Constructive Diplomacy Isn’t Possible When We Are Demanding Capitulation

State Department spokesman Ned Price answered a question on North Korea diplomacy today, and his answer unwittingly demonstrated the folly of the US approach:

On your first question, it unfortunately is a purely hypothetical question. It’s an academic question, because we have been clear and consistent in conveying publicly and through all channels available to us that we are prepared and willing to engage in constructive diplomacy with the DPRK towards what is the goal we share with our allies and partners of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula [bold mine-DL]. And I say it’s hypothetical and academic because at every turn the DPRK has failed to engage meaningfully on these offers. But were that to be the case, were the DPRK to take us up on this, we would look to see if we could devise practical steps that could help to advance what is that longer-term objective of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The goal of the complete denuclearization of the peninsula is at odds with engaging in constructive diplomacy with North Korea. As long as this remains the goal of US policy, there is not going to be constructive diplomacy. When “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” means nothing more than North Korea’s unilateral disarmament, North Korea isn’t going to “engage meaningfully” with a demand for its own capitulation. Of course North Korea has “failed to engage,” because they have no incentive to entertain the terms that the US has set.

Their government isn’t going to engage in a process where the end result is the dismantling of an arsenal that they have spent almost two decades building up. The US and its allies can acknowledge this reality and adjust their goals accordingly, or they can sit back and watch as North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and missile program continue to advance and expand. If the US and its allies want a different outcome, they will have to change what they have been doing and modify their demands.

Biden administration officials love to say that “the ball is in their court” when talking about their inability to make any diplomatic progress with other governments. The Biden administration took this line with North Korea early on, and it is not a coincidence that ever since then North Korea has continued building up its forces and testing its missiles in record numbers. Saying that “the ball is in their court” lets the administration pretend that the deteriorating situation is entirely the fault of the other party. It is how they excuse their own lamentable neglect of the issue. This passivity and unwillingness to take the initiative are debilitating for US diplomacy, and it is no wonder that the US has so few major diplomatic achievements in recent years.

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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

It’s Time To Stop Enabling Allied Dependence

In a new paper for the Cato Institute, Justin Logan gets to the heart of why US allies don’t take on a larger share of the burden for their own security:

The only way to produce more equitable burdensharing is to make allies doubt the strength of the US commitment: the stronger the belief in the US commitment, the harder it is to get allies to defend themselves [bold mine-DL]. Unless policymakers fundamentally change their approach to alliances, there is little hope that defense burdens can be spread more equitably.

Reassurance kills burden-sharing. An ally that is fully confident that the US will bail it out is an ally that is not going to devote more resources to protecting itself. American politicians can whine about Germany as much as they want, as J.D. Vance was doing this week, but unless they are prepared to demand significantly lower military spending and US troop withdrawals from Europe they had better get used to allies that don’t do much more for their own security. You cannot enable security dependence for decades and then blame the dependents for the situation that your policies created. Allies aren’t going to “step up” if the US is always elbowing them out of the way to “lead.”

Our allies are responding rationally in the face of our irrational willingness to bear a large part of the costs of their defense. They free-ride or cheap-ride because Washington has proven that it will always foot the bill and fill the gap, and they are happy to get the benefits of having someone else subsidize their defense. If the price of this arrangement is periodic tongue-clucking from the Secretary of Defense, they are willing to endure these lectures because they know that there are no consequences to doing too little for their own defense. As Logan put it in an earlier piece for Responsible Statecraft last week:

Europe hasn’t heeded the warning, and Washington hasn’t put an “or else” at the end of the sentence.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Iran and Our Rotten Foreign Policy Debates

Dennis Ross just can’t get enough saber-rattling against Iran:

Instead, Blinken or President Joe Biden should announce that although the U.S. favors diplomacy for resolving the threat of the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians continue to demonstrate that they don’t; instead, their actions are drawing them closer and closer to a bomb, something that the US has pledged to prevent, and Iran must understand that its actions jeopardize its entire nuclear infrastructure, including parts that could in theory be used for civilian energy purposes. Declaring this would signal that the US is beginning to prepare the American public and the international community for possible military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

Ross has been bangingthewar drums against Iran for years, and his latest call for threatening an illegal attack is the least subtle one yet. He still bizarrely assumes that the Iranian government doesn’t believe that the US will attack them, and he thinks that the key is convincing Iran of Washington’s determination to strike. Ross never explains why this would lead them to do anything other than hasten towards developing nuclear weapons, and he simply takes for granted that threatening Iran with completely unjustified aggression is the solution. What would make a deterrent more attractive to their leaders than repeated threats to wage illegal war on their country?

It is worth recalling that Iran’s nuclear program has advanced as much as it has because of US “maximum pressure” sanctions and Israeli sabotage attacks. These policies were sold as the means to thwart Iran from making progress with its nuclear program, but in utterly predictable fashion they provoked and drove the progress that the supporters of those same policies now try to use to start a war. If every previous hawkish “remedy” has backfired so badly, what do you suppose will be the result if the US and/or Israel took direct military action against Iranian facilities? It would, of course, lead to an even worse outcome by triggering both conflict and proliferation.

