Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Gates Again Undermines
the Hawks via LobeLog.com by admin on 1/19/08
Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered still more evidence this past
week that he has become the most important actor in steering the Bush
administration's foreign policy toward a more realist course,
particularly with respect to the Middle East and Iran. (I wrote an
article about this for IPS at the end of December.)
No, I'm not talking about his critique of the counter-insurgency skills
of Washington's NATO partners, a rare, Rumsfeld-like gaffe, from which
he quickly retreated. Rather, I'm referring to his interview on NPR
Thursday -- just as President Bush was wrapping up his tour of the
region -- during which Gates was asked whether he considered Iran to be
"the greatest threat that the United States is likely to face in the
final year of this administration." His answer must have caused serious
heartburn in the Vice President's office. "Well,, I think Iran is,
certainly, one of the most significant challenges," Gates replied to
the question.
"We continue to be concerned about their ongoing enrichment programs,
their unwillingness to suspend in the face of broad international
pressure to do so. So I think it will continue to be a challenge."
STEVE INSKEEP: Is there a reason you described them as a challenge
rather than a threat?
GATES: Well, when I think of a threat, I think of a direct military
threat and, while the jury is out in terms of whether they have eased
up on their support to those opposing us in Iraq, I don't see the
Iranians in the near term as a direct military threat to the United
States."
It's important to put this exchange in the context both of the
purported confrontation between U.S. warships and Iranian Revolutionary
Guard speedboats in the Straits of Hormuz the previous week and of
Bush's trip to the region, a major theme of which was the "threat"
posed by Iran not just to its Gulf neighbors, but to all countries,
presumably including the United States.
"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,"
Bush said
in his poorly received speech in Abu Dhabi early last week. "So the
United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments
with our friends in the gulf and rallying friends around the world to
confront this danger before it is too late." It's pretty clear
that, if
Bush had confronted the same question by Inskeep, he would have opted
for "threat" rather than "challenge."
The fact that Gates would downplay the Iranian "threat" -- or at least
its imminence -- in this way and at the same moment that Bush was trying
to rally the Gulf states behind a U.S.-led anti-Iranian alliance once
again suggests not only the defense secretary's determination to move
policy in a more realist direction, but also a growing confidence that
he is succeeding.
(It's also worth noting how Amb. Jay Lefkowitz, a neo-conservative
close to Elliott Abrams and the president's Special Envoy for Human
Rights in North Korea, got slapped down by the State Department for his
remarks at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) forum Thursday about
the North Korea nuclear deal. The conference keynoter, Lefkowitz
asserted that current U.S. efforts to denuclearize Pyongyang were
likely to fail and that, as a result, a "policy review" was underway.
"Let me make it very clear," said State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack Friday when questioned about Lefkowitz's statements. "He is
the envoy for issues related to human rights in North Korea. He is not,
however, somebody who speaks authoritatively about the Six-Party Talks.
His comments certainly don't represent the views of the
administration." Lefkowitz, it should be noted, reports to the most
durable neo-conservative in the State Department, Undersecretary of
State for Democracy & Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, rather than to
the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs,
Chris Hill, who forged the deal and remains very much in charge of the
nuclear file. It might also be recalled that Abrams, no doubt backed by
Cheney's office, made his reservations about the nuclear deal clear
virtually the minute it was announced in an email from his office that
went astray and somehow wound up in the New York Times.)
All in all, it was not a good week for the hawks.
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