Om att förhandla med fienden

Dominic Tierney har en tankeväckande krönika på The Atlantics sajt idag. Han ställer frågan varför så många amerikanska politiker föredrar krig framför diplomati. Eller – rättare sagt – har ställer frågan om varför USA i sina utrikes relationer har så svårt för förhandlingar och är så benäget att falla tillbaka på föreställningen att allt kan lösas med militärt våld.

Furious Republican opposition to a deal over Iran’s nuclear program may look like another example of political partisanship and personal animosity toward Barack Obama. But there’s also a much deeper reason for congressional pushback: the deeply ingrained aversion in American culture toward parleying with ’evil’ opponents.

Negotiating with international adversaries is more controversial in the United States than in most advanced democracies. Whereas in other countries bargaining is often seen as the norm, Americans frequently view face-to-face talks as a prize that the opponent has to earn through good behavior. The United States is part of a coalition of six countries talking to Iran, alongside Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany. But the United States is the only country where the deal has generated a domestic political storm.

Resistance to an agreement with Iran is part of a long history of American skepticism about engaging with adversaries. During the early years of the Vietnam War, France, Britain, Canada, and the UN secretary general all entreated the United States to negotiate an end to the conflict—but Washington refused to entertain any settlement short of North Vietnam’s surrender.

Han citerar en person som haft anledning att fundera mycket över detta:

The United States avoided meaningful negotiations with Iran when Tehran had a few hundred centrifuges—holding back until the Iranians had constructed an industrial-scale nuclear program.

“Many consider negotiations as a sign of weakness,” wrote Henry Kissinger. “I always looked at them as a weapon for seizing the moral and psychological high ground. … It is a device to improve one’s strategic position.”

To employ this diplomatic weapon effectively, Obama must maneuver through a highly challenging political landscape. For a Democratic president, the ideal solution is to build a bipartisan foreign-policy team. This is no easy feat given the current hyper-partisan mood. But Obama pulled off this trick once with the appointment of Robert Gates, a moderate Republican, as secretary of defense. The two Iranian nuclear crises—the one in the Middle East and the one in Washington, D.C.—show that Democrats have a tough time making peace on their own. In the end, it might take a Republican to go to Iran.