THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010 DAVID IGNATIUS


Obama needs a Machiavelli


he two modern American mas- ters of Machiavellian diplomacy, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both practiced their art at times comparable to this one — with the country suffering from reversals in war and loss of confidence in its politi- cal leadership. So it’s an interesting thought exer- cise to imagine how a national security adviser with the secretive, back- channel style of a Kissinger or Brzezin- ski would play America’s diplomatic hand now. Mind you, I’m not suggest- ing what policies these two would ac- tually recommend today but, instead, what a more creative diplomatic ap- proach might produce in a time of dif- ficulty.


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When I say “creative,” what I partly mean is devious. Both Kissinger and Brzezinski did not always state pub- licly what they were doing in private. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Kissin- ger opened a secret intelligence chan- nel to the Palestine Liberation Organi- zation, at the very time he was brand- ing it a terrorist group and refusing open recognition. Similar secret con- versations surrounded the entire Arab-Israeli peace process. Not all of Kissinger’s machinations were successful: He accepted a Syrian intervention in the Lebanese civil war in 1976 to aid the Christians against the PLO that arguably still causes trou- ble. But he created space and options for an America that had otherwise been weakened by the Vietnam War. Brzezinski, too, was adept at con- cealing his hand and adding heft to the drifting presidency of Jimmy Carter. When an emboldened Soviet Union marched into Afghanistan, Brzezinski crafted a secret intelligence alliance with China and Pakistan to check the Soviets. Here, too, we are still living with some of the negatives. But it must be said, the Soviet Union is no more. Let’s look at how this approach might be applied today in four prob- lem areas: Iraq, the Arab-Israeli mess, the India-Pakistan standoff and the endgame in Afghanistan. Again, I want to stress that these gambits are in the style of the venerable strategists but not necessarily what they would advocate now. Iraq is a place where America, hav- ing fought a messy war, must shape political outcomes with minimal use of force. It’s a place where you have to hope the CIA has been busy making friends and contacts, and where a strong U.S. ambassador will be essen- tial. It’s good that Vice President Biden spent the Fourth of July weekend there, urging formation of a new gov- ernment. He met all the right parties; now, he and the new ambassador, Jim Jeffrey, will need to pull those strings hard. The Palestinian problem is one on which I hope the United States is en- gaging in some secret diplomatic con- tacts — with Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Author- ity and, yes, even Hamas. When the open road seems blocked, that’s a time to experiment with new passages. His- tory tells us that when America makes secret contact with rejectionist groups, they split; that’s what hap- pened with the PLO in 1974. The India-Pakistan stalemate has been in the “too hard” box for years. But as with negotiations in the 1990s between Britain and the Irish Repub- lican Army over Northern Ireland, America can subtly encourage greater contact between two parties — and fa- cilitate the exchanges of counterter- rorism intelligence and military infor- mation that will be essential in build- ing confidence. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants a settlement; the United States must encourage re- ciprocal moves by Pakistan that make both countries safer. Finally, there is the sublime stra- tegic challenge of Afghanistan. The ar- rival of Gen. David Petraeus is a useful “X-factor” there. He will give the Tali- ban second thoughts about the other- wise shaky proposition that the United States and its allies can reverse the en- emy’s momentum on the battlefield. But the real test will be in back- channel contacts with reconcilable ad- versaries — something at which Pe- traeus was adept in Iraq. The Obama administration needs to decide what kind of outcome it wants and then use every element of power — overt and covert, military and diplomatic — to achieve it. Secret contacts with ele- ments of the Taliban will be especially useful if they can gradually build con- fidence about what each side can deliver. Perhaps all of these diplomatic cork-


screws are already at work. It’s in the nature of successful secret diplomacy that you don’t know about it until it’s over — and maybe not even then. But if ever there were a moment when a battle-fatigued United States needs a wily strategist to explore options, this is it. Just who could play this role among the administration’s current cast of characters isn’t obvious, and that’s a problem President Obama should address.


davidignatius@washpost.com E.J. DIONNE JR. Let Chairman Mike have his say


Committee chairman is a wonderful distraction, a constant source of gaffes, laughs, clarifications and denials. But Steele recently scored a victory


