Foreign Policy — VOICES for REASON

In the modern era, it is common to hear people put forward the view that in war, “the pursuit of victory would necessarily create new grievances and guarantee an even more destructive conflict in the future.” We hear versions of that invoked all over the place — it is, for instance, central to the rationale for America’s nation-building strategy in Afghanistan. But this idea deserves to be questioned in light of empirical evidence. In his new book, Nothing Less than Victory, Dr. John David Lewis takes on that question (among others) from a historical perspective. He considers “six major wars in which a clear-cut victory did not lead to longer and bloodier war, but rather established the foundations of long-term peace between former enemies,” and looks at how and why those successes were achieved.

Over the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity of hearing Prof. Lewis present his analyses of major wars in history, and every time I’ve come away tremendously impressed with his scholarship. This book examines major conflicts in the ancient world (including the Greco-Persian Wars and the Theban Wars) as well as three episodes that may be better known today: General Sherman’s march through the American south during the Civil War; the lead-up to World War II; and the U.S. victory over Japan in 1945. My copy arrived recently, and I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing how he weaves together the threads of his argument.

Kudos to Prof. Lewis for bringing this important volume to light.

Thursday marks the 31st anniversary of the coalescing of Iran’s Islamist revolution. But on this deeply symbolic day, which Tehran usually spends glorifying its militant, tyrannical rule, millions of Iranian citizens will likely attempt another show of mass defiance and repudiation of the regime.

That’s precisely what Tehran fears. It fears having its veneer of popular endorsement torn away altogether. Witness its preemptive crack down. Critics and student activists have been rounded up and tossed in prison. Earlier this month, to build up the intimidation factor, the regime began executing dissidents. The IranTracker project is compiling a record of Tehran’s intimidation tactics in the run-up to the day. The list is horrifyingly long.

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Over at AEI’s blog, Danielle Pletka detects signs that the Obama administration is changing its approach toward Iran. After getting nowhere with attempts to lure Iran into negotiations, suddenly “the administration has started pouring it on from all spigots: sending Patriot batteries to Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait, lengthening deployments to the Gulf, and otherwise talking up the stakes. So what’s the deal? Is Iran a major threat to the United States and our allies? Did this suddenly dawn on the administration?  . . . Hint: Something has changed. Second hint: It’s not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. About time too.”

Allow me to register a dissenting perspective.

Obama’s so-called diplomatic outreach has treated Iran as a morally worthy interlocutor and estranged friend, whose goodwill it is our duty to cultivate. And that entire initiative is predicated on evading Iran’s bloody record and militant ideal of global Islamist rule. It’s a long way to go from that to a clear-eyed recognition of the regime’s character.  Obama would have to do, and publicly say, a lot more to convince me — let alone convince Tehran — that the administration now views the regime as fundamentally hostile and is willing to use military force to eliminate the threat it poses. Everything our president has done since taking office has reinforced the contrary view.

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Later this week world leaders and diplomats will meet in London to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. In my earlier post I talked about the U.S.-Afghan drive to appease the Taliban; now, in the lead-up to the international conference, the NYT reports:

The leader of the United Nations mission here [Kabul] called on Afghan officials to seek the removal of at least some senior Taliban leaders from the United Nations’ list of terrorists, as a first step toward opening direct negotiations with the insurgent group.

What’s next, a plea-bargain for Osama bin Laden? That’s crazy talk, yes. But on 9/12/01, erasing Taliban fighters from terrorist watch lists would have sounded outlandish, too. Here we are, though, eight-plus years later, currying favor with enemies we have failed to defeat in the hopes they’ll deign to talk to us.

The Afghan government floated a new plan “offering jobs, security, education and other social benefits to Taliban followers who defect” in the hope of quelling, if not crippling, the Taliban-Islamist resurgence seeking to take over the country. The Islamist response? A massive, coordinated suicide attack on the presidential palace, ministry of justice and central bank in Kabul.

