PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Diplomacy of No Diplomacy
February 8, 2021
We now watch as Biden and his foreign policy people effectively allow Israel
to dictate the conditions under which the president can fulfill his campaign
promise on Iran.
(Ted Eytan, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
A return to diplomacy: Let us hold this thought up to the light. Among all
the promises President Joe Biden is going to break over the next four years,
this will prove the most fraudulent and, in the larger scheme of things, the
most consequential of his breaches.
As of last week, it is the crisis over the agreement governing Iran's
nuclear programs that stands to demonstrate the truth of this judgment. On
Sunday Tehran appeared to put the Biden administration on notice that it has
two weeks to get serious about reentering diplomatic negotiations, after
which time the shutter will come down on the window of opportunity. As I
have previously made clear in this space, I see no evidence that Biden's
national-security people will prove either serious or wise as they address
this critical question.
In truth, there is very little American diplomacy to return to. The late and
estimable Boutros Boutros-Ghali explained this memorably in Unvanquished,
the memoir he published in 1999, after the U.S. forced him out as the UN's
secretary-general because he was not sufficiently obsequious. "Only the weak
rely on diplomacy," the celebrated Egyptian wrote. "The United States sees
little need of it, for power is enough."
How very on the mark. "The Roman Empire had no need of diplomacy," the
learned Boutros-Ghali elaborated. "Nor does the United States: Diplomacy is
perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of
weakness."
This is the tradition the Biden administration will return to. Let us call
it the diplomacy of no diplomacy.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, left, and Israel's Moshe Dayan at the Council of
Europe in Strasbourg, October 1979. (Claude Truong-Ngoc, Wikimedia Commons,
CC BY-SA 3.0)
There is much talk now of demilitarizing American foreign policy, and it is
a fine thing that it is at last permissible to raise the topic in polite
conversation. "Time and time again, we've seen how over-reliance on military
tools can lead us into policy quicksand," William Burns, a career diplomat
and now named CIA director, said in an interview last spring with The
Foreign Service Journal. "Time and time again, we've fallen into the trap of
overusing - or prematurely using - force. That tends to make diplomacy a
distorted and under-resourced afterthought."
The right thoughts, surely. But I urge those assuming Burns' remarks have
anything to do with the new administration's direction to temper their
expectations. It is policy to say such things; it is not how the Biden
administration intends to conduct policy.
Iran as Early Indicator
The Iran question was fated to stand as an early indicator of President
Biden's foreign policy principles (if this is my word). Tehran now seems
determined, altogether rightfully, to force the issue. Good, I say. The
sooner we understand the what's-what of this administration the better.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the nuclear agreement is formally
known, lifted U.S. and international sanctions in return for Iran's
reduction of uranium enrichment under enhanced International Atomic Energy
Agency monitoring. The IAEA repeatedly reported that Iran was sticking to
its part of the deal. Given that President Donald Trump withdrew from the
six-nation accord in 2018, Biden's professed intent during his presidential
campaign was to restore the U.S. as a signatory to it.
But it was clear from the outset that Biden's promise was unlikely to prove
policy, chiefly because the Israelis made it plain once Biden won the White
House that they would accept no such outcome.
We now watch as Biden and his foreign policy people effectively allow Israel
to dictate the conditions under which Biden can fulfill his campaign
promise.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets employees as he arrives at the U.S.
Department of State on Jan. 27. (State Department, Ron Przysucha)
The Israeli leadership is at this point divided - but only tactically. Aviv
Kohavi, the Israeli Defense Forces' chief of staff, said 10 days ago that
Washington ought to adopt the Trump policy and repudiate the accord
altogether. But Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad and a confidant of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is now making final plans to consult in
Washington at the end of the month with Biden, CIA Director Burns, and Jake
Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser.
Cohen, who knows full well Biden is about to give Tel Aviv veto power over
his Iran policy, will prevail. We are now in for a textbook case of the
diplomacy of no diplomacy.
