I have seen little particularly shocking in the latest Wikileaks. Ab-A$$ collaborates with Israel? Israel and the Arab governments don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon? They don’t like Turkey? Yes this is all reallya shock how to up my blog traffic? Anyway, I trust Yoshie Furuhashie at MRZine to wade through the non-sense and extract a few of the more important nuggets. See below if you wish to trudge through the bureaucratese. A few comments. We see here the ongoing tension between Israeli/American hopes–an Iran “permanently” prevented from nuclear proliferation–and Israeli/American policy, which is more realistic.
They are consistently stymied by something very simple. As the cables say, “In private, GOI officials have acknowledged that several factors would make any attack against Iran a much more difficult mission…Current USG, EU-3, and IAEA focus on Iran also creates a situation that differs from 1981, when the Israelis felt that the international community was ignoring the Iraqi threat. Israelis hope that the others will solve the Iranian problem for them…[Israel] appear[s] to have very real concerns about the feasibility of military strikes against the Iranian nuclear program. Nevertheless, the GOI has shown time and again that it will act militarily if it believes that its security is threatened.”
Obama’s policy is less bellicose than Bush’s was, Hooman Majd writes, but it still founders on a lack of understanding of Iranian national sentiment: “The Iranian government has spent years explaining and defending its nuclear program to its people, to the point where cab drivers in Tehran can recite the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) article that entitles Iran to uranium enrichment, and giving up that right in the face of pressure from foreign powers would be a catastrophic defeat for the Islamic Republic…Sanctions, or any kind of external pressure or even threats of military action, will be, in the end, self-defeating.
In dealing with Iran we have moved from pressure alone to diplomacy plus pressure, all the while including military threats to force the Iranian government to do as it’s told.” The inability to understand that diplomacy must not only be foregrounded but can be the only resolution is a continuing tendency in American policy, mostly due to an entrenched culture of militarism. The old saw, with everything a hammer, all problems come to be seen as a nail, come to mind. America’s declining power to persuade than than coerce–the latter, always somewhat overstated, I think, hiding the fact that American coercive power itself used to be far greater–is part of the problem.
Put differently, America has simply lost its ability to control the foreign policies of mid-level and large states in the global South–like Turkey, Brazil, and Iran, let alone China which simply ignores American dictates. Countries from now on will increasingly go their own way. The question is if whether that fact permeates American political culture before or after the next conflagration.
