YearlyKos Q & A – 8.03.07
Audience member: You called for one of the hopes for Iraq to hold together. Serious people in foreign policy thinking, some of them believe that that’s actually one of the impossibilities at this point in terms of Kurdish independence, Sunni-Shia splits, irreconcilable Sunni Ba’athists who are not going to reconcile to Shia dominance, et cetera, et cetera. In terms of split, three-way split versus holding together and what influence we can have internationally in, with the international community for a settlement in that direction?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, you have to be careful about the analogies with, with the Balkans. This is not quite like the Balkans. And so, I know a lot of people talk about this. They say, ‘Look, you guys separated, you stopped the war in, in Bosnia. You stopped all this. You separated..’ I-it’s a little bit different. It’s different because the Balkans is not the Middle East. These issues are more complicated. there’s oil involved here. There’s different populations. There’s powerful neighbors who are at odds with each other, and the populations aren’t actually separated. So, you’re right in that there are fracture lines that you can see forming. You know the Shias mostly have the South and they want it. And the Kurds mostly have the North, but they don’t have Kirkuk, and they’re prepared to fight Kirkuk. I don’t know if you saw the, the Bob Novak piece on the weekend that said we’re going to run a special operation inside the Kurdish area to eliminate the PKK guerrillas in combination with Turkish Special Forces. And THAT’ll make us really popular there. (laughter) And, and you’ve got Iran, Turkey.. i-i- This may well be what happens, but I would hate to see the United States propose it and have to worry about implementing it, because it’ll be one more recipe for conflict. There’s no simple mechanistic way out of this. This is about human dynamics. It’s about engagement. It’s about changing people’s minds. It’s about Westernization over a period of time, and it can’t be done in isolation in Iraq. You’ve got to reach out to Iraq’s neighbors.
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Tom Rinaldo: My question relates to diplomacy, and I’ve been pleased that Democrats in general, our Presidential candidates, our current Presidential candidates show a greater willingness to proclaim that we should be willing to talk with Iran for instance without preconditions, but what I hear them defining as diplomacy pretty much stops there. It’s like, ‘Sure, I’ll talk to them. I’ll lecture them. I’ll tell them what they have to do. I’ll tell them why they’re wrong and why we’re right. And sure I’ll organize diplomatically. I’ll organize a coalition of people to put pressure on them.’ It’s all the stick….
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GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The third level is the level that I’m talking about. You go in with a statement of principles. You say things like, ‘Borders should be respected.’ ‘People should have rights.’ ‘Nations should choose their own form of government.’ ‘No nation should use force to threaten another nation.’ Say, ‘Which one of these principles do you agree with?’ When they say, ‘We agree with all of them,’ you say, ‘Good. Can we, can we sign a statement and sort of say there’s an agreement in principle here on these things?’ And you work it through statements and agreements of principles into greater community of interests, into organizations that can deal with those specific interests. Is it about border controls? Is it about the movement of agricultural products? Is it about marketing petroleum. Is it about sharing refining assets? Is it about exchanging security? Is it about turning over Al Qaeda members held in Iraq? Is it about releasing reserves that have been held in New York, financial reserves? There’s a multiplicity of issues. There’s a long way we can go down there.
But diplomacy’s not simply going in and threatening them and saying, ‘There, I talked to them. Okay? You guys do this again, you’re dead.’ (laughter) Diplomacy’s not simply going in and say, ‘I’ll give you this. You give me that.’ It’s about changing people’s perception of their future possibilities. Imagine if Iran actually believed it could be accepted as a member of the world community, join the World Trade Organization, receive financial assistance from Western banks, major Western…, be invested in by the American oil industry (laughter), and participate in all the fruits of the economy. Imagine that. The Iranian people would love it. They want blue jeans, pop music, travel and access, just like the people of Eastern Europe. Surely, we can build a dialog which diffuses tensions and may give us an opportunity to find common interests or convergent interests, and surely we have to try to do that before we resort to threats or beyond. And that’s what I mean by diplomacy.
