The New Republic

One word, Benjamin: jujitsu.

Or chess, if you prefer. The people who gave the world _shah mat'_ (kill the shah / "checkmate") know a thing or two about chess.  Time for us to up our game, esp since there's not a chance in hell we can find or take out the ayatollahs' missile sites.

- teplukhin2you

November 26, 2007 at 8:51pm

Negotiations with Iran would not work in persuading Ahmadinejad or Khamenei to change course. But let's say a new President decided to go to Tehran. Wouldn't that be a bit different than the Bush Administration sending someone? A theoretical President Obama would have a clean slate, thus not jeopardizing any previous stance of his. Much of the Iranian public would actually be encouraged at such a gesture. If the talks do nothing, we can always go back to what we have now. If we're serious about doing everything in our power not to let Iran get nukes, this is one more option we have.

- rozenson

November 26, 2007 at 8:53pm

Obama Is Right on Iran

Talking with Tehran may help us wage the wars we need to fight.

BY SHELBY STEELE

Monday, November 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

After a recent Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama proclaimed that were he to become president, he would talk directly even to America's worst enemies. One could imagine President Obama as a kind of superhero taking off in Air Force One for Tehran, there to be greeted on the tarmac by the villainous Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Was this a serious foreign policy proposal or simply a campaign counterpunch? Hillary Clinton had already held up this idea as evidence of Mr. Obama's naiveté. Wasn't he just pushing back, displaying his commitment to "diplomacy"--now the most glamorous word in the Democratic "antiwar" lexicon?

Whatever Mr. Obama's intent, history has given his idea a rather bad reputation. Neville Chamberlain springs to mind as a man who was famously seduced into the wishful thinking that seems central to the idea of talking to one's enemies. Today few Americans--left or right--would be comfortable with direct talks between our president and a character like Mr. Ahmadinejad. Wouldn't such talk only puff up extremist leaders and make America into a supplicant?

On its face, Mr. Obama's idea seems little more than a far-left fantasy. But perhaps it looks this way because we are viewing it through too narrow a conception of warfare. We tend to think of our wars as miniature versions of World War II, a war of national survival. But since then we have fought wars in which our national survival was not immediately, or even remotely, at stake. We have fought wars in distant lands for rather abstract reasons, and there has been the feeling that these were essentially wars of choice: We could win or lose without jeopardizing our nation's survival.

Mr. Obama's idea clearly makes no sense in a context of national survival. It would have been absurd for President Roosevelt to fly to Berlin and talk to Hitler. But Mr. Obama's idea does make sense in the buildup to wars where survival is not at risk--wars that are more a matter of urgent choice than of absolute necessity.

I think of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to preserve a favorable balance of power that is already in place in the world. We fight these wars not to survive but--once a menace has arisen--to discipline the world back into a balance of power that best ensures peace. We fight as enforcers rather than as rebels or as patriots fighting for survival. Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don't sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.

Conversely, in wars of survival, like World War II, we fight to achieve a favorable balance of power--one in which a peace is established that guarantees our sovereignty and survival. We fight unapologetically for dominance, and we determine to defeat our enemy by any means necessary. We do not harry ourselves much over the style of warfare--whether the locals like us, where the line between interrogation and torture might lie, whether or not we are solicitous of our captive's religious beliefs or dietary strictures. There is no feeling in society that we can afford to lose these wars. And so we never have.

All this points to one of the great foreign policy dilemmas of our time: In the eyes of many around the world, and many Americans as well, we lack the moral authority to fight the wars that we actually fight because they are wars more of discipline than of survival, more of choice than of necessity. It is hard to equate the disciplining of a pre-existing world order--a status quo--with fighting for one's life. When survival is at stake, there is no lack of moral authority, no self-doubt and no antiwar movement of any consequence. But when war is not immediately related to survival, when a society is fundamentally secure and yet goes to war anyway, moral authority becomes a profound problem. Suddenly such a society is drawn into a struggle for moral authority that is every bit as intense as its struggle for military victory.

