The Washington Post is running scared these
days with its editorial writers having great
difficulty coming to terms with the possibility
of improved US relations with Russia and Iran.
They also can't understand why the Obama administration
might decide that additional US military forces
in Afghanistan will not solve the political
and military problems there. There have been
several editorials and op-eds this week that
distort developments in each of these situations
and predict failure for President Barack Obama.
The fact that a "reset" button is
needed and may offer the promise of success
in our relations with Russia, Iran and even
Afghanistan appears to be anathema to the Post.
These policy changes, moreover, presumably
led to today's news that President Obama has
won the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary
efforts to gain international diplomacy and
cooperation between peoples," which must
have these writers apoplectic. Only yesterday,
Post op-ed writer David Ignatius termed the
prospect of any change of policy in Afghanistan
as "lawless," and today Post op-ed
writer Charles Krauthammer compared the president
to a young Hamlet, who "frets, demurs,
agonizes."
President Obama's most persistent critic at
the Post has been Fred Hiatt, the editor of
the editorial page. His column earlier this
week perpetuated a number of distortions and
errors on the topic of Russia. Hiatt does not
comprehend that the Russians are concerned about
possible nuclear weapons in Iran or that Russia
has genuine concerns about nuclear proliferation.
In fact, the Russians do share our concerns
on these issues. In the 1960s, Moscow was the
major driver for the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT), because it feared that the United
States wanted to give West Germany a role in
decision-making in the use of nuclear weapons.
The Kremlin adhered carefully to the dictates
of the NPT and, until the breakup of the Soviet
Union in 1991, carefully monitored the types
of technology that were sent to foreign countries.
When Moscow's nonproliferation regime broke
down in the chaos of the 1990s, during the erratic
rule of President Boris Yeltsin, it was actually
Vladimir Putin who stepped in and stopped the
sale of sensitive technologies to third world
countries. This is the same Vladimir Putin,
who Hiatt believes will prevent President Dmitry
Medvedev from controlling Moscow's nuclear-technology
complex; Hiatt believes that Moscow prefers
trade with Iran over the prevention of nuclear
weapons in Iran.
Hiatt also argues that Russia values its commercial
and military exchanges with Iran far too much
to work toward a nuclear-free Iran. Again, the
facts put the lie to Hiatt's arguments. US-Russian
talks about Iran's military programs began in
the mid-1990s, when Russia froze military sales
to Iran for a five-year period. Even when sales
were resumed in 2000, the Russians kept a tight
leash on the types of weapons that Iran purchased.
Moscow has stopped delivery on the sale of the
S-300 surface-to-air missile system and has
dragged its heels on the delivery of other weapons
systems.
Russia, moreover, was never the enabler of
Iran's nuclear weapons program. Iran received
its nuclear starter kit from Pakistan in 1987
and its missile support from North Korea in
the 1990s. Russia always supported international
efforts to keep Iran from going nuclear, but
it opposed the coercive steps of the Bush administration
that Moscow considered counterproductive. Even
last week's agreement to send uranium from Iran
to Russia for enrichment stems from an earlier
Russian offer to receive uranium from the Natanz
enrichment facility for upgrading. Hiatt, of
course, is welcome to his opinions, but he shouldn't
make up his own facts.
Hiatt's deputy on the editorial page is Jackson
Diehl, and they are two peas in a pod, accurately
representing the views of the paper's publisher
Katharine Weymouth. Diehl favors a policy of
regime change in Iran and not even last week's
promising talks in Geneva between high-ranking
US and Iranian officials - the first formal,
direct negotiations between the two countries
in 30 years - has disabused Diehl of his support
for undermining the regime. The fact that Iran
has essentially agreed to the creation of a
diplomatic clock that will set times for the
monitoring of the uranium enrichment facility
near Qom and to the transfer of uranium from
Iran to Russia and France for enrichment has
made no impression on Diehl. Geneva for Diehl
was simply "seven hours of palaver"
that did nothing to assuage the "deep and
growing gloom in Washington and European capitals"
about Iran's nuclear program. All of his examples
of the so-called gloom were remarks, including
those of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, made
before the Geneva talks, not after. Diehl is
still talking about an "escalation of sanctions,"
when it is quite possible that the talks in
Geneva could lead to a situation that doesn't
call for additional sanctions. Diehl fears that
international inspections and the transfer of
uranium for additional enrichment will only
"complicate the negotiations and the prospects
for sanctions." For Diehl, the objective
in Iran is sanctions and regime change - not
the prevention of nuclear weapons.
Diehl certainly fails to understand the reality
on the ground in Iran, where the opponents of
the regime in Tehran oppose further sanctions
and fully support the uranium enrichment program
of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He also fails
to remember the disastrous consequences of our
overthrow of a legitimate Iranian government
in 1953.
Yesterday, an editorial in The Washington
Post marked another attempt by the paper to
prod President Obama to adapt the "surge
model (in Iraq) to Afghanistan." Forget
that the so-called surge of troops in Iraq in
2007 had tactical, but no strategic, benefits.
Certainly, there were operational benefits from
increasing US military forces in Iraq, but the
surge was designed to provide an opportunity
for the Iraq leadership to strengthen and unify
its political rule in Baghdad and to break the
logjam on important legislative issues that
stymie political progress in Iraq. There is
no evidence to support the notion that the Iraqi
government took political advantage of the surge.
And forget, also, that the proponents of more
troops for Afghanistan consistently underestimate
the degree of ethnic violence, local rivalries
and the intensity of resistance to occupation
in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Post writers mistakenly believe that the
absence of a troop surge would "damage
the effort to persuade Taliban fighters ...
to switch sides." The paper fails to recognize
that the Taliban movement is far more coordinated
and centralized than the US military commanders
appear to believe. Have the Post writers learned
no lessons from the painful 18-year Israeli
occupation of southern Lebanon and our own painful
and long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Or examine the long-term struggle of the French
in Algeria, where they were entrenched for over
a century, but lost a battle against a murky
mix of nationalists and Islamicists. It is unlikely
that adding another 40,000 US troops will make
a difference in Afghanistan where Taliban forces
already move freely in most of the country.
A final word of warning to the neocon editorial
writers at the Post: They have been focusing
so strongly on attacking change in Russia, Iran
and Afghanistan that they possibly have not
noticed that the North Koreans have been sending
signals to Washington and Seoul about the possibility
of change in that arena. In the recent past,
we have witnessed the release of two American
journalists to former president Bill Clinton,
progress in the reunification of families from
North and South Korea and, now, the expressed
interest of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il
in resuming six-power talks on nuclear disarmament.
Even the "hermit kingdom" may be coming
in from the cold, so the Post writers had better
sharpen their pencils.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University,
is The Public Record’s National Security
and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years
with the CIA, the National War College, and
the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of
Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
