Iraq and Afghanistan

The United States is faced with a series of policy conundrums stretching from the Mediterranean to India. The area is unstable, several countries have nuclear weapons, and there is widespread hatred of the United States. In addition, the countries in this swath of territory have serious material and spiritual disagreements with their neighbors that periodically threaten renewed conflict. We do not like or distrust many of the regimes in the area, but we neither have a home front nor an international consensus that will reliably support the maintenance of peace nor our national interests through the repeated application of American military force. In theory, the United Nations should take the lead in controlling aggression and danger in the region. But it does not have either the will nor the ability to act effectively to tamp down contending forces. What to do?

Let me suggest that the United States should begin now to develop a series of overlapping guarantees to the governments of the region. We would guarantee that we would come to their assistance should they be attacked, and especially to punish any aggressor that should use WMD against them. These guarantees would start with Israel in the West, but also include the Palestine State, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey (we already have that through NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Sheikdoms, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. At first glance, this attempt at guaranteeing such countries would be viewed as uncalled for, imperialistic, and unbelievable. However, through patient diplomacy, carrots and sticks, we might be able eventually to make our initiative believable enough that we could develop this series of relationships. Of course, to not seem foolish to ourselves and the region's leaders, we must be quite clear about what we are guaranteeing and how we would respond in a variety of possible situations.

The primary advantage to this approach is that we would make full use of our capabilities without initiating any new military actions. We would be able to define through treaty a new America whose regional policy is based on the maintenance of peace rather than differential support of "friends or foes". Through this policy we would lay a basis for the prevention of proliferation of WMD or the maintenance of such weapons within the region that we simply do not have now.