Diplomacy

By Will Inboden

Ambassador James Lilley died on November 12. With his passing, America also lost one of its most accomplished Asia-hands. It is perhaps a fitting tribute to his legacy that his death occurred the same day that President Obama departed for an Asia shaped so much for the better by the devoted lifetime of service of Ambassador Lilley and his fellow statesmen. 

When Lilley joined the CIA in 1951 upon his graduation from Yale, Asia was convulsed with conflict and poverty, and communism seemed to be everywhere ascendant. China had just two years earlier fallen to Mao Zedong, foreshadowing years of isolation and totalitarian brutality. American troops were mired in a bloody stalemate on the Korean peninsula, trying to prevent Chinese forces from completing communist North Korea's invasion of the South. Taiwan was a beleaguered, impoverished island outpost for Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists. Japan was a traumatized, war-torn nation in the nativity phase of its reconstruction. Southeast Asia was convulsed by anticolonialist nationalisms that often blended with communist insurgencies. 

Over the next four decades, Jim Lilley's career embodied Asia's remarkable transformation and America's evolving posture in the region. Born and raised in China, throughout his life he combined a deep and abiding affection for Asia with a patriot's love for America.  It seemed he was in the middle of almost every significant conflict or foreign policy development. He ran clandestine operations in China and the "secret war" in Laos, became the first CIA station chief in Beijing after the Nixon-Kissinger opening, helped solidify the US defense commitment to Taiwan, and played a key role as U.S. Ambassador in encouraging South Korea's transition to democracy in 1987. He served as Ambassador to China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and for over a year afterwards sheltered Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi in the US Embassy compound. Ambassador Lilley demonstrated throughout his career that American interests and values need not be in conflict, that a wise Asia policy combines pragmatic cooperation with the regimes in power and principled commitments to universal values of human liberty and dignity. By the end of his government service, Asia was incomparably more prosperous, stable, and free.

As a junior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute some years ago, I had the privilege of knowing Ambassador Lilley during the twilight of his career and the early stages of my own. He was invariably engaging, animated, opinionated, and always ready to dispense bits of wisdom gleaned over a lifetime with the captivating style of an accomplished raconteur. His memoir China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, written with his son Jeff, is an elegant model of erudition and insight, a profoundly moving family chronicle, and an indispensable resource for understanding the relationship between the United States and Asia in the 20th century.        

In short, his was a life lived in the spirit of his beloved alma mater: for God, for country, and for Yale. May he rest in peace.

By Will Inboden

The leaked cables from U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry this week add a new wrinkle to President Obama's protracted decision-making over his Afghanistan strategy. Eikenberry's cables apparently urge against increasing the US troop posture because of his concerns about Afghan President Karzai's corruption, competence, and legitimacy. Eikenberry and Karzai have long had a poor relationship, so while Eikenberry's concerns are no surprise, the public airing of them at this juncture is. The timing of the cables as well as their leak this late in the process is curious, given that Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops has been known since August, the senior Obama team's deliberations have been going on for a couple of months, and by many accounts the Administration plans to announce its decision within weeks. The cables and the leaks might represent some new front in the administration's internal battles, although there are hints that they might also reflect Obama's own search for an exit strategy. 

This is a further negative side effect of Obama's prolonged and increasingly public indecision on Afghanistan: it exacerbates internal administration divisions as they become more visible and thus less easy to gloss over or repair. It is also fraying relations with allies, especially America's most important NATO partner in the mission, as British leaders experience growing frustration with Obama's delays while facing declining public support for their own troop deployment.    

But the greatest damage may be in Kabul where the Obama administration has taken their Karzai challenge -- the difficulty of working with an erratic and corrupt leader -- and turned it into their Karzai crisis, as the Afghan president becomes increasingly uncooperative and increasingly vocal in his criticisms of American intentions. Criticisms which, as Jackson Diehl notes, may just be reflecting some of Obama's own words. Which is why the White House needs to remember that Obama's rhetoric on Afghanistan has at least four important yet different audiences: the American public; leaders in allied nations; American troops deployed to Afghanistan; and the Afghan people and government. His rhetorical efforts to assuage American domestic anxieties about the Afghan mission might inadvertently also signal lack of resolve to allied leaders and U.S. troops, and needlessly alienate Karzai even further.     

