If it's true that in politics you are judged by the caliber of your enemies, Yukiya Amano is off to a stellar start. The 62-year-old Japanese technocrat has only been at the helm of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for two months, but he is already exceedingly unpopular with the Iranian regime.
What do al-Qaida's leaders fear most? It's not the more stringent screening requirements imposed by the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing by Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Nor is it the long-awaited deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's AfPak plan. And it certainly isn't the prospect that al-Qaida foot soldiers might end up in U.S. federal court, whether in New York or anywhere else. Rather, what keeps Osama Bin Laden and his followers up at night is the prospect that the Muslim world might get wise to their dirty little secret: that supporting al-Qaida is hazardous to your health.
What can the Obama administration do about Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons?
The president's informal year-end deadline for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse with Iran has come and gone. Iran recently announced that it plans to build 10 nuclear fuel plants and has moved to enrich uranium to a higher level than necessary for peaceful purposes. As a result, the center of gravity within Washington policy circles is moving toward punitive measures against the Islamic Republic in the hope of curtailing its persistent nuclear ambitions.
Yet in order for the tougher measures it contemplates to be effective, the White House will need to know a lot more about the Iranian program than appears to be the case currently. A comprehensive reevaluation of what we know about Iran's atomic drive -- and what it means -- is in order.
There's an old saying, familiar to historians and foreign policy practitioners, that "geography is destiny." A modern twist to this rule is that demography is no less decisive.
Russia is finding this out the hard way. Over the past several years, under the direction of former President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and his handpicked protege, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia may have re-emerged on the international scene with a vengeance. But behind all of the Kremlin's contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a demographic and socioeconomic death spiral.
The funny thing about windows of opportunity is that they have a way of closing. Over the past year, spurred by mounting worries over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Congress has taken up the issue of economic pressure against the Islamic Republic in earnest. The result is a series of sanctions bills aimed at targeting what is commonly viewed as the regime's economic Achilles' Heel: its deep dependence on foreign refined petroleum.
A funny thing happened in the skies over Norway last month. On Dec. 10, as U.S. President Barack Obama geared up to deliver his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo, spectators outdoors were treated to a spectacular display of spiraling light. The cause was not a UFO, as some contended, but a failed test of the Bulava, Russia's newest sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. The episode was a telling reminder of the shifting strategic balance between Washington and the rest of the world.
Another month, another fissure within the Islamic Republic. In the six months since Iran's fraudulent presidential elections brought protesters out into the streets en masse, the Iranian regime has weathered a profound and sustained domestic crisis of confidence. The latest sign of this discontent began on Dec. 7, when tens of thousands of students clashed with regime security forces on university campuses throughout Tehran in days of unrest. This protest and numerous others like it serve as a telling reminder that the rift between the Iranian people and the thuggish theocracy that rules them remains as deep as ever.
Remember Moqtada al-Sadr? Just three years ago, the firebrand cleric and his feared Mahdi Army militia were the scourge of the coalition in Iraq, spearheading the Shia opposition to the United States and its allies in the former Ba'athist state. Since then, the man who ranks as one of Iraq's most notorious native sons has largely disappeared from view, preferring flight rather than fight in the face of an increasingly assertive central government in Baghdad. Now, however, there are signs that Sadr is poised on the brink of a major political comeback – one that could significantly reconfigure Iraqi politics.
When it comes to Iran, the Obama administration could learn a thing or two from Europe. That is because, even as Washington clings doggedly to its plans for "engagement" with Tehran, there are signs that a new consensus is emerging in Europe about confronting the Islamic Republic.
On Nov. 24, the Dutch parliament caused a minor political earthquake on the Old Continent when it voted to designate Iran's powerful clerical army, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), as a terrorist group under Netherlands law. The same measure also called for the IRGC to be put on the European Union's terror list--a step that would harmonize U.S. and European approaches toward Iran's ideological army.
By now, the idea that the struggle against radical Islam is in large part a battle of ideas has become widely accepted. Our statesmen, diplomats and political leaders regularly intone that we are engaged in a monumental conflict between freedom and fear, between democratic values and religious totalitarianism, and between individual liberties and religious fiat. But is the United States actively engaging in this struggle? Sadly, all of the available evidence suggests that it is not. Eight years into the fight, America still lacks anything remotely resembling a coherent strategy for competing on the Muslim world's intellectual battlefields. And without one, it has steadily ceded the strategic initiative to its adversaries, who do.
When the eight states that now constitute Central Asia and the Caucasus freed themselves from the grip of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was perhaps inevitable that outside powers would rush to fill the vacuum. Of the eight at least three, the Caspian Basin states (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan) found themselves awash in natural resources. The remaining five (Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), though less endowed materially, are strategically situated along crucial energy, trade, and logistics corridors. The combination of renewed interest and a reopened playing field in the heart of Eurasia resulted in the rise of a new “Great Game,” reminiscent of the great-power contest of the 19th century between the British and Russian empires over access to India glorified by Rudyard Kipling in his day. A decade-and-a-half on, this Great Game has matured, and undergone important changes. More important, however, as the energy struggle evolved a new front in the Game emerged out of the ashes of the September 11th terrorist attacks: one that pits the United States against Russia for influence and basing rights in Central Asia.
