Pragmatist set to take over [Gates at Defense Dept]

times ^ | November 8, 2005 | Tim Reid

[freedomdefender]

Robert Gates, 59, the man nominated as the new Defence Secretary, is a former Director of the CIA and a foreign policy pragmatist who strongly supports direct negotiations with Iran.

[Cindy]

Adding to the links in post no. 2:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25400

"Blood Sacrifice"
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 9, 2006


ARTICLE SNIPPET: "But while Gates can be absolved of involvement in Iran-Contra, his current views on Iran compel investigation. Especially noteworthy is a report on U.S. policy toward Iran that Gates co-authored in July of 2004 with Zbigniew Brzezinski, a onetime national security advisor to Jimmy Carter and, more recently, a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Entitled Iran: Time for a New Approach, the report reads like a study in self-contradiction. Conceding that Iran has used “Iraqi instability for its own political gain,” the report concludes, “Iran nevertheless could play a potentially significant role in promoting a stable, pluralistic government in Baghdad.” Noting that “Iranian foreign policy remains captive of the regime’s official enshrinement of anti-American and anti-Israeli ideology,” the authors nonetheless attribute strained U.S.-Iranian relations to the Bush administration’s decision to include Iran in the “Axis of Evil,” lamenting that this “undercut several months of tacit cooperation between Washington and Tehran.” The undeniable fact of “Iranian incitement of virulent anti-Israeli sentiment” guides the authors to the non sequitur that “Arab-Israeli peace is central to eventually stemming the tide of extremism in the region.” From the fact that Iran has been a far from reliable negotiating partner, and that it has failed to “cooperate adequately with the [IAEA’s] investigation into its nuclear program,” the authors conclude that the answer is…more “constructive dialogue” on the nuclear issue. That Iran has been a perennial source of regional instability prompts the authors to recommend that it is in the “interests of the United States to engage selectively with Iran to promote regional stability.” And so on.

Central to the report is the fatalist assumption that the United States is powerless to prevent an Iranian nuclear program and that the only solution is to submit to “dialogue” with the mullahs. Cognate arguments have long been advanced by the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy, of which Gates is a member in good standing. In the 1990s, these arguments formed the ideological basis of the Clinton administration’s spectacularly misnamed “Agreed Framework” with North Korea. In exchange for giving up its nuclear program, the reasoning went, North Korea would receive diplomatic recognition and other concessions. Reality proved less obliging. Rather than live up to its end of the bargain, Pyongyang accelerated its program. Last month’s nuclear weapon test by North Korea was the logical conclusion of a decade of misguided policy.

Astonishingly, Gates regards the Clinton approach as the perfect model for dealing with Iran. At a July 2004 briefing on the Iran report, Gates explained the kind of discussions the U.S. should seek with Tehran: “In my view, my personal view, it's very similar to the kinds of discussions that have been going on with North Korea in the respect of more for more” Asked whether his report might be used for political purposes, Gates responded in the affirmative: “Oh, I have no doubt that various pieces of the report will be used by a variety of people,” he said. The danger is that one of those people is Gates himself – no longer a foreign policy theoretician laboring on the sidelines but, pending confirmation by the Senate, the man in charge of American defense."