If there is one overriding lesson from Iraq, it is that security precedes political progress. As Peter Feaver observed, the Bush administration faced similar acute concerns about Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq. But then (as now in Afghanistan) it was neither right nor feasible for the United States to forcibly install another leader. And as important, the Bush administration realized that the first step needed in Iraq was to restore basic security with a new counterinsurgency strategy and troop surge. This eventually created the space for political progress and substantially improved performance by Maliki. The parallels with Afghanistan are hardly exact, but the principle remains the same: The first step towards a more honest and effective Afghan government will be protecting the Afghan population and defeating the Taliban.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

Does the Olympic decision tell us much about Obama foreign policy?

I think Barack Obama's critics will face an irresistible temptation to Blame it On Rio from here on out and that would be unfair. The Olympic setback is hardly the defining moment of President Obama's foreign policy. But it is a window through which we can see some things a bit more clearly now than perhaps we saw before. With apologies to Fred Barnes, who beat me to the punch on some of these, here would be my quick hit list:

1. The decision shows the limits of soft power and those limits are greater than even soft power skeptics realized. The failure of Obama to get substantial soft-power payoff on such crucial issues as NATO reinforcements in Afghanistan, Gitmo detainees, or Saudi help on the Israel-Palestinian Authority peace process is a setback for the most irrationally exuberant soft power enthusiasts, perhaps. But those are actually "least likely" cases for the soft-power thesis. They involve very serious matters of high politics on which there are deep and understandable conflicts of interest. The selection of the Olympic site, on the other hand, is a "most likely" case for soft power influence: low politics, no core conflict of interest (except for the handful of countries competing for host city status), and a secret-ballot protection that would allow delegates to vote their hearts and not their heads. Moreover, President Obama expended more soft-power effort on this issue than any previous president ever did. To not only lose but lose in a much-worse-than-expected fashion is a remarkable result that, quite frankly, should surprise even soft power skeptics. There is a great academic paper in this decision and I look forward to reading it.
2. The decision shows the extraordinary influence of the Chicago three -- Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett -- on matters that cross over into foreign policy. A favorite DC parlor game is trying to figure out how real decisionmaking on foreign and national security policy is done in the Obama administration. There have been some fairly fanciful depictions (I can't find the link but fellow FP blogger Daniel Drezner takes apart one of the most egregious examples here) and few well-sourced players of this parlor game buy those depictions. The Olympics gambit shows, it would appear, that the Big Three close-knit cluster of advisors has extraordinary influence in ways somewhat less favorable to the Obama team. As the inevitable tic-tocs get written, it will be interesting to see whether the team loses a bit of its close-knittedness and is replaced by more of the finger-pointing on which beltway journalism thrives.
3. The optics of the trip, which included a quick meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, are very unfortunate for Obama-era civil-military relations: 25 hours for a failed Olympic bid vs. 25 minutes for your battlefield commander in the good and necessary war in Afghanistan. Such optics are somewhat unfair but they inevitably frame the way the "deeper meaning" of dramatic episodes get interpreted (case in point: what comes to your mind when you hear the words "My Pet Goat"?). Because President Obama already has a slow-motion civil-military crisis-in-the-making due to the way his team is handling the Afghanistan strategy review, he could ill afford the images that emerged.
4. Setbacks (or gaffes) that reinforce an emerging critical frame are more consequential than ones that cut against that frame and, unfortunately for President Obama, this episode fits the former not the latter. Consider the following hypothetical: Which would have been more damaging for President Bush, wasting a primetime address with a long, boring, detail-laden Dukakis/Gore/Kerry-like speech that fell flat with the audience or mangling some talking point about a world leader? The mangled talking point, of course, because that would serve to confirm the caricature whereas the former would reinforce an image no critic really had. Reinforcing setbacks become punchlines; contradicting setbacks do not. Unfortunately for President Obama, the emerging caricature of him is that he is a self-regarding, all-international-politics-is-personal-politics celebrity who doesn't "get" the real world. I don't think that is an entirely fair caricature of him (are any caricatures ever fair?), but the Copenhagen Caper reinforces that frame.

