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Foolish Hawkishness, Now More Than Ever

Michael Oren pretends to write about Ukraine: The erosion can only be stopped — and Russian expansionism checked — by the reassertion of American preeminence. One way to do that is to aid moderate Syrian rebels. Another way is to emphasize America’s determination to stop Iran from going nuclear by all measures, diplomatic and military, […]

Michael Oren pretends to write about Ukraine:

The erosion can only be stopped — and Russian expansionism checked — by the reassertion of American preeminence. One way to do that is to aid moderate Syrian rebels. Another way is to emphasize America’s determination to stop Iran from going nuclear by all measures, diplomatic and military, irrespective of Russia’s stand. And America must take steps to restore confidence in its dependability as an ally.

Oren’s suggestions are linked together in that that they have nothing to do with what Russia is doing in Ukraine, nor are they going to have the slightest constructive effect on Russian behavior there. To the extent that these actions would have any effect on Russian behavior somewhere, they might convince Russia to sell Iran surface-to-air missiles to discourage an attack. Oren thinks that it makes sense to trot out some old hawkish stand-bys on unrelated issues from the last few years, and the crisis in Ukraine is just an excuse for proposing them. Somehow I doubt that threatening to wage an illegal war against Iran is going to persuade Moscow that it has erred in its seizure of Crimea. Few things would be more useful to Russia at the present moment than to remind everyone just how little respect for sovereignty or international law the U.S. can have when it so chooses.

Arming the Syrian opposition has never been likely to achieve anything except to contribute to the continuation of the conflict, and reissuing military threats against Iran is hardly going to make them more inclined to accept a deal limiting their nuclear program. As for restoring “confidence,” this mostly just means that the U.S. should be doing whatever its clients in the region want it to do whether it makes sense or not. Having carefully considered the situation in Ukraine, Oren has reached the unsurprising conclusion that the U.S. should take a harder line in Syria and Iran, which has nothing to do with the crisis in question and would probably both make both the Syrian civil war and the nuclear issue harder to resolve.

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