According to the New York Times, in early June the Israeli air force carried out an exercise simulating an attack on Iran’s nuclear development facilities.  The piece, relying on the interpretation of unnamed Pentagon sources, claims that more than 100 Israeli aircraft (F-15s, F-16s, and rescue helicopters) flew 900 miles as part of the mission; roughly the distance they would need to travel in attacking Iran.  Israeli officials refused comment on the specifics of the operation.

The speculation appears to be that the whole thing was conducted for the benefit of the United States and its Western allies, as a means of communicating Israel’s willingness to use force should the efforts to peacefully halt Iran’s nuclear program come to grief.  Although, Iran has taken notice as well.

For Israel, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran-whose president rhapsodizes about wiping the Jewish state off the map-is dire one.  However, Tel Aviv is unlikely to follow through on its saber rattling with any direct military action, at least not any time soon.  In fact, doing so would be a very bad idea.  Here’s why:

• Foreign intelligence services have done a respectable job of tracking Iran’s nuclear program, but the fact is that no one knows where all of its components are.  The program is dispersed throughout Iran’s more than 1.6 million square kilometers of territory.  Air strikes could conceivably damage the program, but probably wouldn’t be able to destroy it.  Moreover, an attack could actually prompt a crash program to acquire a nuclear bomb at all costs and hasten the emergence of a threat.  Israel’s 1986 raid on the Osirik reactor sped up Iraq’s nuclear program to the point where it had nearly finished a bomb when the Gulf War broke out in 1991.
• Iran cannot directly retaliate against Israel in the event of hostilities; it has almost no weapons that could reach the Levant and those few that may be able to (assuming they are functional and deployed) would risk the ire of a nuclear armed state.  It could, however, orchestrate serious retaliatory strikes through Hezbullah in Lebanon; a terrorist organization with which it has close ties.  This response would be ideal for Iran, giving it plausible deniability in regard to attacks on Israel, thus allowing to keep its place an “innocent” victim of Israeli aggression.
• Finally, bombing Iran would have political repercussions within that country, providing fodder for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hard-line allies.  As it stands, Ahmadinejad’s confederates fared poorly in Iran’s March parliamentary elections; a consequence of popular resentment towards their ineffectual economic policies and constant bickering with the West.  Attacking Tehran would almost certainly galvanise public opinion against Israel and the West, handing the tough-talking conservatives a new lease on political life.

These considerations would come into play if any Western power attacked Iran (immediate terrorist retaliation against Israel as an American proxy is a possibility, as well as strikes against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz).  At the same time, it is certainly not in Israel’s interest to have an avowedly Islamist state acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.  Iran’s nuclear program is a problem of immense difficulty for the international community, but at this point, the risks of a military solution are simply far too high to justify the meager returns of such action…if there are any at all.

UPDATE:  Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warns against using force on Iran, saying that such action could turn the Middle East into a “ball of fire.”

As a student of international affairs, I make it my business to follow some of the more significant publications in the field; particularly the official journal of the secret Illuminati world government, Foreign Affairs.  (For those readers who aren’t  John Birch Society alumni, the publisher is oft unjustly maligned Council on Foreign Relations.)

Anyway, when I opened my mailbox and took a look at the July/August edition of the journal, I was taken aback by the feature essay, penned by our illustrious Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and entitled “The New American Realism.” (At least, that is what is printed on the cover page, the formal title is “Rethinking the National Interest: American Realism for a New World,” hearkening back to her 2000 campaign essay “Promoting the National Interest.“)  As I gazed incredulously at the bold-faced lettering and its soft blue background, I thought to myself “…’Saddam Hussein shelters al Qaeda’…’greeted as liberators’…’ending tyranny in our world’…do Dr. Rice and I have the same understanding of realism?”

According to Hans Morgenthau, one of the progenitors of classical realist theory in international relations:

For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them meaning through reason. It assumes that the character of a foreign policy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts. Thus we can find out what statesmen have actually done, and from the foreseeable consequences of their acts we can surmise what their objectives might have been. (Emphasis added.)

Morgenthau, of course, addresses the issue of a realist theory of politics, but it is generally understood that the praxis which grows out of that theory must be similarly fact based.  In other words, you get the facts (reality), think about your options (forseeable consequences), and take whatever action you think most likely to serve your interests within the consrtaints of political reality. To borrow from another great realist, “politics is the art of the possible.”

The strange thing about this “new American realism” proffered by Secretary Rice is that it is seemingly bereft of reality.  It is, among other things, self-contradictory:

For the United States, promoting democratic development must remain a top priority. Indeed, there is no realistic alternative that we can — or should — offer to influence the peaceful evolution of weak and poorly governed states. The real question is not whether to pursue this course but how.

