But to pick up on Todd Gitlin’s entry, the old “hawk” versus “dove” split may gain new relevance in the coming years in one place in particular: Afghanistan. For seven years now, Afghanistan—unlike Iraq—has largely united the left. Almost everyone (Michael Moore excepted) believed the war was justified as self-defense, and applauded the fact that we overthrew a hideous regime, and did so with substantial multilateral support. The fact that Afghanistan offered liberals a chance to attack the Bush administration from the right, and remind Americans that liberalism does not equal pacifism, probably boosted support even higher.

But multilateral wars—even though preferable—are difficult to fight, especially when your allies are even more casualty averse than you are. And Afghanistan is an extraordinarily difficult nation to build. Most liberals genuinely believe that Karzai’s government is superior to the Taliban (something many didn’t believe about Diem versus Ho Chi Minh, for instance), but that may not matter if those liberals—and many other Americans—start to see the war as hopeless. If it starts to look that way—because Pakistan cannot or will not cut the Taliban off, because the Taliban retains significant Pashtun support, because Afghanistan can’t be effectively governed from the center—I suspect more liberals will turn against the effort, not because they considered the initial intervention immoral (like Vietnam or Iraq), but simply because they consider the current effort costly, bloody and futile (like, say, Somalia). Even if the motivation is good, after all, it doesn’t really matter if you can’t succeed. It’s even possible that some conservatives might also turn against the war. The right has never been as invested in Afghanistan as in Iraq, partly because it doesn’t have Iraq’s strategic significance (read: oil). Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, according to some accounts, wanted to skip Afghanistan altogether in fall 2001 and go straight to Baghdad. And the right is almost always less interventionist out of power than in.

Right now on the left (as in the country at large), Afghanistan hawks still clearly hold the upper hand. Even negotiating with the Taliban in hopes of isolating hard liners and Al Qaeda remains a fairly marginal position politically, although it strikes me as having real merit. (Anbar province shows the possibilities). Morally, letting any former Taliban into the government might be repugnant, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves: Some of our allies in Afghanistan aren’t a whole lot better.

But what if the occupation loses some of its multilateral cover? What if we kill more innocent civilians, and prompt riots against the NATO presence? What if polls show that a majority of Afghans want us out? What if even Karzai begins demanding a timetable for withdrawal? The literature on occupation suggests a cruel irony: Occupations have to last a very long time to create stability, but the people being occupied are rarely willing to wait that long, for understandable reasons.

So the question I’d throw out is this: Is there anyone in the group who thinks Obama’s proposal to increase troop deployments to Afghanistan is a mistake, and that maybe we should start moving in the other direction? If not, what would it take to push you to that position? For my own part, I find losing in Afghanistan too morally awful to even contemplate. And I suspect it would also be a serious blow to America’s prestige, and a major victory for Al Qaeda (who were always a bigger factor in Afghanistan than Iraq). Military defeat might also cripple NATO forever. For those reasons, I’m inclined to want to throw everything possible at the problem: troops, money, diplomacy. But ultimately, it does little good to talk about the horrors of failure if you don’t have a reasonable chance of success. I don’t think we’re at that point now, but that may be a statement based more on faith than evidence. And I suspect the issue will become increasingly contentious among liberals—and perhaps all Americans–in the years to come.

That’s why Obama, in his interviews, is not talking about his foreign-policy philosophy. Instead he sounds like a clean-up guy standing in the middle of post-Katrina New Orleans. Whatever works, we’ll do it, he said in his 60 Minutes interview, and we’ll throw out what doesn’t. He doesn’t care if it comes from “FDR or Reagan.” His pragmatism doesn’t mean his world view isn’t philosophically grounded; it’s simply driven by necessity. He knows we can’t AFFORD ideology. When you’re drowning, you don’t have the luxury of conceptual debates about the best lifesaving techniques (though we might end up having a big one in a year or so over redesigning the global financial system).

