{"id":6801,"date":"2009-02-20T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T07:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/68.169.38.31\/?p=6801"},"modified":"2009-02-20T07:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T07:09:00","slug":"were-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gormogons.com\/index.php\/2009\/02\/were-in-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign-policy roundup: We\u2019re in trouble."},"content":{"rendered":"

The WaPo<\/i> editorial page is on fire with foreign-policy goodness today. (I\u2019m giving Ghettoputer\u2019s sister credit.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>First, Professor Baktybek Abdrisaev, former ambassador of Kyrgyzstan, writes that U.S. policy towards Kyrgyzstan became reduced to simply maintaining our airbase at Manas. He have preferred we\u2019d have continued to press the government towards democracy and openness. As does the Volgi, but Prof. Abdrisaev, in his sorrow for his country\u2019s political regression, underestimates the diplomatic dilemma with which the Foreign Service is presented in such an instance.<\/p>\n

Say we\u2019ve got a strategic airbase in Country X, and the government there is getting more repressive. The State Department tells the GoX on the q.t. (or, if they\u2019re really fired up because some protestors got shot, say, delivers a d\u00e9marche) saying, \u201cHey, dudes, get your act together. We disapprove.\u201d Logically, the next step is a carrot or a stick, and since you don\u2019t want to reward this kind of stuff*, it\u2019s Hammertime. So what\u2019s your stick? \u201cWe can move our airbase.\u201d Except, say, Country X is strategic precisely because you don\u2019t have a lot of options for airbases. And you know as soon as these words pass your lips, the defense attach\u00e9 is sending frothing all-caps e-mails back to the Pentagon, which will result in the Secretary getting involved, and eventually you\u2019ll get a \u201cknock it off\u201d telegram. Plus, you don\u2019t like lying. Who needs the hassle?<\/p>\n

So, you got nothing. Plus, you\u2019re an American. You don\u2019t really do<\/span> diplomacy in the classical sense of pursuing your country\u2019s interests by guile and misdirection. You are good at practical stuff, like managing the relations between State and their Foreign Ministry, and Defense and their MoD. So it\u2018s easier and a lot more rewarding to focus on the details of keeping the base open.<\/p>\n

So you just tell \u2019em, \u201cHey, we\u2019re not happy about that anti-democratic stuff.\u201d They nod, and assure you that your concerns will be taken terribly seriously, and then they keep their heads down in case the increasingly authoritarian government comes after them. And relations slide and become increasingly based on process, like keeping an airbase open.<\/p>\n

This is not to crap on State\u2014there are great people doing great jobs there, and I have no reason to believe that this is what happened in Kyrgyzstan. But this is a pattern that happens frequently in American diplomacy. See America comma Latin; Iran comma Shah of; &c.<\/p>\n

The second piece, which echoes in a different way, Prof. Abdrisaev\u2019s concern for the lack of American assertion in the world is the usually excellent Charles Krauthammer running down the foreign-policy ploys our enemies (and weak allies) have tested the Obama Administration with<\/a>. Krauthammer worries that we\u2019re supine before these challenges. It\u2019s always hard to judge at first glance what, exactly, is going on in diplomatic and miltiary circles, as so much of it is done sub rosa<\/span>, but Krauthammer has legitimate reasons to worry, given the \u201cNegotiations Now, Negotiations Forever\u201d tone that Obama took in the campaign, as well as their aespparent disdain for any<\/span> assertion of American interests by President Bush (why the eff would we want to suddenly suck up to Putin that Chekist \u0425\u0443\u0439\u00ae when he\u2019s the one making aggressive moves by wanting to put offensive<\/span> missiles in Kaliningrad?) Krauthammer concludes:<\/p>\n

I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e., domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented. But when the State Department says that Hugo Ch\u00e1vez’s president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was “for the most part . . . a process that was fully consistent with democratic process,” you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2018s hope the hell not.<\/p>\n

Last, the Post sounds the right note of modesty relative to our ability to deal with the nightmare hermit psychopaths of SLORC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Obama should conduct a policy review, by all means. But he must stick to the priorities implied in his inaugural address: If the United States is to extend a hand to Burma\u2020, that country’s tyrants must first relax their grip on power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s hope Secretary Clinton and anyone else involved in the review resist the temptation to claim a diplomatic \u201ccoup\u201d by merely holding negotiations (which can only result in a North Korean-style giveaway\u2026go re-read the footnote).<\/p>\n

In all of these situations, too, it\u2019s useful to remember the Volgi\u2019s Fallacy of Foreign-Policy Egocentrism. It ain\u2019t always about you.<\/p>\n