WarSclerotic

If a Policy Didn’t Work the First Time, Why Try It Again? » Publications » Family Security Matters.

Foreign policy and national security seem stuck on reruns.

Last weekAhmadinejad, the volatile President of Iran, endorsed new nuclear talks with West even as he declared in a speech in Lebanon that “Israel and its allies are all on their way to ‘hell.’”

U.S. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley declared, “If Iran is ready to hold talks, all they need to do is pick up the phone and set a date.”

As Heritage Foundation regional expert Jim Phillips points out, these developments are nothing we haven’t seen before: “Although the Obama Administration is ever ready to engage in more diplomacy, a resumption of the talks is unlikely to produce much in the way of concrete results.

Tehran long has been willing to talk, but has refused to make any concessions. “Tehran’s diplomatic rope-a-dope strategy always has relied heavily on coy promises of fruitful dialogue that soon decay into diplomatic globaloney,” Phillips concludes.“Tehran hopes that dilatory diplomacy may help create the illusion of progress and forestall future sanctions, buying time for advancing its uranium enrichment efforts.”

The White House strategy on Iran has been wrong from the start. They looked to sanctions as a tool for promoting talks with Tehran. That won’t work. Ahmadinejad may be evil, but he is not stupid. He will continue to toy with the West even as Iran races to build the bomb. Sanctions should be seen as a tool to help topple the regime. By using sanctions in concert with other tools the U.S. could use, America could help to bring freedom to Iran.

Talks in Afghanistan garnered a great deal of attention as well, with new details emerging about U.S. support for negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban. According to the AFP, “The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, US General David Petraeus, admitted Friday that western troops have facilitated the safe passage of Taliban leaders to Kabul for talks with the government.”

Talk of talks is nothing new. Whether these negotiations will lead to something remains to be seen. Negotiations that lead to demobilization and reintegration of the Taliban would be welcome. Talks that are just a pretext for a U.S. withdrawal would be a disaster. Heritage’s Senior Fellow Lisa Curtis authored a detailed study on the right way to attempt reconciliation with the Taliban. As Curtis concluded, “Premature talks with the Taliban leadership could easily backfire. Insurgents are more likely to negotiate if they fear defeat on the battlefield. The Taliban have steadily regained influence in Afghanistan over the past four years—and U.S. and NATO forces must weaken the Taliban on the battlefield before engaging in serious negotiations with the leadership.”

Missile defense was also back in the news last week with reports that NATO intends to establish a missile defense shield with U.S. support. Turkey, a member of NATO, is dithering over whether it will participate. Turkey has been seeking closer relations with Iran and distancing itself from the West.

While the news of NATO commitment to missile defense seems like progress, it is nothing new. NATO endorsed the plans under the Bush Administration for a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama, however, scrapped the plan as a prelude to negotiating a new arms control treaty with Russia. The White House, however, got a bad deal. The treaty, which is currently with the Senate for ratification, is deeply flawed.

Meanwhile, the Administration’s plans for missile defense that would protect against a long-range Iranian attack against the West are still years away. Obama’s system, in fact, is not even scheduled to be in place until after the U.S. intelligence community estimates Iran will have perfected a long-range ballistic missile.

If all this sounds like the White House is on a foreign policy treadmill, slipping further and further behind—well, that’s not far off the mark. The Administration has clearly put foreign affairs on the backburner. The President has a trip to Asia scheduled next month, but by most accounts it is mostly an opportunity to avoid addressing the mid-term elections.

After the mid-terms, the President will have to make a choice. If he stays the current course, he might not get much flack from the opposition, but he runs the risk of being taken advantage of by one of America’s adversaries. A stiff reversal, like the Iran Embassy hostage crisis that sunk Carter’s presidency would put a real crimp in the President’s reelection hopes.

On the other hand, Obama could endorse an even more “progressive” foreign policy. That tack would endear him to his base, but would also set up a number of battles with Republicans in Congress—conflicts that would likely make the President look weak on national security and lose many moderates. A third option would be to adopt a more conservative foreign policy—renewing commitments to missile defense; finishing the job in Afghanistan; pushing back on China, Russia, and Venezuela; pressing for an end to the regime in Iran; protecting rather than trading away U.S. Sovereignty; and winning the long war against transnational terror networks. That approach would find little push back from the Right and take foreign policy off the table in 2012. It would also have the virtue of keeping the nation safe and free.

Foreign policy and national security are apparently on hold in the Obama White House until after the mid-terms. As a result, the Administration’s grade for the week has to be an “I” for incomplete—a mark that might not change for the next several weeks.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is a leading expert in defense affairs, intelligence, military operations and strategy, and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.

This entry was posted on October 22, 2010 at 1:59 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.