Follow us on social

Shutterstock_118623196

Washington's real credibility problem

The US has an increasing tendency to go back on its word and tear up agreements in a fit of pique or with changes in political power.

Analysis | Washington Politics

The United States is no good at making lasting diplomatic commitments anymore. Other states have no difficulty believing in U.S. threats to use force and impose broad sanctions, but it is much harder to convince them that the U.S. can be trusted to honor its promises in negotiated agreements.

Our government has a real credibility problem in that our government’s promises to lift sanctions and make other concessions are not believable. This greatly complicates the ability of our negotiators to strike bargains with other governments to resolve outstanding disputes, because the U.S. has an increasing tendency to go back on its word or to tear up agreements in a fit of pique.

Even when certain other governments reach an agreement with the U.S. and abide by its terms, that is no guarantee that the U.S. won’t turn around in a few years and seek to attack or depose them. The Libyan government ended its international pariah status in exchange for ending its unconventional weapons programs and halting its support for terrorism in 2003, but the U.S. intervened to support regime change in Libya in 2011 and helped to destroy the government. Iran was fully complying with the nuclear deal for years only to be rewarded with severe U.S. economic warfare after Trump reneged on the agreement.  

Iran has been under sanctions for a longer period since it agreed to the nuclear deal than it was able to enjoy sanctions relief because of the deal. Republican hawks are already promising that any agreement that Iran makes with the Biden administration and the other major powers will be torn up by the next administration. Even allowing for demagogic posturing and hyperbole, the Iranian government has to assume that will happen and plan accordingly. 

U.S. diplomacy also suffers from an overreliance on threats of military action. There has been a flurry of articles and letters in the last few months urging the Biden administration to make threats of military action against Iran more “credible,” as if our government’s willingness to resort to force were somehow seriously in doubt. For example, just last week the Washington Institute of Near East Policy (WINEP) released a letter signed by several high-profile former officials, including Leon Panetta, Michele Flournoy, and David Petraeus, urging Biden to “restore Iran’s fear” of military attack. The idea that the U.S. needs to instill fear to make progress in the talks gets everything backwards. The Iranian government doesn’t need convincing that the U.S. might attack them. The Iranian leadership needs credible assurances that the U.S. can deliver lasting sanctions relief, because without that assurance they have no incentive to give up the leverage they have built up over the last few years. 

The U.S. overuse of sanctions serves to handcuff diplomacy and makes it very difficult for a president to use the offer of sanctions relief to get concessions in return. When a targeted state is sanctioned on a wide range of issues, it has fewer incentives to make concessions on any one issue because the practical benefit of having only some sanctions lifted is limited. Because it is politically easy to impose sanctions and it is politically toxic to try lifting them, the promised relief is overshadowed by additional coercive measures. 

Congress’ enthusiasm for sanctions frequently boxes presidents in and gives them very little flexibility in dealing with targeted states. Even when the president can waive sanctions, as Biden did in the case of Nord Stream 2, the backlash from hawks can be politically costly and can undermine U.S. diplomacy in other ways. Ted Cruz’s outrageous and unprecedented blanket hold on State Department nominees has created a huge backlog in the confirmation process for department officials and ambassadors, and all of that has been to protest one decision against imposing sanctions on an ally. 

The U.S. hardly ever negotiates treaties anymore, but it will cast aside successful arms control treaties over the smallest violation or suspicion of violation. Trump pulled the United States out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and Open Skies, ostensibly over Russian violations, but scrapping the INF Treaty let Russia off the hook and freed them to deploy more of the missiles that had been prohibited by it. Being able to monitor Russian troop movements more closely on short notice shows the benefit that the U.S. would have had from Open Skies if U.S. withdrawal had not effectively killed it.  

Full compliance by the other government is no protection against U.S. withdrawal from a treaty. Washington withdrew from the ABM Treaty twenty years ago in the name of expanding missile defenses. That decision sped up the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations at the beginning of the century and eventually led to the destabilizing arms racing that we are seeing now. Arms control treaties that have worked as intended have a remarkably narrow base of support today. While Biden kept it alive and extended it for five more years, New START was almost allowed to collapse despite the fact that Russia has verifiably complied with its requirements for the last decade. When one of our major parties is ideologically hostile to arms control agreements, it is hard to see how the U.S. will be able to negotiate and ratify future treaties with Russia or China.

