What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (51 page)

Next, diplomacy is critical and should be utilized effectively to support rather than weaken our interests. Under Obama, our relations with some of our closest allies have frayed. Our special relationships with Great Britain, Canada, and Israel need particular care. Building trust again may be difficult after Obama’s breaches, but we ought to make clear that the United States will no longer betray them in ways big and small. The missile defense shield once set for Eastern Europe should be revisited, and the United States should move ahead with other missile defense planning. We should be prepared for Russian unhappiness on this point, but we should also be prepared to do what is in America’s interests. Furthermore, NATO ought to be reassured that the United States is back to play a leading role, both militarily and diplomatically—and not “from behind.”

Israel should once again have the full diplomatic confidence and military support of the United States as it navigates its increasingly dangerous neighborhood. Israel’s enemies should understand that acts of aggression against the Jewish state will not be excused by the United States. There can’t be any sunlight between us, particularly on the issues of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the rise of Islamists across the Middle East. This raises the key question of preemption: if Israel is hit, will we retaliate on its behalf? When nuclear weapons are involved, we’ve got to act
before
acts of aggression can take place. America’s policy remains deliberately vague on that question. Furthermore, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States should stop buying into the Arab propaganda that the crisis controls much else in the Middle East. It does not. The next president should act immediately to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital city of Jerusalem. In 2009, Obama postponed the move, despite the fact that this relocation policy is based on a law that was passed by Congress in 1995. We must also stop funding the Palestinian Authority until it not only quits inciting terror but affirmatively sells the idea of peace based on an acknowledgment of the Jewish state’s right to exist. Until this point is reached, any notion of a “peace process” is fraudulent.

The goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel in stages. For the United States to press Israel to make any kind of a “deal” with the Hamas-Fatah gang would be strategically irresponsible and morally reprehensible. Furthermore, the United States should quit negotiating away Israel’s position in public and facilitate private talks only if they are in Israel’s interest. More than ever, Israel needs the backing of the United States through weapons sales, trade, and diplomatic and moral support. This might include a U.S.-run program with Domino’s Pizza and the Mossad, the Israeli covert ops organization, to deliver large pizzas covered in bacon, ham, and pepperoni to every member of Hamas.

Our relationship with the Iraqi government also requires serious attention. Obama’s decision to withdraw precipitously all U.S. troops at the end of 2011 has imperiled our hard-won gains. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has engaged increasingly in authoritarian abuses, from mass arrests to crackdowns on free speech, and we are now far less able to guide his government toward greater liberalization and pro-Western policies. We should focus on repairing that relationship and, if possible, consider reintroducing a modest military force if the Iraqis so desire to ensure that the gains we’ve achieved are not lost in a hail of Islamist violence and Iranian-bred chaos.

Furthermore, enemies of the United States should understand that the days of no-strings-attached olive branches are over. If they want to genuinely extend their hands in peace, we will prudently consider their overtures. If, however, they continue belligerent actions and marches toward weapons of mass destruction, we will not merely offer up empty threats. We will say what we mean, mean what we say, and follow through if necessary.

Arguably the gravest immediate threat to the United States and the world is a Khomeinist Iran armed with nuclear weapons. America will have zero credibility if, after years of warning about the “unacceptability” of an Iranian nuclear weapon, Tehran goes nuclear. Traditional containment and doctrines of “mutual assured destruction” may not work against the fanatical and apocalyptic Islamic regime the way they did against the secular and rational Soviet communists. Iran must understand that if it continues its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, the United States may hit it with an array of countermeasures, from slapping on truly strangling sanctions to placing a naval blockade against Iran in the Persian Gulf to engaging in ramped-up covert sabotage of its nuclear and other infrastructure to an outright military attack on its suspected nuclear installations. Any action may provoke Iranian retaliation, as Tehran has previously threatened to strike Israel and the United States at home and abroad and block oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. We’ve got to be prepared for whatever the Iranian response may be and persevere with our own aggressive approach. We are in a war. The choice may very well be a tough military confrontation now or a much more brutal and widespread cataclysm later. In order to avoid having Iran plunge us into a nuclear hell, we’ve got to be ready to act soon, since, according to the IAEA’s final 2011 report on Iran’s nuclear progress, Tehran is moving at a fast clip.

Some foreign policy elites have warned that if we or the Israelis strike Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, the Iranian people would rally to the regime. A 2007 “guerrilla poll” of Iranians appeared to support that contention: 90 percent of Iranians polled said they’d “fight back against the attackers,” while just 5 percent said they’d “welcome” such an attack. After the bloody 2009 regime crackdown, however, the Iranian people changed their minds. In an August 2010 poll of the same group of Iranians, only 9 percent said they’d “fight back,” while a stunning 62 percent said they’d “welcome” an attack “
if
it results in toppling the regime.”

Regime change in Tehran must be the goal of any U.S. policy. The majority of the Iranian people are with us, but they need to know that we are with them. Many Iranian dissidents complain that our Voice of America/Radio Farsi sounds like it’s run by the regime, while Israel’s Radio Farsi actually broadcasts messages of freedom and interviews with dissidents. Obama had no problem pushing out our allies Mubarak and Gadhafi. We should have even less of a problem helping to push out our mortal enemies in Tehran.

Russian and Chinese obstruction of anti-regime measures at the UN Security Council is a huge problem, as is their (and others’) continuing nuclear assistance to Iran. There are no easy ways around their intransigence. The best practicable option for the United States is to work with like-minded parties, such as the Europeans and Israelis, to try to buckle the Iranian nuclear program and, if necessary, to act unilaterally against the threat. Too often, we have bluffed, only to have Iran call our bluff and continue working on the bomb (knowing there would be no U.S.-led action). This is an exceedingly difficult problem; if it were easy, previous presidents would have dealt with it already. Any policy choice involves huge trade-offs, and the consequences could range from the unpleasant to the devastating. But it’s got to be faced squarely—and soon—before we’re forced to deal with a bigger convulsion down the road.