So I don’t see, for the moment, how we can be having a polite discussion about how to reclaim a “liberal” foreign policy in this environment. Let’s just talk about reclaiming reason, recovering our sense of national self and dignity, and thanking Heaven we survived the asteroid. Let’s just concentrate on getting grounded again. To me, one of the main benefits of Obama’s election is that we won’t have to pretend any more, for the sake of civil conversation in Washington, that invading Iraq was ever a rational act. Forget for the moment whether Bush did it because he was simply a small man trying very hard to be a great man (my theory), or wanted to outdo his father at la the movie “W,” or whatever. The fact remains that it was the act of a fool, and was known to be such at the time by anyone who had a grasp of the strategic realities (a short list that did NOT include Thomas Friedman and most of the rest of the craven media elite who went along with Bush). Bush cited not a single study to justify such a dramatic move at such a critical moment in history, nor did he convene a single strategic meeting to discuss it. Forget the now-established dishonest manipulation of the WMD “evidence.” Did it ever occur to anyone to ask where the conceptual linkage between the rise of al Qaeda and the lack of democracy in the Arab world came from? The answer is: nowhere. No such study exists in the academic or intelligence world. In order to sell this neck-wrenching and nonsensical shift away from the actual culprits of 9/11—al Qaeda–to the American public, Bush then broadened the grim and necessary war against al Qaeda (yes, it was ONLY ever about this one group) in Afghanistan into the strategic fraud we now routinely refer to, the “global war on terror.” And of course he had a lot of help from all those Dems who suffer from national insecurity about national security (whom Peter has written so well about) as well as our unrepentant media elites.

But now President-to-be Obama will dictate a new reality in Washington. I predict you won’t hear a lot about the GWOT. Obama, recall, first came to national attention back in 2002 arguing that Iraq was a “dumb” war unrelated to the real fight against al Qaeda (a fact now borne out by the resurgence of the Taliban in the only battlefront that ever really counted, Afghanistan and Pakistan). That’s the new reality now, and this isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking. Obama, after all, was just a smart guy from Chicago back then. How did he know? Because all the facts were on the table back then for anyone who had the clarity of mind and the simple courage to question Bush. Very few people in Washington did. Anyone who understood the nature of al Qaeda — the fact that it was always an organic outgrowth of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan — and understood how tough a battlefield Afghanistan always was and how critical it was to bring the entire world onto our side against al Qaeda (the reason that 9/11’s silver lining was the grand opportunity to re-take strategic leadership in the world) knew at the time that the turn to Iraq was an act of lunacy. And now even the “media elites” who’ve managed to escape whipping for their strategic blindness will have to quietly acknowledge this reality, even if they still can’t bring themselves to admit their errors.

Now don’t get me wrong: The advent of this new era of pragmatism doesn’t mean we’re going to have to forget about the philosophical debate entirely. But with some exceptions (again, the global financial system needs to be rethought, although all we may need to do is go back to Keynes’ concerns about curbing “hot money” at Bretton Woods—with a strong dose of Stiglitz thrown in) it won’t matter very much. I know some people in this group and elsewhere have been engaged in efforts to reconceive the global system from the ground up. But I think many of these efforts are misplaced because, again, they underestimate how much of an aberration Bush really was. Once you put that into the equation, it becomes less necessary to do the sort of radical reform being discussed.

Look, American leaders have been merging liberalism (or idealism) and realism in practice, some deftly, some not, at least since Woodrow Wilson. The major difference between presidents has been the tilt in emphasis (OK, some, like Warren Harding, were just nitwits). Just cast your mind back six years, remember where we were, at the (relatively quiet) end of the Clinton administration. America presided over a deeply flawed but remarkably functioning global system, one that we ourselves had had the biggest hand in creating. The founding of the U.N. in 1945, with its Security Council designed around Roosevelt’s Four Policemen concept—the U.S., Russia, Britain and China each overseeing stability in their regions—was itself a major attempt to combine idealist international law with realist armed might. The U.N. hasn’t worked as it was designed but it’s not completely broken either, and it’s had many unheralded moments: the East Timor intervention of 1999, the swift creation of an Afghan government at the Bonn conference in November 2001 organized by U.N. senior official Lakhdar Brahimi. (Inside Afghanistan too the world body was crucial, almost single-handedly organizing the loya jirga that set Afghanistan on the course to democracy, and transporting the 1,200 delegates in the largest airlift in U.N. history). The Security Council is still the main source of international legitimacy for intervention of any kind, and despite repeated failures at reforming its musty, World War II-era structure, everyone still wants to get on it. The International Criminal Court is, despite savage U.S. opposition at its formation, about to launch historic prosecutions in Darfur.

