy in the region. As we wrote last May,
The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall. These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.
And that is precisely what is happening—prospects for a resolution of the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict are now, indeed, in free fall. As a result, the Obama Administration appears to have given up on Arab-Israeli peacemaking, just as they have preemptively surrendered on serious, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic, because these challenges are now seen as “too hard.” That is not how to serve American interests.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
rfjk – interesting comments.
The “moderate” Arab regimes fear their own people more than they fear Iran. Iranian hegemony is a non-starter, and nor is it sought. What the Iranians represent is an alternative form of governance that terrifies the dictatorships, particularly considering their primary domestic opposition is Islamist.
The hilarious reality is that the real Iranian “threat” is their promotion of democracy in the region, while the real US “protection” is the prevention of democracy.
This has been the downward spiral toward disaster throughout the Clinton and Bush eras. Obama has to break the cycle if he is to achieve anything. The key to it is Iran, because rapprochement with them changes the game completely. In particular, it boxes in the Israelis, and opens up all sorts of possibilities in moving the Palestine issue forward. But Iran must come first, and I get the impression Obama knows it.
There are so many contradicting leaks and actions at the moment that one can only conclude that nothing is certain.
U.S. national bankruptcy an impossibility? I don’t think so. Debt as a percentage of GDP has been at this level before, after the three major wars in our history (Civil War, WWI and WWII). But we had immense untapped resources and the world’s greatest manufacturing base in those days; additionally we were not weighed down by enormous spending commitments to various political constituencies as we are today. In the past we could grow our way out of debt; I don’t see that as a possibility in our current circumstances. Now, certainly, we could wind up with a situation like Latin America in the 1980s, where the creditors basically write down our debt to prevent an economic calamity. We could also depreciate our currency to the vanishing point. Either scenario requires the United States to accept a much lower standard of living and a diminished role in the world. Could happen, but I rather doubt it. A final possibility would be draconian reforms in federal spending, with elimination of programs and big cutbacks in both defense and entitlement programs. Even if we assume that the political will for this will someday exist, the likelihood is that it would produce social chaos. National bankruptcy is preferable to another civil war.
People who believe in the inevitability of US bankruptcy is like succeeding at Iranian regime change or sanctions, it ain’t gonna happen and they will be waiting a long, long, time. Ive heard that rhetoric all my life, long before I was born and people will be arguing and anguishing over it long after I’m gone.
Fact Sheets of Iran-US Standoff: Twenty Reasons against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.
Please click on this link:
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/?q=node/2093
It was obvious from the get go that current administration’s policy toward Iran will end up with a public threatening of China, as mentioned by Leverets and other posts, Iran can be relatively and easily connected to China’s energy grid via land, and in many way a lot less expensive then the sea routes and outside of any hemisphere of Russian or American of influence, so what would be China’s logic to let go of one of a few major Oil and Gas producers that can guarantee a land based energy security for its monstrous development. Hillary’s comments is more of sign of desperation rather then threatening what would come next from such a reckless policy eliminating 300 million in china like Mao said. May be Hillary can obliterate them too who knows, with this administrations smarter foreign policy we are clinching our hands for China now who is next? This was music for Iran’s ears
You “toe” a line, not “tow” a line
Thanks for the clarifcation, Castiello. I was confused by your first post; now I understand.
The comment of rfjk re “money” bears thinking about. I agree that all currencies today are nothing but paper. That’s absolutely correct. However, even under such a global system, the nation that remains standing economically — i.e., the nation that manufactures and lends as opposed to one that consumes and borrows to excess, will find that its currency has “backing” in global markets. Such a nation will find its currency welcome in exchange for raw materials and manufactured products, and it will have the ability to take on debt at favorable rates. The other economy, drowning in debt, will be forced either to declare bankruptcy or inflate its way out of trouble (i.e., let its currency lose most of its value). When we are taking a wheelbarrow of dollars down to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread, while the Chinese are buying every hard asset they care to — well, clearly one side loses while the other wins.
