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Let’s Make a Deal, Diplomatically Speaking

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Leslie Gelb’s op-ed “In the End, Every President Talks to the Bad Guys,” in the April 27 Washington Post has been one of the very few recent articles in that newspaper worth reading. Not that the title is accurate – W hasn’t thought that this – or any other – “rule” of diplomacy applies to him – at least as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, most previous rational and successful US chief executives learned that to achieve America’s international goals and objectives they needed to talk to the “bad guys.” Most figured this out by the beginning of their second terms. “Standing resolute” in ever increasing isolation just didn’t and still doesn’t cut it.

Roosevelt and Churchill talked to Stalin during World War II, for instance, not because they wanted to – but because Soviet support against the Nazis was imperative for their own countries’ survival. That was an alliance of necessity, not of convenience or choice. Think about it, even staunch anti-Communist Ronald Reagan talked to Mikhail Gorbachev thus helping end the Cold War.

Gelb is a power realist. He understands that to move American interests ahead US administrations sometimes need to deal with not nice regimes. I agree with much of what he has written in his op-ed.

My following ten rules of diplomatic “engagement” therefore, are based, at least partially on his recommendations.

Rule #1: It’s usually a bad idea to threaten or attempt to oust leaders from their perches of power. People – like chickens – do not like to be removed from their roosts. They squawk loudly, or worse, when it happens to them. John and Bobby Kennedy might not have been met with assassins bullets if, for instance, they had not been so aggressively anti-Castro.

Rule #2: In reality, it means achieving an understanding to “live and let live.” This requires putting the brakes on even the threat to unleash the B52s and the Stealth Bombers.

Rule #3: It means not promising a political opposition more support than the US can, in fact, deliver. Think of the tragic consequences in Hungary in 1956.

Rule #4: From Gelb’s perspective setting preconditions before being willing to come to the negotiating table is primarily a recipe for no negotiations. Right on.

Rule #5: As far as I’m concerned although Gelb would disagree, name calling normally doesn’t work well either. It’s all too reminiscent of school yard taunts – threatening with empty words can be hazardous to the health. What is far more effective is the Reagan negotiations mantra “trust but verify.” I believe this has become “monitoring and verification” in current State Department lingo. The Bush administration should be doing it in spades in the Middle East as well as what it is already doing with the North Koreans.

Rule #6: Exaggerating threats is a really bad idea. This administration - perhaps because of its own predilection to use the hammer rather than engage at the chess board - is all too willing to take the worst case scenario at face value as an excuse to expand and continue the war in the Middle East. If I remember correctly, the military, in particular, always puts forth the worst case scenario so that it doesn’t get caught short. This is not to say that I agree with Rumsfeld’s failed charge-of-the-light-brigade warfare doctrine, but I think it is a huge mistake to trump up unsubstantiated threats from an adversary that foremost plump up the military's already humongous budget to be spent on ineffectual and questionable ends.

Rule #7: Listen to and use your experts who understand the culture, speak the language, know how to negotiate, have worked in the country or at least region, and intimately understand the disputed subject matter. Above all, don’t rely on third party intelligence, ideologues or questionable defectors for your information. They have their own agendas which have led and will lead the US down a cactus-filled garden path, or worse.

Rule #8: Show respect for your adversary but ensure that the leaders understand that you require equal respect. While this means putting the military toys in the closet, it also does not, by the way, mean “kow-towing” Chinese fashion.

Rule #9: Bilateral and multilateral negotiations take on different characteristics. The latter are far more complex and the rules subtle and archane. Both take time to learn but both can result in surprising and unexpected positive byproducts.

Rule #10: Make sure your own house is clean before accusing or sanctioning others for their domestic misdeeds, bad governance or poor behavior. After W, whoever wins the presidency will need to embark upon full scale renovations at home – not just engage in the usual spring cleaning at the top. This means fundamental changes in policies, institutions, attitudes and people.

Motivation for a Syrian Reactor and Israel's Strike?

by CKR

Let us, for the moment, assume that the Syrians were building a reactor at al Kibar. They seem to have been doing it for a long time, since the late nineties.

Somewhere, in my intensive reading on the subject over the weekend, someone suggested that the Syrians might have been building a reactor as a bargaining chip with Israel. I can't recall who made the suggestion, so I apologize for not linking.

Let me expand on that suggestion and its implications.

Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel in the 1967 war and would like to get them back. Since 1967, it has become clear that Israel has built about 100-200 nuclear weapons and has delivery vehicles for them, particularly for its neighborhood. Negotiations by Israel with its neighbors for peace have been up and down, mainly down, since 1967. So it would be reasonable for a neighbor who wanted something back to consider developing a bargaining chip.

