However, this inability apparently is not restricted to the domestic side of political class responsibilities. If you look at our country's foreign policy recently you see very few successes (recent trade agreement with South Korea) and a whole lot of failures:
- There was a recent conference in Geneva that involved Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany [Associated Press - December 7, 2010]. The conference was supposed to find a way to allow Iran to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program while preventing them from developing nuclear weapons. The talks ended with a promise of all countries to get together again in 2011. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley went so far to say that: "We are encouraged that there will be a follow-on meeting [in 2011].
Sound familiar? It seems this dance has been going on for a long time, with Iran skillfully sitting down for talks with the over eager other six nations and hinting at enough progress to not kill future talks but never agreeing to anything either. This has been going on for years, with no concessions from Iran but serving as their delaying tactic for their continued developed of a nuclear weapon capability. Lots of talk, no action.
- The never ending search for peace between the Palestinians and Israel also has recently been in the news. The United States, for years, has tried to mediate talks between the two factions, with a recent agreement stipulating that Israel would not do any more settlement construction in Jerusalem for 90 days. This agreement was necessary to prevent the Palestinians from walking out of the peace talks. The Obama administration was so desperate for the 90 day window that they agreed to get billions of dollars of weaponry to Israel and made other diplomatic commitments for their moratorium on construction, all for a mere 90 day freeze on construction.
However, shortly afterward, Israel declared that the U.S. was too consumed by the Wikileaks fiasco to talk peace (Associated press - December 7, 2010) and that the U.S. had stopped the peace talk process. The State Department denied that this was the case and the talks were still on. However, it appears that the Israelis are using the weak excuse of Wikileaks to get the military hardware and diplomatic air cover that the U.S. committed to but never wanted to continue the peace talks anyway. Thus, all of the United States' plans to keep both sides happy and talking are likely to fail. Lots of talk, no action.
- Every time that North Korea acts up, the United States goes begging to China to please, please intervene and keep the North Koreans in check. However, China apparently has very little motivation to keep the North Koreans in check according to recent news reports and documents:
- China likes having a buffer between itself and U.S. ally South Korea. If the North government should collapse, then South Korean, and possibly U.S. troops, could be sitting on the Chinese border, something they probably do not want.
- If the North Korean government should collapse, there is a very high probability that millions of starving North Korean citizens would flee to the more prosperous China in search of food and shelter, an event that the Chinese definitely do not want to cope with.
- The North Koreans intermittently act aggressively towards Japan, a military and economic competitor of nearby China. With North Korea as a wild card, it distracts Japan in its affairs and confrontations with China.
What do all of these situations have in common? Namely, the United States no longer has the leverage to make/convince others to do what it wants. Without leverage, other parties will do what the want and is best for them, not what is best for U.S. interests. Especially today, with a fragile economy, the United States has lost the leverage of economic power. China's economy has grown so much and made us so dependent on it that we can do nothing but go to the Chinese and beg for them to do something about North Korea.
The Israelis are living in a prosperous economic environment that is relatively secure. The Palestinian leaders exist and continue in power because of the hatred it sows among its citizens towards Israel. None of the parties involved, Israeli and Palestinians citizens and leaders really want peace as defined by the United States. We have no leverage to make them change their minds from the status quo but we are gullible enough to sign short term and costly agreements that the Israelis abide by or ignore at their will. Again, no leverage to make them do what we want, they have more to lose than to gain.
What leverage do we have with the Iranians? Obviously, the five or six rounds of sanctions that have been imposed on them have had insufficient leverage to make them stand down from their nuclear weapon ambitions. Plus, we are dealing with some very irrational and possibly insane rulers, both in Iran and North Korea. Without leverage to apply to their irrational interests, the United States is relegated to diplomatic beggar again and sits at these meetings with no power or leverage to enact anything effective. As a result, the Iranians play us for fools as they delay and delay as they develop and develop nuclear weaponry.
A wise old business saying goes as follows: "Never be so in love with a business deal that you cannot walk away from the negotiating table." Our political class and politicians have become so in love with these "deals," a nuclear free Iran, a well behaved North Korea, and a lasting a stable Middle East peace accord that they cannot walk away from the table. We continue to sit at the table and talk and talk because we have diplomatically, militarily, and economically no leverage to do anything else, looking diplomatically impotent in every case. Without leverage or the creativity to create leverage, you get played for a fool, which is exactly the position that our politicians have put is in today.
Which should not surprise us. The meager efforts of the political class to domestically improve life for Americans have almost always been a failure (e.g. Cash For Clunkers, TARP, etc.). And usually the root cause of these failures is that the meager and ill-thought out programs from our politicians usually have no leverage. Without leverage, plans usually fail miserably.
But that discussion is worthy of another post in the near future but before then, think about some of these recent failures and try to identify what leverage was inherent in the thought process of the programs. I will bet that you will find that there were none. As a result they failed as miserably as the foreign affairs fiascos above.
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