Bottom line: this was not a good moment for President Obama's foreign policy. Let's not exaggerate its importance but let's also not miss what it does tell us about important matters.

OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

How should we measure success in the talks with Iran that begin today? I propose the following sliding scale.

1. Breathtaking, mission accomplished victory: Iran agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons program, submit to a rigorous verification and safeguards regime, and open substantive dialogue on its support for global terrorism. If this is achieved, President Obama would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. Chance of this happening: I would guess near zero.

2. Demonstrable and significant progress: Iran's continued recalcitrance is identified early by all the relevant players, especially Russia and China, and the UN Security Council responds within a few weeks with a substantial ramping up of de facto sanctions on Iran -- sanctions that involve the effective participation of Iran's chief trading partners, the EU, Russia, China, and India. Chance of this happening: I would guess not zero, but maybe just a 1-in-10 chance.

3. No progress beyond what the Bush team already achieved: Iran's continued recalcitrance provokes a range of global rhetorical censure ranging from Chinese tut-tutting to American (or French or British) bluster. The United States unilaterally increases sanctions pressure, but only incrementally because U.S. unilateral leverage over Iran is minimal. Europeans agree to review their options for an incremental increase of sanctions pressure themselves, but do not commit irrevocably to a ramp up in pressure. Russians and Chinese acknowledge that Iran has not been forthcoming, but block further sanctions on the grounds that these would be counterproductive. Chance of this happening: I would guess this is the most likely outcome, so maybe a 4-in-10 chance.

4. Less progress than what the Bush team already achieved: Iran's continued recalcitrance even after the U.S. has played its "hole card" of the evidence of Iranian duplicity concerning the second enrichment site splits the international coalition and key members, likely Russia or China, blame the United States for its mishandling of the negotiations. Chance of this happening: I fear this is the next most-likely-outcome, so maybe a 3-in-10 chance.

5. False progress is achieved: Desperate to show progress, the United States accepts a fig-leaf arrangement, or merely declares the negotiations fruitful when they are not, and so there is neither true progress towards Iranian relinquishment of their nuclear program nor increased leverage imposed on them to make a deal in the next round more likely. Chance of this happening: I don't think this is as likely as some Obama critics think, but there is a non-trivial possibility of this happening, perhaps barely a 2-in-10 chance.

6. U.S. capitulation: Desperate for a deal, the United States follows the advice of some and signs a grand bargain agreement that "resolves" the issue by preemptively conceding to all of Iran's demands, including the demand that the world community stop complaining about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Chance of this happening: not likely, probably only marginally more likely than outcome #1.

It should be noted that when Dennis Ross, a key player on the Obama team, outlined his strategy for Iran, it was essentially the Bush administration strategy and so was likely only to produce what the Bush team had been able to produce -- or a slight improvement thereupon. While he hoped for Outcome #1, he acknowledged that it might more realistically only achieve #2 in the medium-term. For that reason, I do not think it is fair to declare the strategy a failure if it doesn't achieve #1. However, if it doesn't achieve #2, I think it is fair, and perfectly within the terms established by Team Obama, to declare it a failure.

