The utter cluelessness of the Obama presidency in all aspects of foreign policy is sufficient reason to be black of mood. When the True Believing predicates of the president and so many of his supporters are factored in, the mood can only fall into the deepest shade of ebony. Of course, there would be no basis for the overwhelming attack of the dismals were it not for the simple fact that the administration's unremitting record of foreign relations missteps is destined to have a most negative effect upon all of us in We the People. The inevitable extension of this downward thrust to the rest of the civilized world only gives further justification for desiring industrial strength Prozac.
The administration has terminally fumbled the effort, if indeed there ever was one, to bar Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability. There can be no denying either that fact nor the necessary corollary: The US is no longer "the strong horse" in either the Mideast or the Persian Gulf; Iran can legitimately claim that appellation.
The short and long term consequences of this transition cannot be predicted in detail. But, coupled with the Obama mishandling of the Israeli-Palestinian matter, there can be no denying that the results will be bad not only for the US and Israel but for the other members of the League of Civilized States.
Those who take comfort in the efficacy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) during the Cold War and assume the same policy will prove effective when directed against the mullahocracy in Iran are placing their hopes on a very frail reed. Not only is the leadership of that country, both clerical and "secular," overwhelmingly eschatological in it orientation, events of recent years show that deterrence has not worked to inhibit terrorist attacks or the sponsorship and facilitation of such operations.
MAD worked because the guys at the top whether they lived in Moscow, Beijing, or Washington shared a horror of presiding over national suicide. This coinciding national interest assured that competition globally would be disconnected from any possibility of escalation across the nuclear threshold. Sure, that made for proxy war, wars of national liberation, any number of nasty little not-so-direct conflicts which might be covered by the hoary term, "wars of the frontiers."
Iran has and continues to sponsor, support, and facilitate Islamist jihadist entities such as Hamas, Hezbollah, assorted groups in Iraq, and insurgents in Yemen. It has done so because it lacked a nuclear capacity, the sine qua non of direct conflict with countries similarly armed.
Use of proxies allows annoying and diverting the militarily superior opponent. It allows the development and enhancement of political influence. Best of all it does both at very low risk to the facilitating power. The Iranian proxy policy has been a low cost, low risk, high payoff approach to weakening the US influence in the region while inflicting military, political, diplomatic, and social damage on Israel and putting assorted Arab states on a threat based notice of Iranian emergence.
The proxy approach has not been inhibited by the presumably overwhelming conventional military superiority of Israel--to say nothing of the US. Of course, it deserves notice that the Israeli defeat in the Lebanon war a couple of years ago went a long way to destroying the image of Israel-the-invincible. The same can be said of the years of fumbling the US military was forced to endure in both Iraq and, more so, Afghanistan.
In short, as these factors indicate, conventional force based deterrence did nothing to dissuade Iran from developing its proxies. Nor did the proxies show any shyness in the face of the same deterrence.
With the acquisition of a nuclear capability, even an ambiguous, virtual one, Iran could cast off the proxy approach. It won't. There is no need. Quite the contrary, the proxies will be empowered by global hesitation over the (presumed) Iranian nuclear weapon(s). If Iran goes a step more, if it allows, even encourages, the world to believe Tehran has the big bomb, the net effect will be that of allowing a more open, more direct set of Iranian actions with the targets being Israel and the US presence in the region.
The Iranians know that nuclear powers, even Islamic ones, are afforded a uniquely gentle treatment by the US and other Great Powers. The Pakistani paradigm will apply to Iran--and the Iranians know it.
As Iran harbors ambitions of being both the regional hegemon and a global actor of real puissance, there is a positive impetus to gain at least the same sort of nuclear status enjoyed by Israel with perhaps a soupcon more ambiguity. At the very minimum achieving nuclear breakout status will confer much authority upon Tehran as leader of the Global South, champion not only of Muslim states but nuclear "have-nots" elsewhere in the world.
Further lessening the US role and influence in the world over the next few months and years is the Obama administration's totally misguided pseudo-strategy of mixing warm and hostile words, drawing lines in the sand only to re-draw them a few weeks later and seeking the impossible grail of global consensus on the view of from the Oval concerning Iran. By making Iran so damn important the president has assured only that the defeat we are facing in that quarter will be all the more damaging.
This defeat coupled with the recurrent, cavalier treatment afforded traditional American allies by the president will serve to erode American credibility, and, thus, influence in all the capitals of all the countries great and small around the world. No country's leadership will be able to trust a single American commitment, no matter how long-standing, after the Obama reversals, the Obama conflicts of rhetoric and reality, the Obama attempts to make the the US over as a global sort of Back of the Yards Organization and himself a Saul Alinsky for the world.
Rules For Radicals was not written as a foreign policy guide no matter how much Mr Obama may pretend to the contrary. A foreign policy quite obviously predicated upon the recipe provided for community conflict organizing provided in that famed book will not work. And, it hasn't.
There are many other Obama and the Progressives driven factors which produce the almost inevitably impending decline of the US from Great Power status. But, the Geek is a sensitive sort of guy and his delicate psyche can only take so much on any given day. The Prozac bottle just ain't large enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment