TW: Many speak of either launching some sort of military action or a "diplomatic" approach. But this Cohen piece proposes an actual diplomatic solution with some meat on the bones which to me makes sense. The deal is predicated upon Iran being rational and interested in joining the world community in a constructive manner, two things which I believe to worth believing and pursuing. Many disagree. To repeat myself Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons because it is a rational move on their part, we can huff and puff but unless we are willing to blow their house down (and accept all of the blow back from Iran and elsewhere) then we need to get real about negotiating something that would benefit both parties.
From Roger Cohen at NYT:
"...Imagine if Roosevelt in 1942 had said to Stalin, sorry, Joe, we don’t like your Communist ideology so we’re not going to accept your help in crushing the Nazis. I know you’re powerful, but we don’t deal with evil.
That’s a rough equivalent on the stupidity scale of what Bush achieved by consigning Iran’s theocracy to the axis of evil and failing to probe how the country might have helped in two wars and the wider Middle East when the conciliatory Mohammad Khatami was president.
Seldom in the annals of American diplomacy has moral absolutism trumped realism to such devastating effect. Bush gifted Iran increased power without taking even a peek at how that might serve U.S. objectives.
...American realism is now essential. It should heed ElBaradei’s view: “I don’t believe the Iranians have made a decision to go for a nuclear weapon, but they are absolutely determined to have the technology because they believe it brings you power, prestige and an insurance policy.”
I think it’s almost certainly too late to stop Iran achieving virtual nuclear power status — something like Brazil’s or Japan’s mastery of the know-how without a weapon. Iran’s advances of the past eight years cannot be undone. What can be transformed is the context Iran operates in; that in turn will determine how “virtual” Iran remains.
One context changer was Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world: it’s hard to argue for nonproliferation without tackling disarmament. “You can’t have nine countries telling the likes of Iran nuclear weapons are dangerous for you, but we need to go on refining our arsenals,” said ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and ends his term later this year. “It’s a different world.”
...Here’s one normalization scenario:
Iran ceases military support for Hamas and Hezbollah; adopts a “Malaysian” approach to Israel (nonrecognition and noninterference); agrees to work for stability in Iraq and Afghanistan; accepts intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency verification of a limited nuclear program for peaceful ends only; promises to fight Qaeda terrorism; commits to improving its human rights record.
The United States commits itself to the Islamic Republic’s security and endorses its pivotal regional role; accepts Iran’s right to operate a limited enrichment facility with several hundred centrifuges for research purposes; agrees to Iran’s acquiring a new nuclear power reactor from the French; promises to back Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization; returns seized Iranian assets; lifts all sanctions; and notes past Iranian statements that it will endorse a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians.
Any such deal is a game changer, transformative as Nixon to China (another repressive state with a poor human rights record). It can be derailed any time by an attack from Israel, which has made clear it won’t accept virtual nuclear power status for Iran, despite its own nonvirtual nuclear warheads..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=roger%20cohen%20realpolitik&st=cse
Showing posts with label roger cohen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roger cohen. Show all posts
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Engage Or Combat?
TW: Our relations with Iran have been a mess for decades. The Iranians are going to obtain nuclear weapons unless we decide to engage in full out war to prevent it. Put yourself in their shoes would not you wish the security of nuclear weapons? Obtaining nuclear weapons will be hugely risky on their part as any future nuclear attack would likely be attributed to them regardless of the circumstances there by risking devastating retaliation.
To me Iran is a country with a brittle but hard thin crust of mullahs capping a populace bristling with opportunity.
From Roger Cohen:
"...Iran, on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, is full of defiance and suspicion of President Obama's motives in reaching out to Tehran. But it is equally full of longing. Most people are under 30 and, like these soldiers, they thirst for contact with the outside world and, above all, an America that looms with all the power of myth
...The revolution freed Iranians from the brutality of the Shah's secret police, Savak, and delivered a home-grown society modeled on the tenets of Islam in place of one pliant to America's whim. But like all revolutions, it has also disappointed. Freedom has ebbed and flowed since 1979. Of late, it has ebbed.
