Why the 2016 Campaigners’ Cliff’s Notes Should Include ISIS, Ukraine, And the Middle East

13/3/2015 Why the 2016 Campaigners’ Cliff’s Notes Should Include ISIS, Ukraine, and the Middle East

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I Changed My Mind…The piece about Bill Clinton I wish I could take back, and nine other things about which I

no longer hold the same opinion.

MARCH 13, 2015BY STEPHEN M. WALT

In most countries, politicians try to impress the citizenry with their command of the issues and their deep

insight into important political problems. In the United States, for example, Americans will spend the next

two years watching a passel of Republicans and at least one Democrat try to convince voters that they

know a whole bunch about foreign policy, the economy, education, the Constitution, climate change,

terrorism, and a zillion other topics, as each tries to persuade the electorate to make him or her president.

What you probably won’t hear, however, is a candidate saying, “Here’s an issue where I was dead wrong,

and here’s how I eventually figured out that what I had previously believed was a lot of hokum.” Aspiring

leaders rarely admit past errors because to do so might make voters doubt their present judgment, and it

leaves a candidate vulnerable to accusations of pandering or flip-flopping.

Instead, most aspiring candidates try to portray themselves as having consistently held the right views

since early childhood. That tendency is unfortunate, however, because the ability to learn from experience

and revise one’s views over time is a more desirable quality in a leader than rigid and blinkered certainty.

As John Maynard Keynes allegedly responded to a charge of inconsistency: “When the facts change, I

change my mind. What do you do?”

I’m not a politician or likely to become one (cue the audible sigh of relief from most readers). Instead, I’ve

been trying to understand international politics for more than three decades. And over time I’ve changed

my mind about a fair number of academic, historical, and contemporary issues. I used to believe a number

of things that turned out not to be correct, and there are others where at a minimum I know have

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considerable doubts. And guess what? Changing my mind isn’t all that painful a process; in fact, it can be

both liberating and enjoyable to realize that earlier beliefs were mistaken.

To inspire a bit more reflection and self-criticism by both academics and maybe even a few politicos, I

offer here the Top 10 Things About Which I Changed My Mind.

No. 1: The origins of World War I

I’ve been reading and teaching about the causes of World War I since I got my first academic job, but my

account of how and why the war broke out has changed significantly over the years. When I first started

teaching in the mid-1980s, I was heavily influenced by Richard Ned Lebow’s Between Peace and War,

which portrays the July Crisis as a series of misperceptions and tragic accidents, driven by both

organizational and psychological pathologies. I also embraced the “cult of the offensive” explanation

offered by Jack Snyder and Stephen Van Evera, which links the war to widespread European beliefs that

conquest was easy and that the war would be very short and cheap. I also read key works from the “Fischer

school” (which emphasizes German responsibility), but I saw that as a background condition rather than

the primary cause.

But over the years, I began to rethink this interpretation, and my understanding was greatly influenced by

my former student Dale Copeland’s detailed analysis in his book, The Origins of Major War. He pins the

blame almost entirely on Germany — and especially Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg — and I

have yet to see any account that does a better job of uncovering the central cause of the war. But given how

historiographical traditions keep evolving, and given the ability of new theories to shape how we view the

past, I could always change my mind again in the future.

No. 2: The transformative power of social science

When I was in graduate school, I believed social science provided powerful analytic tools that could

resolve any number of political issues at home and abroad. Like a good Progressive Era reformer, I

believed a well-trained army of policy-relevant academics could ask the right questions, collect the right

evidence, perform careful and objective analysis, debate and refine their findings, and then announce

http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Cornell-Studies-Security-Affairs/dp/0801487579

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Peace-War-Nature-International/dp/0801832470



their solutions to a grateful world. Policymakers would embrace the scholars’ enlightened wisdom and

quickly proceed to implement the prescribed reforms. Don’t laugh at my naiveté: I was young, ignorant,

and filled with youthful zeal.

