The Failure Of "Poker" Diplomacy

Yesterday, President Musharaff of Pakistan confirmed what had long been reported - that the United States, in the person of former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, had threatened to bomb his nation "back to the stone age" if it did not provide basing and other support for the invasion of Afghanistan. (UPDATE- I see that Armitage is denying saying this and Musharaff is playing nicey-nice with Bush as always. Damn, but he wants those F-16's and harpoon missiles which are only any good gainst India, not terrorists.)

Now I'm not the world's biggest fan of the Musharaff regime, but even I think such a threat was ridiculous not to mention incompetent. At the time Pakistan already had an estimated 50-100 atomic bombs and the capacity to make more as well as an active program to export that knowledge. The U.S. could never have destroyed every bomb, every facility, every scientist. Musharaff blinked (partially) but if he hadn't then just imagine the worst case scenarios for the blowback from an invasion of Iran writ even larger - and it is highly likely that those mushroom clouds of Condi's would indeed have blossomed over Western cities by now.

Instead, what we got was an "ally" that is only a pretense of one. The Pakistani despot has cultivated his Islamists at home - as he must to stay in power - while offering up token captures of some real and some supposed Al Qaida bigwigs. He has continued to allow his intelligence agency, the ISI, to deal in drugs, counterfeiting and state-sponsored terror while making nice with the West and gobbling up every bit of military hardware he has been offered. That latter is the most mind-boggling bit of incompetence of all. Throughout history, larger powers have found that smaller allies who have to be scared into cooperation rarely turn out to be allies at all - at the first opportunity they change colors and hoist the Jolly Roger. Giving a reluctant ally access to better weaponry has rarely become other than turning ones own guns upon oneself.

Yet the Bush administration could have found a middle ground, if it looked. Containment worked for the great powers of Europe for over one hundred years and worked on the former Soviet Union. Enamored by neocon theories it chose their sound-bite strategy of "you're either for us or against us", ignoring the complex realities of nations such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and others where a careful balancing act between religious factions or political currents is what preserves peace and stability. The trouble with a theory that doesn't fit the facts, as any scientist should know, is that it is a false theory. Belatedly, the Bush administration may be coming to realize this, although their are certainly different political currents at work at the White House too as the fading neocon stars grimly try to hold on to their voice in the corridors of power.

So how is Bush's misguided attempt to play poker with a culture of hagglers working out elsewhere? Not too well, it seems.

Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt’s president, proposed Tuesday that his country pursue nuclear energy, drawing strong applause from the nation’s political elite, while raising expectations that Mr. Mubarak is being positioned to replace his father as president.

The carefully crafted political speech raised the prospect of two potentially embarrassing developments for the White House at a time when the region is awash in crisis: a nuclear program in Egypt, recipient of about $2 billion a year in military and development aid from the United States, and Mr. Mubarak succeeding his father, Hosni Mubarak, as president without substantial political challenge.

Simply raising the topic of Egypt’s nuclear ambitions at a time of heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear activity was received as a calculated effort to raise the younger Mr. Mubarak’s profile and to build public support through a show of defiance toward Washington, political analysts and foreign affairs experts said.

“The whole world — I don’t want to say all, but many developing countries — have proposed and started to execute the issue of alternative energy,” he said. “It is time for Egypt to put forth, and the party will put forth, this proposal for discussion about its future energy policies, the issue of alternative energy, including nuclear energy, as one of the alternatives.”

He also said in a clear reference to the White House: “We do not accept visions from abroad that try to dissolve the Arab identity and the joint Arab efforts within the framework of the so-called Greater Middle East Initiative.”

Nor is Egypt the only nation in the area contemplating nuclear power - for ostensibly peaceful purposes, as Iran has steadfastly maintained its own program is for.

The secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdul Rahman al Attiyah, recently called on the "Arab nation" to work "together on a nuclear program," to prevent being left behind as others in the region -- namely Iran, which is Persian and sometimes at odds with its neighbors -- pushed ahead with atomic research.

Attiyah's call points to a shift in policy. Arab governments in the past have criticized both Iran's nuclear ambitions and Israel's (officially nonexistent) atomic program, while arguing for a nuclear-free Middle East and swearing off plans to pursue the bomb.

Of course, Attiyah and other Arab leaders say they want nuclear power only for civilian purposes -- but so does Iran's controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The mere suggestion of "nuclear cooperation at an Arab level" therefore raises fears in the West of an arms race.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as an agreement that bans them from all forms of uranium enrichment. Western countries would naturally like to keep those agreements intact. But Nicole Stracke, from the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, warns that "If the Gulf Cooperation Council decides to pursue a nuclear initiative it could mean Saudi Arabia might rethink its participation in those agreements."

The "big stick" approach of invading Iraq over claimed WMD's clearly didn't work very well.

It is little wonder that both the political right and left in America are hurrying back to pre-neocon thinking. On the right, the buzzwords are "ethical realism" and a return to the days of Truman-Eisenhower bilateralism. For the left, the new foreign policy paradigm is "progressive realism". Both are essentially the same in that both are about a return to an America which values human rights, international standing and multilateral cooperation. There is a general and bipartisan current saying that after the dark days of the Bush/neocon dominion, America can put itself back on track as the leading light of the world. As a non-American, I truly hope so.