A reactor could be used as a bargaining chip in at least two ways: toward the return of the Golan Heights, or toward a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. In fact, in 2003, it was Syria that called for the formation of such a zone. Arab states have been issuing such calls for some long time, no doubt partly to show up Israel's hypocrisy and even scores. The calls are routinely rejected by Israel and the United States.

Failing such bargaining, Syria would have the option of producing plutonium in their bargaining chip. So it would look like a win-win with the small problem of building the bargaining chip being against Syria's obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Last week's CIA briefing claimed that the United States has known about the project since the late nineties, so we may assume that Israel did, too.

We now learn that Israel and Syria have been preparing, with Turkey's help, for talks on the return of the Golan Heights for about a year now. We might look to what was happening in those talks for the timing of Israel's strike on al Kibar. Destroying one of your opponent's bargaining chips is one way to prepare for such talks.

Missing E-Mails: Partly Solved

by CKR

A month ago, I asked for help in tracking down e-mails gone missing in Northern New Mexico. I have found part of the problem.

Last summer, I gave my old laptop to a young relative, four years old to be exact. My intention was for him to have a game box of his own so that his mother could use her computer for other things. The old laptop became the living-room computer for the family.

I had deleted my word-processor files and other potentially incriminating evidence, but I neglected to delete my e-mail account. So when the new owner's parents tried to use e-mail on what was now the living-room computer, they would receive my e-mails.

I sent them instructions on how to delete my account, and I haven't missed an e-mail that I'm aware of for a week or so now.

But that doesn't account for the e-mails I sent that were lost or the e-mails between two other parties. I think it's most of my problem, though.

Many thanks to those who sent me suggestions.

An Historical Note on Reacting to Catastrophe: Jeremiah Wright and Jonathan Edwards

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Since the response to the now infamous “the chickens have come home to roost” sermon has been hysterical and irrational in the extreme, I thought it might be useful to share a snippet I’ve just come across in a book I’m reading. The book is a recent biography of the great American theologian and philosopher Jonathan Edwards by George M. Marsden. Edwards, as students of American literature may recall, was the preacher who delivered the famous sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” whose gist was: if you don’t get your act together, you are going to spend a pretty nasty eternity burning in hell. The dominant image was that of a spider being held over a flame by a furious patriarch.

Edwards was a Puritan and a Calvinist and he believed in heavy duty soul-searching of the sort in which deep-rooted guilt and inescapable personal responsibility play major roles. He’d hate my putting it this way, but Edwards believed in karma big time. Actions have reactions. Events have repercussions. Chickens, etc., etc.

The congregational network in which Jonathan Edwards played his powerful polemical role is also the very church that is ancestral to the United Church of Christ. On 9/11 Jeremiah Wright was pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and he preached a thundering sermon afterwards. He wanted his congregation to do some serious soul-searching. Whether or not Barak Obama was in a Trinity pew when that sermon was preached, he was a member of that congregation, and that sermon may, unjustly, be the undoing of his presidential aspirations.

In fact, Wright’s reaction to 9/11 would have made perfect sense to Calvinistic eighteenth century America. Had he said anything less, he would have been shirking his duty, which brings me to my snippet.

When General Edward Braddock was defeated on his way to Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) in 1755 during the French and Indian War, the catastrophe was seen as apocalyptic by the English colonists. An entire column of Red Coats had been slaughtered. The future of the English enterprise in North America was doubtful.

One of Jonathan Edwards’s daughters was married to Aaron Burr, who was President of the College of New Jersey, a religiously conservative theological seminary that would evolve into the Princeton University we know today. When the news of the French victory reached her, Esther Edwards Burr wrote in great consternation to a friend in Boston:

O the dreadful, awful news! General Braddock is killed and his army is defeated....Oh my dear, what will, what must become of us! O our sins, our sins—they are grown up to the very heavens, and call aloud for vengeance, the vengeance that the Lord has sent—‘Tis just, ‘tis right.

Esther’s lamentations are perfectly consistent with her father’s preaching. In short, what Wright preached that day in Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is as American as apple pie—or Jonathan Edwards.

As for Jonathan Edwards: A Life, I highly recommend it, if you're into philosophy, theology history—and tales of bang up small town squabbling.

Thursday Teeny Tiny Blogging

by CKR

The first flowers of spring around here, at least those that were here before I was, tend to be very small indeed. They are none the less interesting for all that, and a welcome signal of more to come.

Both of these seem to be crucifers. I've posted their photos before and tried to google up identities, but I haven't been able to find what they are. I guess they're not showy enough for the wildflower books. Both kinds of blossoms are only 2-3 mm across. The yellow ones form a nice mat, which is now up to maybe 5-6 cm in its longer dimension, and the purple ones rise from a rosette of leaves on a stem maybe 20 cm tall.