The convenient out of “national dialogue “
Richard Clarke recently started a column in the New York Times Magazine on national security issues. His latest effort, on Iran, is a bit frustrating, but I’m on the fence about whether this the fault lies with Clarke or his word count. Clarke spends the bulk of the article arguing that the invasion of Iraq ...
Richard Clarke recently started a column in the New York Times Magazine on national security issues. His latest effort, on Iran, is a bit frustrating, but I'm on the fence about whether this the fault lies with Clarke or his word count. Clarke spends the bulk of the article arguing that the invasion of Iraq has served Iran's national interest even better that Amercan interests, and argues that hoping for democratization to overwhelm Iran's mullahs would be foolish. He also takes potshots as the administration's recent decisions to recognize Hezbollah as a political party in Lebanon and allow the EU to take the (temporary) lead on nuclear talks. With that, here's how Clarke closes:
Richard Clarke recently started a column in the New York Times Magazine on national security issues. His latest effort, on Iran, is a bit frustrating, but I’m on the fence about whether this the fault lies with Clarke or his word count. Clarke spends the bulk of the article arguing that the invasion of Iraq has served Iran’s national interest even better that Amercan interests, and argues that hoping for democratization to overwhelm Iran’s mullahs would be foolish. He also takes potshots as the administration’s recent decisions to recognize Hezbollah as a political party in Lebanon and allow the EU to take the (temporary) lead on nuclear talks. With that, here’s how Clarke closes:
The president recently said that reports of the United States preparing to attack Iran were ”simply ridiculous.” He then quickly added, ”All options are on the table.” There are reports that Pentagon planners, reacting to the prospect of drawn-out negotiations, are developing strike packages to take out W.M.D. sites in Iran. Some planners say such strikes would cause the people to overthrow the mullahs. Actually, if we struck Iran, I think we would unite it, trigger a spasm of terrorist attacks against America and Israel and start another war for which we have no exit strategy. Thus, we need an honest national dialogue now on how much we feel threatened by Iran and what the least-bad approaches to mitigating that threat are. (emphasis added)
Clarke was the NSC Director for Counterterrorism for more than a decade. He’s just spent 500 words shredding the administration’s menu of Iran policy options. One would think that this would be the right moment for Clarke, a genuine expert on this question, to introduce his own thoughts on the matter. Instead, we get a “national dialogue” cop-out. That’s a close second behind “mobilize political willpower” on the list of Grand and Meaningless Policy Proposals. It’s particularly odd with regard to Iran, since national dialogues about foreign policy tend to be limited to questions of grand strategy or imminent war. It’s possible that Clarke is fresh out of constructive ideas on this subject. To give him the benefit of the doubt, however, it’s also possible that a 700-word limit on his column prevents a fuller explication of his thoughts. My money is on the former — a savvy columnist would have put in a teaser for a future column devoted solely to this topic — but I’ll give him some benefit of the doubt and see what emerges in future columns.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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