Foreign Policy? What's that?

So I've been reading the archives of Nikolas Gvosdev's blog, Washington Realist, and I have to say I'm impressed. Not just because I think of myself as a realist in the IR sense of the term, either.

Gvosdev identifies a number of problems with US foreign policy that I don't think enough Americans really understand. But they're critical to understanding why America has so much trouble in the world today.

One of the most important problems Gvosdev notes (repeatedly, read his blog) is that the US is accustomed to offering what amounts to zero-incentive diplomacy. That is, the offers made by the US usually amount to two awful choices, or one bad choice and one effectively non-existent choice. As a recent example, people have described Ukraine's elections as a choice between "Russia" and "The West." Of course, the US offers Ukraine no immediate, tangible benefits to "joining" our club. Meanwhile, Russia was, before the election of Yuschenko, selling natural gas at below-market rates, effectively subsidizing the Ukrainian economy to the tune of $5-7 billion over a period of years. American and EU aid has not amounted to a small fraction of that. There has been no offer of trade relations or membership in the EU. The only real push has been for Ukraine to join NATO - which you can interpret as you will.

A more important example would be Bush's approach to Iraq before the war began. You remember in September 2002, that Iraq agreed to weapons inspectors - more than a month before they were forced to by UN mandate. By January 2003, Hans Blix was reporting that the inspectors had found no new weapons. A rational response would have been: Fine, the inspectors are staying until we're satisfied, but for now the tanks are parked.

Of course, this wasn't the response the Bush Administration took. The response of the Bush administration was to say that the Hussein family had to leave the country or the US would invade.

Now, this meant that Saddam had no good choice: Either leave your country, or we'll take it from you. What possible incentive did Hussein or his sons have to acquiesce to US demands? None. (Of course, this was actually the point. Bushco saw peace as an obstacle.)

But this goes beyond Bushco, unfortunately. The document drawn up by NATO in the prelude to Kosovo - the Rambouillet "Agreement" said that

NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters.

Basically, Serbia was supposed to allow a NATO invasion. This is a bit much to ask, especially if the crisis we were trying to avoid was contained within one region. Once again, however, we see that the US was only giving the leadership two bad choices: Either we invade your country, or we bomb you until you let us invade your country.

Now, the point here is not that Milosevic or Hussein were "victims" in any sense of the word, other than an obscene one. The point is that if the US is actually interested in acheiving aims short of a military conflict, it needs to offer adversaries something in return. In the case of Cuba, 1962, it was a guarantee to the Soviet Union that Cuba would not be invaded. The North Koreans want what Cuba got. The US could attempt to resolve the tension with Iran by, bizarrely, considering Iran's grievances. I know, it sounds weird. But Iran's leadership has said they want to talk, and specifically they would like the US government to stop trying to overthrow and kill them.

Now, the US can either a) keep failing at regime change, or b) try to keep Iran from getting the bomb. That seems like a no-brainer to me. If only we didn't have a no-brainer in the White House.