America does not do so well in its disciplinary wars (the Gulf War is an arguable exception) because we begin these wars with only a marginal moral authority and then, as time passes, even this meager store of moral capital bleeds away. Inevitably, into this vacuum comes a clamorous and sanctimonious antiwar movement that sets the bar for American moral authority so high that we must virtually lose the war in order to meet it. There must be no torture, no collateral damage, no cultural insensitivity, no mistreatment of prisoners and no truly aggressive or definitive display of American military power. In other words, no victory.

Meanwhile our enemy is fighting all out to achieve a new balance of power. As we anguish over the possibility of collateral damage, this enemy practices collateral damage as a tactic of war. In Iraq, al Qaeda blows up women and children simply to keep alive the chaos of war that gives it cover. This enemy's sense of moral authority--as misguided as it may be--is so strong that it compensates for its lack of sophisticated military hardware.

On the other hand, our great military might is not enough to compensate for our weak sense of moral authority, our ambivalence. If we have the greatest military in history, it is also true that we lack our enemy's talent for true belief. Our rationale for war is difficult to articulate, always arguable, and distinctly removed from immediate necessity. Our society is deeply divided and there is a vigorous antiwar movement ready to capitalize on our every military setback.

This is the pattern of disciplinary wars: Their execution is always undermined by their inbuilt lack of moral authority. In the end, our might neutralizes our might. Our vast power makes all such wars come off as bullying, even when we fight selflessly for the freedom of others.

Great power scares unless it is exercised within a painstaking moral framework. Thus, moral authority is the single greatest challenge of American foreign policy. This is especially so in wars of discipline, wars fought far away and for abstract reasons. We argue for such wars as if they were wars of survival because we want the moral authority that comes so automatically to them. But Iraq is a war of discipline, and no more. If we left Iraq tomorrow there would be terrible consequences all around, but we would survive.

Our broader war against terror, on the other hand, is a war of survival. And it is rich in moral authority. September 11 introduced necessity and, in its name, we have an open license to destroy that stateless network of terrorism that attacked us. America is not divided over this. It was Iraq--a war of discipline--that brought us division. This does not mean that the Iraq war is invalid. Ultimately, it may prove to be a far more important war in preserving a balance of power favorable to America than our war against al Qaeda.

The point is that wars of discipline will always have to be self-consciously fought on a moral as well as a military front. And the more we engage the moral struggle, the more license we will have to fight these wars as wars of survival. In other words, our military effectiveness now requires nothing less than a smart and daring brinkmanship of moral authority.

If Mr. Obama's idea was born of mushy idealism, it could work far better as a hard-nosed moral brinkmanship. Were an American president (or a secretary of state for the less daring) to land in Tehran, the risk to American prestige would be enormous. The mullahs would make us characters in a tale of their own grandeur. Yet moral authority would redound to us precisely for making ourselves vulnerable to this kind of exploitation. The world would witness not the stereotype of American bullying, but the reality of American selflessness, courage and moral confidence.

If we were snubbed, if all our entreaties to peace were flouted, if war became inevitable, then we would have the moral authority to fight as if for survival. Either our high-risk diplomacy works or we have the license to fight to win. In the meantime, we give our allies around the world every reason to respect us.

This is not an argument for Mr. Obama's candidacy, only for his idea. It is a good one because it allows America the advantage of its own great character.

Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win," published next week by Free Press.

- basman

November 26, 2007 at 8:58pm

I only pasted the whole piece by Steele because I couldn'y directly link to it from the main post, but was able to get it by other means and I thought I could save others the trouble.

I see that Steele has written a book about Obama entitled, "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win."  

He is in this essay turning Obama inside out, almost triangulating him,  (but not really, since triangulation is the manipulative co-option of policy which adopts oppostion policy in its own terms in order to hobble the opposition, and in that sense is essentially utilitarian). Steele's line of reasoning derives from the Bush doctrine--"Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don't sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy." Even though he anchors his argument in preserving the balance of power, it is not the realists' balance of power, since in the end what he posits is the balance of moral power.  I do not think, for example, that there is anything in principle that Norman Podhoretz would disagree in Shelby Steele's piece, save perhaps for questions of tactics.

Neither Obama nor any Democrat, except for Lieberman who is now an independent in any event , will make this argument and Steele has tucked the notion of diplomacy generally and Obama's idea of travelling to Iran directly to meet  Ahmadinejad inside the the contours of the general Republican foreign policy analysis.

In Steele's analysis, Obama is assimilable to Chamberlain.

