George Washington’s
advice in his Farewell Address to “Beware foreign entanglements” has always
been well heeded by Americans, to the point of having become a cultural value. That
value is strengthened by our isolation on the American
continent from other worlds, with only friendly Canada and Mexico as our neighbors. That is why
Americans in general are so skeptical of the recent Iran Agreement. It goes
against the American grain to enter into a ten-year entanglement between far
away nations neither of whom really understands or trusts the other. The
problem is compounded when success with this entanglement will involve creating
many more with other nations, some of whom are old antagonists. It is, as they
say, a hard sell.
The Iran Agreement was
reached while I was vacationing in Maine (one of the thousand ways you can tell
my views had absolutely no effect on it), leaving me away from the keyboard
long enough to research and reflect a little. It is, as various analysts have
noted, a subject complex enough that people of sense and good will can easily
differ widely on it, and the cultural bias is against it. My thinking has been
influenced most by an article on it in the Foreign Affairs Journal and by an
excellent discussion on the Charlie Rose Show by Bill Burns, President of the
Carnegie Endowment. The Foreign Affairs article provided an even-handed
discussion of the Agreements strengths and weaknesses, and provided some
interesting insights into some possible ramifications not often discussed. The
Burns discussion provided insights into what it will take to make it work. Both raised the basic question of which was better, a regulated but untrusted Iran or an Iran actively developing nuclear weapons with no monitoring or regulations. Both agreed that the agreement was worthwhile and in fact necessary, and both
emphasized the fragility of it and the urgent work to be done for it to
succeed. And both believed it was an enactment of the long-term Obama policy of
Middle East containment through limiting the danger of really violent
confrontation, a policy with which I agree. So, to start, it involves creating
an entanglement to avoid the dangers of more dangerous ones.
The Foreign Affairs
article emphasized my own view that the Agreement was a holding action to keep
Iranian nuclear development in bounds and well monitored, while awaiting a
generational change in Iranian leadership. The success of that strategy depends
on avoiding ideologically based impulsive action by current Iranian leadership
in the meanwhile. That in turn involves things we and they are not good at,
like avoiding inflammatory rhetoric and perceptions that the other is gaining
control – something like the school yard situation in that neither of us is
good at “plays well with others.” Our political leadership has to reach new
levels of sense and sensitivity. And it will involve building up a web of
understandings and agreements with other interested parties, some of which may
be surprising. For example, both Israel and Saudi Arabia are opposed to Iran’s
influence and activities throughout the Middle East. Nothing promotes
friendship like a common enemy, so those two nations, usually at odds with each
other, may move toward rapprochement and become working partners in containing
Iran. Help in doing so becomes part of our task. Russia and China, who are both
our sometimes adversaries and sometimes working partners, are suspicious of the
intrusion of Iranian-driven Shiite expansionism into their territories, and we
may find ourselves working with them against an expansionist Iran. Iran is, in
the meantime, as interested as we are in curtailing Sunni ISIS violence, and
arrangements with Iran may not always be mutually hostile ones.
Similar ideas were expressed by Bill Burns in his discussion with Charlie Rose. He emphasized our need to maintain international consensus about regulation of the Iranian nuclear program by continued demonstration of our willingness to negotiate peacefully. That consensus is required to build coalitions capable of acting successfully to constrain Iranian nuclear activity. He cast the
challenge as one of purposefully building an infrastructure of containment via coalitions of
nations sharing a common interest. And that is indeed our challenge. We are
used to thinking of international relations as “us versus them” except in times
of active war, when “The Allies” are grudgingly acceptable. In this global
world we must learn to think differently and begin “we versus them” thinking. Old
George to the contrary, other continents are no longer faraway places with whom
entanglements can be avoided.
