Israel Matzav

Multilateralism's dead end

On Tuesday, I reported that Hillary Clinton had told reporters on her Latin American tour that a resolution imposing new sanctions against Iran would come before the UN Security Council in the next few months. I argued that we cannot wait 'a few months' and that Prime Minister Netanyahu will not wait 'a few months.'

Of course, Obama promised that we would move onto sanctions at the end of September, at the end of December, in February, and now 'in a few months.'

Noah Pollak argues that the reason for the continual delays is that the Obama administration is in denial about the fact that Russia and China will not join any effort to impose new sanctions. Here's why:

There are two reasons, I think. The first is that acknowledging Russia and China’s unwillingness to help would strike the most powerful blow yet to Obama’s central foreign-policy message: that his personality and eagerness for engagement would open up doors for America that were slammed shut by the Bush administration’s alleged arrogance and quickness to go to war. Acknowledging that the Security Council will never allow strong sanctions would be tantamount to admitting that the very logic and premises of Obama’s foreign policy is flawed. Thus, this isn’t really about Iran. It’s about the politics of failure and Obama’s increasingly desperate attempt to shield his presidency from the hard realities of the world.

And there is a practical reason why Obama may never admit that the Security Council is a dead end: doing so would force him to move to a new strategy — and there is no new strategy. So instead of thinking seriously about a Plan B, the administration is simply burying Plan A in a process with no chance of success and no expiration date. This is passivity, and it puts Obama in the position of reacting to events instead of shaping them. That’s not a good position for the American president to be in.

I would add a third reason. Another central plank of Obama's foreign policy is acting through multilateral organizations, particularly the United Nations. If the United Nations cannot answer Iran effectively, that plank is blown to bits. Multilateral organizations like the UN are not capable of reigning in rogue states because ultimately each state has its own interests. In Obama's delusional world, each state subverts its own interests to the common good. But the only states that are subverting their own interests when it comes to Iran are the United States and - for now - Israel.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:11 PM