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of sorts, even though you wouldn’t know it from the coverage: His com- ments on Afghanistan got Democrats to recite GOP talking points from the Bush era. Of course, those can be turned against anyone in either party who dares to question the direction of the war. The most incendiary words came from the indefatigable Brad Wood- house, the Democratic National Com- mittee spokesman, who accused Steele of “betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan.” Woodhouse added: “It’s simply un- conscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our sup- port and encouragement.” I have some empathy for Wood- house, who must be weary of dealing with the other side’s demagoguery day after day. He probably couldn’t resist giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine. But this is dangerous stuff in a democracy and particularly perilous from a party that, less than two years ago, rightly insisted it could oppose the Bush administration’s foreign policy on thoroughly patriotic grounds. And Woodhouse’s statement came


shortly after 60 percent of House Dem- ocrats — 153 in all — voted for a troop- withdrawal amendment sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and two of his colleagues. It would have re- quired President Obama to present a plan by April for the “safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment” of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The amendment, which drew sup-


port from nine Republicans, would also have allowed for a vote in Con- gress to stop additional war funding if withdrawal does not start by next July, when the administration has said it will begin reducing forces in Afghani- stan. It’s thus not surprising that one per- son who took issue with Democrats who piled on Steele was McGovern. “The reaction to Steele from some Democrats sounded like Dick Cheney,” he told me. “Democrats need to under- stand that our base is increasingly un- comfortable with this war.” Now the truth is that Steele’s state- ment on Afghanistan at a party fund-


DAVID S. BRODER


n June 30, the Congressional Budget Office issued its long-term outlook, predicting that deficits would come down for the next few years as the need for counter-recession spend- ing eased and revenue improved. But then, it warned, “unsustainable” red ink would flow again, creating debts not seen since World War II. The next day the House of Representa- tives passed a one-year budget resolu- tion rather than the normal blueprint committing the government to a fiscal plan of at least five years. For all the publicity that goes to ear- marks and other spending gimmicks, this was a far worse dereliction of duty. And the cynicism of the maneuver just made it worse.


One of the casualties of this maneuver is the partnership that developed be- tween Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the committee’s rank- ing Republican. In January, they were co-sponsors of the legislation to create a National Commission on Fiscal Respon- sibility and Reform, whose recommen- dations for closing the budget gap would be guaranteed an up-or-down vote in Congress. The commission legislation was de-


feated in February when seven Repub- lican senators who had initially co- sponsored it defected on the roll call. At that point, President Obama stepped in


A dereliction of fiscal duty O


t’s easy to understand why Demo- crats want Michael Steele to stay in the news. The Republican National


KLMNO


K R


A15 GEORGE F. WILL


Another round of Prohibition


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he evening of Jan. 16, 1920, hours before Prohibition descended on America, while the young assistant


secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, drank champagne in Washington with other members of Harvard’s Class of 1904, evangelist Billy Sunday preached to 10,000 celebrants in Norfolk : “The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. . . .” Not exactly. Daniel Okrent’s darkly hilarious “Last


Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” re- counts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right — and condemned the nation’s fifth-largest industry — in or- der to make the nation more heavenly. Then all hell broke loose. Now that ambi- tious government is again hell-bent on improving Americans — from how they use salt to what light bulbs they use — Ok- rent’s book is a timely tutorial on the law of unintended consequences. The ship that carried John Winthrop to


CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.


raiser in Connecticut was something of a mess. Even McGovern said that “Steele was wrong” for asserting that “this was a war of Obama’s choosing.” After all, the war in Afghanistan began under President George W. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with over- whelming support from both parties. And the situation deteriorated badly on Bush’s watch. Yet Steele’s point — that Obama had criticized the Iraq war “while saying the battle really should [be] in Afghan- istan” — was accurate enough. Obama had a choice, and he chose to escalate. And in asserting that “the one thing you don’t do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan” and that “everyone who has tried over a thousand years of his- tory has failed,” Steele was simply making arguments that other critics of the Afghanistan war had offered al- ready. It’s fair enough to argue with Steele about all this, and it was honorable for Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Gra- ham, the premier Republican hawks, to take issue with their party chair, giv- en that Obama’s approach is largely to their liking. Personally, I’m still hoping Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan will work. But


it is maddening that Congress can ap- propriate $33 billion more for Afghan- istan without anyone asking where the funds will come from even as self- styled deficit hawks insist on blocking money for the unemployed unless it is offset by budget cuts. And McGovern is right that the most disturbing line in the Rolling Stone ar- ticle that got Gen. Stanley McChrystal in trouble was this observation attrib- uted to one of his senior advisers: “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular.”


