appeasement — VOICES for REASON

This week, on June 4th, Barack Obama will give a highly anticipated speech in Cairo. The intended audience is the Islamic world. It’s bizarre that he feels compelled to do so, and unseemly that he chose Egypt (a quasi-friendly dictatorship) as the venue. Presumably this high-profile speech is meant to underline that Obama is serious about his policy of outreach to the Muslim world. And by that I mean the repeated pledges of goodwill and the administration’s commitment to diplomatic engagement. Remember his offer of an outstretched arm to Iran, if it agrees to “unclench” its fist? Remember the trial balloon re negotiating with “moderate” elements of the Taliban?

But does anybody buy this stuff? Well, sad to say, many in the United States feel this is the only way forward. And of course this policy is a godsend to Iran and the Islamist movement generally; they stand to gain from Washington’s appeasement. Yet it is interesting to me that there have been some pointed demurrals — from commentators writing for Arabic publications.

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What might Pakistan look like in the years to come? The nuclear-armed country may well look a lot like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Sounds like hyperbole? Consider the trend now unfolding in Pakistan: the national government struck a so-called peace agreement with Islamist kingpins in the North. In return for promising to end jihadist attacks within Pakistan, the Islamists were given the power to enforce sharia (Islamic law) in the Swat Valley. The Pakistani government recently signed this agreement into law. But as a Washington Post subhead puts it, “After Reaching Deal in North, Islamists Aim to Install Religious Law Nationwide.”

Several months back, when the deal was announced, I suggested that it was an outright surrender. Instead of living up to its stated goal of opposing the Islamists, by defeating them militarily, Islamabad has opted for the losing policy of appeasement — a policy that can only strengthen the jihadists. One concerned observer, a prof at Quaid-i-Azam university, told the Post that “The [national] government made a big mistake to give these guys legal cover for their agenda.”

It’s far worse than that. Read the rest of this entry »

In a dramatic rescue operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals, Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama was freed from Somali pirates. The Seals performed admirably and under challenging conditions.

But has the operation made us safe by teaching the pirates a lesson? Apparently not. Even as the Maersk Alabama episode came to an end, there’s news of a pirate attack on another American-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun. Given the belligerence of some of the Somali pirates after the release of Capt. Phillips (one of them threatened that “In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying.”), there’s reason to expect further attacks.

So why have the pirates not been deterred?

Because we have emboldened them for years through an entrenched policy of passivity and accommodation — and the freeing of Capt. Phillips was unfortunately just one, halting step in a better direction.

Our typical policy was evident even in the recent rescue. Once four of the pirates had taken the captain hostage in a lifeboat, Americans did not retaliate with force. Instead, an enormously powerful U.S. Navy destroyer simply followed along in their wake and drone aircraft kept watch from the skies. The strategy was “negotiation” — that is, appeasement. There was talk of getting some Somali clan on the mainland to use its leverage with this gang, in order to secure Capt. Phillips’s release. Trained FBI negotiators were consulted. One of the pirates came aboard the Navy destroyer to negotiate the ransom. It was only when the three other pirates seemed to be particularly menacing toward Phillips that the Seals shot them dead. What’s striking here is how far down the road of appeasement we were willing to go. That willingness to capitulate is — sad to say — a common feature of U.S. policy.

The result? Part of it can be seen in the attitude of some of the pirates.

“We are safe and we are not afraid of the Americans,” one of the pirates, who was not identified by name, told Reuters by satellite phone, speaking on behalf of the men holding Capt. Richard Phillips on the lifeboat. “We will defend ourselves if attacked,” he added.[Emphasis added]

That’s precisely what some of them have done following the rescue of Capt. Phillips.

What we need — in response to piracy as well as other  foreign threats — is an across-the-board reversal in U.S. policy.  That process must begin by putting American interests first, and doing so proudly and consistently across time and different contexts. Our government’s sole purpose is to protect our lives and freedom and property — and that certainly includes from the threat of piracy on the waves.

When it became clear (more than a year ago) that the waters off the coast of Somalia are a playground for pirates, the minimum that Washington should have done is to lay down an ultimatum to the pirates to leave Americans alone or else — and live up to it.

The substance of that warning: if any American vessel is captured by pirates, we will use military force to destroy every last pirate base in Somalia (and any neighboring African country). No country that harbors pirates can demand that its sovereignty be respected. When such a threat of retaliation is made fully credible, it can be sufficient to deter would-be aggressors. If any dare test us, then we must unapologetically respond with force.

Not just occasionally, when negotiations go south — but on principle.

When America has once again earned a reputation as a power that none dare cross, we won’t have to worry about pirates.

The other day I gave a talk at U.C. Berkeley on American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. One of the major episodes I discussed is the so called Peace Process of the 1990s, a widely supported but ruinous scheme predicated on the idea of Israel surrendering land in exchange for peace with the Arabs. During the Q&A, someone asked what I thought about the Obama administration’s seemingly new approach. 

A genuinely new approach would incorporate lessons learned from the disasters of the past. Obama’s team appears intent on reenacting those disasters.

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Elan Journo has just released an op-ed expanding on the analysis in his post from last week. The article explains how President Obama’s “appeasing diplomacy re-enacts the disastrous policy of the past.”

And as if to prove Elan’s point, news emerged today that Obama may be willing to forego plans for an American missile defense system in Northern Europe if the Russians agree to exert their influence over Iran and encourage the latter to forego its pursuit of nuclear power. (!)

Obama has been sending out all kinds of feelers in hopes of bringing Iran to the negotiating table. One that generated a lot buzz was his comment, in a high-profile interview, that “if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” But Obama and the many other supporters of so-called diplomacy pretend–and would have us believe–that Iran’s fist is “clenched” only metaphorically.

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