Compared to previous periods of imperial rule, this international system was—and still is—unmatched by any other in history in the depth and breadth of its reach, economic and political. No country, not even would-be rogues like Iran and (now) Russia, has found a way around the iron law of this global order: in order to be influential or powerful, a nation must be prosperous; and in order to be prosperous, its economy must take part in the international system (Deng Xiao-ping’s great “black cat-white cat” apercu in the 1970s, as he sought to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union). And if we can keep ourselves from electing another president who came as close to destroying this system as Bush did, I think that Obama and every other president to follow will find himself tinkering with it, not remaking it. His will be a more liberal emphasis, no doubt, than say Reagan or Nixon’s. But it’s still just tinkering. And that will be the extent of your debate.

It’s not as if liberals ever settled the question of just how much saber-rattling is necessary to ensure the trust of the American people regarding issues of national security, but presumably it is a great deal less than it was before approximately 67 percent of the country turned against a war that many liberals felt they had to support, regardless of its merits, to meet exactly these charges.
If the “tough-mindedness” of liberals were the central question facing Obama’s foreign policy, well, … the very notion is a logical non-sequiteur (sp?) because Obama would not be president. He was the more dovish of the two final candidates in the Democratic presidential primary and the more dovish of the two candidates in the general election. Indeed, it was this dovishness vis-à-vis Iraq back when it mattered that powered his candidacy and gave him the daylight he needed to run a credible campaign against Hillary Clinton in the first place. It was her “tough-mindedness” back in 2002 that destroyed her dreams of ever being president.

When the issue was faced during the primaries, Obama staked out the relatively dovish position of being willing to speak to our adversaries without apology. Attacked in typical hawk-dove terms by the Clinton campaign, his campaign offered this, to me, quite refreshing refusal to back down or walk away, but reaffirmed his argument from a position of strength. The “white paper” authored by then adviser Samantha Power read: “American foreign policy is broken. It has been broken by people who supported the Iraq War, opposed talking to our adversaries, failed to finish the job with Al Qaeda, and alienated the world with our belligerence. Yet conventional wisdom holds that people whose experience includes taking these positions are held up as examples of what America needs in times of trouble…. We cannot afford any more of this kind of bankrupt conventional wisdom.”

My point is not to argue on behalf of “dovishness” per se, but on behalf of dealing with things as they are. Iraq and Afghanistan are miserably difficult problems without adding this unnecessary complication to their already fraught and complicated mixes (respectively). What’s more, the most important foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration do not lend themselves to this kind of dichotomy in the first place. Obviously the global economic crisis is first and foremost in this category as is fashioning a serious world-wide response to the threat of climate catastrophe. Worldwide food shortages, millions of displaced refugees, and festering Israeli-Palestinian problem with the added element of a potential Iranian nuclear threat require a degree of global cooperation that is both historically unprecedented but absolutely crucial to our own well-being and future security.

I am not much on democracy promotion given our record and given how difficult it is to do in the first place, and given how ambivalent I am about the true democratic yearnings of the many millions of people in the Arab world who hate us and would like to overthrow their (relatively) US friendly governments and install ones far less friendly. I would like to see us invest in strengthening the peace and security of the millions–or is it hundreds of millions of people—who lack it. Let us help create the conditions for middle-class life in their nations and a far more stable form of democracy will eventually take root, to say nothing of a much healthier global economy.

One area where I would invest heavily, however, is in the education of women. That strikes me as the single best investment a liberal foreign policy can make, and would naturally lead to fewer babies being born and far better conditions for those who are. I think Hillary Clinton is the perfect person for the job of Secretary of State in this respect. And I note that that dustup about talking to our enemies turned out to be not such a big deal after all, since well, she appears ready to take the job working for the guy who insisted on it.