But the issue here is less about Af- ghanistan than about dissent in time of war. Even if Steele was just popping off, he had a right to offer his opinion without being accused of undermining our troops or “rooting for failure.” Some of our greatest leaders, from


Abraham Lincoln to Robert F. Ken- nedy, courageously stood up against wars in their day. Steele is no Lincoln and he is no Kennedy, but as an Amer- ican, he enjoys the same rights they had. “It is not enough to allow dissent,” RFK said. “We must demand it.” If members of Kennedy’s party don’t re- member this, who will? ejdionne@washpost.com


Massachusetts in 1630 also carried, Ok- rent reports, 10,000 gallons of wine and three times more beer than water. John Adams’s morning eye-opener was a tan- kard of hard cider; James Madison drank a pint of whiskey daily; by 1830, adult per capita consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of 80-proof liquor annually. Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women’s Prohibi- tion sentiments fueled the movement for women’s rights — rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to di- vorce those husbands; to vote for politi- cians who would close saloons. So the United States Brewers’ Association offi- cially opposed women’s suffrage. Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syn- dicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a rede- fined role for the federal government and a privacy right — the “right to be let alone” — that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.


and rescued the idea, creating the com- mission by executive order. Now, in a stunning reversal, the Dem-


ocrats are using the existence of the commission to justify their abandon- ment of their long-term budget respon- sibilities. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brazenly hailed the one-year substitute as “another key step . . . in restoring fis- cal responsibility.” Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the House budget com- mittee chairman, more modestly termed it “the functional equivalent of a tradi- tional budget resolution.” “These are disciplines for the short


run,” Spratt said, “while the fiscal com- mission works out recommendations for the longer run.” The Republicans, who had been right- ly roasted for abandoning Conrad and Gregg on the vote to create the commis- sion, were not about to let the Demo- crats pull off this bait-and-switch. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republican on Spratt’s committee, said in a state- ment: “This is not a budget. The meas- ure fails to meet the most basic, com- monly understood objectives of any budget. It does not set congressional pri- orities; it does not align overall spend- ing, tax, deficit and debt levels; and it does nothing to address the runaway spending of federal entitlement pro- grams.”


When I reached Gregg by phone, he said the commission — on which both he and Ryan serve and to which the Demo-


crats were ostensibly deferring — “re- mains a hope-and-prayer exercise.” Its work has barely begun, and it is not due to report until December. Gregg speculated that the reason the Democrats did not pass a real budget resolution is because “they do not want to let the American people see how bad the five-year numbers really are.” My next call was to Conrad, and I felt nothing but pity for him. He had passed a credible five-year budget through his committee but deferred to the leader- ship and did not call it up for a floor vote. Now, he said, with the House’s ac- tion, “it makes no sense. There’s nothing for it to link up to.” The terrible irony in all this? More and more people are seeing that what this agonizing situation requires is a limited and temporary measure to pump more life into the economy and create jobs, along with a serious commitment to im- pose real spending discipline and hold down deficits in the long term — exactly what a five-year budget resolution could provide. Gregg and Conrad agree that such a resolution could “unleash huge energy back into the economy,” because corpo- rations are hoarding $1.8 trillion in their treasuries and consumers are sitting on billions more.


