Gold, Silver, Bronze and US Foreign Policy

August 20, 2016
 

The Olympics are interesting; despite the new-age, ‘everyone wins’ psychology, the Olympics really celebrates only one thing: winning. Medal counts, and especially gold medals, are at the center of every event. It doesn’t even matter if you’re the second best in the world, everyone wants that gold medal. Winners and losers.

Not quite like academia, or government bureaucracies. But a lot like the real world. The US, and President Obama’s foreign policy team – to include Mrs. Clinton, got a lesson in that last week.

 

It’s pretty easy to miss these kinds of things (they tend to get brushed off the front page fairly quickly, replaced by the latest remark from the leading candidate, or the latest fashion statement from some reality star), but Russians bombers are flying out of Iranian air bases.

 

Let me repeat that: the Russians are flying bombers out of Iranian air bases.

 

So, let’s just put this all in perspective:

 

The Obama – Clinton – Kerry team spent 6 years putting together a nuclear deal with Iran, giving Iran the right to maintain a nuclear research program and, at the end of 15 years do whatever it pleases with that program, in exchange for which we returned $150 billion in frozen assets. We lifted trade sanctions and released frozen assets and they promised to suspend certain activities for 15 years, during which they can continue research.

 

And the US received?

 

Since then, the Iranians have been more aggressive in the Gulf when they confront the US Navy (remember those sailors grabbed and humiliated?); and the US has become more passive.

 

Iran moved into Iraq (recent press reporting suggests there may be as many as 100,000 Iranians in Iraq fighting against ISIS).

 

And they’ve cosied up to the Russians.

 

The Russians (and their alter egos, the Soviets) have had their eyes on Iran and the Persian Gulf) for several hundred years. US (and before us the UK) presence in Iran through 1979, and our support for the Shah, was to prevent just such an occurrence.

 

Now we find the Russians and the Iranians working together to defeat ISIS in Iraq and bolster a pro-Iran Iraqi government, working together to support Assad in Syria, and the Russians working with the Iranians to improve their military and their defense posture.

 

The Russians have sold Iran state-of-the-art surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and other modern weapons, and now Russian bombers are flying out of Iranian air bases. We have to assume Russians are servicing and at least in an oversight role manning these SAMs.

 

About a year ago I suggested that a de facto “Damascus Pact” had been created that would give Russia a presence spanning from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of Afghanistan. It appears to have happened. A Russian air base in Syria, Russian advisors in Iraq, Russian bombers and advisors in Iran; Russia sits astride any possible pipeline from the Middle East to Europe; they sit astride trade routes from East Asia to Europe; Russia has staked out a position that could give them control of the heartland of Asia.

And where is the US?

The US is lost in the Mid-East. Whether Iraq, or Syria, or Yemen, or Afghanistan or Libya or Egypt, US security – and US interests – have deteriorated substantially in the last 7 years. The foreign policy errors of the last 7 years are coming home to roost. And Washington foreign policy wonks, in particular the former Secretary of State, appear to be oblivious to it all.

What happens next is up to the gold-medalist Putin. He’s been strengthening his forces immediately adjacent to Ukraine. It’s reasonable to expect that he’ll further tighten the screws on Ukraine over the next several months. Elsewhere, silver-medalist China will continue to ramp up pressure in the South China Sea. Bronze-medalist Iran will continue to push against our Arab allies in the Mid East.Gold, silver, bronze.

And the Obama – Clinton – Kerry foreign policy?

Not in the medal count.