August 31, 2010
Word games
Foreign policy is typically made behind closed doors. Treaties and trade agreements may become public information once they are signed, but the planning, strategizing, and negotiating that creates them is hidden from public debate. Sometimes, however, the process that creates official foreign policy can take on a very public character. When it does, the results can be both illuminating and unpredictable. Public debates over contentious issues can have wide-ranging and unanticipated consequences, and governments can insert themselves into open, public forums as a way of testing their ideas or—more likely—to send a particular message. The recent, public debates about a proposed Islamic community center in New York and about Iran's nuclear program illustrate these points. In each case, public debate stands to truly affect how foreign policy is developed.
In recent weeks, passions have become inflamed over plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site in New York. Park51 is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a religious leader with a long tradition as a moderate, conciliatory figure. A passionate group of supporters for the project has emerged, arguing that it will embody the constitutional right to freedom of religion and help preserve New York's culture of tolerance and diversity. But opposition to Park51 has been even more vocal. In many media depictions and reports, the center has been labeled “the Ground Zero mosque,” and it has been seen as insensitive or even offensive to the memory of the 9/11 attacks.
The recent uproar over Park51 is, in some respects, very peculiar. The project has received support from a local community board committee and from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Abdul Rauf has been praised by Jewish leaders and the FBI, and he has even written a book entitled, “What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America.” But many of the project's opponents have amplified their views, and they have come to dominate the national conversation. Some, like Newt Gingrich, equate the project with a Nazi sign being posted near the Holocaust Museum or a Japanese “site” next to Pearl Harbor, and suggest that a synagogue should be built in Saudi Arabia before a “mosque” is built in Lower Manhattan. Others take a more moderate view that Park51 should simply be moved further away from the Ground Zero site or outside of Lower Manhattan.
The arguments against Park51 clearly have taken hold. A recent poll by the Economist found that 58 percent of Americans thought that an Islamic cultural center should not be built near the World Trade Center site, and 33 percent did not even think that Muslims had a constitutional right to build such a facility. Opposition to Park51 has spread beyond New York and has grown into wider, more public anti-Muslim sentiment. In Connecticut, Tennessee, and California, existing and planned mosques have become targets for vitriolic protests.
Park51's opponents imply—deliberately or otherwise—that Islam writ large is waging a war against the United States and the West. Ironically, this is the same notion that extremists such as Osama bin Laden seek to perpetuate. Their ideology rests upon the notion that the West, and the United States in particular, is fundamentally hostile to Islam, and that Islam must strike back violently. Without this extremist interpretation of a cultural and religious war, the logic of al Qaeda's violent agenda dissipates. But the intense, public opposition to Park51 and to mosques around the country only gives credence to al Qaeda's point of view. Even the more mild opponents of Park51—those who simply think that the center should be built elsewhere—may unwittingly be giving comfort to adherents of religious warfare. Declaring entire neighborhoods off-limits to places of worship could isolate, ostracize, or even radicalize religious minorities.
To be sure, the debate over Park51 is not one-sided. The fact that a debate is taking place, and that prominent figures like Bloomberg and even President Obama have expressed support for Park51, sets the United States apart from many other countries in which such open expression would be discouraged or even repressed. But in functional terms, such nuance may not matter. To succeed over the long-term, the U.S. effort to combat Islamic extremism must rely primarily on the power of ideas. Extremist ideologies must be exposed as corrupt and hopeless, and the notion of an existential struggle between Islam and the West must be undermined. In a certain sense, it almost doesn't matter if Park51 is built or not. The passion and anger that have fueled the Park51 debate will give ammunition to extremist propagandists for years to come. And that will make U.S. efforts to counter such propaganda more difficult, more costly, and more time-consuming.
