The Grandest Strategy
Mideast peace? Tough, but possible.

With North Korea as with Iran, a discreditable game of nuclear "chicken" has been conducted for far too long. For years, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea pretended that North Korean nuclear weapons and delivery systems were a U.S. problem. As the U.S. is relatively distant from North Korea and has the world's most sophisticated anti-missile defenses, this was just delusional. The latest North Korean test firings of a warhead and missiles seem finally to have stirred the Russians and Chinese out of their torpor.

Pyongyang has declared that the failure of South Korea to continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of ex gratia Danegeld into the North is "a declaration of war." After the very difficult experience of almost going it alone in Iraq, the U.S. is putting on an elaborate display of conventional ineffectual diplomacy and bumbling collegiality, in the manner much admired and practiced by the Europeans (and much to the irritation of conventional hardliners such as the ubiquitous John Bolton). President Bush went through the charade of taking North Korea, formerly a charter member of the "Axis of Evil," off the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, and the new administration has been trumpeting its desire to "engage" with Pyongyang, which has responded by refusing entry to the senior State Department official for the Korean Peninsula.

It is inconceivable that the Russians and Chinese could really be blasé about North Korea's becoming a nuclear military power. Presumably, all the relevant countries will work together on countermeasures before the lunatic Kim Jong Il regime is bristling with deliverable nuclear warheads. The U.S. has been correct to leave most of this with China, as nothing can be done until China moves, unless a unilateral military solution is contemplated — and that would be impetuous at this point. Short of that, and setting up anti-missile defenses for America's allies, Japan and South Korea (which is being done), there is nothing to do but await the Chinese.

These endless distractions from that ghastly regime incite curiosity about whether Douglas MacArthur, Richard Nixon, and John Foster Dulles were correct that North Korea should have been disposed of when United Nations forces were close to doing so in 1951–53. President Truman and President Eisenhower thought it not worth the cost or the risk, but they could not have foreseen what a durable and pestilential nuisance the Kims would become.

Iran is a more substantial and legitimate country, in a more explosive region. Its Islamist government and its egregious president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been claiming not to be developing nuclear weapons, while winking at the Muslim world and implying that its fingers are crossed behind its back, and provisionally saber-rattling, especially at Israel.

The U.S., Israel, and (in its more robust moments) France — all echoed by the major Arab powers – have said that the development of an Iranian nuclear military capability is intolerable. Body language and leaks indicate that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Obama in Washington two weeks ago that Israel would deliver a plausible Palestinian state with restraint on new Jewish settlements if the U.S. would organize a serious plan to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-capable military power.

Here the chicken game is between the Great Powers (the U.S., Russia, China, Western Europe, and India) and Israel, to see whether Israel will, one more time, have to do the world's dirty work for it. As soon as the Iranian elections this month reveal whether there is any point in continuing diplomatic overtures, which have been just as farcical and futile with Iran as with North Korea, a diplomatic track should be pursued to a quick settlement, or a military solution prepared. This would be attached to a real Israeli proposal for an independent Palestinian state (and not, as was famously said of Menachem Begin's first crack at it 30 years ago, "the right of the Palestinians to take out their own garbage"); to an Arab-Israeli rapprochement; and to a general repulse of Iranian infiltrations in the Arab world, especially by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Iranian interloping and mischief-making among the Arabs has created the most promising conditions in 60 years to wind down the Arab-Israeli conflict. If Ehud Olmert hadn't bungled the war with Hezbollah in 2006, this would already be well advanced, as Egypt and Saudi Arabia were both overtly cheering for Israel. (It is now clearer than ever that Israel would have been wasting its time to try harder to make an arrangement with Arafat, who — contrary to the conventional Western wisdom at the time — had no interest in peace.) This ties neatly into the pursuit of terrorists and the calming of South Asia. The George W. Bush administration has received insufficient credit for striking up an alliance with India, while warming up relations with Pakistan. The Clinton administration bequeathed it frosty relations with both, as well as outright hostility with both Iran and Iraq, making any policy for the Persian Gulf or South Asia impossible.

With relations improving between India and Pakistan, it should be possible to promote full Pakistani military attention against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other trespassing terrorists, as the U.S. leads NATO forces in a heavy assault on the same forces from Afghanistan. This correlation of forces, if pressed, would assure the destruction of the principal terrorist cadres in the world, and of the apparatus of the most violent Muslim extremists.

There is a chance to string all this together: The U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea denuclearize North Korea; the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and India remove the Iranian nuclear threat and encroachments on the Arabs; Israel helps create a viable Palestine; the major Arab powers accept the legitimacy of Israel; and the principal sources of terrorism are rooted out and destroyed. This prospect is not a mirage, but it will require the most sophisticated American diplomacy since the Nixon-Kissinger era to achieve it.

– Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.

© 2024 Conrad Black