Freedom Line Blog

The Wall Street Journal carried a superb op-ed this morning by Johns Hopkins professor Eliot Cohen on the growing dangers of Iran.

Cohen, who runs the university’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, is the author of “Supreme Command,” one of the seminal books on political leadership during wartime. He also served as a special advisor to Condoleeza Rice at the State Department during President Bush’s second term (though, from an outsider’s perspective, it seems as if Secretary Rice didn’t take nearly enough of his advice).

The whole piece is wonderful for its clarity, but the money quote is:

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase [the Iranian] nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.”

Read it in its entirety here.

While the future of space travel may be in the private sector (see the X Prize Foundation’s website), governments are still the main players in this day and age. That’s why it’s encouraging to see this ABC News report that the U.S. is considering delaying the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

Not that the shuttle is anything exciting. Space travel started losing its appeal when the focus became the International Space Station (a sort of floating UN with freeze-dried food) instead of missions of discovery. But with space becoming an issue tied in just as closely with national security as with science & technology, leaving the US dependent on an increasingly surly Russia for our trips to outer space was never a good idea.

I have been skeptical of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense ever since he replaced the flawed, but honorable, Donald Rumsfeld in the final years of the Bush Administration.

Gates is one of those “non-ideological”, “pragmatic” types that the press always crows about (at least when they’re Republicans). There were many similar figures in the Bush Administration — Henry Paulson, Colin Powell, and (to a lesser extent) Condoleeza Rice, as well. What they all have in common is that their “sensibility” and “prudence” emanates from the fact that they have very few principles that they’re willing to go to the mat for. They tend towards principled timidity. For example. take a look at Gates’ comments from a CNN interview to be broadcast this weekend:

“…The only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened. And so I think, as I say, while you don’t take options off the table, I think there’s still room left for diplomacy.”

Did the Secretary of Defense really just tell us that the ONLY way to prevent Iran going nuclear is to convince them that they’re stronger without a nuke that will deter almost everyone in the world from challenging them? I’m building my bomb shelter.

Today’s revelation that the Obama Administration is pulling missile defense out of Poland and the Czech Republic reflects a complete ignorance of (or apathy towards) the point that I made in yesterday’s post — that the Western commitment to collective security in Eastern Europe has made the continent (and the world) a safer and freer place.

It also reflects a total strategic miscalculation. The oldest con in international diplomacy is to get an adversary to give up something tangible today for an abstract promise tomorrow (see “Land for Peace”). The notion that Russia will be of more assistance in sanctioning the Iranians (and the broader idea that sanctions will have any serious effect) ignores a question that the self-proclaimed realists in the Obama Administration have somehow overlooked. Why is it in Russia’s interest to play ball when they’re currently getting major concessions from the U.S. at no cost?

Though it’s been overshadowed by the healthcare debate, the last month or so of the Obama Administration has been its absolute worst for foreign policy. We’ve agreed to one-on-one talks with North Korea (with the laughable goal of getting back to the six party talks — you know, the ones we had before we agreed to one-on-one talks?), decided to pursue prosecutions of CIA interrogators, announced that Iran likely already has the ability to build nuclear weapons, seen the White House put political pressure on General McChrystal to keep from requesting more troops in Afghanistan, and imposed a foolish tire tariff that’s threatening a trade war with China.

The President can get away with Jimmy Carteresque policies for a lot longer than Jimmy Carter ever could because Obama has considerably more political gifts. But in the end, politics (particularly the presidency) is always about performance. This will not end well for Obama or the country.

A reader sent me a link to this confused piece by Andrew Sullivan over at his Daily Dish blog on the Atlantic.

Sullivan — whose career in recent years has consisted of trying to find the most erudite style in which to whine — fixates on the revelation that Margaret Thatcher feared the implications of a reunified Germany and a disbanded Warsaw Pact in the wake of the Cold War’s end.

As Sullivan rightly notes, this was a rare example of the Iron Lady embracing foreign policy “realism”: the notion that states act only in a narrowly-defined sense of self-interest that is true regardless of regime type and ideology. And — though I rarely have cause to say it — Thatcher was wrong about this one. After two decades of peaceful German reunification, we have empirical proof that the catalyst for German expansionism was the nature of the regime and not the fact of German nationhood. While the former Warsaw Pact countries have been decidedly less stable, there is no question that the spread of liberal democracy throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (along with the expansion of NATO) has made the world a freer, safer place in the years since the Berlin Wall came down.

What’s so peculiar about Sullivan’s take is his snide conclusion: “… what’s interesting is to see Thatcher, a neocon idol, acting in such brutally realist fashion. Toryism, even Thatcherism, is not neoconservatism, is it?” Well, in this instance, no, they’re clearly at loggerheads. But Sullivan, who seems to think he can win arguments these days simply by invoking “neoconservatism” as a pejorative, seems blithely unaware of the implications of his argument.

If neoconservatism stands athwart Sullivan’s lionized realism, does that mean he longs for a still-partitioned Germany and an expanded Soviet orbit? And if so, isn’t that a bit of a jog to go on just because you hate neoconservatives?