Meanwhile, the issue of Iran's nuclear program has entered the public forum in a different and more direct kind way. In the September 2010 edition of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about Israel's growing concern with Iran's nuclear ambitions. Gaining extensive access to Israeli political and military leaders, Goldberg concludes that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will attack Iranian nuclear facilities by July 2011. Within days of the publication of Goldberg's article, The New Yorker featured an article by Jon Lee Anderson, for which he interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As he is prone to do, Ahmadinejad spoke at great length about the hypocrisy of U.S. policy toward Iran and about Iran's right to nuclear technology. But the context of the interview, as reported by Anderson, sent a very different message: significantly, Ahmandinejad agreed to be interviewed by Anderson—a Western journalist—in Tehran.
Goldberg's and Anderson's articles each offer valuable glimpses into the minds of national policymakers. In a sense, the governments of Israel and Iran have entered the realm of public debate in a very deliberate kind of way. Both journalists are fully aware that their sources may have used them to advance a precisely constructed—and not necessarily honest—public message. But even if that was the case, the messages that Israel and Iran hoped to put forward still help to illuminate the motivations of each side. This is diplomacy-as-poker. Each player, or country, is endowed with a certain set of resources and a particular range of options for how to employ those resources. But the path from potential policy to actual policy is marked by bluffs and truths, with each move designed to manipulate, recruit, or deceive the other players.
In Goldberg's case, his sources may have advanced the idea that Israel was likely to attack Iran for any number of purposes. It could increase the pressure on the Obama administration to take a tougher line with the Iranian regime, or it could serve to remind Iran of Israel's resolve. It also could serve a domestic purpose, to reassure Israelis that their government is proactively engaged with the issue. But deliberate or not, Goldberg's sources seemed nearly unanimous on one point in particular: Israel views an Iranian nuclear weapon as more than just an abstract existential threat, but as something on equal terms with the Holocaust—as a clear echo of a specific historical episode. That key Iranian leaders have explicitly denied the very existence of the Holocaust makes this strain of the debate even more poignant. In the eyes of Israeli policymakers, Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust is more than just the ranting of a leader playing to a domestic constituency. It reinforces their perceived connection between an actual calamity and a potential one.
Anderson, for his part, reports very explicitly that Ahmadinejad and his handlers were trying to use him as a vehicle to deliver a particular message. Although Ahmadinejad spoke in familiar, hyperbolic terms, his media officials hinted very strongly that his interview should focus on the prospects for peace between Iran and the United States. Regardless of whether Anderson's article satisfied Ahmadinejad's handlers, it is notable that they wanted to use him to deliver this particular message. Given the outlet, it seems logical that Ahmadinejad wanted to communicate without the filter of diplomacy or politics, directly to Americans (or at least to New Yorker readers). But one point on which Ahmadinjad's officials seemed quite clear was that the nuclear issue should be disentangled from Israel. As reported by Anderson, it appeared that Iranian officials were open to negotiations with the United States but were much less conciliatory toward Israel. This may be part of an Iranian effort to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States, or it may represent a legitimate opening to resolve the nuclear issue. Either way, it contrasts strongly with Israel's own view (as reported by Goldberg) that Iran's nuclear program is aimed squarely in its direction.
Neither the Park51 controversy nor Iran's nuclear program will be resolved by these latest public debates alone. The U.S. campaign to combat Islamic extremism has many components and will not conclude anytime soon, and the governments of Israel, the United States, and Iran guard their true intentions with the utmost secrecy. But this recent activity in public forums is not merely academic. These open debates can be seen and heard (and are) by a much wider audience than intended. And as public debate can be an unpredictable, unruly thing, it is all too easy for passions to overrule reason, or for deliberately crafted messages to be misinterpreted or manipulated. None of this is to suggest that the debate should be stifled. Instead, it is simply incumbent upon everyone engaged in these public debates to realize that their voices carry, and that their effects may be unpredictable. More than mere glimpses into how the games of foreign policy are played, the public debates about Park51 and the Iranian nuclear program could have a direct and profound effect on their very outcomes.
Foreign Policy Association, 27 August 2010
Posted by Daniel Widome at 03:58 PM to Middle East, | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