Since those early days, I’ve acquired a healthier respect for the vagaries of politics and a greater humility

about what social science can do. In international relations, at least, none of our theories are all that

powerful, the data are often poor, and coming up with good solutions to many thorny problems is difficult.

Unintended consequences and second-order effects abound, and policymakers often reject good advice

for their own selfish reasons. Don’t get me wrong: I still think systematic historical and social science

inquiry is essential to better policymaking; I just don’t think it’s the magic bullet that I once hoped it could

be.

No. 3: The power of quantitative analysis

I originally intended to pursue a career in biochemistry, and I was initially enamored with quantitative

approaches to international relations because they seemed more “scientific.” I still believe statistical tools,

formal models, and other mathematical techniques are valuable parts of the social science tool kit, but I’ve

become more sensitive to the limits of all extant methods and increasingly skeptical of anyone who claims

to have discovered the one true way to analyze international politics. As I’ve argued elsewhere,

maintaining a diverse intellectual ecosystem is essential in the study of politics because none of our tools

or methods is useful for all subjects and we never know in advance what sort of problems will demand our

attention. Better a well-stocked tool kit than one big hammer.

No. 4: The importance of ideology

I was drawn to realism from the very beginning because I thought it explained the historical record more

persuasively than other intellectual traditions. Not surprisingly, therefore, I believed ideology had only

limited effects on state behavior and that the competitive pressures that operate in an anarchic system

inevitably pressure states to compromise or abandon hard-core ideological beliefs. I still think power

politics dominates, but I’d concede more causal weight to ideology today than I would have back in the

early 1980s. Insights from the Kremlin’s archives suggest that Marxism-Leninism shaped how Soviet



early 1980s. Insights from the Kremlin’s archives suggest that Marxism-Leninism shaped how Soviet

leaders viewed the world in sometimes powerful ways, and the ideology of American “exceptionalism” has

had an enduring impact on U.S. behavior as well. All of this is another way of saying that mono-causal

explanations rarely suffice and that scholars need to be open to rethinking their initial theoretical

commitments.

No. 5: The role of culture

Similarly, I used to have a certain contempt for cultural explanations of political phenomena. Whenever

somebody invoked “culture” to explain some aspect of political behavior, I thought it was a lazy catchall

category one could invoke to account for something one didn’t really understand. I now regard my

youthful dismissal of culture as mostly just plain dumb, and I have become more sympathetic to

explanations that employ well-specified definitions of culture. This shift began after I had worked at

several different universities and had noticed how much their intellectual cultures differed despite their

other similarities. Stanford is not Berkeley is not Harvard is not Princeton is not the University of Chicago,

just as New Orleans is not New England and Sweden is not Vietnam or Brazil. A further implication:

Trying to shape the politics and society of an alien culture is a fool’s errand because even well-intentioned

actions generate side effects that foreign actors won’t have anticipated.

No. 6: U.S. nuclear strategy

I used to be dead wrong about U.S. nuclear weapons policy. After reading the early nuclear strategists and

books like Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith’s How Much Is Enough?, I assumed that the United

States was firmly committed to a policy of nuclear deterrence via mutual assured destruction. But the

work of Desmond Ball, David Alan Rosenberg, Robert Jervis, Fred Kaplan, Bruce Blair, and many others

revolutionized my understanding of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. We now know that the United States was

never content with mutual assured destruction and that the Pentagon has always devoted vast sums to

developing counterforce capabilities and wanted to be able to fight and win a nuclear war if it had to. This

is not to say that the United States wants or intends to ever fight a nuclear war, but it sought nuclear

superiority over any and all rivals since the very beginning of the nuclear age and continues to pursue that

goal today.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Much-Is-Enough-1961-1969/dp/0833038265



No. 7: Reconstructing Afghanistan

In the first article I wrote after the 9/11 attacks, I endorsed the invasion of Afghanistan and called for a

major U.S. and international effort to rebuild the country once the Taliban was ousted. It’s possible that

such an effort would have succeeded had George W. Bush and the neoconservatives not galloped off to

invade Iraq in 2003, but I’m no longer convinced that this would have been the case. The problem, I now

believe, is that trying to construct a Western-style state in Afghanistan was a vast project and was virtually

certain to trigger all sorts of resistance and unintended consequences. This would require the work of

several generations, and there are a zillion ways the work could get derailed even if outside forces had the

best of intentions, patience, resources, and lots of smart people doing the work. Perhaps a more limited set

of goals would have succeeded, but even that is not certain. I still agree with a lot of what I wrote back in

2001, but I was too sanguine about our ability to do more than just topple the Taliban and capture Osama

bin Laden.

