Where Krauthammer Went Wrong: An Appeal to Nuance

In the past week, the U.S. Congress has made two unprecedented interventions into U.S. foreign policy. First, Speaker John Boehner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, arranged for PM Netanyahu to speak before the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015 and argue his case against current negotiations over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. President Obama had no knowledge of the speech and PM Netanyahu’s speech was largely considered a sidestepping of the Executive branch’s sole ability to conduct foreign policy. Next, on March 9, 2015, 47 U.S. Senators, led by Freshman Tom Cotton of Arkansas, sent a letter directly to Iranian leadership “explaining” the U.S. constitutional system and the supposed short-sightedness of working with the Executive when it does not have the previously agreed to support of the Legislature. Though not as egregious, this letter was also an affront to President Obama’s leadership and was intended to blow up current negotiations with Iran.

In a sea of largely partisan and wrongheaded punditry on the recent Congressional actions, Charles Krauthammer’s article “Netanyahu’s Churchillian Warning” stood out as particularly heinous. The article was written after PM Netanyahu’s speech, but before Senator Cotton’s letter. It was a confirmation of PM Netanyahu’s purpose and essentially argued that the United States is misguided in working with Iran because Iran is duplicitous and is not negotiating in good faith. The thesis itself is reasonable enough, but the arguments Krauthammer uses to support his claim are uniformly misguided. He insists on parallels and precedents that do not exist, and views the Middle East through the close-minded conception of good guys (the United States and Israel) versus terrorism (Iran+). The simplicity of his arguments are compelling, though they are also wrong. For this reason, I decided to go point-by-point and refute Krauthammer’s article.

[su_quote]Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress was notable in two respects. Queen Esther got her first standing O in 2,500 years.[/su_quote]

That is perhaps due to the fact that the story of Queen Esther’s saving the Jewish people from the wrath of Persian leadership has not been seriously considered precedent for contemporary political actions at any point in the past 2,500 years. PM Netanyahu drew a historical thread from Queen Esther to the Holocaust to the present day without blinking an eye or respecting any particular circumstances of particular events. Krauthammer apparently appreciated the simplicity of PM Netanyahu’s argument.

[su_quote]And President Obama came up empty in his campaign to preemptively undermine Netanyahu before the Israeli prime minister could present his case on the Iran negotiations.[/su_quote]

President Obama could not preemptively undermine anything, as he did not even know it was in the works before the public announcement. That being said, there are many other avenues for the Israeli prime minister to present his case to the U.S. President and the American people, few of which require State of the Union-esque political theatre. That PM Netanyahu and Speaker John Boehner felt it necessary to create a spectacle belies the purpose of the talk as a product of the domestic politics of Israel and internal politics of Congress.

[su_quote]On the contrary. The steady stream of slights and insults turned an irritant into an international event and vastly increased the speech’s audience and reach.[/su_quote]

It was never going to be a mere “irritant”, and it was, by definition, always going to be an international event.

[su_quote]Instead of dramatically unveiling an Iranian nuclear deal as a fait accompli, Obama must now first defend his Iranian diplomacy.

In particular, argues The Post, he must defend its fundamental premise. It had been the policy of every president since 1979 that Islamist Iran must be sanctioned and contained. Obama, however, is betting instead on detente to tame Iran’s aggressive behavior and nuclear ambitions.[/su_quote]

Reasonable people can disagree here, but I agree with the sentiment portrayed here: no matter what you think of the underlying politics and interpersonal relations between Israel, the United States, and Members of Congress, PM Netanyahu did succeed in pushing the U.S.-Iranian talks back into the spotlight in the United States, if briefly, and perhaps made negotiations more difficult.

