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Engaging talk
By
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Hawks in the
administration of President George W Bush may
think they are tough, but their dreams of "regime
change" in Iran and North Korea are increasingly
deluded, not to say dangerous, according to their
hard-edged realist rivals, who have become
increasingly outspoken in recent weeks.
Their latest broadside comes in the form
of an article by Richard Haass, president of the
influential Council on Foreign Relations, in the
forthcoming edition of the journal Foreign Affairs
titled "The Limits of Regime Change".
Haass, who served under Bush in a top
State Department position, also has just published
a new book, The Opportunity: America's Moment
to Alter History's Course, one of the central
themes of which is that the hawks have
over-estimated Washington's ability to change the
world.
The release of Haass' article and
book follow the publication of a column last week
by arch-realist Brent Scowcroft in the Wall Street
Journal which argues that the hawks' rejection of
bilateral talks with North Korea in the hopes that
the government there will collapse are
"irresponsible".
Yet another realist,
former Foreign Affairs editor Fareed Zakaria, made
much the same argument in a recent Newsweek column
that assailed the White House for what he called a
four-year "stalemate" within the administration
between hawks who "want to push for regime change"
in North Korea and "pragmatists" who "want to end
the North's nuclear program".
Common to
all three authors is the conviction that the US is
not all-powerful; that it must coordinate its
policy with other great powers to achieve its
ends; that creative diplomacy can be far more
constructive than military action; and that,
despite the tough rhetoric of administration
hawks, US policy toward Iran and North Korea, both
members of Bush's "axis of evil", effectively is
adrift.
The realist offensive comes amid a
growing sense that the intra-administration fights
between hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney
and realists led by then-secretary of state Colin
Powell have continued unabated nearly six months
into Bush's second term, albeit more recently
without Powell and fewer leaks from unhappy State
Department and intelligence officers who generally
lined up with the realists.
While
Washington has persisted in its refusal to
directly engage either Iran or North Korea, it has
provided nominal, if skeptical, support to
negotiations between the so-called EU-3 - Germany,
Britain and France - and Iran on Teheran's nuclear
program, while also stating that a military option
of one kind or another remains on the table if an
agreement is not reached.
Washington also
has continued to insist that Pyongyang return to
the six-party talks - which also involve China,
Japan, South Korea and Russia - to discuss a
possible agreement for dismantling its nuclear
program.
But the administration has
rejected entreaties by China and South Korea, in
particular, to put on the table what it might be
prepared to offer if North Korea were to strike
such a deal. In recent weeks, Washington also has
sent 17 Stealth warplanes to South Korea as part
of a series of steps to increase pressure on the
North and signal the other parties that its
patience is running out.
Haass, who as
head of the influential Policy Planning Office in
the State Department during the first two years of
the Bush administration, was a top adviser to
Powell, argues in his Foreign Affairs article that
the hawks' pursuit of regime change is flawed on
many counts.
He concedes that regime
change appears superficially attractive because it
"is less distasteful than diplomacy and less
dangerous than living with new nuclear states".
"There is only one problem," he adds. "It
is highly unlikely to have the desired effect soon
enough."
Haass dismisses the notion that
Washington is prepared to invade either country
simply due to the "enormous" expense involved, the
ability of Pyongyang's conventional military power
to inflict destruction on South Korea and US
forces stationed there, and the size and large
population of Iran that would make "any occupation
costly, miserable and futile".
In
addition, "regime replacement", often is far more
difficult and expensive than the initial regime
ouster, as Washington's experience in Iraq has
demonstrated, according to Haass.
As for
the option of carrying out a military attack on
Pyongyang's or Tehran's nuclear sites, as urged by
some hardline circles outside the administration,
Haass warns that, given the state of US
intelligence on the two countries' nuclear
programs, this is likely to be limited in its
effectiveness and would almost certainly prove
strategically counterproductive.
In the
first place, Washington is unlikely to face a
demonstrable imminent threat from either country
that would justify pre-emptive action. Any
preventive attack on North Korea would be opposed
by Washington's six-party partners because of the
dangers posed by war on the Korean Peninsula,
according to Haass.
While a preventive
attack on Iranian targets could set back its
nuclear program by months or years, he argues,
Teheran could respond in any number of ways, from
"unleashing terrorism" and promoting instability
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, to
triggering oil price increases that "could trigger
a global economic crisis".
Instead, Haass
urges what he terms a "containment" policy similar
to that pursued by Washington during the Cold War
which, he notes, had as a "second, subordinate
goal" incremental regime change or "regime
evolution". Such a policy, he says, "tends to be
indirect and gradual and to involve the use of
foreign policy tools other than military force".
"A foreign policy that chooses to
integrate, not isolate, despotic regimes can be
the Trojan horse that moderates their behavior in
the short run and their nature in the long run,"
Haass writes.
Critical to this strategy is
Washington's willingness to offer clear
incentives, "including economic assistance,
security assurances and greater political
standing", to both countries if they satisfied US
and international concerns regarding their nuclear
programs. It also would spell out clear penalties,
including military attack "in the most dire
circumstances", if they failed to cooperate, notes
Haass.
Washington also should work with
its negotiating partners to devise packages for
both countries that lay out similar carrots and
sticks on which all parties would commit
themselves, he adds.
He admits it is quite
possible this strategy will not work, and that one
or both countries will use the time to build up
their nuclear capabilities either overtly or
covertly. The option then is to accept their de
facto nuclear status similar to that currently
accepted for Israel, India and Pakistan.
Given the stakes that would be involved,
particularly the likelihood that the two
countries' neighbors would try to follow suit,
Washington, according to Haass, should declare
publicly that any government that uses or
threatens to use weapons of mass destruction or
knowingly transfers them to third parties "opens
itself up to the strongest reprisals, including
attack and removal from power". At the same time,
he adds, the US should try to persuade all other
major powers to sign on to such a policy.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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