I was inspired by Josh Manchester’s suggestions on how to fix Iraq. I find it fruitless to offer advice to this administration because they don’t learn or listen. But what if I were to wake up tomorrow and discover a la Freaky Friday that I was the President? What would I do?
The first thing I would do is make some nominations. I would nominate Jimmy Carter to run the Pentagon. I would nominate Bill Clinton as our ambassador to the United Nations. I would nominate Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) as Secretary of State. I would nominate Bill Bradley as our ambassador to Iraq. I would nominate Pat Lang to be Director of National Intelligence and I would let him pick the head of Central Intelligence. Once I had my national security team in place I would ask Mr. Lang to supply me with several reports. I would want to know the following:
How much freedom of action do we have with respect to our debtors? How badly can China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and other holders of U.S. debt hurt us if they decide to sell off their holdings?
How stable is the House of Saud? Can we control them? What would happen if they fell from power?
A full breakdown of likely outcomes in Iraq for every conceivable action we might take. I want to know especially about potential economic consequences, not just for the U.S. but for the global economy.
And, finally, the intelligence community’s best assessment about how to get a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Once I had all that information then I would make my decisions.
Here is what I would hope to do.
Israel has a peace agreement with Egypt and Jordan. We need an agreement with the Syrians. We want to peel the Syrians away from the Iranian camp and get them to sign on a treaty that recognizes Israel. The Saudis would also sign on. Whatever it takes, this would be the first priority. If we can secure Israel’s borders then we can move on to the next step, which is isolating Iran and marginalizing the violent extremists.
We will have a concurrent problem in Iraq, where we will have to deal with the civil war between the Shi’a and Sunnis. Whatever the outcome, it will have to occur without the active participation of American forces. The question is whether we should remove ourselves entirely and take no side, or whether we should align ourselves with our Sunni allies, and facilitate a Saudi counterattack on the government we have created and hoped would govern effectively. I have a bias against taking sides, but I need those intelligence reports before I can make a final decision. My greatest concern is global economic dislocation. I do not want to do anything that might lead to a second Great Depression and unleash fascism abroad or even here at home.
The United States doesn’t have any particular interest in how the Sunni/Shi’a thing plays out. Our best position would be to take the Palestinian question off the table and let the Muslim world realize the futility of making progress by engaging in sectarian warfare. The success of the Iranian revolution is still our biggest problem in the region. The Shi’a have defeated us in every confrontation since 1979, while the Sunnis have been totally ineffectual (9/11 excepted). Therefore, we need to take the oxygen out of Shi’a successes. To do this we absolutely must get a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian question. Once that is done, the Shi’a movement will be seen as a force of instability and not as a successful anti-colonial, anti-western, anti-Zionist force.
When our primary enemy was Communism, their official atheism was a potent tool for mobilizing pious Muslim opposition. But the Saudis need to change with the times. What we need now is not fundamentalism, but the opposite. If the Saudis put as much effort into spreading a moderate form of Islam as they put into spreading Wahhabiism in Pakistan’s madrasas, then maybe we can avoid a clash of civilizations.
At the same time, if I were to wake up tomorrow as President, I would immediately push for an Apollo project to lesson our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. I’d also explore how we can eliminate our foreign debt, so we are not beholden to foreign powers (potential enemies) to run our government.
I would hope that putting a new face on our foreign policy would give us some good will to change course and get some cooperation. I don’t think I could avoid exposing the full degree of deception, propaganda, criminality, and corruption of the Bush administration. They would absolutely have to be exposed and prosecuted in order for our nation to have the necessary credibility to navigate a way forward.
Should I set up a PAC for my Presidential bid?
Hey Boo, if I were to work on your design to become this prez, would I get a position someplace in your cabinet? :o)
Sound good to me…btw, we need to get rid of all the large donors and make this a public affair. Anyhow, I like your ideas…I am sure I can add to some of y our desires if given time for thought.
Why Jimmy Carter at Pentagon? I would’ve initially thought a Wes Clark-type there, initially.
Wes Clark is probably ineligible to be Def Sec until about 2009 or 2010.
Ah…didn’t realize there was a ‘statute of limitations’, so to speak.
I want someone at the Pentagon that is credible, that has undoubted experience at running a large bureaucracy, and that fully gets the failure of American imperialism.
I want Clinton to be the face of what is left of U.S. internationalism.
I want John Lewis, a protege of Gandhi and MLK to be our face for diplomacy.