Doubtless, Barack Obama’s foreign policy will also prove too pragmatic, complex or contradictory (choose your adjective) to conform to any simple ideological label. And yet there is no such thing as pure pragmatism either. All presidents, to some degree or another, are informed by ideological traditions: inherited ideas about how the world works and how America can best shape it. This is particularly true today, in an era when foreign policy debate is more ideologically polarized than it was in the early decades of the cold war. Today, according to polls, self-described liberals and conservatives differ as strongly on foreign policy as they do on economics and culture. And among elites, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the mid-twentieth century has long since collapsed, leaving in its wake two distinct groups of foreign policy practitioners, one Democratic and one Republican, one more liberal and the other more conservative.

Thus, it is not that surprising that from his hostility to international law to his lack of faith in both nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence to his openness to preventive war, George W. Bush exhibited deeply rooted conservative ideological tendencies, which cannot be explained simply as a response to the particular circumstances he faced. And similarly, it is reasonable to expect that—to some degree at least–the liberal foreign policy tradition will inform the policies of Barack Obama, a man who has embraced liberal politics more openly than any Democratic President elected since Vietnam.

The topic for this discussion, then, is what a liberal foreign policy would look like in today’s world. Let me open with a few questions. First, must such a foreign policy put international law and international institutions at its core? From Wilson to Roosevelt to Truman, there is no question that the liberal tradition has been more sympathetic to the idea of a world of law—and not merely power—than has the conservative one. And yet, in recent decades, even many liberals have questioned the utility of existing international institutions, as well as the opportunities for building effective new ones. Should Obama make the strengthening of international law and institutions a central focus of his foreign policy, and can it truly be called liberal if he does not?

Second, how central is the promotion of liberal democracy to a liberal foreign policy? Many liberals have criticized the way the Bush administration has tried to promote freedom overseas (with some doubting that it has really tried at all). But even if one grants that democracy promotion mostly requires non-military means, that it should be done multilaterally, that it should address questions of economic justice as well as political freedom, and that it should focus on the rule of law rather than merely elections, the broader question remains: Is democracy promotion really that valuable anyway? Does a liberal foreign policy have to make democracy and human rights central to America’s relationship with, say, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, China or North Korea? Or can liberals comfortably say that questions of domestic, regional and international security take precedence given America’s lack of influence, and perhaps lack of wisdom, when it comes to the internal affairs of other states?

Thirdly, should liberals be unalterably opposed to preventive war as a means of nuclear non-proliferation? If so, does that require liberals to ultimately place their faith in nuclear deterrence, given the difficulty of preventing nuclear proliferation purely through diplomacy and economic pressure? If liberals reject both preventive war and missile defense as unworkable, does that require the left to reconsider its historic distrust of the logic of mutually assured destruction?

Finally, to what extent must a liberal foreign policy be an anti-imperial one? Beyond Iraq and even Afghanistan, the United States maintains a massive military presence across the globe, one that has grown substantially since even the end of the cold war. Are liberalism and military globalism compatible, or should liberals–following George McGovern—call not merely for the US to withdraw from a costly and unpopular war, but to withdraw from its role as policeman of large swaths of the world? This would presumably have the added benefit of reducing the defense budget, something that was central to liberal foreign policy in the post-Vietnam years, but has largely fallen off the liberal agenda in Washington in recent years.

These questions are meant merely to launch the discussion. Feel free to answer some, but not all, to rephrase them as you’d like, or to take aim at the assumptions underlying them. Entries don’t need to be comprehensive. Just bite off whatever piece of this extremely broad topic most interests you, and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks for participating,
Peter Beinart

People here are amazed that 130 million Americans voted on November 4—despite the long lines they saw on television—and impressed that for the first time in US history an African-American was elected president. Egyptians—like many others—have renewed faith in America and all that is possible in the United States. And like others around the globe, they are impressed with president-elect Obama: with his background and personal story, his politics and eloquence and yes, his name. People are hopeful—although realistic—about the possibility of a new and significantly improved relationship with the United States.