[...] Democracy, it is said, cannot be imposed, particularly by a foreign power. This is true but beside the point. It is more likely that tyranny has to be imposed.

I’ll grant that there is a fine line between “promote” and “impose”, but my sense is that the current ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq lean more toward the latter.  And tyranny is supposedly the unnatural political system?  I have no love for authoritarianism, but I do recognize the fact that it has been the predominant form of governance for the last 10,000 years of human civilization.  However loathsome tyranny may be, to simply dismiss it as a political aberration is disingenuous.

On the Middle East:

For six decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, a basic bargain defined the United States’ engagement in the broader Middle East: we supported authoritarian regimes, and they supported our shared interest in regional stability. After September 11, it became increasingly clear that this old bargain had produced false stability. There were virtually no legitimate channels for political expression in the region. But this did not mean that there was no political activity. There was — in madrasahs and radical mosques. It is no wonder that the best-organized political forces were extremist groups. And it was there, in the shadows, that al Qaeda found the troubled souls to prey on and exploit as its foot soldiers in its millenarian war against the “far enemy.”

One response would have been to fight the terrorists without addressing this underlying cause. Perhaps it would have been possible to manage these suppressed tensions for a while. Indeed, the quest for justice and a new equilibrium on which the nations of the broader Middle East are now embarked is very turbulent. But is it really worse than the situation before?

Actually, yes, it is.  Under President Bush’s leadership the United States has traded “false stability” in the Near East for outright instability by unleashing the underlying political fricitons between Shia and Sunni Muslims, eliminating all the regional checks on Iran’s power, and backing an aggressive Israeli stance toward Hamas and Hezbollah that has proved counter-productive.

And those authoritarian regimes we used to back?  Well, they’re still in place; happily presiding over their people from Cairo, Riyadh, and Jordan.  Essentially, the only Bush accomplishment in the Middle East was moving the bulk of America’s regional military presence out of Saudi Arabia (and away from Mecca and Medina) and to Qatar; an action that probably could have been taken without all the other fuss.

On Palestine:

[...] The Palestinian people must ultimately make a choice about which future they desire, and it is only democracy that gives them that choice and holds open the possibility of a peaceful way forward to resolve the existential question at the heart of their national life. The United States, Israel, other states in the region, and the international community must do everything in their power to support those Palestinians who would choose a future of peace and compromise. When the two-state solution is finally realized, it will be because of democracy, not despite it.

Except that in 2006 Palestinians did exercise democracy and they voted for the party of war, Hamas.  But this didn’t count, according to Rice, because Hamas proved itself incapable of governing by, well, being Hamas (which usually entails blowing things up).  Thus, the U.S., Israel, and the secular Palestinian leadership, Fatah, refused to recognize the election results and general chaos ensued, with Hamas seizing control of the Gaza Strip and Fatah holding the West Bank.  Now, it looks as if even Israel may have recongized the unsavory politcal reality of Hamas’ popular appeal.

I could go on, but I think I have effectively communicated the tenor of the Secretary’s piece.  Essentially, President Bush and Secretary Rice have looked at the world and found grave threats to American security that can only be attenuated by carrying the banner of democracy to the far corners of the globe.  The only faults with this argument are that the threats are exagerated, the solution is unsound, and democracy is usually won only after several decades or more of gradual exapnsion of civil and political rights, won at great cost by courageous advocates of liberty in their native country – not by invasion.  But that’s old realism talking; Secretary Rice has moved beyond her foreign policy education to a new plane of (un)reality.

Who would have thought that the Near East’s beacon of secularism could be united with the region’s most notorious theocracy by something as simple as crushing another people’s aspiration to statehood:

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and Iran have been carrying out coordinated strikes against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, a top Turkish general said Thursday. It was the first confirmation by a military official of Iranian-Turkish cooperation in the fight against the rebels.

[...]

“We are sharing intelligence with Iran, we are talking, we are coordinating,” General Basbug said at a security conference in Istanbul, CNN-Turk television reported. “When they start an operation, we do, too.”

Of course, the story makes no mention of protests on the part of the Iraqi government in Baghdad, but then why would it?  Iraq’s state of disarray leaves it basically powerless in the face of its neighbors, capable of mere tongue-lashings even when Turkish ground troops violate its sovereignty. It is, for the time being, utterly dependent on the United States to protect its interests in such cases and Washington has no sympathy for the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) either.

