t r u t h o u t | 07.31
http://www.truthout.org/article/warmongering-loses-ground-washington
Warmongering Loses Ground in Washington
Tuesday 29 July 2008
by: Renaud Girard, Le Figaro
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are maneuvering together to remove any idea of preventative war.
A quarter of an hour on foot from the White House, the air-conditioned amphitheater of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS, one of the main international policy think tanks in Washington ) is packed. Everyone who counts as a geopolitical expert in the capital has come to attend a conference on Iran, given by two renowned experts: Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and General Brent Scowcroft, who exercised the same responsibilities under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, father of the current president.
Brzezinski has become a noted adviser to Barack Obama on foreign policy; Scowcroft - who has never hidden his horror of neoconservative ideology - has retained great influence in moderate Republican circles.
During the recent conference, people were very pleased, on the podium as well as in the audience, by the decision President George W. Bush took to send a high-ranking diplomat to speak directly with the Iranians in Geneva during the July 19 meeting between the Group of Six (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany) and the Tehran regime's Supreme Defense Council secretary.
The American experts agree on the necessity of stopping nuclear proliferation across the planet, and consequently about preventing Iranians from providing themselves with the atom bomb. But how? Brzezinski criticizes the George W. Bush administration doctrine that consists of saying "all the options (including that of bombing Iranian nuclear installations) are on the table" head-on: "You can't simultaneously threaten a great nation like Iran and aspire to calmly holding talks with them," explains President Carter's former adviser.
Reviving Commercial Ties
For Brzezinski, maintaining the option of a unilateral act of war is counterproductive: it confirms Iranian leaders in the idea that they need to equip themselves with new means of defense. On top of that, in his eyes, the idea of a preventative war is unreasonable from the perspective of American interests. Its consequences for the stability of the Middle East and the global economy would undoubtedly be "catastrophic."
On the other side of the scales, the hypothesis of a nuclear Iran - however undesirable it may be - does not present a great risk of regional destabilization since, up until now, "deterrence has always shown that it worked."
Brzezinski believes there is no reason to think the Iranian regime will behave less rationally than Stalin's Russia or Mao's China did in the past.
Scowcroft and Brzezinski share the idea that we have to show Iran that its interests in reviving trade ties with the West are greater than in developing a military nuclear program. The two men believe that we cannot claim to demand the suspension of Iran 's uranium enrichment program without giving something other than the promise of broad all-out negotiations in immediate exchange. A concrete gesture from the West (such as suspension of the American embargo on oil technologies) would be welcome in their eyes.
At the heart of the outgoing Bush administration, Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates have maneuvered together to remove any idea of preventative war by supporting the principle of direct negotiations, by publicly wishing for the opening of an American interest section in Tehran, by allowing the military leadership's opposition to opening a third front to leak out.
The problem of the Israelis remains. This week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni, and Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz follow one another in Washington to press the Americans to send an ultimatum to Iran . "They know it's their last chance, since a President Obama would not allow an Israeli "fait accompli" to pass without consequences," judges commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former Reaganite who is getting ready to vote for the Democratic candidate.
However that may be, President Bush has not yet given any sign that he'll allow his hand to be forced once again by Vice President Dick Cheney and the warmongering neoconservative camp.
A pdf complete transcript of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' conference is here.
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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
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