Tehran asks the Biden administration to lift the punishing sanctions Trump
imposed after he pulled the U.S. out of the accord as its only condition
prior to reopen talks. A goodwill gesture of this kind is hardly an
extravagant request under the circumstances. But Sullivan and Secretary of
State Antony Blinken have made it abundantly clear that the U.S. will take
this step only after Iran returns to full compliance with the agreement's
limitations.
Translation: Act on our demands before we open negotiations on our demands.
The U.S. position, in other words, is intended as an offer Iran cannot
possibly accept.
Blinken, it is to be noted, has begun to change his story since his Senate
confirmation hearings the day before Biden's inauguration. "The time it
would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for one weapon," he
advised the assembled senators, "has gone from beyond a year, as it was
under the JCPOA, to about three or four months, based at least on public
reporting." In an interview with NBC News on Jan. 31, he said this timeframe
could shrink to "a matter of weeks" if Iran continues low-grade enrichment
at its current pace.
In my surmise, Blinken is sharpening his rhetoric in anticipation of the
Yossi Cohen talks, now a matter of a week or two away. The heightened sense
of alarm will then justify accepting what are certain to be the very
stringent demands Israel imposes on the Biden administration. Lost in all
that Blinken now articulates, of course, is Iran's longstanding declaration,
verified by a National Intelligence Estimate during the Bush II years, that
it has no program or plans to develop nuclear weapons.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister and for my money one of the
two ablest diplomats now active (the other is Sergei Lavrov, Russia's
foreign minister), is nothing if not inventive. Let us act simultaneously,
he proposed last week: Iran will return to compliance while the U.S. lifts
sanctions.
The European Union, in the person of Josep Borrell, its de facto foreign
minister, can "choreograph the actions," Al Jazeera quoted Zarif as saying.
"There can be a mechanism to basically either synchronize it or coordinate
what can be done."
What's not to like? You may wonder. You will have to ask Biden's foreign
policy people, because they declined the offer.
"If Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the
JCPOA, the United States would do the same," the State Department's
spokesman, Ned Price, responded the next day, "and then we would use that as
a platform to build a longer and a stronger agreement that also addresses
other areas of concern."
State Department Spokesperson Ned Price holding a press briefing this month.
(State Department, Ron Przysucha)
What a third-rate hack. This is nothing more than the arrogant, impudent
boilerplate of dullards with too much power: Blinken has been using these
same phrases verbatim for months. It is another way of saying the U.S. has
no intention of altering its position even when presented with a mutually
satisfactory way through a diplomatic impasse.
There is nothing new in this. It is North Korea redux, to take one of
numerous cases: Washington has engaged in the diplomacy of no diplomacy with
Pyongyang for much of the past seven decades, offering it one "deal" after
another intended to precipitate the North's rejection.
Indeed, in his confirmation hearings before the Senate a few weeks ago,
Blinken made it plain this is precisely how he proposes to address the North
Korea question: Use sanctions and the threat of force to confront the North
with offers they cannot accept, then cast them as intractable.
This nonsense will not endure indefinitely as our new century unfolds.
In the Iran case, the clock now ticks. In apparent response to Washington's
rejection of Zarif's proposal, on Sunday Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
described Tehran's final position thus:
"If they want Iran to return to its commitments . America must completely
lift sanctions, and not just in words or on paper. They must be lifted in
action, and then we will verify and see if they have been properly lifted,
and then return."
The Agence France-Presse report, quoting this televised speech, implied that
Iran, in observance of a law passed in the majlis last December, will expel
all IAEA nuclear inspectors on Feb. 21 if the U.S. does not meet its
demands.
The diplomacy of no diplomacy is not diplomacy. It is a pantomime acted out
by frivolous poseurs, the intent of which is to veil America's reliance on
military power.
Here, posthumously and respectfully, I must correct Boutros-Ghali. Powerful
nations are often weak - history is replete with examples. This is America's
condition after seven complacent decades: We are too weak, and weak-minded,
to manage any such thing as diplomacy.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the
International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer.
His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American
Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick
Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of Consortium News.