No. 8: Israel

As is the case with a lot of Americans, my early views on Israel were shaped by writers like Leon Uris, by

reading about the horrific experience of the Holocaust, and by the influence of Israeli and Zionist friends.

The strongly pro-Zionist coverage of Middle East issues in the U.S. media undoubtedly reinforced that

view. When I began researching my dissertation and first book, however, I become aware that there was an

alternative view of these events, though I did not explore the tension between these perspectives at the

time. By the mid-1990s, however, the work of Israel’s “new historians” (e.g., Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, Benny

Morris, etc.) and a number of other writers had provided a more complicated and nuanced picture of

Israel’s founding and subsequent conduct. While still supportive of Israel’s creation, over time I became

more critical of its actions and more concerned about the costs of the “special relationship” for the United

States. The consequences of that policy became increasingly clear after 9/11, of course, and eventually led

to my book with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby. Nothing that has happened since that book was

published has undermined its basic thesis, but subsequent events have made me more pessimistic about

the prospects for peace in the near-to-medium term.

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501



No. 9: Can democracies conduct an effective foreign policy?

When I first got seriously interested in foreign affairs, reading about statesmen like Dean Acheson, George

Marshall, George Kennan, or Henry Kissinger was inspiring and probably gave me an unwarranted faith in

the maturity and gravitas of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. I used to be very comfortable with the

“rational actor” assumption, for example, but that faith is harder to maintain when one sees how much

domestic politics and other pathologies intrude on the policy process. I used to have a lot of faith in the

“marketplace of ideas” — i.e., the idea that democratic debate can weed out bad ideas and allow mistaken

initiatives to be corrected — but the Iraq War and some other events showed me that the “marketplace” is

usually warped by secrecy, strategic leaking, interest group politics, media bias, and other forms of

opportunism and corruption. Add to this the enduring alliance between Democratic liberal

interventionists and Republican neoconservatives, and it’s easy to see why a relative outsider like Barack

Obama could become president and end up repeating many of the same mistakes as his predecessors. The

silver lining: The United States is in such a favorable position that it may not need to have a very effective

foreign policy. Good thing.

No. 10: The Clinton administration

Back in 2000, Foreign Affairs published my article “Two Cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy.” It was a

limited defense of Bill Clinton’s foreign-policy record, and I argued that his performance was better than

many believed (and much better than his Republican critics maintained). Over time, however, I’ve

concluded that my assessment was too lenient. In particular, several of Clinton’s decisions — most notably

“dual containment” in the Persian Gulf and NATO expansion — helped sow the seeds of much future

trouble. Similarly, there were important missed opportunities during Clinton’s tenure — most notably the

failed Oslo peace process in the Middle East — and the consequences of that failure have loomed ever

larger with the passage of time. If there is one article on my CV that I’d like to go back and rewrite, it would

be that one.

There’s my list, and I’m sure I could add more items with a bit more thought. Whether you are a student, a

scholar, an aspiring policy wonk, or a would-be public official, I encourage you to perform a similar

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55848/stephen-m-walt/two-cheers-for-clintons-foreign-policy



scholar, an aspiring policy wonk, or a would-be public official, I encourage you to perform a similar

exercise from time to time. You don’t necessarily have to air your errors in public, but being aware of how

each of us changes our views over time is good protection against the arrogant overconfidence that often

contains the seeds of foreign-policy disaster.

