Tanked Thinking

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is getting quite a bit of attention for some analysis that Iraq is harming the War on Terror. In fact, whether or not he meant this particular study, Al Gore cited the "think tank" in his already infamous tirade. Reading the full summary of the report (PDF), however, one gets the impression of a glorified opinion column. Consider the section on WMD proliferation:

Washington's leverage over both Tehran and Pyongyang has eroded, as the US found itself pre-occupied with an increasingly desperate situation in Iraq and as the Bush Administration remained deeply divided over policies towards Iran and North Korea.

This brings to mind a recent quip from Ann Coulter that, for liberals, "history always begins this morning." Does anybody believe that Iran and North Korea would currently be more inclined to eschew their nuclear ambitions, the "underlying motivations" of which the IISS itself says are "more deep-seated" than Libya's, if the United States had backed down on Iraq?

In fact, one must look at these situations at a skewed angle in order to find even tepid diplomatic progress to be a setback. For its part, Iran is doing nothing that's not habitual among rogue regimes if its "commitment to the October agreement [to disclose past nuclear activities, accept stronger IAEA inspections, and suspend its fuel cycle program] has been suspect." North Korea has long provided an example of the dubious nature of such "commitments."

Especially regarding North Korea, the IISS criticizes the American administration for moving forward — and succeeding in large part — with a strategy that it has held for years: refusing to engage in unilateral talks with the dictator. The broader version of this point strikes me as simply odd; continuing from the previous quotation:

As a result, the US ceded diplomatic initiative to third parties: to China in the case of North Korea and to Europe in the case of Iran.

In context, this is presented as undesirable; I'm not sure why the IISS believes the United States shouldn't work with allies in its diplomacy. It would seem to me to increase the options (e.g., good cop/bad cop). Indeed, just two paragraphs before, in describing Libya — presented as casting its shadow on the "limited progress" in the other two countries — the IISS declares it to have been "a brilliant success for British diplomacy." Not surprisingly, there's no mention of the role that the invasion of Iraq played therein.

It appears that ambiguously successful multilateral strategies are the fault of the Bush administration, but that such strategies are to be credited to the other nations when they represent clear advances. For an encapsulation of the bias from which this standard ensues, consider this bit of casual, unexplored prognostication:

Increasingly, the Six Party Talks [involving North Korea] look like buying time until a new Administration takes office in Washington in January 2005.

I'm sure Iran, North Korea, and countless despots, terrorists, and corrupt bureaucrats are, indeed, anxiously hoping for that electoral outcome.