By Christian Brose

I finally got around to reading this Fareed Zakaria piece that some have recommended, and I can't say I'm much impressed. He's usually a smart writer, but he makes assumptions in this piece that are far more reflective of the so-called "Washington establishment" he aims to criticize, and it's worth picking at it for those reasons. Here's his main point:

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own -- Russian demands are by definition unacceptable. The only way to deal with countries is by issuing a series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

I'm all for a serious discussion of diplomacy, but unfortunately this isn't it. Is negotiating akin to appeasement? No, not inherently, but as with everything, the devil's in the details. Diplomacy is not just a synonym for talking. It is the balancing of incentives and disincentives to elicit changes in another party's behavior. So the question should never be, are we negotiating? -- but rather, are we aligning our tools of engagement and coercion to get our desired result?

I'd be the first to say that the Bush administration did not always pass that test. Indeed, one of the many tragedies of the Iraq war was that, at the moment (in April 2003) when U.S. leverage over Iran was highest, the Bush administration did not attempt to use it to change Iran's behavior. Would it have worked? Who knows. But it should have been tried, because the administration then spent its final years trying (unsuccessfully) to recreate the leverage it once had for a policy that was too-little-too-late.

We've been hearing a lot about the Obama administration's plans to talk to adversaries -- Iran, Russia, Syria, the Taliban, etc. But we've heard preciously little about how the administration intends to create conditions of strength that are the requirement for diplomatic success. Everyone knows Obama is willing to talk. The question is what new leverage he will bring to bear to make that talk effective. Will we use the military forces we are withdrawing from Iraq to exert greater pressure on Iran? Are we asking our European allies to take any bold new steps on financial coercion? What exactly is Russia willing and able to do to change Iran's decision-making? So far, answers to questions like these have not exactly been forthcoming, and in their absence, it's not at all off-base to think that talking without leverage could harm U.S. interests. (And all of this is assuming that Iran hasn't just said, screw it, we're getting the bomb, and damn the torpedoes, which opens up a whole new world of problems.)

Similarly, there's Zakaria's assertion, which is echoed so often by people in Washington, that "other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own." Well, there's interests, and then there's interests. It is perfectly legitimate for Russia to use its national power to advance its commercial and security interests. And Obama's team, like Bush's, will have plenty of conversations with Russia about whether our interests and theirs are reconcilable. Some will be; others won't. And we should never mistake, as Zakaria and others seem to do, a lack of agreement for a lack of diplomacy.

But in some sense, this is the less important issue. The real sticking point is how a Syria or a Russia defines some of its "interests." Damascus's desire to dominate Lebanon is not an interest. Nor is Russia's attempt to create a sphere of influence in its old imperial stomping grounds and prevent sovereign nations from making free choices about their own foreign policies. Such "interests" should be, in Zakaria's words, "by definition unacceptable." And to capitulate on this point, in the case of Russia specifically, is not only craven; it plays into what increasingly seems to be Moscow's real goal: to force the United States into a position where every decision we make about our own interests in Europe and Central Asia has to go through the Kremlin first -- be it resupply to Afghanistan or cooperation on missile defense with NATO allies. We can call this many things, but a partnership isn't one of them.

These are hard problems, and rather than tired cliches or pleasant rhetoric about outstretched hands, it's getting to be time for serious answers. Zakaria I suspect knows better. I hope the administration does too.

By Michael Singh

With Secretary Clinton just back from her first trip to the Middle East, attention inevitably turns to the future of the peace process. Doubtlessly mindful of this, President Obama has rightly pledged to spare no effort in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace. However, the form of this effort is just as critical as its magnitude. Obama should not, in an attempt to correct a perceived deficiency of the Bush administration's approach, substitute micromanagement of the parties' bilateral negotiations for a genuine peace effort. Indeed, if Obama draws only one lesson from the recent Gaza conflict, it should be that a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace cannot be made solely at the negotiating table.

Conventional wisdom holds that everyone knows what an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement will look like: solutions to the so-called "core issues" -- borders, refugees, and Jerusalem -- have been largely worked out in past talks. If only the parties would negotiate in earnest and the United States would lend its full support, an agreement could be worked out quickly, or so the theory goes. However, this narrative doesn't square with reality. The past years have witnessed Israeli and Palestinian leaders genuinely committed to a negotiated solution, and a high level of U.S. engagement -- Condoleezza Rice visited the region more than any of her predecessors as secretary of state.