John Moore/Getty Images

Why the 2016 Campaigners’ Cliff’s NotesShould Include ISIS, Ukraine, and theMiddle EastIt might seem like the U.S. public doesn’t care about foreign policy, but it would be a big

mistake for presidential hopefuls to ignore foreign policy. Huge.

MARCH 12, 2015BY AARON DAVID MILLER

If we were to consider — even some 20 months out — how important foreign policy will be in the 2016 U.S.

elections, a smart take from inside the Beltway might sound something like this: Sure, foreign policy is

important, but most of the time just not to most Americans who vote.

Americans continue to be singularly uninterested in matters beyond their borders unless, of course, bad

things that are far away come much closer to home. (See large numbers of Americans dying in wars on

foreign soil, rising gas prices, and terrorist threats to the homeland.)

But even the latter — and the dire predictions from our leaders of terrorist attacks — often can’t shake

Americans’ collective complacency. Despite Americans’ intense horror over the Islamic State’s beheadings

and a decrease in their satisfaction over the way the terrorist threat is being handled, a January 2015

Gallup poll found that only 2 percent of those surveyed identified terrorism as the most important

problem facing the United States. Clearly a single consequential terrorist attack directed from outside

would change that.

Still, aspiring presidential candidates of both parties, beware (particularly governors without much

http://www.gallup.com/poll/181199/americans-satisfaction-security-terrorism-drops.aspx

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https://foreignpolicy.com/author/aaron-david-miller

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28121935/poll-americans-not-satisfied-with-obamas-response-to-isis

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/12/why-the-2016-campaigners-cliffs-notes-should-include-isis-ukraine-and-the-middle-east/



national security know-how): Foreign policy may well loom larger in the 2016 presidential campaign than

it has in the past. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re going to be vulnerable. President

Gerald Ford never really recovered from his gaffe in his 1976 debate with candidate Jimmy Carter in which

he said, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” even though that’s not what the president

intended to say. And if you do know what you’re talking about, well, you just might score a few points with

voters because experts or not when it comes to foreign policy, Americans, particularly in our crisis-driven

world, want their presidents to be confident and know what they’re talking about — or at least make a

great case that they do. So foreign policy will matter. And here’s why.

Handling 24/7 Crises

Today’s world is hardly a more dangerous or explosive place than it was in the 1930s and 1940s, when

world war, genocide, depression, and expansionist totalitarian powers threatened global order and

stability. But it often feels that way now, a veritable world on fire. Maybe that sensation is a result of a 24/7

media that turns breaking news into an interminable nonstop cycle of breathlessly delivered catastrophes.

Combined with our seemingly willful determination to ignore or trivialize the past and handle these crises

with almost no sense of historical perspective, we focus more on the headlines than the trend lines.

Everything from Putin and Crimea to Ebola to the Islamic State is perceived as part of a new and

unprecedented world on fire and is constantly being presented as a veritable game-changer.

These are very real challenges. But our 24/7 relentless media and our tendency to focus on headlines

instead of trend lines with no sense of historical perspective turns everything into a collective gestalt that

the world is somehow coming apart.

And so Americans are bombarded by a seemingly uninterrupted parade of crises that mostly occur abroad.

Russia’s moves to annex Crimea and support separatist forces in Ukraine bring echoes of the Cold War; the

Middle East continues to melt down; and this region’s newest horror — the Islamic State — demonstrates

its barbarity and savagery on an almost daily basis. Middle Eastern terrorism stalks Europe too. Worse,

there are no quick or easy solutions. All of these are long movies that will likely play on as America

struggles to come up with effective responses in a world of long shots and insoluble problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfyL4uQVJLw



And that virtually guarantees that presidential candidates — whether in debates or during routine

campaigning — will be pressed to make sense of it all. It’s virtually unimaginable that at some point

during what is likely to be a year and a half campaign that some crisis, most likely in the Middle East, or

even an attack at home, won’t present the candidates with the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call scenario — as

in the candidates will have an opportunity to stump on how they would’ve responded in the hot seat. And

in our crisis-laden and media-driven world, particularly during election season, there may well be more

than one.

