Home |
Site Index |
FAQs |
Contact |
RSS
|
Podcast
home > by publication type > daily analysis > U.S. Pivots on the Axis
Email
| Prepared by: |
|---|
Overtures toward the "Axis of Evil" may be an indication that the administration has changed course. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Back in 2002, shortly after George W. Bush coined the term “Axis of Evil” in his state of the union message, a hue and cry went up from some quarters about the wisdom of lighting so many new fires while the one being fought by U.S. troops in Afghanistan still burned so bright. Lawrence J. Korb, a former Reagan defense official who was then CFR's director of studies, argued “by broadening the objectives of the conflict to ‘rooting out evil’ in the world, Bush risks undermining his original goal and has taken on a war no nation can win.”
Many foreign policy experts on both sides of the American political fray long ago concluded the quarantine imposed on diplomatic contacts with nations Washington viewed as “rogues” had become counterproductive. In the past month, however, the opening of new, groundbreaking contacts with members of the infamous “Axis”—Iraq, Iran, North Korea—look like a climb down (Telegraph) to some, and not just those on the left. On North Korea, bilateral talks the administration promised it would never hold occurred in January. They produced a tentative deal on at least part of that nation’s nuclear arsenal in February that bore a distinct resemblance (NY Review of Books) to the deal the Clinton administration struck in 1994.
Elsewhere, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week nonchalantly announced she would attend a meeting of Iraq’s neighbors which will include the foreign ministers of Syria and Iran (FT). In another less-publicized shift in December, President Bush received a radical Shiite Iraqi political leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, at the White House, extending an official welcome to a politician trained and backed by Iran and in command of Iraq’s largest Shiite militia group.
All this has critics feeling vindicated. As Rupert Cornwall reports in Britain’s left-leaning Independent: “The very fact the United States has agreed to take part marks an abrupt shift in policy by Washington after months of refusing to have any truck with Tehran—despite strong urgings to that effect by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) and many Middle East policy experts.” Furious cries of “betrayal” emanate from some. “Two days after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man who has sworn to annihilate Israel, declared that Iran's nuclear program has 'no reverse gear,' the Bush administration has apparently gone into reverse itself,” fumed conservative essayist Daniel Johnson (NY Sun).
So, has the Bush administration “gone into reverse?” It argues the timing of its decision to suddenly engage in talks with these particular actors is important. In each case, an unnamed senior official tells the New York Times, sticking with a confrontational approach for so long—the surge in Iraq, moving a second carrier into Iran’s range, slapping financial sanctions on Pyongyang—has paid off. "The government of the United States now feels as though it has leverage," another senior administration official said.
In North Korea, at least, the flexibility has brought progress which seemed impossible until recently. This week, talks progressed to unfreeze (NYT) some North Korean assets in Macao banks.
At the same time, U.S. intelligence officials backed away from the certainty (WashPost) they once claimed about the extent of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program—the part, critics point out, that falls outside the tentative agreement reached in February. All this has friend and foe alike wondering whether America is turning on the "axis," or merely spinning.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.
In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.
Complete list of Council Special Reports.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.
Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.
You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