Another reason why Washington doesn’t have more success in its diplomatic efforts is that our political culture doesn’t place much value on diplomacy or the people tasked with carrying it out. Diplomatic compromise is often treated as being synonymous with weakness, and virtually every significant diplomatic initiative with a rival or pariah state is denounced as appeasement before it even begins. 

Hawks attack even the most minor, necessary concessions as a betrayal of national security. The seesaw of partisan control in Washington means that agreements negotiated by a president from one party rarely survive long when the other party comes to power, and the Senate’s inability to ratify new treaties ensures that presidents have to settle for whatever short-term agreements they can get.

The United States still has a stifling bipartisan foreign policy consensus on military intervention and sanctions, but when it comes to negotiating a compromise that benefits all parties it is usually met with bitter partisan and ideological factionalism. This applies to political agreements and treaties alike. No negotiated agreement is safe from being scuttled when diplomacy itself is held in such low regard by many political leaders and policymakers. 

Washington policymakers often worry about how the U.S. can verify compliance by other governments, but the bigger problem at the moment is that our government can’t be trusted to do what it says it will do for more than a few years at a time. Why should any government take the political risk and make major concessions in negotiations with the U.S. when it is practically guaranteed that its position will change after the next presidential election? If the U.S. cannot relearn how to keep its diplomatic commitments, American diplomacy will continue to atrophy to the detriment of national interests and international peace and security.

Shutterstock/Brian A. Jackson
Analysis | Washington Politics
Chris Murphy Ben Cardin

Photo Credit: viewimage and lev radin via shutterstock.com

Senate has two days to right Menendez’s wrongs on Egypt

QiOSK

Time is ticking if senators want to reinstate a hold on U.S. military aid to Egypt following indictments this week against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is accused of taking bribes in exchange for greasing the skids for Cairo to receive weapons and aid.

On September 22, the Southern District of New York indicted the New Jersey Democrat, his wife Nadine Arslanian Menendez, and three associates on federal corruption charges. Prosecutors alleged that the senator accepted bribes, including gold bars, stacks of cash, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible, using his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to benefit the government of Egypt. The FBI is now investigating Egyptian intelligence’s possible role.

keep readingShow less
||
Diplomacy Watch: A peace summit without Russia
Diplomacy Watch: Laying the groundwork for a peace deal in Ukraine

Diplomacy Watch: Domestic politics continue to challenge Ukraine’s allies

QiOSK

Last week’s edition of Diplomacy Watch focused on how politics in Poland and Slovakia were threatening Western unity over Ukraine. A spat between Warsaw and Kyiv over grain imports led Polish President Andrzej Duda to compare Ukraine to a “drowning person … capable of pulling you down to the depths ,” while upcoming elections in Slovakia could bring to power a new leader who has pledged to halt weapons sales to Ukraine.

As Connor Echols wrote last week, “the West will soon face far greater challenges in maintaining unity on Ukraine than at any time since the war began.”

keep readingShow less
What the GOP candidates said about Ukraine in 4:39 minutes

What the GOP candidates said about Ukraine in 4:39 minutes

QiOSK

The second Republican debate last night hosted by Fox news was marked by a lot of acrimony, interruptions, personal insults and jokes that didn't quite land, like Chris Christie calling an (absent) Donald Trump, "Donald Duck," and Mike Pence saying he's "slept with a teacher for 30 years" (his wife).

What it did not feature was an informed exchange on the land war in Europe that the United States is heavily invested in, to the tune of $113 billon dollars and counting, not to mention precious weapons, trainers, intelligence and political capital. Out of the tortuous two hours of the debate — which included of course, minutes-long commercials and a "game" at the end that they all refused to play — Ukraine was afforded all but 4 minutes and 39 seconds. This, before the rancor moved on — not to China, though that country took a beating throughout the evening — but to militarizing the border and sending special forces into Mexico to take out cartel-terrorists who are working with the Chinese.

keep readingShow less

Ukraine War Crisis

Latest