...Competing pressures bear down on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and behind him the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They know that with unemployment at 14 percent (and rising), inflation at about 25 percent, oil revenues set to plunge by about two-thirds this year, and the country's oil and gas infrastructure in desperate need of modernization, opening to the West and its technology makes sense.
They also know Iran is composed of two worlds: the surface and the subterranean. The former is placid; the latter is hungry for more of the freedom the revolution promised. This, too, speaks for an engagement that might over time end Iran's bipolar state.
...On the other hand, a revolutionary government that deprives itself of its great enemy is one that has lost the core of its galvanizing propaganda. Opening equals risk.
..."The Arabs are chickens," he said. "Just look at what Egypt did about Gaza. Those big-bellied Arabs, you take up a stick and they run away."
Scratch the surface and there's no love lost between Persians and Arabs, another reason to be careful in distinguishing Iranian rhetoric, which can seem monolithic, from Iran's many-shaded reality.
...A few days after this meeting, I found myself on the Tehran subway. A bunch of youths started smiling and pointing. "This guy's an American!" they exclaimed. There was no menace, only curiosity...."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/11/opinion/edcohen.php
To me Iran is a country with a brittle but hard thin crust of mullahs capping a populace bristling with opportunity.
From Roger Cohen:
"...Iran, on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, is full of defiance and suspicion of President Obama's motives in reaching out to Tehran. But it is equally full of longing. Most people are under 30 and, like these soldiers, they thirst for contact with the outside world and, above all, an America that looms with all the power of myth
...The revolution freed Iranians from the brutality of the Shah's secret police, Savak, and delivered a home-grown society modeled on the tenets of Islam in place of one pliant to America's whim. But like all revolutions, it has also disappointed. Freedom has ebbed and flowed since 1979. Of late, it has ebbed.
...Competing pressures bear down on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and behind him the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They know that with unemployment at 14 percent (and rising), inflation at about 25 percent, oil revenues set to plunge by about two-thirds this year, and the country's oil and gas infrastructure in desperate need of modernization, opening to the West and its technology makes sense.
They also know Iran is composed of two worlds: the surface and the subterranean. The former is placid; the latter is hungry for more of the freedom the revolution promised. This, too, speaks for an engagement that might over time end Iran's bipolar state.
...On the other hand, a revolutionary government that deprives itself of its great enemy is one that has lost the core of its galvanizing propaganda. Opening equals risk.
..."The Arabs are chickens," he said. "Just look at what Egypt did about Gaza. Those big-bellied Arabs, you take up a stick and they run away."
Scratch the surface and there's no love lost between Persians and Arabs, another reason to be careful in distinguishing Iranian rhetoric, which can seem monolithic, from Iran's many-shaded reality.
...A few days after this meeting, I found myself on the Tehran subway. A bunch of youths started smiling and pointing. "This guy's an American!" they exclaimed. There was no menace, only curiosity...."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/11/opinion/edcohen.php
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Things I Would Like To See Happen In 2009: A Balanced Approach to Israel and the Arab World
TW: Roger Cohen asks a simple question. Why is our Mideast diplomatic corps essentially void of Arab-Americans. Jewish-Americans hold prominent positions, why not Arab-Americans?
From Roger Cohen at Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...I have nothing against smart, driven, liberal, Jewish (or half-Jewish) males; I’ve looked in the mirror. I know or have talked to all these guys, except Shapiro. They’re knowledgeable, broad-minded and determined. Still, on the diversity front they fall short. On the change-you-can-believe-in front, they also leave something to be desired.
...“Do people in the region take note when Arab-Americans are not represented? Sure they do,” said Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. “A message gets sent.”
...Change is needed, and not just in the intensity of U.S. diplomatic involvement with Israel-Palestine. Some fundamental questions must be asked.
Does regarding the Middle East almost exclusively through the prism of the war on terror make sense? Does turning a blind eye to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank that frustrate a two-state solution, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza that radicalizes its population, not undermine U.S. interest in bolstering moderate Palestinian sentiment?
