The View from Right Field

Ryan Crocker on the United States’s Middle East Policy – and More

On Thursday evening, Ryan Crocker and Danielle Pletka spoke to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on “How Effective Is America’s Middle East Strategy.”¹  Mr. Crocker has been ambassador to, in alphabetical order, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria.  He has also served in Iran, Qatar, and Egypt.  He has been named a Career Ambassador and has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Ms. Pletka is Senior Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Among the things former Ambassador Crocker said (I will also include some things Ms. Pletka said):²

In response to the question what the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy is, former Ambassador Crocker said, “You’re asking the wrong guy.”  He said there is no strategy.  He cannot connect the dots of the various individual things the Administration is doing into a policy and strategy.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal

In an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung weekly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

“America is and remains the superpower, but at the moment it doesn’t recognize multilateral agreements in all areas, as shown by the decision to leave the [Paris] climate accord and now the tariffs that President Trump has levied against Europe.”

I would agree with Chancellor Merkel with respect to the tariffs that the Trump administration has levied (or is threatening to levy, I am not sure which it is) against Europe (and other places).  However, when it comes to the Paris climate accord, and similarly the Iran nuclear agreement, I think Chancellor Merkel is missing an important point regarding the American system.

Withdrawing from the Iran Nuclear Deal

A few comments on President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal:

1. Nobody can say that President Trump didn’t tell us he was going to do this. The only surprise, I suppose, is it took him so long.

2. President Trump’s ability to withdraw the United States from this agreement is a result of the fact President Obama merely signed the agreement himself, instead of submitting it to the Senate for approval. The problem with the “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone”-way of doing things is that your successor has a pen and a phone, too.  And they can use their pen to change whatever you did with your pen.

Is President Trump a Hypocrite For Supporting Iranian Protestors?

Steve Chapman¹ accuses President Trump (and Vice President Pence) of hypocrisy for their tweets and statements supporting the protestors in Iran while they say nothing (or even say positive things) about Saudi Arabia.²  Several comments.  First, if our silence on Saudi Arabia means we can’t say anything about Iran, then we could have never complained about human rights violations in the Soviet Union because we weren’t complaining about Saudi Arabia back then, either.  Is Mr. Chapman really saying that if you don’t complain about human rights violations everywhere, you can’t complain about them anywhere?

Also, if you want to complain about presidents supporting Saudi Arabia despite its human rights violations, you need to criticize not only President Trump, but also Presidents Obama, Bush (43), Clinton, Bush (41), Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, etc.

Mr. Chapman complains that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, of our dealings with Saudi Arabia:

Is the Iran Nuclear Agreement Bad? If So, What Should We Do Now?

If:

• As U.S. Air Force General John Hyten says, Iran is not violating the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”); and
• Iran is also, per General Hyten, “rapidly deploying and developing a whole series of ballistic missiles and testing ballistic missiles at all ranges”; and
• The development of these missiles at most violates “the spirit” of several United Nations resolutions, but not the JCPOA,

then, maybe the Iran nuclear agreement really isn’t all that good of an agreement, as Donald Trump likes to say.  But, while that tells us either those who negotiated it did a poor job or they couldn’t get any more and wound up overselling what the agreement actually accomplished, or both, that doesn’t tell us we should terminate the agreement now.

The Selling of the Iran Agreement. And What It Means for Where We Go Next.

This week’s addition to the Obama administration valedictory is another lengthy article in The New York Times Magazine: “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru.”  This one is by David Samuels, and it profiles Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication.

As with Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic on “The Obama Doctrine” and Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy” (also in The New York Times Magazine), the article is full of information and juicy tidbits.  Whether it is praiseworthy or damning will probably depend on your point of view. 

What is most interesting to me, however, are the connections between this article and Jeffery Goldberg’s, especially what those connections say about President Obama’s worldview and how they explain the Administration’s policies, especially in the Middle East.  While different people are doing the writing and different people are being written about, there is a real consistency between the two articles. 

Iran Nuclear Agreement: An Update and an Apology

With the harshest sanctions on Iran having been lifted, and with the release of five Americans being held by Iran (admittedly in exchange for the United States granting clemency to seven Iranians and dismissing charges against fourteen others), President Obama said yesterday that the nuclear agreement with Iran is proof that a “smart, patient and disciplined” approach is better than war. 

That is obvious.  President George H.W. Bush proved that again and again.  Germany united and East Europe free – all without war – is proof of that.  As was President Reagan’s agreement with the Soviet Union to remove all intermediate range nuclear missile from Europe.

However, George H.W. Bush is also proof that sometimes, unfortunately, diplomacy doesn’t work.  When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, President Bush tried diplomacy.  But it didn’t work.  It took force to get Iraq out Kuwait.  (Most Democrats back then voted against the authorization to use force against Iraq {even though the United Nations Security Council had already approved it}.)  They said we should give sanctions a chance.  In that regard. regardless of what you think of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, approved by a lot more Democrats than the number who voted for the use of force in 1991, Iraq’s decade-long failure to comply to UN resolutions after 1991, which was at least part of the reason for the 2003 invasion, showed that a year or two of sanctions was not going to do the job.)

Is “No Boots on the Ground” in Iraq the New “If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Keep Your Doctor”?

In 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously (or was it “infamously”) said that under his new healthcare plan, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”  Obviously, it wasn’t true.  It is pretty clear that President Obama either knew or should have known this statement wasn’t true when he said it, which is pretty much the definition of lying.  The President, however, wouldn’t admit it.  Here, for example, is one of his attempts to explain what he really meant when he said it.

Which brings up the question of President Obama’s pledge that there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq.  Now that we have troops undertaking combat missions in Iraq – and people dying, what about this pledge?  Was it a lie, too, like “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?  I don’t think so, though I am not sure if it helps all that much. 

I think President Obama really didn’t want to send combat troops back to Iraq and he was not planning on doing it.  What happened, however, was that the situation in Iraq kept getting worse and worse.  Eventually, he had to send combat troops. 

Iran’s Ballistic Missile Tests: Is Another Red Line Disappearing?

Remember President Obama’s “red line” on Syria’s use of chemical weapons.  It looks like he may be in the process of doing it again.  Since the nuclear agreement with Iran was signed, Iran has launched two ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions against such tests.  In one case, even a United Nations panel said Iran violated the Security Council resolution.

Senators, including even senators who voted for the nuclear agreement with Iran, have called for the United States to issue new sanctions against Iran because of these tests.  Finally, on Wednesday, the Administration notified Congress that it would be imposing new sanctions against Iran because of the violations.  They wouldn’t be big, just financial sanctions against a few companies and individuals.  But Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that any new sanctions on Iran, whether relating to the nuclear agreement or anything else, would violate the nuclear agreement.

Here’s Why Iran Won’t Violate the Nuclear Agreement – Or At Least Why We Won’t Say They Are

An editorial in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune notes that, while negotiations with Iran were going on, Secretary of State Kerry said Iran was going to have to disclose its past work on building nuclear weapons, i.e., weaponization, as part of any deal.

When the agreement was finally announced, the International Atomic Energy Agency was delegated the job of finding this out.

But the Obama administration is now hedging.  The Administration is saying it doesn’t need Iran to say what it has been doing.  “[W]e believe we already know about Iran’s past activities,” it claims.  This from intelligence agencies that have gotten virtually nothing right about the Middle East for decades.