Wrong Analysis

Arnaud De Borchgrave is someone I want to like. He is one of the good guys, and he wants to see us win the War on Terror and see the enemy defeated. He knows right from wrong, unlike left-wing "civil rights" attorneys such as Lynne Stewart. When he criticizes the Bush Administration, then, he does so in good faith. So I don't want to be too hard on him here.

But his analysis can be so exasperating. Consider this piece that appeared in Wednesday's paper. I think he's a bit too approving of the "concerns" of the "EU3" (UK, France, and Germany).

To introduce; Secretary of State Rice told a breakfast meeting of EU3 ambassadors that Iran was a "totalitarian state", and that therefore we would not talk to them. The EU3 approach, she said, should continue negotiations with Iran, using a mixture of carrots and sticks.

De Borchgrave says that this "was deemed absurd" by the Europeans. They have no sticks short of going to the UN Security Council, and the carrots "can be negotiated only in direct talks with the United States."

Ok, so far so good. If he says that we should abandon multi-lateral talks and go it alone with Iran, fine. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't. Reasonable people can disagree. Then we have this description of what the EU3 think, with from what I can tell he agrees:

The EU3 are beginning to couple Miss Rice's intransigent rhetoric on Iran with Vice President Dick Cheney's offhand remark that the Israelis might pre-empt before the United States with air strikes against Iran's 12 to 15 nuclear facilities, most of them underground. EU3 have asked their Washington ambassadors if his isn't Iraq deja vu all over again.

Ah, "intransigence." How unreasonable of us! And what exactly would be wrong with deposing the Mad Mullahs? Yes Iran is different than Iraq. Yes Iran can fight back in ways that Iraq never could. But one wonders if the reason why Europeans are so worried is that they'll lose trade with Iran like they did with Iraq. "Oil-for-Food" is the deja vu I'm thinking of.

But ok, maybe the Europeans do have legitimate fears of a "wider war." I'll grant that for now. Then comes this

President Bush's hopefully allegorical reference to a "fire of freedom ... that will burn those who oppose it" and "reach the darkest corners of the world" prompted a number of foreign ministries to ask their Washington ambassadors to reassess the influence of the Born Again Christian Right and the Likud lobby on the Bush Doctrine. The wild card is what the Economist called President Bush's "intellectual love affair" with former Soviet dissident and Israeli Cabinet minister Natan Sharansky.

"There are few things that irritate foreign-policy types more about Mr. Bush than his Manichean view of the world," the Economist wrote. "His infatuation with Mr. Sharansky suggests he is not likely to be any more "sophisticated' in his second term. Mr. Sharansky sees the world in black and white terms " good vs. evil and free societies vs. "fear societies,' with a bunch of "realists' dithering in the middle."

Yeah, well I'm irritated now too. And I really don't care if "foreign-policy types" don't like it. In fact, I'm glad they're irritated. If anything, it's more evidence that Rice needs to shake things up at State.

Heaven forbid we should see the world in "black and white terms." Oh no, we rubes need to adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the world. "Evil" is like, you know, such an absolute word. You can just hear the Europeans saying to each other; "Why, oh why, couldn't they have elected John Kerry?"

And of course they have to drag the dreaded "Christian Right" into all of this, as if our President was a wild-eyed religious fanatic. Perhaps statistics that show that only 10% or so of Europeans attend church might have something to do with how little they undestand our country. And "Likud Lobby?" We wouldn't want to favor democratic Israel over the corrupt and terrorist-tolerating PA, would we?

They said these things about Ronald Reagan, too, especially after his "evil empire" speech. Then when he died they all pretended that they'd been with him all along.

Next we have the alleged hypocrisy

If Iran is a totalitarian state, ask the EU3, what does that make Saudi Arabia? What is worse than totalitarian? There is even less freedom in Saudi Arabia than in Iran.

Let's see, maybe it's the fact that for twenty-five years Iran has been trying to export their revolution, while the Saudis are pretty much happy opressing their own people? The United States has always drawn a distinction between repressive states that are expansionist and those who "merely" wish to repress their own people.

To be sure, Saudi rulers have for too long turned a blind eye to radical Whabbist clerics (a redundancy, I know) who have exported their hate to the west, in particular the United States. And we have let this go for too long. I've written about this before, too (here and here).