Ross tries to blackmail the Biden administration by warning that a regional war will start in response to an Israeli attack:

Without a clear show of resolve by the US to act on its own behalf, unilateral Israeli strikes on the Iranian nuclear program will trigger Hezbollah and maybe Hamas missile attacks on Israel, potentially numbering thousands per day.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Attacking the Cartels Will Achieve Nothing

Bill Barr wants to attack Mexico:

America can no longer tolerate narco-terrorist cartels. Operating from havens in Mexico, their production of deadly drugs on an industrial scale is flooding our country with this poison. The time is long past to deal with this outrage decisively. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) and Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) have proposed a joint resolution giving the president authority to use the US military against these cartels in Mexico. This is a necessary step and puts the focus where it must be.

The worst thing that the US could do is to further militarize an already failed drug war. Barr presents this as a way to combat the drug problem “decisively,” but it would decide nothing. At best, it would create a new theater of the drone war in which the military plays whack-a-mole using Hellfire missiles. The civilian population in the targeted areas would then live in fear of being caught in one of the blasts, and more than a few innocent people would end up as victims. Because military options would do nothing to address the causes behind the drug trade, they would succeed only in creating temporary disruptions in the operations of the cartels.

The last thing that the president needs is another authorization to wage open-ended war in another part of the world on some new pretext. We know that these authorizations are very difficult to rescind once they are approved. We also know that the executive will stretch these authorizations well past any reasonable interpretation to provide cover for operations that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the authorization. The US needs to be halting its endless wars and not looking for ways to start new ones.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Another Stupid Hawkish Panic About Iranian Ships

While their preferred policies have brought war closer in the Middle East, it is not surprising that Iran hawks want to talk about something else. The Wall Street Journal editors fume about two (count them, two!) Iranian ships docking in Brazil:

The arrival of two Iranian warships in Brazil on Sunday is unsettling for democracies in the Western hemisphere. Worse is that the Biden Administration seems to have been complicit in trying to bury the news.

The editorial goes on to claim that “President Biden’s domestic political agenda trumped security in the Americas.” That would be a damning charge if it weren’t devoid of merit and made in bad faith. No one seriously believes that the presence of two Iranian ships in our hemisphere threatens “security in the Americas.” This is nothing but cynical fearmongering designed to fault Biden for alleged “weakness” and to sour relations with a Brazilian government that hawks already despise for other reasons. There is no news to “bury” because there is nothing more to the story. We are all stupider now for having listened to the hawks’ arguments.

Ted Cruz was the first out of the gate with his own ridiculous overreaction to the news, calling the docking of the ships a “direct threat to the safety and security of Americans” and threatening Brazilian firms with sanctions. It would almost be funny if Cruz weren’t trying to demagogue this non-event into an excuse for damaging relations with one of our largest hemispheric trading partners. Threatening Brazilian firms with sanctions over nothing is a useful reminder of how unhinged hardliners are by even the slightest hint of Iranian influence. It is no wonder that so many other governments resent U.S. sanctions overreach.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

The Lies Paving the Way for War With Iran

Walter Russell Mead turns reality on its head:

Worse, Iran’s inexorable march toward nuclear weapons [bold mine-DL], combined with its deepening partnership with Russia, is driving the Middle East steadily closer to a war that is likely to engage the U.S.—one that the Biden administration desperately wants to avoid.

The region is getting closer to war, but it is not because of Iran’s “march toward nuclear weapons.” There is no such march. The chief reasons why Iran’s nuclear program has expanded as much as it has are U.S. sanctions and Israeli attacks. Iran isn’t marching toward nuclear weapons, inexorably or otherwise, but if people like Mead get their way that could change.

If there is going to be a war, it will happen because Israel or the U.S. or both together decide to start one against Iran. To the extent that any one set of actors is “driving” the region towards war, it would have to be the ones threatening to launch illegal attacks on another country and conducting military exercises to practice for those attacks. As he often does, Mead gets everything backwards to push his agenda of more and more hawkishness and more catering to regional clients.

Later in the column, Mead makes an even more ridiculous claim:

But the Russian dictator doesn’t need to go that far. Simply by increasing Iranian military capabilities that limit Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Mr. Putin could force Israel into a pre-emptive strike [bold mine-DL] that would set off a regional war.

This is quite something. If Russia provides Iran with the means to defend itself against possible Israeli attack, that would “force” Israel to attack? Apparently aggressors aren’t responsible for their own actions when the aggressor happens to be on the “right” side. It is important to emphasize that any Israeli or U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran would not be pre-emptive, because there would be no imminent threat that is being averted.

The Bush administration caused a lot of damage to the world, and one of the things it did was to damage the way that Americans talk about aggressive warfare. Launching an attack against another country’s nuclear facilities isn’t pre-empting anything. Even if you believe that their government might one day build nuclear weapons, attacking them before they even have a nuclear weapons program is not pre-emption. This is preventive war, and that is nothing but illegal aggression. Attacking another country because you have an irrational fear of the threat they might pose in the distant future is no different than what the U.S. and its allies did to Iraq. The Iraq war was a massive crime, and this would be, too.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.