I want a clear thinking secularist like Bill Bradley to be our face in Baghdad.
And I want a son of a bitch like Pat Lang to wrangle control of our intelligence agencies and get them to give straight analysis with no sugar-coating. I also know that Pat can get us the humint that we need.
He probably wants to stay in retirement, but I won’t hear of it.
Who would be your VP?
my lawyer Cicero, of course.
but you better make sure the deal is acceptable to the people on the Arab street and not just their dictators or it wont be a deal worth having. And do not put too much faith in the Saudi dictatorship as being able to lead anything. they really only are allowed to be dictators because they allow the radical elements to do anything they want.
Oh now I think of it, it is actually probably better for us to just stop interfering in the region completely. After all our middle east policy has never been effective at anything except making us look bad. Maybe in a few generations, if we stay out an no longer interfere we wont be hated, and we will no longer be seen as legitimate targets by most of the world. The big mistake is thinking that we actually have legitimate interests in the region, which we do not.
in orange.
I realize this is sort of a tongue-in-cheek pseudo think tank piece so I will sort of reserve my comments but I did have to at least address some of it.
How much freedom of action do we have with respect to our debtors? How badly can China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and other holders of U.S. debt hurt us if they decide to sell off their holdings?
This is sort of a misunderstood meme. It’s kind of like asking how bad can a company’s majority stockholder hurt the company if he sells off his stock?
A small sell off won’t do much except net the stockholder a small profit and not hurt the stock issuer much (or at all). But a large-scale selloff would panic potential other buyers and so cause a major reduction in price of the remaining shares.
In shorter speak, Saudi Arabia, China etc would be cutting their own throats to try and make a significant (or rapid) sell-off of American holdings. The price would bottom out and it would devalue the rest of their holdings. So this is not a threat.
As for all the foreign policy stuff (Iraq, Syria, Iran etc) well I guess we can all talk until we’re blue in the face, eh? What needs to be done will never BE done because all the “practical” and “reasonable” people will never go for it.
What I mean by that is stop funding and arming dictators and kings and stop acting like Israel has some magical immunity “get out of jail” card for all the atrocities they perpetrate.
Israel’s borders? I’m sick of Israel. I’m sick of all the people who live there and yes I include Palestinians. I lived there and there’s plenty of nice, regular ordinary folks but the local leaders make me sick on ALL sides. The effort to provide a land of peace and justice is simply too much for any politician of any stripe.
Our best position would be to take the Palestinian question off the table and let the Muslim world realize the futility of making progress by engaging in sectarian warfare.
Since when is sectarian warfare “futile”? The US was founded on a sect (pro-independence) winning (defeating the anti-independence sect). The white sect then expanded by destroying the “red” sect (Native Americans). The white sect then expanded into the brown (Mexican) sect and the Spanish sect.
The Communist sect in China defeated the Nationalist sect. They then defeated the Tibetan sect and now are destroying the Xinjiang Turkmenistan sect. The Buddhist sect in Sri Lanka is handily destroying the Hindu sect. The Malaysian sect defeated the Chinese sect. The Buddhist sect is handily destroying the Muslim sect in Thailand. The Lao Communist sect is even now destroying the Hmong sect, which are already destroyed in Viet Nam. The royalist sect defeated the Khmer Rouge sect. The Kieven Rus sect defeated the Mongol sect. The Visigoth sect defeated the Roman sect.
Civil wars are the least futile wars of all! Wars of conquest and domination always end up failing – NOT civil wars. The United States is the country it is today (good and bad) precisely because one sect defeated the other 150 years ago and I’m not talking just about the slavery issue.
There were two revolutions in 1979. One happened in Iran and everyone knows about it. But the other one is the one that nearly was “successful” in Saudi Arabia itself. That’s the civil war that the U.S. needs to keep its greedy oil-fueled eyeball on.
Pax
I think what is missing in Booman’s piece is the notion of respect. Until we respect other people, their cultures and traditions for what they are and not through our lens we will always have policies where we act as if everyone else should dance to our tune. We are immune to international law – we can do we what we want because our “intentions” are noble. Everyone else has to follow our strictures. That’s the fundamental problem with US foreign policy.
As Pat Lang stated in a recent post the “wogs” don’t fall for our bribes or threats that easily anymore.
