Matt Yglesias

Civilian Power

Jim Arkedis suggests “civilian power” as an alternative term to the much-derided “soft power.” I think this suggestion actually shows that we don’t need one term to replace soft power, but rather that the underlying concept can probably be split into a few different ideas. One thing, that seems to be well-described as “civilian power” is the idea that the government needs to mobilize more of the non-military instruments available to us — things like diplomatic resources, technical assistance, development aid, etc. There are a lot of problems on the planet and not all of them can be solved primarily by blowing things up. But right now our budget is heavily tilted toward the “blowing things up” side of the ledger. We would do well to balance better.

But there’s also something else that, as I said before, I don’t think is well-captured by the term “power” at all. Maybe it’s easier to think about it in terms of another country. One thing that’s good about the United States is that we have a brand that, when we’re at our best, is very broadly appealing across ethnic and religious lines. By contrast, Iran can have strong appeal in southern Lebanon or in Iraq, but theocracy based on Shiite Islam is an inherently tough sell. Similarly, Putin-style Russian nationalism is a potent force in Russia, but hardly an ideology that’s ready to travel the globe. But insofar as the United States comes to be identified with torture, bullying, and aggressive warfare rather than with humane liberal values we lose that brand advantage.

All The President’s Cronies

Atrios linked to this item on how the Obama team “has notified all politically-appointed ambassadors that they must vacate their posts as of Jan. 20.” The end of the item observes:

Most ambassadors, of course, are foreign service officers, but often the posts involving the most important bilateral relations (such as with Great Britain, Japan and India) or desirable locales (such as the Bahamas) are given to close friends and well-heeled contributors of the president.

I had always just thought of this is a kind of casual, widely accepted corruption. But recently I did learn the official story as to why this is good practice, namely that an important political supporter or a friend of the president is likely to have a much easier time of getting access to the Oval Office than any mere foreign service officer would. Thus, it’s arguably better for the host country to have a political appointee than a career FSO. Therefore, this practice helps build good-will and so forth.

Not sure I buy that, or even that the person who explained it to me buys it, but that’s the story.

How to Engage With Iran

Karim Sadjadpour has a fascinating Middle East Progress item on the question of how to do engagement with Iran. His five points:

1. Build confidence on issues of common interest (rather than, say, opening with discussion of Israel or nuclear weapons).
2. Understand where power lies (with the Supreme Leader).
3. Speak softly (rather than boasting about all options being on the table, or issuing threats to obliterate Iran).
4. Don’t let the spoilers set the tenor.
5. Maintain an international approach.
6. Get the Timing Right (i.e., save big steps for after Iran’s June 2009 presidential election).

One thread running through this advice is that for a diplomatic strategy to succeed, the people carrying it out need to be primarily concerned with trying to make it succeed, hoping that the fruits of a breakthrough would provide the political justification for having undertaken the mission. If you go in trying to guard your right flank and “look tough,” it’s going to be hard to follow this advice.

Burns: Obama is Right

Nicholas Burns started his career as a foreign service officer in 1983. He served in Cairo and Jerusalem, before working in the State Department’s Department of Soviet Affairs. Then in 1990 he shifted onto the National Security Council staff. In 1995 he became Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, and in 1997 he was appointed Ambassador to Greece. In 2001, the George W. Bush administration made him the United States’ Permanent Representative to NATO, and then in 2005 they made him Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs — the number three job in the State Department. This career diplomatic, widely respected and widely experienced, trusted with key missions by the Bush administration, has an article in Newsweek about how yes we should engage in direct, high-level talks with “bad guy” regimes:

Are McCain and Palin correct that America should stonewall its foes? I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe that’s why I’ve been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I’ll bet that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the following position: of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.

The more challenging and pertinent question, especially for the McCain-Palin ticket, is the reverse: Is it really smart to declare we will never talk to such leaders? Is it really in our long-term national interest to shut ourselves off from one of the most important and powerful states in the Middle East—Iran—or one of our major suppliers of oil, Venezuela? [...]

The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism—cannot be resolved by America’s acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms.

Consider this part of the trend of realists and career practitioners moving toward Democratic Party positions. And, I might add, of Democratic Party positions coming toward the consensus among real experts and professions. It wasn’t inevitable that the Democrats would wind up with a nominee who was willing to take the political risks that articulating these views entails.

Palin Denounces Negotiations Without Preconditions, Supports Negotiations Without Preconditions

One of the virtues of Sarah Palin being badly underbriefed about national security issues, is that she has to rely on common sense to bluff her way through questions, and she keeps accidentally straying from conservative dogma. When asked about the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war, she said she embraced the doctrine, but then actually outlined a much more reasonable “imminent threat” standard for action. And here she is talking about negotiations without preconditions:

WILLIAMS: What — first of all, what in your mind is a precondition?

PALIN: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going into a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il, one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a– a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them. So that — that’s — that’s some ill-preparedness right there.

That’s just not what preconditions are. As Ilan Goldenberg says, she’s talking about the need to prepare before a meeting, which is different, “not negotiating until preconditions are met means not starting your negotiating until the other side has met some kind of condition you imposed.” That’s our current policy — that we need to isolate Iran until they preemptively give in to all our demands, and then we can talk. Obama’s proposal is also Palin’s proposal — to negotiate first in hopes of getting a deal. Of course you have to prepare. You don’t just fire up Air Force One and head to Pyongyang without some kind of bargaining strategy and preliminary meetings. But that’s uncontroversial.