Fred at Fred Fry International ("Citizen Journalist and Observer of Human Nature") just finished reading Guests of the Ayatollah. He draws some lessons-learned (or not).
Money quote(s):
"One thing that is clear by the end of the book is that the best way to deal with Iran is to keep ourselves isolated from them. Negotiations for the release of the hostages was an ongoing joke as the Iranians constantly changed their demands, always demanding more once the US Government demonstrated that it was willing to deal in order to win the freedom of the US Embassy staff being held hostage."
"(C)onfirmed recently was the Iranian people's ability to still act as agents of their Government while at the same time acting in a way that the Government can deny any involvement. This happened at the end of December when protesters stormed a UK Diplomatic compound in Tehran. This is exactly how the US hostage crisis started. The only reason this did not turn into a hostage situation was because it did not appear to be their goal, but it certainly could have been.
In short, the Iranians are the same thugs and are capable of the same acts as thirty years ago. Unfortunately, the US, UK and other Western Governments still have yet to adapt to deal with them. There was even recent talk of re-establishing diplomatic relations and re-opening the US Embassy in Iran."
&
"Iran is not the only place where US Embassies are at risk of a similar occupation. Another question is whether or not the US is prepared to use lethal force the next time five, ten, a hundred 'protesters' come jumping over an Embassy wall."
Two points.
First, there is what I sometimes cynically call the "full employment for ambassadors" program. There's what seems to me sometimes to be an unseemly haste to open or re-open embassies in places where perhaps we have no business being, or before it's reasonable and prudent or perhaps not really best in U.S. interests to do so. And there's always a reluctance to close (temporarily or otherwise) an embassy when things start to go to Hell. While Churchill was right ("jaw-jaw is better than war-war"), first questions should be asked first, to wit: Is it in the best interests of the United States to open/re-open its embassy in Country X at this time and why?
Second, with only very few exceptions, U.S. diplomatic facilities really aren't designed to function as fire bases, holding off human waves of attackers using cleared fields of fire, &tc. Neither are their security staffs; even where we have U.S. Marines ("No better friend, no worse enemy.") there simply aren't enough of them. Under the Vienna Conventions, the host nation is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of foreign diplomatic missions. Our own security arrangements, both physical and otherwise, are intended only to delay or obstruct an attack to allow the host nation time to respond and increase its protective measures.
What should be obvious (but is apparently not) is that when the host nation uses "spontaneous demonstrations" as a means of communicating its displeasure with the United States (countries like Iran, China, Syria, and Serbia come immediately to mind) then this system breaks down. Hell, it's not really broken in such cases, it's being used against us in a form of international lawfare. That's when you've got to constantly be re-visiting your first questions (see above).
Monday, January 19, 2009
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3 comments:
Great post. I agree wholeheartedly with your first point. On the second, I find myself torn. Reciprocity failed during the hostage crisis because the kidnappers didn't care about the old Iranian regime's diplomats in the U.S. hence we had nothing to bargain with, but I can't see the U.S. storming an embassy here even in reciprocity in response to such an attack. Iran is a conundrum.
@Hegemonist,
International diplomacy, laws, and conventions are based upon reciprocity, without good faith actors, they can become a strait jacket or worse.
While it's (nearly) absurd to envision a scenario where the U.S. government organizes a "spontaneous mob" to storm a foreign mission (science fiction writer Ben Bova did just that the final Kinsman novel, burning down the United Nations building in NYC), it's _not_ particulary outrageous that we've declined to reward Iran's earlier violation of diplomatic conventions and not re-established normal relations for three decades.
Considering that they could have constituted causus belli, that's getting off lightly.
@CAA, I couldn't agree more that "it's _not_ particulary outrageous that we've declined to reward Iran's earlier violation of diplomatic conventions and not re-established normal relations for three decades," indeed, given the choice today, I'd go to Iraq before Iran for that reason. I guess my point was that, if nothing else, fear of reciprocity is supposed to prevent embassy attacks, and yet I can't see the U.S. acting in a reciprocal manner in a hypothetical new hostage crisis.
Also, I'm not familiar with Bova, but that sounds like a great book.
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