Of all the times for Congress to aban- don its responsibility for long-term fis- cal planning, this is the worst. davidbroder@washpost.com


THE PLUM LINE Excerpts from Greg Sargent’s blog on domestic politics and debate on the Hill: voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line


John Boehner’s America


Since House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) accused Democrats last week of “snuffing out the America that I grew up in,” people across the Web have attempted to define the America of Boehner’s youth. My contribution? Let’s check out the Republican Party platforms of Boehner’s childhood and formative years, which re- veal a GOP very different from the party Boehner helps to lead today. Boehner was born in 1949. In 1956, he was 7; in 1960 he was 11; and in 1964 he was 15. The Republican Party platform of 1956 called for “broadened coverage in un- employment insurance” and “better health protection for all our people.” It


vowed to “continue vigorously to support the United Nations.” It pledged support for “progressive pro-


grams” to expand workers’ rights. It vowed an immigration policy that en- sured that the United States would remain a “haven for oppressed peoples.” The Republican Party platform of 1960 hailed the GOP’s success in extending un- employment insurance. The GOP counted as an achievement its efforts to raise the federal minimum wage. The platform hailed expanded Social


Security coverage and pledged an aggres- sive federal effort to help those struggling with health-care costs (in those pre-Medi- care days, the primary focus was the elder- ly). It pledged to continue robust federal intervention to preserve the environment. The outlines of today’s GOP are more visible in the Republican Party platform of 1964, which makes sense, since it was crafted after Lyndon Johnson assumed


the presidency. The platform decried Johnson’s efforts to expand the federal government and called for more market- based solutions to poverty. Johnson’s War on Poverty and the pas-


sage of civil rights legislation, of course, led to GOP control of the South and start- ed the party down the road toward the conservatism we associate with it today. It’s also true that in some respects the America Boehner grew up in was a far more right-wing country, particularly in what constituted acceptable treatment of minorities, gays and women. But as liberal journalist Mike Tomasky notes, the Republican Party of Boehner’s youth was fairly moderate and embraced massive federal spending on public works projects — a far cry from today’s GOP. Contemporary conservatism was merely a gleam in Bill Buckley’s eye. If this is what Boehner is nostalgic for, that would be news indeed.


By 1900, per capita consumption of al- cohol was similar to today’s, but mere temperance was insufficient for the likes of Carry Nation. She was “six feet tall, with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden, and the persistence of a toothache,” and she wanted Prohibition. It was produced by the sophisticated te- nacity of the Anti-Saloon League, which at its peak was spending the equivalent of 50 million of today’s dollars annually. Ok- rent calls it “the mightiest pressure group in the nation’s history.” It even prevented redistricting after the 1920 Census, the first census to reveal that America’s urban —and most wet — population was a ma- jority. Before the 18th Amendment could


make drink illegal, the 16th Amendment had to make the income tax legal. It was needed because by 1910 alcohol taxes were 30 percent of federal revenue. Workmen’s compensation laws gave employers an interest in abstemious workers. Writes Okrent, Asa Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Co., saw “oppor- tunity on the other side of the dry rain- bow.” World War I anti-German fever fueled the desire to punish brewers with names such as Busch, Pabst, Blatz and Schlitz. And President Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism became a wartime justifi- cation for what Okrent calls “the federal government’s sudden leap into countless aspects of American life,” including drink. And so Prohibition came. Sort of.


Briefly. After the first few years, alcohol con- sumption dropped only 30 percent. Soon smugglers were outrunning the Coast Guard ships in advanced speedboats, and courts inundated by violations of Prohibi- tion began to resort to plea bargains to speed “enforcement” of laws so unen- forceable that Detroit became known as the City on a Still. Prohibition agents cherished $1,800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them. Fiorello La Guardia taunted the government that it would need another “150,000 agents to watch the first 150,000.” Exemptions from Prohibition for church wine and medicinal alcohol became ludicrously large — and lucrative —loopholes. After 13 years, Prohibition, by then re- duced to an alliance between evangelical Christians and criminals, was washed away by “social nullification” — a tide of alcohol — and by the exertions of wealthy people, such as Pierre S. du Pont, who hoped that the return of liquor taxes would be accompanied by lower income taxes. (They were.) Ex-bootleggers found new business op-


portunities in the southern Nevada des- ert. And in the Second World War, draft boards exempted brewery workers as es- sential to the war effort. The many lessons of Okrent’s story in-


clude: In the fight between law and appe- tite, bet on appetite. And: Americans then were, and let us hope still are, magnif- icently ungovernable by elected nuisances.


georgewill@washpost.com on washingtonpost.com/opinions


The Brookings Institution’s Steven Pifer and Strobe Talbott


respond to Mitt Romney’s July 6 op-ed on the New START treaty, arguing for Senate ratification.


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