Should policy not be directed toward reconciling a Palestinian movement now split between Fatah and Hamas, without which no final-status peace will be possible? Beyond their terrorist wings, in their broad grass-roots political movements, what elements of Hamas and Hezbollah can be coaxed toward the mainstream?
Do we understand the increasingly sophisticated Middle East of Al Jazeera where, as Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, put it to me, “People are not dumb and our credibility is at a historic near-zero?”
Asking these questions does not alter America’s commitment to Israel’s security within its pre-1967 borders, which is and should be unwavering. It does not change the unacceptability of Hamas rockets or the fact the Hamas Charter is vile. But it would signal that the damaging Bush-era consensus that Israel can do no wrong is to be challenged.
...Obama should take note, name an Arab-American and an Iranian-American to prominent roles, and beware of a team that takes him — and the region — back to the future."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12cohen.html?_r=1&hp
From Roger Cohen at Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...I have nothing against smart, driven, liberal, Jewish (or half-Jewish) males; I’ve looked in the mirror. I know or have talked to all these guys, except Shapiro. They’re knowledgeable, broad-minded and determined. Still, on the diversity front they fall short. On the change-you-can-believe-in front, they also leave something to be desired.
...“Do people in the region take note when Arab-Americans are not represented? Sure they do,” said Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. “A message gets sent.”
...Change is needed, and not just in the intensity of U.S. diplomatic involvement with Israel-Palestine. Some fundamental questions must be asked.
Does regarding the Middle East almost exclusively through the prism of the war on terror make sense? Does turning a blind eye to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank that frustrate a two-state solution, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza that radicalizes its population, not undermine U.S. interest in bolstering moderate Palestinian sentiment?
Should policy not be directed toward reconciling a Palestinian movement now split between Fatah and Hamas, without which no final-status peace will be possible? Beyond their terrorist wings, in their broad grass-roots political movements, what elements of Hamas and Hezbollah can be coaxed toward the mainstream?
Do we understand the increasingly sophisticated Middle East of Al Jazeera where, as Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, put it to me, “People are not dumb and our credibility is at a historic near-zero?”
Asking these questions does not alter America’s commitment to Israel’s security within its pre-1967 borders, which is and should be unwavering. It does not change the unacceptability of Hamas rockets or the fact the Hamas Charter is vile. But it would signal that the damaging Bush-era consensus that Israel can do no wrong is to be challenged.
...Obama should take note, name an Arab-American and an Iranian-American to prominent roles, and beware of a team that takes him — and the region — back to the future."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12cohen.html?_r=1&hp
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Return Of Competence
TW: Cohen gets a rare two poster from one column out this piece from me. The first point relates to the nature of dissent in the White House as initially embodied in the Obama cabinet.
From Roger Cohen at Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...I'm thankful for many things right now...The first is that Barack Obama is a man of sufficient self-confidence to entrust the critical job of Secretary of State to his former rival, Hillary Clinton. She has the strength and focus to produce results. The second is that he's a man of sufficient good sense to retain the remarkable Robert Gates as Defense Secretary.
President Bush had one overriding criterion in choosing his inner circle: loyalty. The result was nobody would pull the plug on stupidity. Obama wants the kind of competence and brainpower that challenge him. The God-gut decision-making of The Decider got us in this mess. Getting out of it will require an Oval Office where smart dissent is prized."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/26/opinion/edcohen.php
From Roger Cohen at Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...I'm thankful for many things right now...The first is that Barack Obama is a man of sufficient self-confidence to entrust the critical job of Secretary of State to his former rival, Hillary Clinton. She has the strength and focus to produce results. The second is that he's a man of sufficient good sense to retain the remarkable Robert Gates as Defense Secretary.
President Bush had one overriding criterion in choosing his inner circle: loyalty. The result was nobody would pull the plug on stupidity. Obama wants the kind of competence and brainpower that challenge him. The God-gut decision-making of The Decider got us in this mess. Getting out of it will require an Oval Office where smart dissent is prized."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/26/opinion/edcohen.php
Monday, July 21, 2008
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