How is all of this related to US policy in the Middle East and what the next administration should not do in the region? As Rachel Bronson astutely observed in her November 4 post (“Don’t Linger”), now is not the time to linger or delay engaging the Middle East—with both the regimes and peoples of the region—in a serious and intelligent way. The US cannot afford to squander this historic moment of opportunity.

Governments in the region are looking forward to engaging with a new US administration. For the last two years, in fact, they have been waiting for the Bush administration to come to an end, literally counting the days. Government officials are looking forward to sitting down with American policy makers and exchanging views and ideas; speaking and being listened to—unlike how many here have characterized the Bush administration’s approach to the region: “we know what’s right, so don’t say anything and just listen to us”—an approach characterized by arrogance and ideology.

The people of the Arab world are also hoping for a more respectful and intelligent engagement with the US: an end to unnecessary wars, bellicose language and Islamophobia, a reduction in the US military presence in the region, genuine support for democratic principles and yes, a more even-handed approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As a result, the new administration faces a historic opportunity. It cannot afford to squander the opportunity by dealing only with those issues that seem most pressing (i.e., Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan). The next administration should immediately begin to seriously assess and formulate policy options regarding two other critical issues: the Arab-Israeli conflict and the question of “democratization” and US support for democracy.

There will be many who articulate seemingly compelling reasons why the new US administration should not immediately devote some of its attention and resources to these issues: the more pressing questions of the global financial crisis, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, the need to withdraw responsibly from Iraq, the Iranian nuclear question—not to mention the fact that it is not politically shrewd for a first-term president to invest time and risk political capital dealing with the seemingly intractable issue of Arab-Israeli peace or the thorny question of US support for democracy.

This would be a tremendous mistake (similar to the mistake made by the Bush administration when it put off dealing with these issues because of past failures). The next administration must take advantage of the historic opportunity—of the renewed goodwill toward the United States and the hope that many in this region have toward an Obama presidency. Hope and goodwill could soon dissipate if they are not acted upon. And just as importantly, if the Arab-Israeli conflict and the question of democratization are not addressed immediately they will not simply remain, but will worsen and become more difficult for the new administration and future administrations—not to mention for US national security interests and the people of the region.

The next administration, therefore, must immediately begin to assess and creatively engage with the Arab-Israeli conflict—and it cannot be held hostage by the failed personalities and politics of the region’s 20th century “leaders.” The new administration must formulate new ideas and create new possibilities for resolving this conflict once and for all. The benefits for the US would be tremendous (and would not be confined to the region).

Similarly, the next administration must not put off the question of democracy promotion or prioritize the Arab-Israeli conflict over the issue of US support for democracy. Both issues are mutually reinforcing and must be pursued simultaneously.

Aaron Miller, in a previous post, writes that US policy in the region should be guided by the “diplomatic equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. Above all do no harm but beyond that avoid failure.” This is perfectly correct—but continued US support for Arab authoritarian regimes which relentlessly oppress their peoples does significant harm to US interests and standing in the region (not to mention ordinary people in the region). Formulating new, intelligent effective yet cautious American policies to support democracy in the region will not be easy. The difficulty will be working out a range of policy options that intelligently and effectively support the principles of democracy (e.g., rule of law, accountability, transparency, participation and hopefully good governance) which are realistic and workable—and reflect American principles. This should be the immediate task of the next administration.

There is, of course, much the United States needs to do on that front—prevent the collapse of the PA, work more expeditiously and soberly for Palestinian security reform, prevent Euro-slackening on the isolation of Hamas, cajole Arab states to put meat on the bones of the Arab League summit initiative, address the recrudescence of anti-Jewish incitement, invest seriously in the Blair mission on economic development and institutional reform—all of which can be advanced, at levels below the presidential, even while Israel sorts out its political mess.