Leading From the Front or Behind

Indeed, the 3 a.m. phone call conceit for most Americans is less about the details and complexities of the

foreign-policy universe than who has the smarts and experience to lead. Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign

spot — your children are sleeping; there’s a phone call to the White House about some problem in the

world; whom do you want answering that phone? — gets to that issue. Bottom line: Americans want to

know that their presidents are up to the job and that they possess the calm, smarts, and toughness to

handle the middle-of-the-night crisis

Sure foreign-policy facts are important here — really important, if you fumble them. But in the end, what

makes or breaks a candidate’s chances in this scenario — the real measuring stick in this hypothetical — is

really about character. Voters are going to want to know: Which among these presidential candidates is

going to be wise enough — and have the stature to stand up for American interests abroad with the

appropriate sense of caution and prudence to keep the United States out of reckless military ventures

abroad? And when the occasion does require action, will this person be able to command the force

necessary to protect U.S. interests?

Here the Republicans have a ready-made and well-rehearsed narrative to roll out, particularly during the

general election. Whatever the merits of the argument, the Republicans will continue to hammer home

the “leading from behind” narrative in order to cast doubt on anyone associated with Barack Obama and

to show that his policies are responsible for much of the current mess. And they will try to use the crisis-

ridden Middle East to make it stick. The notion that an inexperienced Democratic president has abdicated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg



America’s responsibilities abroad and is perceived as feckless by America’s allies and adversaries alike is

already a dominant Republican campaign staple.

Whether it’s Jeb Bush or Scott Walker who ends up as the Republican front-runner and eventual party

candidate, this theme will keep turning up. You might think that the former would be careful about

becoming too closely identified with his brother’s unpopular Iraq War and the advisors who supported it.

By the looks of the foreign-policy team advising the former Florida governor — 19 of the 21 names have

previously served in either his brother’s or his father’s administration — this doesn’t seem to be the case. If

the candidate is Walker, the Wisconsin governor will have to bone up on his foreign-policy expertise and

not suggest so casually that taking on 100,000 protesters gives him the wherewithal to handle the world’s

problems. And it’s clear he’s trying to take crash courses in how to do so.

Obama isn’t running again. But Republicans will run against the policies he has presided over, particularly

on terrorism, in an effort to tar his successor and create a frame for a more muscular foreign policy. They

will charge that too early an exit from Iraq and not enough muscle in Syria have enabled the Islamic State

to expand and have threatened U.S. interests. Should another terrorist attack directed from abroad occur

on U.S. soil, this argument may well sway voters, however unconcerned Americans say they are about

terrorism as a major problem for the United States. And with the U.S. economy improving, Republicans

may see greater value in shifting the focus to foreign policy. According to a CNN/ORC poll, 57 percent of

the public is already unhappy with the way the president is handling the Islamic State and thinks the

approach is failing.

The Clinton Card

Whether the “leading from behind” trope will stick to Hillary Clinton is another matter. On the one hand,

she was Obama’s secretary of state and supported and acquiesced in the president’s foreign policies. On

certain issues, particularly Syria and dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin, she wanted to be

tougher. But on diplomacy with Iran and getting tough with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

she sided with the president. How she is going to walk that fine line? Conveying a tougher posture than her

president while not walking away from him and the policies she supported will be no easy task.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/18/jeb-bushs-foreign-policy-team-is-eerily-familiar-in-1-venn-diagram/

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/politics/cnn-poll-isis-obama-approval/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-making-of-scott-walker-statesman/2015/03/06/43b347b0-c286-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html



It will be doubly difficult for her precisely because she touts her foreign-policy experience. So the bull’s-

eye on her campaign back will be bigger. Then there are those pesky other State Department distractions

— email-gate, Benghazi, and trying to square her staunch defense of women’s rights with the Clinton

Foundation’s taking money from some pretty anti-feminist Saudis and Gulfies.

