Decision ‘08

Condi: Standard-Bearer of RealPolitik?

Applause, when it comes from certain quarters, can be almost as alarming as jeers; it’s with some trepidation, then, that I note the approval Condi Rice’s Iranian overture is receiving from such folks as Simon Tisdall of the Guardian:

Yesterday’s statement by Condoleezza Rice was first and foremost an internal Washington victory. It offered the clearest proof yet of her foreign policy-making ascendancy and of the declining influence of neo-conservative ideology in George Bush’s second term. Ms Rice, who succeeded Colin Powell as US secretary of state last year, has pursued a pragmatic or “realist” line. She has also worked hard to rebuild relationships with traditional allies damaged by past unilateralism.

We’ll come back to that ‘realist’ line shortly. First, let’s assure everyone of Tisdall’s progressive credentials:

Ms Rice’s approach increasingly brought her into conflict with the vice-president, Dick Cheney - the dark lord of rightwing Republicanism; and Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon tsar whose political infighting skills repeatedly undermined Mr Powell. But both men have lost ground in recent months, largely because of Iraq. They are believed to have opposed an opening to Iran as a “concession” to terrorism and blackmail. So did Israel. Speaking at the White House last week, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, warned that Iran’s activities represented an existential threat with which there could be no compromise. But yesterday Ms Rice made it crystal clear who is calling the shots in Washington now.

Oh…I see. Well, at least he’s honest about his hatred of the ‘neocons’ Cheney and Rumsfeld - and of course, like most who prattle on endlessly about ‘neocon’ influence, he quickly drifts into the rote condemnation of Israel - make of that what you will.

I have, as recently as this past Sunday, argued in favor of the Bush Doctrine’s idealism as opposed to RealPolitik’s cynicism (for those who wonder, the best capsule definition of RealPolitik that I know of is that it is the belief that we have no permament friends or enemies, only permanent interests). I will admit, though, that cynicism is sometimes intelligence where foreign policy is concerned.

Tisdall lays out the wisdom of Condi’s position here:

The US shift puts the ball squarely back in Iran’s court. In a sense, Ms Rice’s statement was Washington’s response to the open letter written last month by the country’s hardline leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Despite the president’s anti-western and anti-Israeli rhetoric, Iran has repeatedly offered to hold talks with the US. By conceding Iran’s right to civilian nuclear energy and dangling a wide range of incentives, Ms Rice has called Mr Ahmadinejad’s bluff.

If, after serious consideration, Iran formally rejects the offer and the accompanying carrots-and-sticks package to be finalised in Vienna today, the US will be able to say that it has tried its best.

And western nations, plus Russia and China, will almost certainly agree. They will be much more likely to unite behind Washington in seeking coercive UN security council action against Tehran. Ms Rice will have achieved her “coalition of the willing”.

If Iran accepts, then long and difficult negotiations will lie ahead with no guarantee of success. But a third war in the Middle East in almost as many years may have been avoided, at least for now; Iranians will face the prospect of reintegration into the international community after decades of ostracism; and a historic corner will, just possibly, have been turned.

Well, who’s the idealist now? That’s far too optimistic a conclusion. Nevertheless, we can got lost in the semantical trees here; the borderline between optimism and cynicism, particularly when dealing with foreign affairs, is seldom hard and fast. After all, even in the run-up to the Iraq War, we at least went through the motions of a diplomatic solution - and Condi’s overture has the undeniably salutory effect of providing cover should the worst come to pass…

2 Responses to “Condi: Standard-Bearer of RealPolitik?”

1 section9 Says:
June 1st, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Tisdall’s glee at the collapse of the “neocons” is widely shared by clueless liberals everywhere. In point of fact, they are doing Condi a great favor. They are assisting her in a great deception she is running, which is all to our benefit.

This is not a serious negotiating gambit. It is a ploy to smoke the Iranians out and demonstrate that they are more interested in pursuing atomic weapons than they are in pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy program. That’s what the enrichment clause is all about. Condi secured this promise from the Chicoms and the Ivans before she went to Vienna today and got the package from the group of six.

She knows that the Iranians will never negotiate in good faith. This parlor game in which she “defeated” the Dark Lords Cheney and Rumsfeld in order to bring peace is a load of bilious crap peddled by people in the MSM who probably haven’t figured out how the RIG meetings work. She probably agrees with Cheney and Rumsfeld that the Persians are running a huge scam. They probably assented to this proposal as the only way to smoke the Iranians out.

This is our way of buying time so our position doesn’t collapse and we get the Chinese and the Russians to cooperate with us in New York. The libs don’t realize this, but then again, the last time they were at bat, we got Maddie Albright and the “Agreed Framework”.
2 peter Says:
June 1st, 2006 at 8:42 pm
“The libs don’t realize this, but then again, the last time they were at bat, we got Maddie Albright and the ‘Agreed Framework’.”

From today’s Financial Times:

In 1994, the Clinton administration signed the “agreed framework” with North Korea, a deal that on the surface looks remarkably similar to what is believed to be on offer for Iran. North Korea was to freeze the operation and construction of nuclear reactors believed to be part of a covert weapons programme. In exchange an international consortium would provide two proliferation-resistant light water reactors, and North Korea would get fuel oil on top. Pyongyang and Washington also committed themselves to moving towards the normalisation of relations, a process that led to a visit to North Korea by Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, in 2000.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/91f501d6-f196-11da-940b-0000779e2340.html