Moreover, Iraq itself has little desire to lose territory to Kurdish separatism.  Though it would certainly rather not have Turkish and Iranian troops operating on its soil, such incursions are arguably less of threat to Iraqi security than the prospect of a large scale Kurdish secession.

President Bush recently wrapped up a Middle Eastern foray meant to pay homage to Israel’s 60th year of statehood, prod along the Palestinian peace process, and beg Saudi Arabia for oil. So what did he choose for a grand finale? Another insipid call for Arab democracy, devoid of any comprehension of the enormous challenges such a project entails nor the consequences for public diplomacy of such an exhortation when viewed along side his laudatory address to the Israeli Knesset.

Leaving aside the practical and philosophical problems of Bush’s democracy crusade for a moment, let’s first consider how his remarks played in the Middle East. After one journalist pressed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the likely perception of Bush’s words as further evidence of a pro-Israel bias in administration policy, she responds:

SECRETARY RICE: [...] I haven’t heard how they’re viewing it. I know that these allies know they have a very strong ally in President Bush. You know, it would have been interesting to see if that was a view from Iraqis, for instance, who’ve been liberated from Saddam Hussein. [...]

And these are discussions that the President and I and all of us have with Arab leaders all the time. The Middle East needs change. It needs reform. This is not the first time the President has said it. It’s not the last time that he’s going to say it. We do it in a spirit of respect for them and for their traditions, but also in an understanding that when you have a region that’s producing fewer patents than South Korea alone, you have a problem. But it’s not just something the United States has said. You remember, the Arab Human Development reports that talk about the need for change.

But, you know, the President isn’t pro-this or pro — the President is pro-democracy and pro-peace — and pro-peace. And he has stood for a Palestinian state, he’s pressed, through Annapolis, to bring together the coalition of states that can support it, and now he’s pressing both sides to come to an agreement. And that’s being in favor of both sides, because both sides need a say.

There are some in the Arab world who beg to differ with Secretary rice:

“The president was himself, finally. Maybe because this is the end of his political career,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and now a lecturer at Birzeit University. “This is actually him. This is George Bush the human being, not the politician. . . . I always thought he was a Christian Zionist and a fundamentalist ideologue.” [...]

Hani Masri, a Palestinian columnist for the newspaper Al Ayyam, said, “Bush is trying to wash his hands from his promise. All his Middle East policies have failed, in Iraq, Lebanon and now here. So he tries to appear that he is fighting for democracy just for the sake of his legacy.”

Once more, the President has shown himself to be oblivious to the impact of his words on Arab, and especially Palestinian, public opinion; something that will have to change if he really expects to make progress in brokering a settlement between Israel and Palestine.

Bush has also once more demonstrated a profound historical ignorance in pressing for the rapid democratization of the Middle East. This is not because “Arabs aren’t ready” for democracy; it is because Arab states are not ready for democracy. The legal, social, and political institutions upon which liberal democracy is dependent, by and large, do not yet exist in the Near East. Oft forgotten are the centuries of accumulated common law, civil liberties, and gradual enfranchisement that led to democracy in the English speaking world.

The Middle East has yet to experience this process, or rather its own indigenous version of such. Consequently, when democracy is imposed prematurely, the result is a country in which majority political factions use the levers of government to bolster their own power and repress their opponents, just as the ruling Shia factions have done in Iraq. And, of course, there is the old problem of democratic outcomes that aren’t in line with American interests, such as the victories of Hamas in the Palestinian elections and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s 2005 vote. Strange how there’s been so little White House criticism of the virtual repudiation of those results…

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s offensive against Shia strongman Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army shows no signs of letting up and is increasingly drawing in American forces, according to the Washington Post. U.S. armored forces, spearheaded by Stryker APCs and backed up by attack helicopters have been dueling with militias in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.  Americans are also increasingly involved in supporting the Iraqi army as it fights in Basra, coming to the rescue when the Iraqi’s are in danger of being overrun. Word has also come out that more than 1000 Iraqi soldiers and police either sat out the fight or deserted, prompting a worried Maliki to rush in reinforcements  This as the Iraqi security forces are supposed to be demonstrating their self-sufficiency. .

Meanwhile, questions are being raised about why Maliki undertook this offensive in the first place.  This might sound like a rather odd line of questioning, but it is surprisingly apropos since the Prime Minister didn’t bother to consult with the U.S. at all before launching the attack, so we don’t really know the answer.  A growing number of observers have concluded that Maliki has “fired the first shot in the Iraqi elections” and is seeking to liquidate a major rival in Iraq’s Shi’te community, namely Sadr.  This view has been lent some credence by the PM’s threat to freeze Sadr out of the elections if he does not disarm.