The primary purpose of U.S. public diplomacy is to explain, promote, and defend American principles to audiences abroad. This objective goes well beyond the public affairs function of presenting and explaining the specific policies of various administrations. Policies and administrations change; principles do not, so long as the United States remains true to itself. Public diplomacy has a particularly vital mission during war, when the peoples of other countries, whether adversaries or allies, need to know why we fight. After all, it is a conflict of ideas that is behind the shooting wars, and it is that conflict which must be won to achieve any lasting success.
"This is the way the world ends," T.S. Eliot wrote in his epic 1925 poem "The Hollow Men," "not with a bang but a whimper." Had he written it today, Eliot could easily have been speaking about the strategic divorce taking place between Israel and Turkey - a monumental decoupling with the power to alter the correlation of forces in the greater Middle East.
Don't let the atmospherics fool you. The inaugural U.S.-Iranian parlay that took place in Geneva on Oct. 1 may have netted a pair of notable diplomatic concessions from the Islamic Republic, namely, a commitment to open its recently disclosed nuclear facility in Qom to international inspectors, and agreement in principle to having at least a portion of its nuclear cycle carried out on foreign soil. But Tehran is already giving indications of reverting to type.
In the wake of talks with Washington, Iranian officials have taken pains to reaffirm that they still view their nuclear program as an "inalienable" right. Not surprisingly, they have nixed the idea of foreign enrichment, demanded nuclear fuel imports from abroad, and announced plans to install a new generation of even faster centrifuges at the previously clandestine uranium plant in Qom. The message is clear: No matter the diplomatic niceties, Iran's nuclear program is not up for grabs.
The problem of North Korea has bedeviled policy makers in Washington for years. The notoriously opaque Stalinist state that sits above the 38th Parallel represents one of the world’s most intractable security dilemmas. Starting this spring, however, the challenge posed by Pyongyang has grown more acute. The defiant series of nuclear and ballistic tests carried out by Kim Jong Il in May has brought into sharp focus the growing threat posed by the North’s strategic arsenal—and precipitated a frenzy of international activity in response.
What's in a name? This spring, the Obama administration ignited a political firestorm when it replaced the phrase "war on terror" with the more antiseptic "overseas contingency operations." The turn of phrase led critics of the administration to conclude that, when it came to confronting our terrorist foes, the White House was trading substance for style.
Recent events have done little to dispel that notion. As John Brennan, the president's top adviser on counterterrorism, told an audience at the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies back in August, Team Obama defines the current conflict quite differently from its predecessor - as neither a "war on terrorism" nor a "global" struggle.
In the eight years since Sept. 11, the U.S. has devoted a great deal of funding and thinking to the struggle against radical Islam. There's at least one area where it's fallen short, though: It hasn't mounted a serious economic challenge to the activities and ideologies of terrorist groups on a grassroots level.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Obama administration's decision last Thursday to scrap missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic is that it was so long in coming. Mr. Obama has defended his decision on both technical and financial grounds. The Bush administration's plans to deploy ground-based interceptors in Poland and early warning radars in the Czech Republic were targeted as part of his campaign pledge to eliminate billions of dollars in missile-defense spending. Instead, the White House now has pledged to develop a new theater and sea-based missile-defense architecture for Europe that "will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies." But what about defense of America?
When the Fatah Central Committee convened its sixth party conference last month in Bethlehem -- the first such meeting in twenty years and the first ever held on Palestinian Authority territory -- one might have expected a bit of soul-searching. After all, more than two decades after the Palestine Liberation Organization and its main political faction met America's prerequisites for a dialogue by rhetorically recognizing Israel's right to exist, renouncing terrorism, and accepting United Nations Resolution 242, a casual observer might assume that a re-examination of revolutionary principles was in order. Yet nothing of the sort occurred.
After months of dithering and delay, the Iranian government appears to have grudgingly accepted the U.S. president's diplomatic overtures. Just shy of the deadline for dialogue set by the White House, the Islamic Republic has announced its readiness to offer new "proposals" for talks over its nuclear program.
The move is a political victory of sorts for Obama, who has made "engagement" with Iran a centerpiece of his Middle East policy. But it might end up being a Pyrrhic victory. If true to form, Iran will likely try to use the upcoming talks with Washington the same way it did previous ones with Europe -- as a way to play for time and add permanence to its nuclear project. For Obama to convince Iran's rulers that the costs of their nuclear effort will far outweigh the perceived benefits, talking alone won't be enough; the White House will need real leverage over Tehran.