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Today we have a long look at the Iran agreement. Streetwise Professor is up first.
The United States, and the other countries in the 5+1 group, have reached some sort of agreement with Iran which trades a relaxation in sanctions for some temporary limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. Most of the discussion has focused on the specifics of this deal, but that is short sighted. All parties admit that this is just an interim step along the path towards a more permanent settlement. We need to look forward and try to anticipate where that path will lead. It is unlikely to lead anywhere good, from an American perspective, and likely to be highly favorable to Iran.
The dynamic will favor Iran because it is easy for them to delay or evade any substantive cutbacks in their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, and because it will be difficult for Obama to resist Iranian demands. Look at the protracted and frustrating and largely futile attempt to stop the North Korean nuclear program: Obama’s personal investment in the Iran initiative will make the US even more likely to make concessions in order to keep the process alive.
Other news illustrates exactly how this process works. The Russians have repeatedly violated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Agreement but the administration has refused to make these violations public because . . . well, you have to read it to believe it:
Inside the meeting, Kerry expressed anger and frustration about the Russian cheating and warned that if the violations became widely known, future efforts to convince the Senate to ratify arms control treaties would be harmed.
In other words, we can’t possibly acknowledge treaty violations because that would impede our ratification of treaties . . . that would be violated. Treaty-making becomes an end unto itself, rather than a means of securing American interests. That mindset gives anyone we are negotiating with a tremendous advantage: they know they can play us for patsies because we are so obsessed with the process, rather than the results. …
… In sum, Obama has entered into an agreement that will not be honored, will subject him and the US to increasing demands that he cannot refuse, will strengthen and embolden a sworn enemy of the United States, will destabilize the region and increase the risks of conflict, and betrays and confuses our allies.
Given that this endeavor is inimical to American interests, reputation, and prestige (both of which affect our ability to advance our interests) one wonders about the motivation. Folly or blunder based on a desire to achieve a legacy or a fundamental misunderstanding of reality are actually the least frightening alternatives. The more sinister possibility is that Obama is acting on a view of American interests and proper place in the world that is at odds with the mixed idealist-realist view that has shaped US policy since at least WWII. I usually adhere to the maxim not to attribute something to malice which can be explained by stupidity, but it gets harder to do that every day.
Comments from Mark Steyn.
… In Geneva, the participants came to the talks with different goals: The Americans and Europeans wanted an agreement; the Iranians wanted nukes. Each party got what it came for. Before the deal, the mullahs’ existing facilities were said to be within four to seven weeks of nuclear “breakout”; under the new constraints, they’ll be eight to nine weeks from breakout. In return, they get formal international recognition of their enrichment program, and the gutting of sanctions – and everything they already have is, as they say over at Obamacare, grandfathered in.
Many pundits reached for the obvious appeasement analogies, but Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal argued that Geneva is actually worse than Munich. In 1938, facing a German seizure of the Sudetenland, the French and British prime ministers were negotiating with Berlin from a position of profound military weakness: it’s easy to despise Chamberlain with the benefit of hindsight, less easy to give an honest answer as to what one would have done differently playing a weak hand across the table from Hitler 75 years ago. This time round, a superpower and its allies, accounting for over 50 percent of the planet’s military spending, were facing a militarily insignificant country with a ruined economy and no more than two-to-three months’ worth of hard currency – and they gave it everything it wanted.
I would add two further points. First, the Munich Agreement’s language is brutal and unsparing, all “shalls” and “wills”: Paragraph 1) “The evacuation will begin on 1st October”; Paragraph 4) “The four territories marked on the attached map will be occupied by German troops in the following order.” By contrast, the P5+1 (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China plus Germany) “Joint Plan of Action” barely reads like an international agreement at all. It’s all conditional, a forest of “woulds”: “There would be additional steps in between the initial measures and the final step…” In the post-modern phase of Western resolve, it’s an agreement to reach an agreement – supposedly within six months. But one gets the strong impression that, when that six-month deadline comes and goes, the temporary agreement will trundle along semipermanently to the satisfaction of all parties. …
… Some years ago, I heard that great scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, caution that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. The Obama administration seems to have raised the thought to the level of doctrine. What has hitherto been unclear is whether this was through design or incompetence. Certainly, John Kerry has been unerringly wrong on every foreign policy issue for four decades, so sheer bungling stupidity cannot be ruled out.