Certainly we must press the Saudis to make reforms, and serious ones at that. Along these lines it is true that for far too long we excused them because they were seen as strategic allies and because we feared that change might result in loss of oil production.

But by the same token one does not deal with all totalitarian regimes in the same manner. It has always struck me that the oh-so-sophisticated critics of the Bush Administration cannot, will not, or pretend not, to see this. They pretend (they can't actually be serious) that we deal with each and every regime in the same manner ("You attacked Iraq, are you going to do this to North Korea and Iran too? Huh!? Huh!?").

Lastly, we have the moral equivalency

Iran, say the EU3, also has legitimate security concerns, which only the United States can address in direct talks. Seen from Tehran, there is a military vise of U.S. troops on Iran's eastern and western frontiers, U.S. aircraft carriers and scores of preprogrammed sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea on its southern border.

Ok, let's get this out of the way up front; when planning our strategy we must take their view into account. It would have been unrealistic, for example, in arms talks, to not have taken into account the Soviet perception of what weaponry needed, and which of ours they feared most. We have always done this by use of "orange" or "red" teams, who play the enemy in diplomatic/war games.

But "legitimate security concerns?" A revealing word indeed. Did the Soviets or Nazis have "legitimate security concerms?" No I'm not saying that we can or should attack totalitarian countries at will, and anyone who suggests such a thing is an idiot (and hasn't read my series on Just War Theory). But the concern for Iranian security is, well, touching.

During the Cold War the left would defend the Soviet position by pointing out that the Soviets considered themselves "surrounded". "Good!" was my usual off-the-cuff response. There's a difference between a gun in the hands of a police officer and a gun in the hands of a criminal. There's a difference between missiles on U.S. cruisers and missiles carried by Iranian gunboats.

To be fair, Arnaud does conclude with some sound advice:

Seventy-five percent of Iran's population is younger than 25. It is the world's only country whose youth is pro-American. But a military attack by Israel or the U.S. would quickly drive them into the hard-line camp " and jeopardize Iraqi democratization.

He is certainly right in that young Iranians are fed up with their mullahs and are at least somewhat pro-American. Indeed all we may need is a spark, some incident, to start off a counter-revolution. A military attack at this time may be ill-considered. But maybe not, either. Reasonable people can disagree.

Syria? Now that's another matter. One of our mistakes in Vietnam was allowing the enemy sanctuaries. Cross-border raids into Syria should and must be considered. We can bomb known terrorist training camps and staging areas. But all this will be the subject of future posts, so stay tuned.

Right Analysis

You can find all that is right in analysis over at The Redhunter.

Ok puppies, what do you think?

Update - More Wrong Analysis

At least one observer thinks the global media has overblown North Korea's strident claim to a nuclear arsenal.

"It's merely a beautiful bargaining strategy on the part of a country with the economic importance of Chad to make itself into a centerpiece of world diplomacy. None of the weapons is usable, since North Korea would be turned into glass within minutes should the country lob a missile at somebody," said George Friedman of Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence service.

"Iran's nuclear program isn't really all that viable, and the country has to know that if she continues to enrich uranium in defiance of Western desires, the U.S., or perhaps Israel, will hit them with the big stick. Iran isn't that stupid," Mr. Friedman continued.

The problem I have with this is that it is mirror-image thinking; because we believe in the logic of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) they do too (ok, let's not get into whether MAD is logical or not, you know what I mean here). Friedman is saying "if I were them, then, I would not launch nuclear weapons because I would not want my country destroyed."

We should never assume that others think the way we do. For example, the Soviets never really bought into MAD. We came to accept it by the mid to late '60s, but they continued to believe that a nuclear war was both fightable and winnable.

In the 1930's many believed that Hitler could not possibly mean what he said. Mein Kampf was surely just political propaganda designed to gather followers. We underestimated how far he would go until it was too late.

Osama bin Laden wishes to establish a new Caliphate on the model of one of the ancient dynasties such as the Umayyeds. To us this seems so insane it can't be true. But it is, and we must understand his motivations in order to defeat him.

So it may be today with North Korea and Iran. Iranian mullahs are on record as saying that they will destroy Israel if given the chance. We regularly hear threats from North Korea. To be sure, such pronouncements sometimes are for internal political reasons only. But sometimes not.

All I'm trying to point out here is that in my opinion mirror-image thinking is wrong-headed analysis. "What I would do if I were them" is the wrong question. The right question is "What if their mindset and how might they act upon it?"