These suggestions from Dennis Ross seem mostly on-point and it's nice to see someone with impeccable Serious credentials so totally uninvested in the idea that perpetual occupation is vital to securing American interests. Ezra notes yesterday that Sandy Berger has pretty sound views as well. I think substantial swathes of the Democratic advisor class have evolved their thinking (in a good way) beyond the point where the presidential campaigns are willing to go. That said, the persistence of magical thinking like "basically lock everyone in a room together until they come to an agreement" (from the Ross article) is pretty strange.
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Statecraft in Iraq
22 Oct 2007 05:26 pm
Comments (7)
"That said, the persistence of magical thinking like "basically lock everyone in a room together until they come to an agreement" (from the Ross article) is pretty strange."
For better or worse, wasn't that the approach behind the Dayton Accords?
If Matt loves Dennis Ross so much, I wish hewould read Dennis Ross's book so we can have fewer "the settlements are the only obstacle to peace" posts.
The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
Might be a little quicker to lock the Israelis out of our Treasury until they come to an agreement...
This from Ross seems pretty much on the money:
(regarding the Bush admin's use of "stagecraft" instead of "statecraft" in pursuing foreign affairs)
Statecraft is following clear objectives that are also married to the means of their own fulfillment; while stagecraft is inflating the objectives for rhetorical use while totally ignoring the means.
But for such a Serious Person doesn't seem to be much in the way of serious thought in his list of preferable policies. Matt skewers the "get everyone in a room" idiocy, but the other two propositions aren't much better.
1)"[U]se withdrawal as a lever" (to force cooperation with our agenda) sounds nice, but the only actual change in policy is that our troops leave. Other than exiting, Ross proposes we give money and guns to groups that are cooperating and let them sort out the malcontents once we've left (We're already doing this, except that the sorting out is happening now. The more usual term for it is ethnic cleansing).
Getting the troops home is important in itself, but it seems unlikely that this will somehow translate into greater leverage over the various hostile factions.
2) Ross's other suggestion is to get everyone in a room again, but this time with Saudi Arabia and Iran. He doesn't really offer a reason why they would suddenly stop pursuing the outcomes they prefer (a puppet government friendly to one of them, or failing that, low grade civil war) and start pursuing the outcome we want (a solid, somewhat democratic national government with largely autonomous regions, or failing that, a puppet government friendly to us). Again, there is a suggestion that leaving (or threatening to) will offer us leverage, now with Iraq's neighbors, but this fails to address the fact that our respective desires for Iraq are fundamentally at odds.
I'd just get them together and tell them to knock the shit off.
That's a GREAT idea!
Lock all the stakeholders up in a room, and let them all fight to the death. The one who comes out alive gets to dictate policy.
Comments closed November 05, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
every so often, i get a chance in these discussions to note to matthew that he and his cohorts are getting a real-time lesson in what drove a particular subset of anti-vietnam activists so completely around-the-bend crazy: because the persistence of magic thinking on the "serious" side is so frickin' maddening.
Posted by howard | October 22, 2007 5:30 PM