If the Chinese are smart they will get going on unwinding their U.S. debt positions. The U.S. is still 10 or so years away from a declarartion of national beankruptcy. Indeed, we would do better to declare bankruptcy now, and let the Chinese take a $6 trillion hit. A strategic bankruptcy might be the best thing that’s happened to this country in decades.
To Winter, Pirouz and Jon Harrison, I apologize for misreading your comments. You are agreeing with the original article, not with rjjk’s response, which assessment, I feel, traduces the reality. (One day, I will get used to the most recent comment on top.)
In Iraq_Iran war that Iran was in low point, (tanker_war) Rafsanjani said if we don’t sell oil nobody could sell also, if china dosen’t get oil so does USA, here we go…
Castellio states the arrogant attitude of the American side well. And it is exactly that attitude which disquiets me. Rather than recognize the realities of the world today, Washington prefers to act according to illusions of past grandeur.
There a lots of reasons for Washington not to attack Iran. But, as was the case in Iraq, the real issue is whether illusions prevail over common sense.
I’m assuming that Winter, Pirouz and Harrison are agreeing with rfjk’s dismissal of the threat of US intervention in Iraq. I confess, I don’t.
I think the American statement to China is more simply this: you may get Iranian oil and gas now, but if we bomb Iran – about which you will do, and can do nothing – then you will find your sources less secure. If China wants resource security, then it must side with us, for we are the military power who controls, and intends to remain in control of, the flow of world resources. Moreover, if you don’t like our position, then we will send even the F-16s to Taiwan. Don’t mess with us: we are the only military power with global reach and ability. Behave. Fit in.
Its precisely that subtext which makes coherent (but not advisable) current American actions.
Sorry to disagree, but all these happenings are tempests in a teapot.
The US and China have been haggling and threatening each other over Taiwan since before I was born, and will be spitting at each other until the day the two China’s become one again.
The drivel dripping from Hilliary’s lips is representative of the angst & displeasure the Dennis Ross faction are experiencing over China’s intransigence to sanctions. How much this actually reflects Obama’s or even the majority of his team’s thinking on this issue is another question. After all, per Israel and their fifth columnists Obama should not just be renouncing sanctions, he should have been bombing the Iranians back into the stone age at least a month ago.
The Bush/Cheney regime and fellow cabalists dreamed up this lunacy of a US/Israeli/Arab alliance against Iran, which got nowhere. And as far as weapons sales are concerned its principally fear of the Iranians that’s driving Arabs, especially in the Gulf (Iran’s backyard) into closer relations with the US in security, intelligence, armaments and anti-missile defense. This of course doesn’t mean the US is building up to attack Iran. What it does do is checkmate Iranian intentions and hegemony in the region. And though the NYT’s imagines these moves “show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities,” the more likely consequence is of Israeli and Iranian concerns about deepening, “special relationships” the US is developing with Arab/Muslim states to both their disadvantage.
And as for debt used as leverage against the US, I wouldn’t worry about it. The day the US established the FED and started printing a fiat currency instead of coining specie for legal tender, that’s the day the US dollar traveled done the road to where it is today. And since no one else transacts a value backed currency all of us are in the same boat with worthless denominations of debt no matter the paper or how we hold it. Which also means it doesn’t matter whether its dollars, franks, pounds, yen, rubles, rials or whatever is used for a “reserve” or “anchor” currency.” Anyone holding it in their pockets, banks, investments or treasuries are merely holding promissory notes. Modern monetary policy is a neat racket, inventing money out of thin air where value is virtually based upon faith. No one is going to break that bubble…NO ONE! If you can trust anything in life beyond death and taxes, you can trust that one.
I believe the unexpected and unsettled nature of Iranian politics is the principal stumbling block to US/Iranian rapprochement, though of course Obama’s enemies inside and out of his administration, domestic and foreign are exploiting the current stalemate in hopes of sabotaging Obama’s stated goals of diplomatic engagement with the Iranians, which I believe in spite of all the rhetoric of bluster, huff and puff is still Obama’s policy.
same here.
So do I.
I agree completely with what you say.