[su_quote]For six years, Obama has offered the mullahs an extended hand. He has imagined that with Kissingerian brilliance he would turn the Khamenei regime into a de facto U.S. ally in pacifying the Middle East. For his pains, Obama has been rewarded with an Iran that has ramped up its aggressiveness in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, and brazenly defied the world on uranium enrichment.[/su_quote]

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

[su_quote]He did the same with Russia. He offered Vladimir Putin a new detente. “Reset,” he called it. Putin responded by decimating his domestic opposition, unleashing a vicious anti-American propaganda campaign, ravaging Ukraine and shaking the post-Cold War European order to its foundations. [/su_quote]

Again, just because one thing happened after another, doesn’t mean it was caused by the first thing. Would Putin not have crushed domestic opposition or invaded Ukraine if the United States was more hostile at the beginning of the Obama Administration? Who knows, but it’s extremely unlikely that offering the Russians a seat at the table emboldened them sufficiently to renew their aggression in Eastern Europe. Krauthammer, by painting with a broad brush of American omnipresence and predominance in international politics, along with President Obama’s supposed ineptitude, is refusing to acknowledge the many other factors at play in either Iran or Russia.

[su_quote]Like the Bourbons, however, Obama learns nothing. He persists in believing that Iran’s radical Islamist regime can be turned by sweet reason and fine parchment into a force for stability. It’s akin to his refusal to face the true nature of the Islamic State, Iran’s Sunni counterpart. He simply can’t believe that such people actually believe what they say.[/su_quote]

Setting aside the Orientalist imagery of “sweet reason and fine parchment”, the word “Islamist” is not enough to compare Iran to ISIL. Granted, both are Islamic political-military movements, and both seek Islamic law in the state, but couching them both as “Islamist” and saying that ISIL is “Iran’s Sunni counterpart” is completely and totally ignoring any semblance of history or ideology or particular context. Again, Krauthammer opts for the broadest brush possible to draw a connection between two largely disconnected groups.

In what way is President Obama not recognizing the threat ISIL poses to the United States? Because he didn’t send U.S. troops directly into the battlefield? Debating if boots should be on the ground or not is a fine disagreement, but both parties to that disagreement understand that a threat is there. Though he doesn’t seem to realize it, Krauthammer is arguing tactics here, not strategy.

The core of this argument, though, is whether or not you believe that Iran is a rational actor negotiating in good faith. PM Netanyahu and Krauthammer do not. President Obama does.

[su_quote]That’s what made Netanyahu’s critique of the U.S.-Iran deal so powerful. Especially his dissection of the sunset clause. In about 10 years, the deal expires. Sanctions are lifted and Iran is permitted unlimited uranium enrichment with an unlimited number of centrifuges of unlimited sophistication. As the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens points out, we don’t even allow that for democratic South Korea.[/su_quote]

First, it is not the “U.S.-Iran deal”. Negotiations are taking place between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany (P5+1). The United States is not alone here, though they are the main party and the majority of responsibility still rests on the United States’ shoulders.

That being said, the P5+1-Iranian nuclear deal is still in the works, and stakeholders should obviously voice any concern they have, Israel included. As shown here, the “sunset clause” is clearly worthy of concern. However, I have no way of knowing if the deal will eventually come to that, and neither does anyone else. As I said, it is still in the works.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the deal will eventually include this terrible clause. Certainly, a problem ten years down the line is not sufficient for as large a fanfare as was produced for this address. Iran and concerned nations would have ten full years to continue negotiations for a permanent cap.

Perhaps the sunset clause is a flaw in the agreement, but not one that would require the uproar that was created for PM Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

[su_quote]The prime minister offered a concrete alternative. Sunset? Yes, but only after Iran changes its behavior, giving up its regional aggression and worldwide support for terror. Netanyahu’s veiled suggestion was that such a modification — plus a significant reduction in Iran’s current nuclear infrastructure, which the Obama deal leaves intact — could produce a deal that “Israel and its [Arab] neighbors may not like, but with which we could live, literally.”[/su_quote]

PM Netanyahu is allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and he is insisting on holding discussions not on the Iranian nuclear issue, which is thorny enough as it is, but on Iran’s entire foreign policy. Iran is one of the worst perpetrators of human rights on the planet, and they support many groups that do the same. Still, the P5+1 can get them to agree not to produce nuclear weapons. That is a huge win by itself. Separate issues can and should be addressed separately.