Ultimately, U.S. policy will have to confront the question of whether a nuclear Iran is tolerable and whether military means--if it is intolerable--are efficacious as to obviating or obstructing that. The people posting here will forgive me if I have no less confidence in their opinion on this issue than I have in my own--which is none. Experts will have to tell me about that, not amateurs here.

The tolerability of a nuclear Iran is going to be a straight and clear issue in the presidential campaign as, for example, Rudy Giuliani  has clearly and decisively staked out his position on it. His clarity and straightforwardness, whether or not ultimately commendable as policy, will, I think, if he is the presidential candidate, which I for one think he will be, stand in stark contrast to inevitable Democratic parsing and nuanced dithering.

To come back to Steele: were Obama to be the democratic candidiate, which he could be and I hope he is not and don't expect him to be, he will raise that nuanced parsing/dithering to a high art, especially in that halting almost stuttering manner he has--no matter how much God is with him in his campaign. Hillary, who I expect and hope will be the nominee, would I think be more clear and direct, which would augur better for Democratic presidential fortunes.

Finally, I found Steele's distintion between wars of survivial and wars of discipline illuminating and entirely conducive to improved clear thinking about  Iraq and Iran and the issues they more generally are part of, and I am grateful for the link to his essay.

- basman

November 26, 2007 at 10:34pm

p.s. If Shelby Steele, who shares at least some views of the world with John McWhorter, contributed to TNR that would be entirely welcome by me for one.

- basman

November 26, 2007 at 10:43pm

Basman,

Though I am not as big a Steele fan as you, he is a fine scholar and very thoughtful and smart, though too conservative for my tastes. I too would welcome his contributions to tnr...

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 27, 2007 at 9:19am

If Shelby Steele contributed to TNR, it would be another Peretz-related move that would damage the magazine.

- vverma

November 27, 2007 at 9:46am

vverma:

I respect your view, but decidedly disagree: a healthy dose of thoughful contrary opinion within a generally accepted spectrum of thinking is, I think good, for TNR.

- basman

November 27, 2007 at 10:51am

vverma:

I respect your view, but decidedly disagree: a healthy dose of thoughful contrary opinion within a generally accepted spectrum of thinking is, I think good, for TNR.

- basman

November 27, 2007 at 10:52am

p.s.

Of course that goes for the Middle east as well. Look for eg. at Margalit's essay in the latest NYR: it could truly make one weep.

- basman

November 27, 2007 at 11:01am

vverman,

I am hardly the one to rise to Steele's defense - as I mentiioned, I am not particularly fond of his politics - but I do not see him as a Peretzian clone (does the name Kirchick come to mind?) nor would I see his contributions to tnr as necessarily a bad thing.  He is thoughtful, has made his mark on his own, and is very smart. I disagree with almost everything he writes but I would not exclude him from our conversation.  I enjoy thoughtful conservative input and if tnr brought in Steele, I would say, have your heard of Patricia Williams and how about bringing her in too?

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 27, 2007 at 11:52am

yikes,

make that vverma...not verman...sorry...no jab intended..

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 27, 2007 at 11:53am

"[W]ere Obama to be the democratic candidiate, which he could be and I hope he is not and don't expect him to be, he will raise that nuanced parsing/dithering to a high art, especially in that halting almost stuttering manner he has."  Exactly, and so well put.  This is why I have drifted from Obama.  He will "stutter" and over-think and while we're all waiting to be inspired he'll just fail to connect.   Obama's position may be right or wrong, but he'll never communicate it or connect on a gut level.  Hillary  just sounds tougher, more decisive.  Not like Bush, who antagonizes, but like someone who's saying she won't take crap.  The diplomacy takes a back seat.  And weirdly, her refusal to come and get specific on domestic policies is starting to grow on me.  Her reason, that getting change done requires political savvy, makes sense.  However, whether she'll be able to beat Giuliani I'm not so sure.   Don't know the latest in the polls, but isn't she now behind him?  Obama's electability is not the topic of the post, but your talkback made me want to respond.

By the way, if you still care, I've replied to your post on Hexing Barak.  But you, Basman, couldn't possibly offend, even if you tried.  

- MOLLYSIMON

November 27, 2007 at 5:14pm