One way is to change the channel and try to focus on her foreign-policy expertise. She is hands down the

most experienced of the field on foreign policy. For one thing, Clinton could be the first secretary of state

since James Buchanan to ascend to the presidency. And private email account or not, and Benghazi too,

she will argue that the cruel and dangerous world beyond America’s shores mandates that a president

know that world. Of course, Clinton’s Republican opponents will almost certainly want to focus on foreign

policy in an effort to show that Clinton doesn’t know the world. Her rivals (and eventually ultimate rival)

will likely try to use issues such as the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound and her support for

Obama’s Iran policy and criticism of Netanyahu to prove that she is weak and that she doesn’t understand

how to deal with America’s enemies or allies.

In many elections, foreign policy doesn’t count all that much. But in this one it just might. With the

economy improving and with the cruel and unpredictable world beyond America’s shores, in 2016 foreign

policy is going to assume a much bigger role in who Americans look to lead them. From possible terrorist

attacks at home, to what to do about an AUMF and the use of force, to dealing with Putin’s next move on

the Euro-chessboard, there’s no running away from the world in this election, probably right up to

Election Day.

So candidates, dust off that atlas; start boning up now on which states border Ukraine, the differences

between Sunnis and Shiites, and what distinguishes the Islamic State from al-Nusra Front. A few months

from now you just might be called on to come up with the answers.

Photo credit: Sean Gardner/Getty Images

In the Supreme Leader We Trust

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/11/in-the-supreme-leader-we-trust-iran-nuclear-negotiations-cotton-letter/



Set aside D.C.’s partisan follies and there are real questions both sides should be asking

about our Iran policy.

MARCH 11, 2015BY DAVID ROTHKOPF

And we have a winner!

In a Congress full of partisan hacks, nitwits, and know-nothings, young Tom Cotton of Arkansas really had

to do something special to have his blunder considered more awful than the prior lows, missteps, and

gaffes that have come to symbolize this bleak era in the history of America’s legislative branch. But the

letter he authored to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, represents the worst single example

of partisan meddling in an ongoing international negotiation in modern American history.

The letter, co-signed by 46 other Republican senators, shows far more than a complete disregard for

America’s long-standing tradition of having partisanship stop at the water’s edge. It represents a clear

effort to undermine the constitutionally mandated responsibility of the president of the United States to

conduct U.S. foreign policy. It also simultaneously damaged American credibility in the eyes of the other

nations with which we are involved in the negotiating process and in the eyes of the Iranians with whom

we were negotiating. Think of the precedent: If Congress simply sent out letters saying, “We will overturn

whatever the president agrees to,” who would negotiate with us after that? And not just on one issue, but

on anything?

Cotton and his colleagues are clearly not ready for prime time. If a young, inexperienced executive arrived

at a company and made such a blunder in his first 60 days, he’d be out the door on his keister in

milliseconds. But not only did Cotton decide to make this grandly stupid gesture out of a stunning surfeit

of ignorance, but almost half the U.S. Senate had the bad judgment to go along with him. All of them

showed not only a disregard for the Constitution, but as Leslie Gelb rightly noted on the Daily Beast, also a

disregard for actually trying to make progress defanging Iran. Not secondarily, their move demonstrates a

deeply flawed understanding of international law. And in a telling show of irony, no one articulated that

quite so well as Iran’s canny foreign minister, Javad Zarif.

https://foreignpolicy.com/author/david-rothkopf

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/9/8180933/zarif-cotton-letter

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/10/open-letter-to-iran-shows-gop-senators-hate-obama-more-than-they-love-america.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/11/in-the-supreme-leader-we-trust-iran-nuclear-negotiations-cotton-letter/

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Finally, the true test of the egregiousness of this move is illustrated by the fact that it so quickly

overshadowed the newly minted worst moment in the history of partisan foreign-policy meddling: the

invitation extended by House Speaker John Boehner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — an

event that took place only the week before.