The infrastructure agreement, as framed here is not ideal. However, assuming you trust International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, or whoever it is agreed will inspect, the infrastructure in and of itself is not dangerous. Not having an agreement in place as to how to use that infrastructure, that is dangerous.

[su_quote]Obama’s petulant response was: “The prime minister didn’t offer any viable alternatives.” But he just did: conditional sunset, smaller infrastructure. And if the Iranians walk away, then you ratchet up sanctions, as Congress is urging, which, with collapsed oil prices, would render the regime extremely vulnerable.[/su_quote]

There is a point of diminishing returns with sanctions, and we have hit it with Iran. Further punishing the people of Iran for their government’s actions is not practical.

Inciting revolution, as Krauthammer implies with “render the regime extremely vulnerable” is rarely good foreign policy. Iran is, at the very least, the devil we know. Perhaps a regime more favorable to U.S. interests would develop, but perhaps not. As long as the United States believes that Iran is a rational actor negotiating in good faith, there is little reason to incite revolution.

[su_quote]And if that doesn’t work? Hence Netanyahu’s final point: Israel is prepared to stand alone, a declaration that was met with enthusiastic applause reflecting widespread popular support.[/su_quote]

I trust the Israel Defense Forces and Air Force immensely, but bombing all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, much of which is underground and surrounded by state-of-the-art concrete, would be a Herculean task. I don’t know if Israel is capable of standing alone, but I am certain that it would come with immense risk and possible failure.

I don’t believe that the quantity of applause at Congress correlates well with the American people’s opinion on a given issue, but perhaps Krauthammer disagrees.

[su_quote] It was an important moment, especially because of the libel being perpetrated by some that Netanyahu is trying to get America to go to war with Iran. This is as malicious a calumny as Charles Lindbergh’s charge on Sept. 11, 1941, that “the three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.”[/su_quote]

“Netanyahu is trying to get America to go to war with Iran” is not a popular opinion. Krauthammer is beating on a straw man.

Also, very few people are suggesting that the reason that PM Netanyahu disagrees with the current approach of negotiations is that President Obama is cowing to foreign pressure, his own whims, or Antisemitism. There is no comparison to be made here.

[su_quote]In its near-70 year history, Israel has never once asked America to fight for it. Not in 1948 when 650,000 Jews faced 40 million Arabs. Not in 1967 when Israel was being encircled and strangled by three Arab armies. Not in 1973 when Israel was on the brink of destruction. Not in the three Gaza wars or the two Lebanon wars.

Compare that to a very partial list of nations for which America has fought and for which so many Americans have fallen: Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea, and every West European country beginning with France (twice).[/su_quote]

Israel has a powerful military that has had a substantial edge over its opponents for decades. Who provided and still provides that edge? The United States. The United States provides almost $4b in military aid every year to Israel. Israelis are strong, but they need guns to fight with. The United States provides those guns. It is far cheaper, does not endanger U.S. military personnel, and provides far fewer headaches to U.S. foreign policy if the United States acts as facilitator rather than active combatant in Israeli military operations. Other countries do not have the military capability to partner with the United States this way. Israel is a unique and special ally of the United States, and their close diplomatic and cultural ties express this.

Strawman defeated.

[su_quote]Change the deal, strengthen the sanctions, give Israel a free hand. Netanyahu offered a different path in his clear, bold and often moving address, Churchillian in its appeal to resist appeasement. This was not Churchill of the 1940s, but Churchill of the 1930s, the wilderness prophet. Which is why for all its sonorous strength, Netanyahu’s speech had a terrible poignancy. After all, Churchill was ignored.[/su_quote]

2015 is not 1938. The Middle East is not Europe. Ali Khamenei is not Adolf Hitler. Benjamin Netanyahu is not Winston Churchill.