Robert D. Kaplan: Iran, Iraq, North Korea ... What Now?
[Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.]
Seven-and-a-half years ago, in his 2002 State of the Union address, then-President George W. Bush declared that the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil." He thereby put the United States on a war footing with them. In rhetorical terms, Bush's use of the phrase was highly successful: It was repeated endlessly by the media. But in operational terms, the consequences were tragic. The phrase helped Bush gather support for an invasion of Iraq that wiped out the evil of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, but replaced it with the far worse evil of anarchy, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and 4,000 Americans in the process. Moreover, the phrase alienated Iran’s leadership, with whom, following our invasion of Iraq, we might have had a functional rapprochement, since Iraq is Iran's own nemesis. Finally, the phrase led to an ineffectual policy of not talking to North Korea, a route that led nowhere. Having accomplished nothing by its failure to engage, America (still under Bush) returned to the negotiating table five years later. And by then Kim Jong Il was that much further along in developing his nuclear bomb.
So where do we stand now? All three Axis countries continue to play a strong role in defining U.S. policy preoccupations. The administration of President Barack Obama is right now concentrating much of its energies on developments in Baghdad, Teheran, and Pyongyang. Iraq has undergone a very tenuous stabilization since 2007, and the Administration is justly nervous about the security situation unraveling once American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities this summer. But the spotlight lately has been on Teheran and Pyongyang, as both regimes have, in recent days and weeks, taken dramatic turns toward further radicalism, even as their domestic bases of support may be narrowing.
In the recent Iranian national elections, nobody knows just how well or badly the candidates fared. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical anti-western Holocaust denier, was declared the winner over the reformist Mir Hussein Moussavi by a two-to-one margin. But because the results were largely seen as fixed (and it has been alleged that the outcome and vote percentages were announced even before the ballots were counted), we are left completely in the dark. Was Moussavi's support simply overstated by western journalists, who took in the thrilling demonstrations by Teheran's young elite in favor of Moussavi, but did not travel to the more conservative rural provinces where Ahmadinejad is reportedly very popular? Or were the massive anti-regime demonstrations in Teheran in fact indicative of a population that had truly turned against Ahmadinejad's rants? Or, was it a mixture of both: Did Ahmadinejad perhaps win in a close election, with the regime having helped him out by stealing ballots here and there?..
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Seven-and-a-half years ago, in his 2002 State of the Union address, then-President George W. Bush declared that the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil." He thereby put the United States on a war footing with them. In rhetorical terms, Bush's use of the phrase was highly successful: It was repeated endlessly by the media. But in operational terms, the consequences were tragic. The phrase helped Bush gather support for an invasion of Iraq that wiped out the evil of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, but replaced it with the far worse evil of anarchy, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and 4,000 Americans in the process. Moreover, the phrase alienated Iran’s leadership, with whom, following our invasion of Iraq, we might have had a functional rapprochement, since Iraq is Iran's own nemesis. Finally, the phrase led to an ineffectual policy of not talking to North Korea, a route that led nowhere. Having accomplished nothing by its failure to engage, America (still under Bush) returned to the negotiating table five years later. And by then Kim Jong Il was that much further along in developing his nuclear bomb.
So where do we stand now? All three Axis countries continue to play a strong role in defining U.S. policy preoccupations. The administration of President Barack Obama is right now concentrating much of its energies on developments in Baghdad, Teheran, and Pyongyang. Iraq has undergone a very tenuous stabilization since 2007, and the Administration is justly nervous about the security situation unraveling once American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities this summer. But the spotlight lately has been on Teheran and Pyongyang, as both regimes have, in recent days and weeks, taken dramatic turns toward further radicalism, even as their domestic bases of support may be narrowing.
In the recent Iranian national elections, nobody knows just how well or badly the candidates fared. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical anti-western Holocaust denier, was declared the winner over the reformist Mir Hussein Moussavi by a two-to-one margin. But because the results were largely seen as fixed (and it has been alleged that the outcome and vote percentages were announced even before the ballots were counted), we are left completely in the dark. Was Moussavi's support simply overstated by western journalists, who took in the thrilling demonstrations by Teheran's young elite in favor of Moussavi, but did not travel to the more conservative rural provinces where Ahmadinejad is reportedly very popular? Or were the massive anti-regime demonstrations in Teheran in fact indicative of a population that had truly turned against Ahmadinejad's rants? Or, was it a mixture of both: Did Ahmadinejad perhaps win in a close election, with the regime having helped him out by stealing ballots here and there?..