We’re in new territory here, folks. There has always been partisanship in Washington. There never really

was a period of good old days despite what the old-timers say. After all, Aaron Burr shot and killed

Alexander Hamilton. But what we’re seeing here now is the scorched-earth nihilism of a bunch of partisan

yahoos who seem to quite literally believe that their purpose in life is to ensure nothing gets done in

Washington or around the world on behalf of the American people. They unblinkingly and without pang

of conscience have gone into the business of subordinating our national interests to their political agenda.

Not only is this ugly — and by ugly I mean Roger Ailes ugly; lowest-common-denominator, epithet-

hurling, all-heat, no-light, cable-TV ugly — but it could not be more ill-timed. We have great challenges

facing us abroad, and this is really not the moment to blow up our foreign-policy apparatus.

Furthermore, I should add that in part, the reason it is the wrong moment is that the other party in this

food fight — the president of the United States — is not helping matters either with his own partisanship

(and that of his team’s). And their own consistent foreign-policy bumbling isn’t helping matters either.

This is a time of big challenges and complex issues that require the best in both parties to help each other

help the American people find decent solutions. And what we’re getting instead are political suicide

bombers who are blowing up initiatives that may have been shaky or ill-considered to begin with, but

happened to be the only initiatives on the table.

It will no doubt be seen as wildly inflammatory, but let me describe the consequences of this behavior in

the starkest possible language: Political dysfunction in Washington is a much greater threat to each and

every one of us than the Islamic State will ever be. It is time that a concerted effort by reasonable people of

both parties to restore something like a functioning bipartisan foreign policy be undertaken — with the

same urgency we would require of any other effort to address a major immediate threat to our national

well-being. (And save yourself the effort in the comments section: Such an effort does not begin with

saying the problem is primarily the other party’s fault. These recent incidents are more the fault of the



saying the problem is primarily the other party’s fault. These recent incidents are more the fault of the

GOP on Capitol Hill. But Democrats have done their own damage in this regard. So has the president. Time

to get over it and move on, or deal with more of the consequences.)

The Iran issue is a particularly good case in point because we need to strip away the partisan name-calling

and reflexive positioning to fully understand it. It is too important and it is far too complex. You literally

cannot see the truth of this situation through a partisan lens.

For example, I have seen smart, well-meaning defenders of the president argue that war is the only

alternative to achieving a deal with the Iranians.

This is just not true. First, it is hard to imagine any circumstances under which this president will go to

war with Iran. It’s just goes against his every instinct as we have seen. He is also too invested in this deal to

let that happen. Frankly, that goes for circumstances in which Iran cuts a deal and then cheats. The White

House can swear all options are on the table all it likes. We have six years of evidence that suggests

otherwise, six years of the president being the one person on his own team most likely to block the use of

force or even strong or provocative action when it is proposed. Might a breakdown produce more tension

and more sanctions? Yes. But a war involving the United States? Very unlikely.

On the other hand, a deal does not guarantee that we don’t have a war. If there were a deal but certain

other regional actors — the Israelis, for example — did not trust it, then they could take unilateral action.

Is that likely? No. More opportune moments for that kind of action have come and gone. (Further proof

that war is not a likely outcome.) But is it possible? Sure, especially if some in the region don’t feel that the

deal in question really puts a nuclear Iran out of range, if they feel, as seems likely, that the deal leaves it a

realistic possibility. So while engaging in an armed conflict is not likely, suggesting that a deal means the

issue is completely resolved is also unrealistic.

Other rhetoric around the Iran deal issue is also open to question by critics on both sides of the aisle. The

president and his team responded to Netanyahu’s critique by saying the Israeli prime minister wanted a

deal that was so strong that it would be impossible to achieve. The implication was that the only



deal that was so strong that it would be impossible to achieve. The implication was that the only

alternative to what some see as a weak deal is an impossibly strong deal. This is ridiculous. Gradations

exist. It is possible to fairly critique this deal by admitting it is better than no deal and weaker than it ought

to be. Just not in Washington. Not in the overheated debate of today.

It is also not necessarily the case that no deal is better than a weak deal, as some of the Iran hawks suggest.