Indeed, there is one arena in which Obama may be uniquely placed to make a personal contribution—I believe he has the great opportunity to be a change agent on the normative aspect of peacemaking—i.e., not the important and essential haggling over security and territory but the psychological, emotional, intellectual and ideological contest over legitimacy. I would be delighted to see his unique contribution to peacemaking be to bring about historic Arab acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. If he invests in that effort early and hard, and if that effort bears results, then no Israeli government—Likud, Kadima or Labor—will be able to withhold compromise on the issues most dear to their Arab side.

On Iran, Michael—not surprisingly—argues that the idea of engagement is a fool’s errand. Michael is making a more nuanced “inside-out” argument. The configuration of Iranian politics is such that any engagement with Tehran will result in another hostage crisis of sorts as different factions in Iran use (or abuse) the relationship with the United States to advance their own parochial political interests. Under such circumstances, the policy recommendation is don’t talk to the Iranians until the clerical regime is swept away. I wonder, given our strategic position in the region, whether this is a luxury we can afford.

On the other critical issue in the region, Chris suggests a far quicker timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq than most are expecting. It seems to me, however, that Chris’s contention that real national reconciliation can only happen the sooner the U.S. withdraws is as much an analytic leap as suggesting that the surge has “worked.” Both assertions gloss over the deep fissures within Iraq that could once again undo what U.S. and Iraqi forces have gained. Ultimately, I am sympathetic to a withdrawal and Chris’s recommendation that Washington stop playing favorites—we cannot micromanage Iraq’s political trajectory—but we need to be clear that withdrawal is no panacea and may result in both familiar and new problems in Iraq.

It’s just that a conflict-ending solution (and I choose my words carefully here) that resolves Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and security, is simply not feasible now (or maybe at all). The complexity of the issues (no, Israelis and Palestinians have never been “this close to an agreement”) and the dysfunctional politics on the Palestinian and Israeli side make a conflict-ending agreement which ends all irredenta and resolves all ends all claims is almost unimaginable during the next administration’s tenure. The Palestinian national movement is broken, divided, and dysfunctional. It lacks what any polity that aspires to be credible to its own constituencies or its neighbors must have: a monopoly over the forces of violence within Palestinian society. Without a central authority defined by one gun and one negotiating position, it seems almost impossible to envision a sustainable two-state solution.

At the same time, the Israeli house is also characterized by its own unique dysfunction. A transition is under way from the founding generation, which had produced leaders of moral authority, legitimacy, and competency, to a younger generation of Israeli Prime Ministers who have already demonstrated (Netanyahu, Barak, and Olmert) that they’re not quite up to the job. If this weren’t difficult enough, Israel’s settlement enterprise, hopelessly mixed with the nation’s security concerns, has created an enterprise of systemic control in which Israel still occupies the entire West Bank, Jerusalem, and in the cruelest paradox of all, despite disengagement, still maintains a measure of responsibility for Gaza, now under Hamas’ authority.

Four elements define successful negotiation and a sustainable agreement: leadership, urgency, a doable deal, and an effective third-party mediator. At the moment, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations lack all of them. A new American President, compelled by the importance of Arab-Israeli negotiations, may be tempted to take on this impossible challenge. But given the need to avoid another high wire failure, he may well decide to steer clear of anything on the Israeli-Palestinian track, other than a more energetic management strategy, than his predecessor.

There is a compelling argument, however to be made for the doability of another negotiation, an Israeli-Syrian agreement. Much work has been done here, the gaps are clear, and probably bridgeable. Two states, rather than a state and a dysfunctional national movement would be at the table; limited numbers of Israeli settlers occupy the Golan Heights; and while emotional, there are no “Jerusalem” mega-ton issues that would seemingly blow up this track. In fact, the stability here is quite remarkable. Since June 1, 1974, when Henry Kissinger negotiated the Israeli-Syrian disengagement, that space has probably been the Middle East’s quietest. Finally, for a new president, concerned about America’s regional and strategic position in the Middle East, an Israeli-Syrian deal would offer the following benefits: weakening of Syria’s connection to Hamas and Hezbollah, and over time, if America were patient, and prepared to work with the Europeans and the Arab states to buck up economic and political support for Syria, the weakening of the Syrian-Iranian relationship. In fact, a Syrian-Israeli agreement would pose serious choices for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