We should also make clear to Moscow and Beijing that the United States is unwavering in its support of our allies in Europe and in Asia, and that any attempt to intimidate them by extortion or force will be met with a vigorous response. The ill-conceived “reset” with Russia is long over, as Moscow reverts to greater authoritarianism and steps up its direct challenges to the United States over missile defense, Iran, and our debt. We should signal that we’re no longer going to bend over backward to prove to Moscow that we’re a steady partner; instead, the burden will be on Russia to prove to the United States that
it’s
a willing and trustworthy partner.

China is a direct competitor of the United States. Our challenge will be to try to manage the competition while keeping it from deteriorating into militant hostility. We’ll be walking a very fine line: previous attempts to lean on China with regard to its currency manipulation and other unfair trade practices have produced few results. One of the most effective ways to deal with a rising Beijing will be to bring down our debt so that China will have less economic leverage over us in the coming decades. The United States should also be more active in the Pacific by carrying out more frequent naval exercises and giving greater care to our diplomatic and economic relationships with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Each of those bilateral relationships is critically important to our regional security, and each nation has its own complex set of concerns. Obama began an important reorientation of our foreign policy toward Asia. The next administration should follow it up with even deeper strategic partnerships with our regional friends.

North Korea remains the problem child of Asia, and, after a leadership succession in 2012, it’s even more unpredictable. It should be made clear to Kim Jong-un that the policy of the United States will no longer be to try to bribe his regime to halt its nuclear weapons program, only to have it take our money to sell nukes to rogues such as Iran, Syria, and Burma. While we’ve wasted years gassing around in the Six-Party Talks with North and South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan, Pyongyang has developed and tested nuclear weapons and honed its ballistic missile program. The days of rewarding their bad behavior have got to end. We should use whatever influence we may have with Beijing to lean on its client. That may prove difficult, as it has been in the past, but given that sanctions have shown limited utility, China is the most accessible diplomatic route we’ve got. Furthermore, we should make clear that we’ve had enough of the North’s attacks on our ally in the South and if its regional bullying continues, the United States is prepared to respond in a variety of ways. Those options may range from increasing diplomatic and economic pressure to military action. The deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il loved wearing women’s clothes, specifically high-heeled shoes. I wonder if his son does too. If so, then perhaps a way to lure the regime away from its militant ways is to load up a fleet of B-52 bombers with crates of Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks and carpet-bomb the entire country.

In the broader Middle East, a new Iron Curtain is now falling, thanks largely to Obama’s pro-Islamist foreign policy. Here too we are in a war, whether we want to see it or not. The Islamists now dominating the Middle East should understand that the United States will not play footsie with jihadists in any form, whether they are the violent jihadists of al-Qaeda or the stealth jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups. There must be no negotiation with self-professed enemies of the United States that actively and openly seek our destruction. The United States should try to minimize the damage to our security from their rise in places like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, and Morocco by supporting and encouraging genuinely pro-American and pro-Western factions in these nations to at least try to blunt the carefully calibrated but determined Islamism of the new governments. U.S. aid to nations dominated by the Brotherhood and other enemies of the United States should end altogether. In the case of Egypt, if the peace treaty with Israel is abrogated, the United States must immediately end assistance, consider transferring it to Israel, and make sure our ally knows that we will back it with every resource. We should also try to correctly identify secular, pro-Western elements (as we failed to do with the Libyan and Syrian “rebels”) and support them much the way we supported Solidarity and other pro-Western forces behind the old European Iron Curtain.

Elsewhere around the neighborhood, we need to deal straightforwardly with several nations playing their own double games. Our relationship with nuclear-armed Pakistan is particularly fraught; we need its assistance in fighting al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani terror network and other extremists in the region, and it enjoys our military and financial aid. The powerful Pakistani security service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is shot through with Islamists who continue to threaten the regime. If they were to gain control of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons, the world would immediately be a far more dangerous place. (It was under President Bill Clinton that Pakistan developed and tested nuclear weapons in direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Let’s hope Obama isn’t Captain of the Dumb-Ship to the point where Iran is now able to hoodwink another Democrat and develop a nuke.)

We cannot continue to allow Pakistan to encourage militants to smuggle weapons into Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers and to allow al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and members of the Haqqani network to cross the Afghan-Pakistan border to give aid and comfort to our enemies. Since September 11, 2001, we have given Pakistan $20 billion in aid. The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 committed $7.5 billion to Islamabad over five years, but it conditioned the dough on Pakistan’s behavior. We need to make clear to Pakistan that if it continues to support terrorism, spread nuclear technology to rogue regimes, and lie to us about all of it, we will eliminate U.S. aid, halt intelligence cooperation, continue drone air strikes in country, and possibly declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terror and impose sanctions. Because Pakistan is so central strategically to our efforts to combat extremism in the region, any of these actions would involve a complex balancing act. But Pakistan must believe that our threats are not empty and that we have every intention of carrying them out. Furthermore, Islamabad should understand that if the United States moved on any of these policies, it would not be able to retaliate effectively and that the United States would seek to develop a strategy for Afghanistan that would not be dependent on Pakistan’s assistance. If, however, Pakistan ends its support for terrorism, helps us battle terrorist networks, and stops its aid to our enemies in Afghanistan, we should be prepared to increase our economic, military, and political aid. A productive relationship with a stable Islamabad is far preferable to a hostile one, but we cannot continue rewarding bad behavior. As with any deal with the devil, our relationship with Pakistan involves deep trade-offs. Our job is to walk carefully the line between working with the devil and letting him run roughshod over us.