Hillary Clinton has not turned out to be a particularly good Secretary of State. At the time of her nomination she was far from being my preferred pick (either Bill Richardson or John Kerry would have been better choices). But I thought she would probably do a pretty good job.My attention was drawn this morning to a statement that Clinton made last month regarding Iran and nuclear weapons:
"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support military capacity of those in the [Persian Gulf], it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon," she said.
Intimidate and dominate? I am no fan of the Iranian government, but I think that Hillary Clinton lacks a fundamental grasp of game theory and nuclear power.
Iran is a rational state actor. They have and hope to maintain relationships with other nations for purposes of trade, defense and diplomacy. Who exactly would the Iranians be expecting to intimidate or dominate by acquiring nuclear weapons? There are only two options. The United States and Israel.
We in America have so very many nuclear weapons with so many and varied delivery capabilities that the idea of starting a nuclear war with us is absurd. Iran, governed by rational actors, would never do this. We would completely annihilate them and they know this. They are neither crazy nor stupid. We aren't talking about al Queda here. The nuclear arming of Iran would not change their relationship with America in the slightest bit. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Iran has more leverage against the United States by considering and exploring the idea of a nuclear weapons program than they do by actually going through with one. We might give them some type of reward for changing their minds and not building nuclear weapons, but once the weapons have been built they've got nothing. We would never reward them for getting rid of the weapons after they were built, since we could never be completely sure that all of them were actually disclosed and destroyed. It is far easier to verify that a program was halted midway and that a reactor was destroyed than it is to determine exactly how many warheads were made after the fact.
They know all of this. These are intelligent people who watched the nuclear dance between America and the Soviet Union throughout the cold war. They understand how this game is played.
Regarding Israel, Clinton is assuming that the Iranians miss the point. Israel is known to be a nuclear power, having probably about a dozen warheads on long range missiles (but probably not ICBMs). As much sympathy as I have for ordinary Israelis for what they have had to endure for the last 50 years or so, it is a fact that Israel is able to hold its regional nuclear exclusivity over its neighbor's heads in a somewhat bullying way. I'm not condemning this as particularly evil -- it is merely the natural consequence of only one regional power having nuclear weapons.
By obtaining nuclear weapons Iran would not be able to dominate anyone in the region and they know this. Their major enemy is Israel, which is also a nuclear power and therefore could respond tit for tat in the event of a nuclear attack. The whole point here is that Iran wants to be able to give Israel the finger when the Israelis make implied threats against them.
It has often been said that 'an armed society is a polite society.' If both Iran and Israel have nuclear weapons then neither can make serious threats of eliminating the existence of the other, due to the necessary assumption that one would instantly retaliate against the other.
Nuclear weapons are bad, m'kay. It would be best if they all disappeared, because the very existence of even one represents a massive danger to millions or possibly billions of people. But that is not going to happen any time soon. If one of two rational enemies has nuclear weapons then it is better for the other to have them as well. When both sides have them, nobody can actually lob one.
I suggest that a nuclear armed Iran could actually bring greater stability to the Middle East by forcing both sides to abandon any hope of wiping out the other and finally sit down at the table and sort things out through diplomacy.
Clinton does not seem to grasp any of this. Its got nothing to do with the nuclear defense system (which I incidentally favor). She seems to believe that the Iranians have not taken the time to study game theory or the history of nuclear preparation and diplomacy.
This follows a pattern of un-diplomatic behavior on Clinton's part. She insulted the North Koreans, which prompted them to compare her to a school girl, followed by her own retort. Now I happen to hate the North Korean government and in fact advocated for an American attack against Pyongyang instead of an invasion of Iraq. But I am not the Secretary of State -- she is. America's top diplomat has an obligation to behave diplomatically.
Clinton also lost her temper on stage in the Congo when a reporter asked her a question about her husband. This would have been an understandable response on the campaign trail as a Senator. But Hillary Clinton does not seem to understand that this is not an acceptable way for a diplomat to behave. Her job is to be diplomatic, which by definition means responding to things you don't like in a polite way for the purpose of getting something that you want.
Meanwhile, the two most notable diplomatic achievements of the Obama administration this year had little or nothing to do with her. Following groundwork laid by Al Gore and the White House, Bill Clinton got our people back from North Korea. Then our own Senator Jim Webb was the first American official to visit Myanmar in ages, meeting with key figures in Myanmar politics and government. He returned triumphantly with John Yettaw, an American citizen who had been captured and sentenced by the Myanmar government for visiting Aung San Suu Kyi (yes, Yettaw was an idiot but we still had to go and rescue one of our own).
What exactly has Hillary Clinton accomplished as Secretary of State? What has she even attempted to accomplish? I cannot think of much of anything. She swans around acting like a showboating political candidate, with no willingness to actually do anything or to use diplomacy to change our bad relationships with various countries into ones where we start getting what we want. She has continued the retarded (for that is what it is) Bush-era notion that diplomacy its self is supposed to be a reward to countries that already do what we want. Missing the point that they only way that this is negotiated in the first place can be through diplomacy.
Clinton is, practically speaking, nearly indistinguishable from Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State. If anything, Rice was better in that she consistently maintained a diplomatic bearing and had a very thorough understanding of nuclear game theory.
This is still Clinton's first year as Secretary and she may yet prove herself. I certainly hope so. Right now I am far from impressed.
