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Nawaz Offers Views on Changing Pakistani Perceptions of U.S.
Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, was interviewed on The Takeaway morning radio news program on the Pakistan flood situation. The discussion focused on the U.S. being the single largest donor of aid, and the potential for Pakistanis to shift their perceptions of America. However, Nawaz warns of the long-term effects of America's goodwill, stating that "changing image takes a long time."
Nancy Walker Addresses U.S. Africa Command Conference
Dr. Nancy J. Walker, Director of the Ansari Africa Center, gave the keynote address at Africa Command’s Senior Leader Offsite Conference in Starnberg, Germany on August 26, 2010.
South Asia Center's Shikha Bhatnagar Spotlighted
Shikha Bhatnagar's recent appointment as Associate Director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, is yet another manifestation of a growing trend of second generation Indian Americans' advent into leading Washington, DC think tanks as senior policy analysts and associates.
Chuck Hagel Discusses START Ratification on RussiaToday
Atlantic Council Chairman Chuck Hagel was interviewed for RussiaToday on delays in ratification of the START treaty in both the U.S. and Russia.
FEATURED ISSUE
In August the sunny calm and quiet that is a Swedish summer will be shattered by the impact of Joint Direct Attack Munitions dropped by F-16CM Fighting Falcons from US Air Force Europe.
Kissinger: Iran Diplomacy More Than Just Talk
James Joyner | January 16, 2009
Perhaps the longest running foreign policy argument during the 2008 presidential campaign stemmed from Barack Obama's vowing during the July 2007 YouTube debate that he would be "willing to meet separately, without precondition . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries." He was beat up over this repeatedly, first by his erstwhile primary challenger and now Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and then by Republican John McCain. I argued in "Preconditions, Preparations, and Posturing" that this was ultimately a debate over semantics, in that all three candidates had essentially the same policy. We shall soon see.
This controversy was brought to mind last evening by a profound observation from Henry Kissinger, speaking to the Atlantic Council as part of our Christopher Makins lecture series. In response to a question from Boston Globe foreign policy reporter Farah Stockman, who asked him for creative solutions to our nuclear standoff with Iran along the lines of the Nixon administration's opening to China, Kissinger quipped that they didn't simply hop on an airplane one day and begin talks. Instead, it was "a three year project" that was "developed slowly and carefully." The real breakthrough "did not come at the negotiating table" as a result of his considerable charm and diplomatic brilliance but rather in seeing the strategic opportunity three years earlier presented by the massing of 42 Soviet divisions on the Manchurian border.
Unfortunately, Iran does not have the same threat-based incentives at the moment. For diplomacy to work, then, we must "create the circumstances" to convince them that "their present course will fail." To do that, we must extend the discussion beyond the issue of nuclear weapons to include other issues important to them. We must persuade them that "some of their objectives" are beyond their reach.
More fundamentally, Kissinger continued, we must ask ourselves a strategic question: Can we accept Iran as a regional power? He notes that, under the Shah, we did so for decades and saw it as in our interests.
Related New Atlanticist Commentary:
- Kissinger in Quotes – James Joyner
- Henry Kissinger: Optimist! – James Joyner
- Kissinger's Formula: Goal + Capability + Staying Power – James Joyner
Related Event:
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. Photo from Getty Images.
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