Engage this!

Nancy


Outstanding commentary from The Middle East Interest blog. Here are some tidbits:

[...]House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that “our bill calls for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq so that we can focus more fully on the real war on terror, which is in Afghanistan.” According to Charles Krauthammer, “but you cannot reasonably argue that in 2007 Iraq is not the most critical strategic front in the war on terrorism. There’s no escaping its centrality,” Washington Post.

[...]The central notion behind the engagement is that the United States, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas would negotiate a comprehensive settlement on issues of critical importance of their differences in a cooperative context, rather than a confrontational contest. Instead of trying to coerce these states and movements to comply with the international laws and norms, we should persuade them to de-radicalize, work with us over Iraq, stop nuclear program, and resolve the Palestine issue by offering rewards that would be too good to be refused. Another great advantage is that since they would be entering this grand bargain of their own free will, they would be more likely to keep their ends of the bargain.

What all of this implies, then, is a paradigm shift, a redefinition of the American foreign policy in the Middle East that goes far beyond a sheer policy shift. As Ray Takeyh advocates, “but with a new policy of engagement, normalization would have to be the starting point of talks; it would then facilitate discussions on issues such as nuclear weapons and terrorism. A strategy that seeks to create a web of mutually reinforcing security and economic arrangements has the best chance of tying Iran to the status quo in the region. In essence, a new situation would be created in which Tehran’s relationship with Washington would be more valuable to the regime than either its ties to Hezbollah or its pursuit of nuclear arms,” wrote in Foreign Affairs.

The problem with the engagement is that it doesn’t work in practice. For one thing, this is pure idealism; for another, such a idealism is misplaced. Engagement theorists, by and large, reduce particular form of the Iranian state down into generalized political grievances and discontents against the United States that need to be addressed. Yet, they give no reason as to why grievances as such causes revolt and violence among these states and movements. And they give no clue of who experienced political grievances in the Middle East.

But whereas Takeyh is quick to say “too often, pragmatism has been sacrificed at the altar of ideology, and common interests have been obscured by convoluted historical grievances,” Foreign Affairs, he ignores the fact that those who are discontented are not necessarily those who rebel. On the contrary, there is evidence that the marginal and isolated social groups are not playing any important role in the radicalized political movements, because “the powerless are easy victims,” as Eric Wolf maintains.

[...] Boiled down to their essence, engagement theorists argue that where you have political grievances and discontent, there you get violence and terrorism. By this standard one might reasonably argue that the pursuit of weapon of mass destruction, the sponsorship of terrorism, and the anti-American incitement should have happened by now almost in all non-Western countries, since most of them faces similar political grievances and have issues with the United States, but terrorism and proliferation of nuclear weapon have been rare in these countries. Emphasizing grievances and interests in the way Takeyh does as the constitutive features of engagement with Iran omits the proper place of ideology and the radical projects imposed on the Iranian state by the Khomeinist leaders, which advances “a clear vision of a permanent, intractable, and ultimately victorious struggle against the West,” as David Hazony puts it.

The state in Iran is based on an ideologically peculiar form of the hostility against the West in general and the United States in particular, which lacks any solid social bases. It is also based upon a system of political exclusion of the ongoing activated popular social classes by closing the democratic channels of the access to the government. This exclusion is justified by a determination to challenge the U.S. global hegemony and, in the process, to secure its own future reproduction.

Let me conclude by paraphrasing Martin Kramer who criticizes “engagers” for failing to see that “these states and movements [do] have big ideas or grand strategies of their own.” Yes, indeed, they do.

Please read the comments to his post here. You'll be glad you did.