So what stands in the way of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?  Not the lack of clever ideas to resolve the "core issues," especially borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. The supply of such ideas far outstrips the demand. While the core issues will determine the structure of an eventual peace, the foundation for that peace depends on issues more fundamental than these, progress on which will restore domestic support to negotiators and confidence in the party across the table. And without a firm foundation, no structure can be trusted to stand very long.

Foremost among these issues is security, for both Israelis and Palestinians. Bitter experience in Gaza and southern Lebanon has shown Israelis that territorial withdrawals are poor guarantors of security. And there is no wall high enough to stop even the crudest rocket. Before Israelis will expose themselves to even greater risk by ceding control of the West Bank, cooperative arrangements will be required with both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and neighboring states to prevent groups such as Hamas, with help from Tehran, from building an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal with which to terrorize Israel.

These groups also terrorize Palestinians, who find themselves used as shields in war and beset by armed gangs even in times of calm. Freeing Palestinians from these woes requires a professional security force such as that currently being deployed by the PA with U.S. assistance.  Success in this effort can restore order to Palestinian streets and give Israel the confidence it needs to curtail security operations and lift much-resented checkpoints in the West Bank.

At the same time, increased effort must be devoted to Palestinian institution-building. If a future Palestinian state is to survive past its independence day, a competent Palestinian entity must be ready to govern and economic activity must be sustainable. Accomplishing this will require cooperation from Israel, which must find a balance between its security requirements and Palestinian viability; the PA itself, whose failure to reform brought Hamas to power on cynical promises of transparency and accountability; and the international community, whose rhetorical fervor for the Palestinian cause has not been matched by zeal to assist the PA.

Finally, each side must credibly acknowledge the other's right to a state of its own. The Arab world's refusal to accept Israel's existence is evident in textbooks, mass media, and mosque sermons across the region. These are rife with anti-Jewish sentiment and contribute to an atmosphere in which Israel is vilified and terrorism against its citizens is excused. Peace is portrayed as capitulation, and Hamas and its ilk are glorified, which redounds to their financial and political benefit. To counter this, Arab states must isolate extremists and throw their full support behind the PA, while demonstrating to Israel that they are ready to end the conflict.

The flip side of the recognition issue pertains to settlements. The expansion of settlements leads Palestinians to question the sincerity of Israel's commitment to Palestinian statehood.  While Israeli leaders have curtailed new settlement activity, they have exerted insufficient control over the process by which such activity is planned and announced. The confusion and resentment generated thereby do serious harm to Israel's own interests and undermine their Palestinian negotiating partners.

Gaza was a dark reminder that there is far more to the peace process than peace negotiations. It is for this reason that the November 2007 Annapolis Conference not only launched a new round of bilateral talks, but also a multi-pronged process to support those talks by addressing these fundamental issues. It is to these issues, first and foremost, that Obama should direct the efforts of the United States and its allies. The outcome will determine whether the peace process is catalyzed or undone.

By Philip Zelikow

Will Inboden wonders in his otherwise very good post how folks might have imbibed the long-held view that President Bush regarded development as a priority right alongside defense and diplomacy -- one of "three D's" -- placing development as one of the top three priorities of the United States. Some referred to the 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS). But, Will writes, he checked that document, and "it nowhere privileges development as the third pillar of some type of new national security trinity."

Will believes he solved the puzzle by finding a USAID official who heard something at a White House meeting and embellished it. That's a good story. I have another. This one traces the origins to a White House official ... George W. Bush.

In his remarks at the World Bank on July 17, 2001, President Bush said that, to build a better world, the United States "must be guided by three great goals." The first was to keep the peace with a balance of power that favors freedom. The second was "to ignite a new era of global economic growth through a world trading system that is dramatically more open and more free." Finally, Bush said, "our third goal must be to work in true partnership with developing countries to remove the huge obstacles to development, to help them fight illiteracy, disease, unsustainable debt."

