OPINION:
If Americans who, on some previous Veterans Day, ever thanked me or my brothers and sisters in uniform for our service, then please accept this thank you in return for voting last Tuesday. That stunning turnaround vexed President Obama, but provided new hope to those who worried that the damage done to the nation’s security was becoming irreparable.
So, is Mr. Obama really serious about working with the new Republican leadership in Congress? Or might this president have something else up his sleeve, a grand strategic bargain to help secure his badly tattered “legacy” in foreign policy?
Mr. Obama badly needs a “win” in his column to offset a string of embarrassing losses. Just as American forces were being pulled back into Iraq to fight the Islamic State, for example, our service chiefs were testifying that sequestration’s budget cuts might soon leave them unable to provide the bottom-line combat forces required by our war and contingency plans.
Every news cycle carries new horror stories about the hollowing-out of our armed forces, from spare parts being cannibalized on Navy jets to combat leaders in Afghanistan dodging bullets and pink slips. While airily dismissed by the sorcerer’s apprentices now occupying the West Wing, unmistakable signals of weakness are being sent to every American adversary, from the Islamic State to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
No one dissects those signals with greater discernment than the Iranians. The ayatollahs must have smiled upon receiving Mr. Obama’s latest correspondence, like a used-car salesman watching the dying gasps of a clunker as its owner nudges it onto his lot. If you’re looking for a good deal today, my friend, then welcome to Rouhani’s Used Cars. History’s greatest chess masters and rug merchants, the Persians know the value of keeping their strategy unwavering and their options open, particularly when dealing with unwary non-Persians. Their constant strategic objectives: nuclear weapons and regional dominance. They especially understand the value of hard power when confronting a weak, waffling opponent such as Mr. Obama, for whom they now openly express contempt.
Their assessment solidified over six years as Iran patiently endured the American president’s best efforts, everything from speeches to sanctions to Stuxnet. More than anything else, the ayatollahs understood that time was on their side when confronting American inconstancy. Whatever pronouncements were issued by Western diplomats and international bodies of every description, the Persian centrifuges just kept spinning, because Mr. Obama was even less of a threat than Jimmy Carter was a generation ago.
During torturous negotiations, the Iranians have conceded nothing while single-mindedly protecting their nuclear weapons program. Americans may have been surprised by the rise of the Islamic State, but the Iranians were not, knowing full well that new opportunities often appear in the aftermath of a grand strategic retreat. It is hardly accidental that Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the shadowy commander of the secretive Iranian Al Quds force, has recently been seen in northern Iraq, directing ground combat against the Islamic State’s forces.
Those subtleties suggest the final groundwork for a grand strategic bargain: Persian boots on the ground against the Islamic State in exchange for a de facto acceptance by the United States of the Iranian nuclear program. As K.T. McFarland of Fox News suggests, they would pretend to stop developing nuclear capabilities while we would pretend to believe them. The new reality: Iran would become the acknowledged defender of the new Shiite Crescent, extending from the Straits of Hormuz to the shores of Beirut. In return, two of the most negative influences on Mr. Obama’s foreign policy — what to do about the Islamic State and Iranian nukes — would instantly be transformed into a brilliant foreign-policy achievement. Best of all from Mr. Obama’s point of view, he could do all of this unilaterally, without sharing credit with his new detractors in the Republican Congress. The usual suspects in the mainstream media would erupt in riotous applause: Mr. Obama’s legacy is assured and everybody would win, at least for a while.
Maybe this is all that really matters to Mr. Obama, who sees himself as either a heroic or tragic figure in American history. Neither version matters very much so long as he is remembered. But the grand strategic bargain would, of course, turn out to be Munich on the installment plan. Because the millennial generation learned little or nothing about World War II in their high school and college classes, they might have to relearn painful historical lessons about appeasement or even about the Holocaust. For example, how is Hamas any different from the Islamic State, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood or, for that matter, the death’s-head units of the Waffen SS?
Among those many imponderables lurks an absolute certainty: One Iranian nuke will surely beget others, an enduring Obama legacy that may well become tragedy.
Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel, is a military analyst and author on national security issues.
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