It is possible that a deal that is weak but is then well administered, carefully monitored, and assiduously

enforced would actually make the region considerably safer than it would be without such a deal.

But there are other levels of reasonable concerns that we ought to be debating. There is the concern of

important allies that such a deal represents a new tilt toward Iran. The White House can offer all the

rhetoric it wants to the contrary, but right now one of the very biggest worries about its Middle East policy

ought to center on the degree to which it depends on the goodwill of not just Iran but in particular of

Khamenei. He is the last word on Iran’s direction. And not only is he going to be key to whether Iran

honors any deal it strikes, but he is turning out to be America’s most important real partner in the battle

against the Islamic State. We can deny it, but the facts say otherwise. It was Iranian-backed Shiite militias

scoring the gains in Tikrit this past week. It is Iran’s Quds Force that is the pointy end of the Iraqi spear in

fighting the Islamic State. The Iranian government is really guiding the Baghdad regime. What if its

intentions are not simply to get rid of the Islamic State, but to assert greater power in Iraq or even to

effectively annex part of it? That is certainly the kind of fear of further Shiite overreach that led many

Sunnis to accept the Islamic State’s first moves as they grew more disenchanted with the last Shiite-

dominated Iraqi government. Have we really thought through the consequences of depending so heavily

on them?

And it is not just with the nuclear deal or the war against the Islamic State that Iran is the critical player. It

is key to the outcome in Yemen, where Shiite forces have taken control of vast parts of the country, and it

is the primary ally of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran is in fact the one making the big gains, taking

the best advantage of the Middle East’s unrest right now. And therefore the success or failure of most of

the Obama administration’s efforts in the region currently depend far too heavily on Khamenei. This is a

man who views the United States as an enemy. Israel too. Many of our other allies in the region as well. He



has openly supported terrorist groups like Hezbollah and has been a destabilizing force in the region as

long as he has been in office. Certainly it is reasonable to argue that depending on him to such a degree

should be viewed with concern, especially given his precarious health. Who knows who will replace him

and what that person’s views will be?

In fact, critics of the pending deal who actually seek a safer Middle East and a safer world should really

focus on figuring out how to take the best deal the United States (and the other nations involved) can

strike and make the most of it. They should be asking: How do you offset concerns that it might be

violated? How do you offset concerns that it might make our allies uncomfortable? Clearly, a broader

regional strategy is required. Working with our traditional allies in the region — all of which are wary of

Iran — we should support the development of a tighter alliance and effective capabilities to deter any

aggression or mischief by the Iranians. We should work with the countries that helped strike the deal to

ensure that the United Nations and all appropriate agencies are tireless in their enforcement of the deal

and that very clear penalties for missteps are enforced. (This especially means that as sanctions are lifted,

it is clear to the most important players in places like Europe, Russia, and China that the sanctions can and

will be immediately reimposed with meaningful penalties added.

In fact, what should be clear to all is that just as the interim deal for which there is a March 24 deadline

looming is only a step toward a final deal this year, so too should any deal be seen as just a first step toward

a major Iranian policy reversal and the ramping-up of a broad array of measures to ensure that Iran is

honoring the terms of the agreement. Further, and not secondarily, it is important that we do not become

so mesmerized by the prospect of this deal that we ignore the consequences either of Iran’s active efforts

to gain influence in the region or of the country’s other problematic initiatives, such as its ongoing

cyberwar against us. We cannot reward Iran for an express intention to change its nuclear direction with a

carte blanche to destabilize the region, seek to change its character, or attack us. When Blanche DuBois

depended on the kindness of strangers, there was at least the possibility they might be people of goodwill.

In this instance, we are depending on the kindness of a known adversary, and that requires a special kind

of steely determination and constructive skepticism that only a bipartisan U.S. foreign-policy initiative

can really bring to bear. When the likes of Cotton and Boehner willfully abrogate their responsibilities in

that regard, they may think they are striking out at the president, but in reality they are putting their

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.646072



that regard, they may think they are striking out at the president, but in reality they are putting their

country at ever greater risk.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

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