In summation, the situation appears to be that the elected head of government in Iraq has used state security forces to further his personal political goals by eliminating a major rival; either through combat, or by forcing him to give up his militia (and thus the source of his power).  So much for political reconciliation.  Not that Sadr is the kind of leader you’d want in charge of Iraq, but it would have been nice if Maliki had tried approaching the problem with a little more tact, a lot more cooperation, and significantly fewer 5.45×39mm rounds.

In Washington, there is a daily ritual that occurs along side other traditional happenings like the opening prayer in Congress and the President’s morning nap (supervised by the Director of National Intelligence). It is the State Department’s daily press briefing. The briefing is a chance for reporters to get the official stance state straight from the horse’s mouth; which, in this case, would be the mouth of Sean McCormack.

Like its White House counterpart, the State Department press briefing is characterized by probing, incisive questions (ex. “There was a question of why the briefing is so early today, and I said perhaps it’s because the Red Sox are on TV. [Laughter.]“) and carefully worded, evasive answers (ex. “No, that’s tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m., the Red Sox begin their defense of their World Series title and begin the baseball season.”). Unlike many White House press briefings, the State Department briefing is incredibly boring; to the point that a self-proclaimed C-Span junkie like myself (who usually follows committee hearings the way most people follow Lost) dozes off by the fifth or sixth question. I decided it might be fun to take a few points from yesterday’s briefing and recast them in more punchy language while also trying to decipher the reality behind the vague, diplomatic wording. So here it goes.

Here, Mr. McCormack addresses the ongoing talks between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government initiated at the Annapolis Conference on Middle East peace:

QUESTION: Can you put — we’re now a good four months into the sort of post-Annapolis period. Can you put anything in that period that (a) demonstrates that either side is meeting their Roadmap obligations and (b) that you would argue constitutes material, substantive progress toward reaching an agreement of some sort by the end of this year, as the President hopes to do?

MR. MCCORMACK: In terms of Roadmap obligations, I guess I would just refer back to what the Secretary herself has said on this, and that is that each side needs to do more, that they haven’t done enough, and I expect that that will be a topic of her conversation when she goes out on the next trip as well as the trip after that. This is going to be something that we work with both sides in detail on.

General Fraser recently had the first trilateral meeting, I think, last – was it last week or the week before – with bringing together all the sides. I think it’s fair to say that we are still in the process of getting each side to focus on what they need to do and get out of the mode of pointing the finger at the other guy and talking about what they need to do. The focus needs to be on each side examining where it stands in terms of its obligations and what it is doing to meet its own obligations and worry less about what the other guy is doing or not doing [...]

It’s our assessment, though, in talking to both sides that they are making progress. And they both have abided by a commitment to the other side that they are not going to talk about where they stand in negotiations. They are not going to do a blow-by-blow in public. We think that’s – we think that that is a wise decision at this point and, certainly, it’s not for us, then, to talk about what it is that we might have heard from each side in terms of where they stand in the political process.

First, we notice that McCormack refers constantly to the statements others have made, especially the Secretary of State. Moderately bothersome perhaps, but hey…he is the spokesman. The other thing we notice right away is that he doesn’t give us any specific evidence to back up his claim that things are going well. Just that both sides are making “good progress”…meaning they aren’t attempting to slaughter one another en masse at the moment. Sure, there might be the odd rocket attack on Israel or an IDF shooting near Gaza, but as long as nothing so horrifically shocking happens to inflame public opinion against even sitting at the table with the other side, talks continue. Progress. (Sadly, there’s some truth to this…)

On the recent scandal involving State employees snooping on presidential candidate’s passport files:

Okay, yes, lots of hands, yeah. Elise.

QUESTION: More on the passports. Just one quick follow-up on that. Can you say whether typically, passport files, in addition to the application, also have when the passport was – when and where the passport was used?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t think that – I’ll check for you, Elise, but I don’t believe that that is – that is in that –

QUESTION: In that –

MR. MCCORMACK: — that passport file, yeah, because it’s not the function of that file. We don’t keep a record of people entering into foreign countries. That’s not part of what we would do, as far as I know.

QUESTION: Okay. And then –

MR. MCCORMACK: Like I said, to –

QUESTION: Entry into U.S. Can you check –

MR. MCCORMACK: Entry, that would – again, that’s not something that we keep. That’s something – that’s a separate function of the Department of Homeland Security. You can ask them what records they maintain in terms of people’s entry and exit into the United States, but that is not a function that we perform in terms of monitoring entry and exit to the United States.