With over a trillion dollars in currency reserves China is not going to rollover anytime we want. Russia having rebuilt their financial condition after their debt default is not going to watch meekly as we insert military bases all around them. The Arabs and Persians are not going to fall for our machinations that easily anymore. Booman is implicitly backing a pro-Sunni Arab tilt with the notion of trying to isolate Iran and the Shia. That is exactly in my opinion what is wrong with US policy. Trying to pick winners and losers without adequate understanding of the aspirations and traditions of these people who have a history millenia old.
I would advocate instead a policy rooted with the notions of westphalia. A policy that recognizes that different people have different traditions and ways in which they would like to organize and interact. That if we believe our system and traditions are superior lets prove it by example and win others over but not judge that quickly others who we don’t really understand.
I couldn’t help but note that you used the term “westphalia” in sort of the traditional sense, wherein the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) sort of established the non-intervention of sovereign states in the affairs of another sovereign state.
The treaty actually DID state that France and Sweden had the right to interfere in Germany’s internal affairs should Germany (or its states) violate the treaty.
Anyway, the interesting angle is that apparently Al-Qaeda (or one of its spokespersons) specifically mentioned the “Westphalia system” being a target of the A-Q movement.
I’ve kind of ignored any in-depth investigation into A-Q mainly because it’s such a well-worn topic and is discussed nearly to death by bloggers and MSM alike. But I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much “we” truly do understand A-Q and the like and how wrong we all might be on some of what we take for granted as an “assumed truth”.
Just curiosity on my part I guess…
Pax
calvin wants to know who’ll be paying for his cat food. You know, the domestic agenda.
We could have a big impact on the international front if we demonstrated our committment to significantly lowering greenhouse gases, for example. If we worked to restore clean air and clean water.
How about real mass transit? Problems in the auto industry? Maybe they could manufacture train cars. Other countries, like France, have great transportation infrastructures. We could join them. An environmentally sensitive high-speed train structure. Buses running on bio-diesel. Smoke stacks that emit only smoke. And so on.
Oh, yeah and sustainable agriculture. Tear down the feed lots.
calvin prefers free range chicken. It’s the thrill of victory tracking down those suckers. But, oh, the agony of defeat.
You’re right in that the United States has no particular interest in how the Shi’a/Sunni dispute plays out — insofar as it is a centuries-old theological dispute. But because those theological factions represent entire national populations, it is not in our long-term national interest to marginalize either side. Resolving the Palestinian question is vital to long-term peace in the middle east, but so is engaging — not isolating — Iran. The Shi’a dispute with the US has nothing to do with Islamic theology — it’s a result of our foreign policy, our history of meddling in the region, our unilateral support of Israel, and support of dictators so they will feed our hunger for oil.
Treating Iran with respect due a sovereign nation, rather than attempting to back it into a corner over the nuclear research issue, would allow the moderates inside Iran a chance to change the country from within (over time), whereas threats and sanctions only empower those who use a combination of national pride, past resentments and religious rhetoric to gain power. (The same principles by which Bush & Co. have fired up so much of their “base” are what fuels the support of their mirror elements in Iran.) The Iranian revolution was successful, and while its government may not be ideal from our point of view, it’s stable and functional, and should be treated as such.
My two cents, anyway…
All of this and you didn’t promise us all a pony? You’re slipping dude.
Booman: Your analysis and approach seem very well thought-out. The main difference between your approach and that of the current Conman-In-Chief who is mishandling our foreign affairs is that…he would probably not be able to make it past paragraph one of your analysis without becoming confused, or impatient, or bored, or, perhaps all three.
This administration seems simply incapable of taking a comprehensive approach that assimilates a wide variety of factors into formulating either a short- or long-term strategy for anything.
Their approach reminds me more of a struggling high school football team dragging out the old chalkboard to come up with a simple play. And they appear to just yank some of those “plays” out of thin air without much regard to facts.
Just some thoughts.
A corollary thought: it may very well be possible that you have demonstrated that you are simply too intelligent to ever be elected to the office. (Seriously, there seems to be a large strain of the American public that is deeply anti-intellectual (i.e. they don’t like or trust people who seem too intelligent).
Maybe you might want to “dumb down” your commentary a little and resubmit it to the powers that be in the State Department. That would be the only way that anything like this would ever encounter serious consideration by the bozos running our unelected government in Washington these days.
On the other hand, perhaps some of the incoming chairman of the new Senate and House committees dealing with foreign affairs might be receptive to these thoughts?