Bret Stephens: 'Beggar Thy Neighbor, Bankrupt Thy Country, Appease Thy Foe...Pretty Much Sums Up President Obama's Global Agenda'

Foreign policy 'change you can believe in':

In 1943, Walter Lippmann observed that the disarmament movement had been "tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament." That ought to have been the final word on the subject.

So what should Mr. Obama, who this week becomes the first American president to chair a session of the U.N. Security Council, choose to make the centerpiece of the Council's agenda? What else but nonproliferation and disarmament. And lest anyone suspect that this has something to do with North Korea and Iran, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice insists otherwise: The meeting, she says, "will focus on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any particular countries."

But the problem with this euphemistic approach to disarmament, as Lippmann noticed, is that it shifts the onus from the countries that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons to those that can. Is Nicolas Sarkozy, with his force de frappe, about to start World War III? Probably not, though he has the means to do so. Should Mr. Obama join hands with Iran and the Arab world in pushing for Israel's nuclear disarmament, on the view that if only the Jewish state would set the right example its enemies would no longer want to wipe it off the map? If that's what the president believes, he should say so publicly, especially since he's offering the same general prescription for America's nuclear deterrent.

Of course what the administration wants is to set the right mood music for its upcoming talks with Iran. Mr. Obama would be better served having a chat with Moammar Gadhafi, who will be seated just a few chairs away at the Security Council: The mood music for his disarmament was set by the 4th Infantry Division when it yanked Saddam Hussein from his spider hole in December 2003. Col. Gadhafi gave up his WMD a week later.

Then again, it's not as if the administration doesn't know how to play hardball when it has a real villain in its sights. Like Chinese tire makers, for instance, who last week were slapped with a 35% tariff because Mr. Obama owed political favors to his friends in Big Labor. Quite something for a president who last year sounded off on the dangers of "trade policy [being] dictated by special interests."

In an op-ed in this newspaper, Brookings Institution economist Chad Bown noted that "the count of newly imposed protectionist policies like antidumping duties and other 'safeguard' measures increased by 31% in the first half of 2009 relative to the same period one year ago."

[...]

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is earning kudos from the Russian government for his decision to pull missile defense from central Europe, even as Poland marked the 70th anniversary of its invasion by the Soviet Union. Moscow is still offering no concessions on sanctioning Iran in the event negotiations fail, but might graciously agree to an arms-control deal that cements its four-to-one advantages in tactical nuclear weapons.

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Europe Continues March To The Political Right

Remember when everyone said that Europe's politics were a rebuke of the Bush administration?

And then Germany & France, whose leaders opposed Bush, elected conservatives in Merkel and Sarkozy. And Italy elected Berlusconi.

And now the rest of Europe is going right.

Conservatism is dead, conservatism is dead. Long live conservatism.

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Iran: Beware Good News

As we consider the recent NIE revelation that Iran discontinued it's nuke program some 3 years ago, it's worth considering a couple of things:

- Iran recently tested a missile with a range of 2000 km--effectively allowing a strike against Israel.

- Israel does not agree with many of the basic assumptions in the NIE report.

- The French, specifically President Sarkozy, still believe Iran is a threat to acquire nuclear weapons. For all you doves, the fact that it is the French sounding the alarm ought to carry a bit of credibilty with you.

- At least two of the committee members who reviewed the final NIE report have been outspoken critics of President Bush. Though criticism has been warranted, much of theirs took on a very partisan tone.

- Iran still has hegemonic aspirations. And they want to obliterate Israel.

- Iran continues to enrich Uranium. This is one of the more difficult steps in the bomb-making process. Ostensibly, they are doing so for energy production. We should know better.


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I'll take sour grapes, with a skosh of schadenfreude

In our last post we referred to an impending Cambridge trip. It ended up being positive and productive for a number of reasons. With the help of a professor friend there, we pounded out an idea for a PhD proposal, attended the Intelligence Seminar and listened to a CIA historian, and sat at the high table at Corpus Christi formal hall.

These intelligence seminars are interesting affairs. All in attendance agree to abide by Chatham House rules. Essentially this means that participants can use the information they learn at these seminars (or any other setting where Chatham House rules are invoked), but cannot reveal the source. As a result, we get some fairly interesting bits of information. Since I've already revealed who the source was, I can't really post what he said, other than to say, that the CIA had more things going on in China and Tibet going on in the last 50 years than I would have ever guessed.

During the seminar he also discussed the gross innacuracies of The Good Shepherd and its treatment of what is supposed to be "the untold story of the beginning of the CIA." Sorry to burst the bubble of all you cloak-and-dagger enthusiasts, but that movie is pure fiction. He (the CIA historian) also referred us to a fantastic story about two CIA operatives who were captured by the Chinese in 1973, imprisoned for 20 years undergoing all sorts of deprivations, and finally released, quietly when relations with China "thawed" under Nixon.

There's another interesting dynamic at these meetings. Most of those in attendance have or are working on PhDs, with a few MA students and undergrads kind of in the periphery. Though the invited speaker is a guest, it is a time honored tradition to put hard questions to these speakers. Having been trained in the self-esteem society that is the American education system, it is always a little shocking to hear just about anyone sitting around the large conference table in the hollowed halls of Corpus Christi College take a CIA historian or whoever to task.

While in this seminar, we met and briefly talked to Stefan Halper. Mr. Halper was an erstwhile assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney when Mr. Cheney was White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford and later an assistant to Mr. Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush. Prior to the 2004 Presidential election, Mr. Halper co-authored a book critical of the "neoconservative cabal" inhabiting the halls of power in Washington DC. In his own words, his name was "stricken from dinner party lists in DC." That line sounded like it had been repeated not a few times, with great delight.

Now, we don't want to jump to any hasty conclusions, but the schadenfreude that infects Mr. Halper's voice as he talks about the difficulties of his one time Republican colleagues and friends smacks of sour grapes at not having been invited in to government when the Republicans retook the presidency with George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Halper now hosts a show over at the BBC.

Mr. Halper pointed out, and we found it funny, that Mark Steyn, probably the most consistently funny political writer we read, "stole" his book name, America Alone. He probably wouldn't be pleased to know that Mr. Steyn's book appears #1 on an Amazon search for "americal alone," while his comes in at #6.

We suggest, therefore, that you read Mr. Steyn's column from yesterdays New York Sun about Nicolas Sarkozy's win in the French presidential election (Congrats, Mr. Sarkozy). Good stuff.

Read also John Fund, from the Opinion Journal, about the same thing.

***Update: Also worth reading, a primer on George Tenet's new "slam dunk" of a best seller by the Weekly Standard's William Kristol. Turns out (thanks Marc) the intel about al-Qaeda in Iraq was even better than we thought. Thanks Mr. Tenet for that "inadvertent truth."

Until next time, enjoy.


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