Center for International Policy

As printed in
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 24, 2006

Bush's knee-jerk rejection of negotiations

By Wayne S. Smith

The Bush administration has a well-established tendency to spurn negotiations in favor of confrontation, even in cases where the former hold out the promise of constructive and peaceful solutions. We need only remember that the U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq were decidedly upbeat about the prospects for disarmament in Iraq. Their chief, Hans Blix, stated on Jan. 9, 2003, that they were getting prompt access from the Iraqis and were covering ever more sites. They'd found, he said, "no smoking gun."

On March 6 and 7, 2003, Blix said it would take no more than a few months to complete their mission and urged that they be allowed to do so. But the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team had no intention of waiting.

They wanted their war with Iraq, and so, on the basis of shamelessly concocted intelligence to the effect that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, on March 20, they invaded.

That invasion and the ensuing war have now cost the lives of over 2,500 American troops, some 20,000 wounded, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Only it turned out the U.N. arms inspectors were right. There were no weapons of mass destruction left in Iraq -- Sen. Rick Santorum's recent assertions notwithstanding.

Nor had Iraq had anything to do with 9-11 -- though the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team lied about that as well.

Bush, in short, launched an unnecessary war -- one in which we are now trapped with no end in sight, and which has sparked growing instability and extremist insurgency in the Middle East. Rather than being part of the overall war on terrorism, as Bush likes to maintain, it is the breeding ground, the hothouse, for that war.

And, shortly after we invaded Iraq, the Bush administration received a diplomatic message from the highest levels of the Iranian government, delivered through the Swiss, who vouched for its authenticity. According to The Washington Post, it offered nothing less than a broad dialogue with the United States -- with everything on the table, even Iran's nuclear program, the acceptance of an Israeli state (or at least the discussion of that) and the end of Iranian support for Palestinian groups. For its part, Iran wanted to bring about the end of sanctions, have full access to peaceful nuclear technology and recognition of its "legitimate security concerns."

Iran had not at that point begun the process of uranium enrichment, and had the Bush administration taken advantage of the Iranian offer, might not ever have begun it. Indeed, the U.S. and Iran might by now have worked out a constructive relationship.

But the Bush administration believed the Iranian regime was on the verge of collapse and so did not respond to the overture. As in the case of Iraq, they wanted regime change, not a negotiated solution.

According to Trita Parsi, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., the lack of a U.S. response convinced the Iranians that what would get the attention of the U.S. was not a softened, negotiable, Iranian position, but a tougher, more assertive posture on its part.

And so, here we are today, at loggerheads with Iran over an issue -- its program to enrich uranium -- that we could have negotiated three years ago.

The same pattern holds with Cuba. Just after 9-11, the Cuban government condemned the terrorist attacks and terrorism in all its manifestations, indicated its solidarity with the American people and opened its skies to any American planes caught in the air when we closed our own air space. Subsequently, it signed all 12 of the U.N.'s anti-terrorist resolutions, offered to cooperate fully with the U.S. in anti-terrorist efforts and even to sign a bilateral agreement to that effect.

Bush ignored Cuba's overtures.

As Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega put it on Oct. 2, 2003: "The president is determined to see the end of the Castro regime and the dismantling of the apparatus that has kept him in office for so long."

In 2004, the administration created a Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and in 2005 appointed a "transition coordinator," as though the U.S. had already occupied the country. All the signals are clear. The Bush administration has no interest in cooperation with the Cuban government, not even cooperation against terrorism, and certainly no interest in negotiations. Its objective, rather, is to bring down the Cuban government.

The problem there is that the measures it has put forward to accomplish that objective fall far short of the task. Restricting the travel of Americans and Cuban-Americans, for example, reduces the Cuban government's revenues somewhat, but that is more than compensated for by the increased travel of Europeans, Canadians and Venezuelans. The restrictions harm Cuban-American families far more than Cuba.

The administration is also increasing Radio Marti and TV Marti broadcasting to the island. But Radio Marti has been broadcasting for some 20 years now without the slightest impact on Cuban public opinion. A few more broadcasts will have no more. Cubans, after all, do recognize propaganda when they hear it.

In short, our Cuba policy is a total dud. We won't negotiate with, or even talk with, the Cuban government, but our plan for bringing about its demise merits little more than raised eyebrows. Raised in puzzlement, that is.

Wayne S. Smith, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is the former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, 1979-82.