An awkward question. McCormack is clearly groping for a dodge on this one and then-yes! That old favorite of officialdom, “the passing of the buck”. Unfortunately, the spokesman doesn’t know exactly what kind of information the perpetrators were able to see because the labyrinthine construction of bureaucracy charges another agency with that. Better go talk to DHS…

Finally, to the Tibetan protests against Chinese rule:

QUESTION: On Tibet, I know the Secretary spoke a little bit earlier this morning, but there’s been a lot of talk about the Olympics and whether there should be some kind of boycotting because of China’s actions towards Tibet. Do you think that the U.S. is sending the wrong message to China by attending the Olympics at such a high level?

MR. MCCORMACK: No.

QUESTION: President Bush is supposed to be attending.

MR. MCCORMACK: No. We’ve made our views clear on this. We believe that the Olympics is an important international sporting event. We’re going to treat it as such. And we have consistently and will consistently urge China to put its best face forward, to allow expansion of basic human freedoms, whether that’s the ability to report on events in China or to speak out in a peaceful manner to voice one’s own opinion in China, whether or not to be able to worship as an individual sees fit.

So we will – we have done that. We’ll continue to do that. And we would only counsel China that, given the fact that the Olympics is such a high-profile international sporting event, that there will be the world’s attention on China for those couple of weeks in August when they host the Olympics, and that that is an important opportunity for China and that they should take up the opportunity to put their best face forward to the world.

Here we find a long-time favorite of official State Department language: thinly veiled realpolitik. Simply put, the U.S. relationship with China is strategically crucial for a number of reasons, both economic and political. Thus, America has to attend China’s big coming out party at the Summer Olympics, otherwise Beijing will get upset and stop answering our calls or talking to us about exchange rate policy or something of the like. The problem is that Americans generally don’t like to see oppressive governments deploying paramilitary goons to crack the heads of protesters, however raucous. The solution, as is often the case, is to pay lip service to the idea of human rights (because we know China will put its “best face forward” if we just ask) while pursuing American national interests in the realm of policy.

Of course, as a student of international relations, I recognize that there is really little else for the U.S. to do, however galling this may be. I sometimes like to think that if the government invested more time educating the citizens of the United States about foreign policy and what American power can realistically achieve, we could dispense with this charade of discussing policy in such formulaic terms. Yet, I fear that is a might too idealistic…

Big Trouble in Little Tibet

It’s been a great week for China watchers everywhere…unless your vantage point happens be somewhere on the Tibetan Plateau. Agitated Tibetans took to the streets this week in protest against the policies imposed upon them by the communist Chinese government in Beijing. The Chinese response was tragic, yet predictable, and exercised with all the finesse of a raging mountain gorilla. Police and paramilitary units descended on the Tibetan Autonomous Region to quash the protesters, leaving an unknown number dead (perhaps a dozen or more) and many others in state custody.

Of course, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, had a ready explanation for the widespread unrest. It was all orchestrated by that nefarious mastermind of international intrigue, Tenzin Gyatso; better known as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Yes, how could we have not seen it? It was the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Lamist Buddhism that sparked the revolt, not state restrictions on religious worship, demographic dilution by Han Chinese through official settlement policies, or outright discrimination. That tricky, bald bastard.

Any attempt at achieving true autonomy for Tibet, let alone independence, is almost certainly a doomed enterprise. The PRC is dead set on maintaining its territorial integrity and there are a lot more Chinese with a lot more guns than there are Tibetans. No amount of protest, international scolding, or meditation by Richard Gere is going to change that.

I am, however, curious to see how these events will play out domestically in China. In spite of the government’s best efforts to control internal news coverage of the protests, China is too wired today to keep out reports from the international media. Will this create outrage in China proper? I doubt it. Ever since Tiananmen Square in 1989, Americans seem to think of the Chinese multitude as yearning for freedom within the oppressive constraints of the state. But in reality, Chinese society has become increasingly nationalistic in recent years and many (though not all) have done quite well from its economic boom. Why rock the boat? In fact, why should the Han Chinese reaction to injustice against Tibetans be any different from white America’s reaction to the L.A. riots or the Katrina debacle? I could be wrong, but I’m not holding my breath for any popular Chinese outcry on Tibet’s behalf.

News and Notes

• Saudi clerics: “So wait, now we aren’t supposed to call for the ritual beheading of heretics and infidels? Time for another sermon revision…”
• Holy crap, Canada has state secrets? And an “elite counter terrorism squad”!? And a “Department of National Defense”?!?
• If you’re going to spy on someone, it’s probably not a good idea to carry your CIA buddy’s business card with you at all times.
• Do I sense a diplomatic cat fight coming on?