The Hanover Collaboration

Generally, I think “talking tough” is bad foreign policy. Keep in mind that in every country you’ll find people who agree with you and people who don’t. Our “tough talk” tends to buttress the people who disagree with you. Apropos of Iranian elections, John Dickerson basically agrees.

Fred Kaplan makes the argument that now is a moment when talking tough to the Iranian government wouldn’t be construed as talking tough to the Iranian people. As a result, it wouldn’t necessarily be counterproductive.

If you were the President, what would you say?

What follows is a related post that I never published:

To the extent that “[politically] moderate Islam” exists, it exists in Turkey. I think Turkish politics are a definitive experiment as to whether Islam can coexist with secular democracy.

My friend, Sertaç, is Turkish and we talk about this stuff all the time.

He says that Hitchens’s condemnations are totally valid, although he doesn’t appreciate the bluster. Furthermore, both he and I agree that Turkey should not be admitted to the EU.

But then we disagree with the foreign policy implications. Hitch takes a stab at Obama’s “make nice” school of diplomacy, which I think is completely unwarranted. What on earth could Obama possibly accomplish by doing anything else? What does Bernard Kouchner accomplish by taking the position that Hitch is advocating?

Answer: Give support to the people whom they condemn, while alienating people who could help.

I’m going to belabor this point because it is an excellent example of a repeating problem: quite often the “tough” rhetoric is stupidly counterproductive.

Stipulate that we don’t want Turkey in the EU. Notice that the Nationalist/Islamist factions in Turkey don’t want to be in the EU either. The secular Turks do want to be in the EU, but they aren’t controlling the government at the moment. Ironically, if they did, we might want Turkey in the EU.

Scenario 1: The EU (and/or the US) says something like “No you can’t be in the our club! (... Armenian Genocide…)” This will obviously put “The West” in an unfavorable light. The only imaginable result of this is the validation of the nationalist government, and the marginalization of the secular politicians who are rebuked.

Scenario 2: The EU says: “Sure you can join!” The subsequent referendum would be extremely divisive in Turkey, but Sertaç‘s guess is that the Islamists would win.

Scenario 3: We “play nice”, but stall on the actual referendum. Ideally, we can get the Islamist government to withdraw the request for membership themselves. That or do something so stupid that the EU can deny them and have it be viewed in Turkey as the Turkish government’s fault and not “prejudice of the west.”

Notice that in all three scenarios, Turkey is not admitted to the EU, but the only one that advances our political goals within Turkey is the “play nice” option.