Working on the NSS in late 2001 and early 2002, I was quite struck by the trinity of priorities announced in this July 2001 speech, and the rank it gave to development.  Condi Rice confirmed to me that this was deliberate. President Bush soon followed up with his Monterrey speech in March 2002 announcing the plan to increase development assistance by 50 percent and create the Millennium Challenge Account initiative, displaying an international side to his ideal of compassionate conservatism. Although the NSS ended up not adopting such a trinitarian structure, at the time I cited the conceptual structure of President Bush's World Bank speech to many people as illustrative of the emphasis he had placed on development.

So perhaps a more likely explanation for the belief in President Bush's "three D's" is that many people internalized the structure the president had used in his speech, adjusting the middle principle into one of "diplomacy" in order to create a useful and memorable catechism.

But, since Will recently served on the White House staff as one of the custodians of authoritative presidential guidance, the story serves another purpose. It illustrates how fragile institutional memory is in our government, even within the White House of the same president.

By Peter Feaver

The Obama team in the first month has made it clear that they believe they know how to do public diplomacy better than the Bush team did. They start off with an enormous asset: President Obama's sky-high global celebrity status and a secretary of state who is no celebrity slouch herself. 

They also have shown some refreshing willingness to try new things. Here I am referring not to Clinton's "listening tour." Nothing is older than the global listening tour. However, it does appear that on Secretary Clinton's "listening tour" she may be willing to say some interesting things, and that may shake things up in an interesting way.

On the debit side, I would list a continuing embrace of anti-Bush rhetoric that may have provided comfort during the campaign but will seem increasingly shrill and defensive as the dominant story of the first 100 days becomes continuity rather than change.

However, in her recent NPR interview, UN Ambassador Rice put her finger on a very important point about public diplomacy that is all-too-often ignored by the Pew poll watchers: public diplomacy is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. Being the world's BFF is all well and good, but if it does not yield greater global cooperation on the global challenges that matter, then it is not worth much.

I was struck by the different tone between, on the one hand, Ambassador Rice's derisive dismissal of the previous 8 years of U.S. diplomacy, and on the other hand, her candid admission that, well, actually, the Obama administration does want the rest of the world to actually, um, do some things that President Bush tried to get them to do and so, well, in the end, we need them to do it.

I am unfairly paraphrasing, of course, because Susan Rice is one of the best sound-bite deliverers in the business, and she would never fumble around like that in a live interview. She is an A-team player, and as President Obama assembles the rest of his public diplomacy team, I hope they pick other A-team players like her and not flounder about. But regardless of who is on the team, the team will be judged by results -- by the extent to which Obama is able to get the world to cooperate with the United States on core foreign policy strategies, and not by the extent to which he boosts Pew poll ratings: for instance, the extent to which NATO countries offer significant numbers of troops in Afghanistan rather than just expressions of "support."

We may even discover that the real Bush problem in this area was not inept public diplomacy but rather a bona fide conflict of interest among our friends and allies over key foreign policy challenges -- a conflict of interest that derives more from the power disparities of the international system than from cowboy brusqueness. Such a discovery would not really surprise the new team because, last time they were in power, they encountered the very same phenomenon. They were accused of being a hyperpower. And a politically astute would-be president slammed them for wielding U.S. power arrogantly. Then he got into office and faced the very same accusations.

Soft power is the ability to get other states to do what you want by getting them to want what you want. If you do not get other states to do what you want, you do not have soft power, regardless of how popular you are. And if you don't have much soft power and keep on asking for things without getting them, sooner or later you may not be so popular. Or you can try to stay popular by dropping your requests, as one report suggests might be happening with Obama and NATO troops for Afghanistan. It is hard to see how that course will do much for U.S. soft power or for U.S. national security interests.