Robert D. Kaplan: Obama Cannot Afford to Get Iran Wrong
President Barack Obama has come under withering criticism from neoconservatives and liberal internationalists for not speaking out more quickly and forcefully in support of the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran. But now that the initial crisis is past, and Teheran has settled in for a behind-the-scenes struggle among the Shiite clergy, it is apparent that Obama's instinct has been pitch-perfect.
The last time an American president was criticized for not coming out forcefully enough in support of pro-democracy demonstrators was twenty years ago, when George H. W. Bush took a publicly reticent stance as the Soviet Empire collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. In A World Transformed, the 1998 memoir he coauthored with his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, one of the finest and under-rated of political memoirs written in recent decades, Bush recalled that he felt it important to “step carefully in Poland and Hungary and … avoid aggravating the Soviets, whose military presence still loomed there.” If the U.S. had taken overt action to encourage democracy, he explained, “I understood that the pressure on Gorbachev from hard-liners to intervene would grow...there could be more Tiananmens."
In other words, he recognized that Ronald Reagan's aggressive policies had set history in Eastern Europe in motion, and that it was now his own task to slow it down – to allow liberal change to settle in with minimal bloodshed. Tiananmen was fresh in his memory—a bloody repression by another communist regime against its democratic opponents. His fear of instigating another such event governed his decisions in Europe.
Obama now faces a similar challenge.
History has been set in motion in Iran. Though only dozens have been killed so far, the possibility of hundreds or more dying in a bloody upheaval is not out of the question. One ayatollah has even called for executions. Obama's goal must be political change and liberation in Teheran with minimal bloodshed. And he simply cannot accomplish that by putting America's fingerprints all over the democracy movement there. How he handles this could mean the difference between a massive crackdown by a terror-promoting, radical regime (who would likely retain complete control for years to come), and a gradual behind-the-scenes transformation, as the clerisy moves delicately away from the "Death to America" mantra of previous decades. In that regard, like the elder Bush vis-à-vis Eastern Europe, the less Obama says about Iran these days the better. It's not about winning an argument, as some commentators appear to believe; it's about effecting change, indirectly, in a complex society half-a-world away....
Read entire article at Atlantic blog
The last time an American president was criticized for not coming out forcefully enough in support of pro-democracy demonstrators was twenty years ago, when George H. W. Bush took a publicly reticent stance as the Soviet Empire collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. In A World Transformed, the 1998 memoir he coauthored with his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, one of the finest and under-rated of political memoirs written in recent decades, Bush recalled that he felt it important to “step carefully in Poland and Hungary and … avoid aggravating the Soviets, whose military presence still loomed there.” If the U.S. had taken overt action to encourage democracy, he explained, “I understood that the pressure on Gorbachev from hard-liners to intervene would grow...there could be more Tiananmens."
In other words, he recognized that Ronald Reagan's aggressive policies had set history in Eastern Europe in motion, and that it was now his own task to slow it down – to allow liberal change to settle in with minimal bloodshed. Tiananmen was fresh in his memory—a bloody repression by another communist regime against its democratic opponents. His fear of instigating another such event governed his decisions in Europe.
Obama now faces a similar challenge.
History has been set in motion in Iran. Though only dozens have been killed so far, the possibility of hundreds or more dying in a bloody upheaval is not out of the question. One ayatollah has even called for executions. Obama's goal must be political change and liberation in Teheran with minimal bloodshed. And he simply cannot accomplish that by putting America's fingerprints all over the democracy movement there. How he handles this could mean the difference between a massive crackdown by a terror-promoting, radical regime (who would likely retain complete control for years to come), and a gradual behind-the-scenes transformation, as the clerisy moves delicately away from the "Death to America" mantra of previous decades. In that regard, like the elder Bush vis-à-vis Eastern Europe, the less Obama says about Iran these days the better. It's not about winning an argument, as some commentators appear to believe; it's about effecting change, indirectly, in a complex society half-a-world away....