The madness of letting Mad Men dictate our foreign polices

When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, one of the central problems we face is outdated policy frameworks that seem to date to the era of Mad Men, three martini lunches and fedoras. Two such anachronistic approaches are absolutely central at the moment.

As we slouch toward containment in Iran, to use David Sanger’s terrific phrase, defenders of the "get used to Tehran having a finger on the button" approach argue that their government is rational and self-interested and therefore the old Cold War deterrent of assured destruction will work (remember those M.A.D. old days). All we have to do is threaten to blow them up if they use their weapons and we will once again assure peace on earth. (BTW, I don’t recall us all being so sure the policy was going to work as I huddled under my elementary school desk with a coat over my head.) The 21st Century twist that invalidates the old policy is that the greater risk is not state vs. state WMD use, it’s that as more countries like Pakistan and Iran and North Korea get the bomb, the odds that one or more warheads fall into the hands of less rational non-state actors grows. And it grows further as the addition of each new nuclear state makes other states — many for whom having secure nuclear programs will be a challenge — want to enter the club. We’re on the verge of a new developing world nuclear arms race and we’re basing our approach on 50 year old policies for a very different world. 

Similarly, as Secretary Clinton returned from her Latin trip frustrated with her exchange with Brazil over Iran, many in the U.S. Latin policy community (which is broken with a few notable exceptions into two distinct groups — hacks and old hacks) are fretting that this will be an impediment to a "real partnership" with Brazil. The problem is that the U.S. bases its idea of international partnerships on a very 1950s idea of marriage. America is the husband and our "partners" are our wives. We may call them "equal" in polite conversation but in the end we’re the ones who get to decide who’s going to get fucked and when. Not only is that old-fashioned sexual politics, it’s an old fashioned view of relationships with a superpower in the Cold War. But we have entered into a world in which "you’re with us or against us" and "you’re with us or else" doesn’t work. It’s a world in which most of the major players with whom which we will have to deal will frequently be with us and against us.

Hopefully, the new centrality of China to American interests may introduce us to a more 21st century idea of international marriages — one in which both sides really are equal and it is acknowledged from the outset that their interests may diverge and that when they do, it is possible to disagree and without undercutting the parts of the relationship that do work and where cooperation is possible. This idea — of a U.S. that actually listens to and respects the autonomy of the other great powers with which we deal — will be the key to building and maintaining successful coalitions in the future.

That’s not to say, by the way, that Brasilia’s samba with Tehran is in anyone’s interest or is a good policy. It gives leverage to a very bad regime that is flaunting international law and seems intent on making the world a more dangerous pace. It’s also not to say we shouldn’t make our case clearly to the Brazilians or to pretend tensions won’t result. However, we mustn’t petulantly let our most important relationship in South America rise and fall on a single issue or on the notion that only one of the partners is in a position to set the terms of what is or is not acceptable.