But look at it this way: It’s been clear for some time that the United States was not going to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. That leaves only one other nation even minded to keep the option on the table: Israel. Hence the strange new romance between the Zionist Entity and the Saudi and Gulf Cabinet ministers calling every night to urge them to get cracking: In the post-American world, you find your friends where you can, even if they’re Jews. But Obama and Kerry have not only taken a U.S bombing raid off the table, they’ve ensured that any such raid by Israel will now come at a much steeper price: It’s one thing to bomb a global pariah, quite another to bomb a semi-rehabilitated member of the international community in defiance of an agreement signed by the Big Five world powers. Indeed, a disinterested observer might easily conclude that the point of the plan seems to be to box in Israel rather than Iran. …
The UK’s Spectator is harsh.
‘Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can!’ With these exuberant assurances, the young candidate, buoyed by an unexpectedly strong showing in the Iowa caucuses, vowed to carry on his crusade. One year later, in January 2009, the candidate became president and set out to make good on his promises.
That Barack Obama possessed the ability to heal the nation and repair the world seemed in many quarters all but self-evident. As he donned the mantle of the ‘most powerful man in the world’, the expectations that had lifted him into the Oval Office qualified as nothing short of messianic. A dark and depressing interval of American history, symbolised by place names such as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, was ending. A new era of hope had begun. Nothing seemed beyond reach. So at least many Americans believed.
In surprising numbers, observers further afield shared these happy expectations. For a brief moment, Obama’s rising star cast its light well beyond America itself. He was, or appeared to be, everyone’s president. As if speaking for all humanity, the Nobel Committee ratified this proposition, awarding its annual peace prize on an anticipatory basis, the recently inaugurated president not actually having done anything to promote peace. Obamamania was sweeping the planet.
Well, going on six years later, the fever has long since broken. In beleaguered, war-torn Syria, polio may be making an unwelcome comeback. But the infection that was Obamamania is gone for good.
As for the President himself, the verdict is in: when it comes to repairing and healing, no, he can’t. In retrospect, it’s hard to fathom why so many people succumbed to the illusion that he could. …
… Altogether, Obama’s record of achievement has to rate as modest. No wonder the cheers have turned to jeers. ‘When I hear a man applauded by the mob,’ H.L. Mencken observed, ‘I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.’ Obama has lived long enough to make the journey from rock star to something between laughing stock and object of pity. …
While we’re on foreign affairs, let’s have a look at events in Venezuela, courtesy of John Hinderaker of Power Line who says they’re “doubling down on stupid.”
Venezuela is reaching the end point of socialism: economic collapse. Its government, headed by Hugo Chavez’s successor and acolyte Nicolas Maduro, has followed the classic left-wing playbook, with the result, inter alia, that you can no longer buy toilet paper in Venezuela. Producing such a complex product evidently is beyond the capacity of the state.
Naturally, Venezuela suffers from rampant inflation, currently running at over 50% annually. So the government has imposed price controls. With an election impending, President Maduro has vowed to intensify enforcement of penalties for “price gouging.”
“Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said a stricter wave of inspections for suspected price-gouging would begin on Saturday in an aggressive pre-election “economic offensive” aimed at taming the highest inflation in the Americas.
“We’re not joking, we’re defending the rights of the majority, their economic freedom,” Maduro said on Friday, alleging price irregularities were found in nearly 99 percent of 1,705 businesses inspected so far this month.
Maduro, who has staked his presidency on preserving the legacy of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, launched a theatrical – and often televised – wave of inspections this month to force companies to reduce prices.
He says “capitalist parasites” are trying to wreck Venezuela’s economy and force him from office.”
I suppose they are actually trying to stay in business, but undoubtedly one of Venezuela’s biggest problems is a shortage of “capitalist parasites.” Don’t laugh, it could happen here, too.