It was meant to deliver a message — which the Taliban’s spokesman put into words afterward: “We are ready to fight, and we have the strength to fight, and nobody from the Taliban side is ready to make any kind of deal.”

Horrific scarcely begins to describe the attack, but there was ample reason to expect the baksheesh (bribes) to elicit that kind of response from the Islamists. There are many parallels you could draw, but take just one: the current U.S. approach toward Iran.

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Last week President Obama claimed that “our intelligence community failed to connect those dots” signaling a plot to blow up Flight 253. But ritual flogging of the intelligence community has diverted attention from a larger failure — this one belonging squarely on Obama’s shoulders.

Zoom out from the plentiful red flags outlining what we already know about the Christmas Day attack. Now observe the connection between it and two (of many) other “dots”: the suicide bombing by a double agent at a U.S. base in Afghanistan; and the (latest) failed assassination attempt on Kurt Westergaard, who drew the Mohammad-with-a-bomb-in-his-turban cartoon.

On the face of it, these have little if anything in common. Unlike the Nigerian bomber on Flight 253, the bomber in Afghanistan used an explosive-packed vest; the assassin in Denmark wielded an ax. The Nigerian was a recent college graduate, scion of a wealthy family; the killer in Afghanistan was a doctor of Jordanian descent; the Danish assassin, an immigrant from Somalia. Not their origin, not their specific targets, not their choice of weapon, not their age or income-level — none of these are the same. Nor is there any evidence that they ever met.

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In the wake of the national security debacle of the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253, the Obama administration is being justifiably pummeled — and the Republicans are piling on with zeal.

GOP opinion leaders such as former Vice President Dick Cheney have seized on the attack to question President Barack Obama’s grasp of foreign affairs. Republican Party officials have sent fund-raising appeals that take aim at Mr. Obama’s response to the episode.

The Republicans’ goal, the WSJ reports,  is to “regain [their] traditional advantages on security issues.”

Regain it? When have Republicans deserved that reputation? Definitely not during the eight years of George W. Bush.

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The clerics in Iran have led crowds in chants of “death to America” for 30-plus years, but now protesters in Iran are reportedly shouting “death to Khamenei.” Bear in mind that the cleric Ayatollah Khamenei is the supreme leader in a regime predicated on the supremacy of religious law. Not only have the protesters dared to defy the government, to risk death while resisting the security forces sent to disperse them; they’re (again) challenging the legitimacy of the Iranian theocracy.

Could 2010 be for Iran what 1989 was for the USSR?

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One of the worst foreign policy developments of 2009 was also one of the most underreported—the Obama administration’s decision to do away with the official use of the term “global war on terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The term “global war on terror” was awful, to be sure—it named our enemy vaguely and evasively. But instead of correcting that mistake by a clear identification of the enemy that threatens us with terrorism and nuclear attacks, President Obama’s new designation denies the existence of any enemy. We went from worse to worser.

Correctly defining the enemy is indispensable in any war. In Chapter 4 of Winning the Unwinnable War, Alex Epstein and Yaron Brook write:

To fulfill the promise to defeat the terrorist enemy that struck on 9/11, our leaders would first have to identify who exactly that enemy is and then be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat him.

Who is the enemy that attacked on 9/11? It is not “terrorism”—just as our enemy in World War II was not kamikaze strikes or U-boat attacks. Terrorism is a tactic employed by a certain group for a certain cause. That group and, above all, the cause they fight for are our enemy.

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President Obama has sought to buy off Iran with concessions and talks, so that Tehran will agree to end its nuclear program. This policy of so-called engagement (in reality, appeasement) has quite predictably shipwrecked (the administration is admitting as much). I have been arguing that Obama’s policy of appeasement works to galvanize Tehran in its belligerence, including notably its nuclear program. That appears to be an intensifying trend.

Secretary of State Clinton starts making noises that the time has come to “pressure” Iran with the additional sanctions. Iran scoffs at a bill in Congress that would sanction its fuel supply. And it successfully test fires an enhanced long-range Sejil 2 missile.

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