None of this will come easy and a new president should not even begin to get into an Israeli-Syrian negotiating process unless he’s prepared to be tough, smart and fair about what it will cost America and what price Israel and Syria must pay to consummate a peace treaty. At all costs, we must avoid the mistakes of the Clinton years in which we didn’t know what was required to close an agreement, weren’t prepared to be honest with the Israelis and the Syrians about what that cost was, let alone how to bring an agreement into fruition. But there is a deal here none-the-less, and as tragic, sad, and as profoundly negative as the consequences of an unresolved Israeli-Palestinian negotiation would be, an Israeli-Syrian agreement would represent a major historic success; and the next administration should go for it.

Today is the 29th Anniversary of the Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Both reformists and hardliners continue to endorse the seizure. Few Americans remember the details of the embassy seizure. On November 1, 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, president Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, met with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi in Algiers to discuss, among other issues, the restoration of the U.S.-Iran relationship. The Shah was gone, but the U.S. government wanted to cement its relationship with the new revolutionary regime. Photos of their handshake appeared in Iranian newspapers the next day. Students, with Ayatollah Ruhollah’s blessing, stormed the embassy the next day, holding 52 American diplomats for 444 days. What went wrong? In many ways, the U.S. diplomats were pawns in a struggle that had less to do with the United States and far more to do with Iran’s domestic politics. The Islamic Revolution was popular: Fully ten percent of the Iranian population took part, not only ayatollahs and seminary students, but also liberals, merchants, students, religious leftists, among others. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a symbol but, for months, it was uncertain he would be able to consolidate the power which history demonstrates he desired. His followers—Students Following the Line of the Imam—used the manufactured embassy crisis to force Bazargan’s resignation and consolidate the revolution. Khomeini came out of the embassy seizure much stronger than his regime went into it. The Carter administration may have sought to engage moderates, but they inadvertently bolstered the hardliners.

The same pattern repeated when, in what became the Iran-Contra Affair, U.S. officials sought to engage revolutionary authorities in Tehran. One week after former U.S. national security advisor Robert McFarlane’s secret trip to Tehran, Mehdi Hashemi, the son-in-law of Khomeini’s deputy Hossein Ali Montazeri, leaked word of secret talks in pamphlets distributed at the University of Tehran. Six months later, Montazeri or his immediate aidesleaked word of McFarlane’s meetings in the pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine Ash Shira‘a. Twenty-two years ago today, former president and Expediency Council chairman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani confirmed the meeting to the international press. Whatever one thinks of Reagan administration actions, the fact remains that Iranian officials betrayed U.S. confidence in secret talks and crippled the remainder of the Reagan presidency. They did so, not out of spite for the United States, but rather for narrow domestic political reasons.

The list continues. After Mohammad Khatami’s so-called Dialogue of Civilizations initiative, radical Iranian vigilantes attacked a busload of American businessmen. They did so to embarrass the Iranian government. The same day Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waved the conditions outlined in her May 31, 2006 speech and sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to Geneva to join nuclear negotiations and offer the Iranian government a generous incentives package, Mohammad Jafar Assadi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces, declared that the concession proved that “America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated.” The problem is not diplomacy. Rather, it is inattention to timing. Poorly calibrated diplomacy can backfire, spark crisis, and benefit hardliners.

One day, it may be appropriate to send U.S. diplomats to Tehran. That day is not now nor will it come until there is broad consensus across the Iranian political spectrum about the direction in which Iranian leaders should take their country. The new U.S. President must think not only of U.S. desires, but also remain cognizant of the complex political scene in Tehran. While Iranians jockey for position ahead of their June 2009 presidential elections, and while vigilante groups continue to flex their muscles, any attempt to send U.S. diplomats prematurely may spark the crisis and test which Senator Joe Biden warned against.

The Middle East is the center of gravity for America’s most immediate and serious challenges. Secretaries of State from James Baker to Madeleine Albright to the foreign policy team of George W. Bush have made the mistake of thinking ‘when they are ready for peace here’s the number for the White House.’ America can’t afford to wait. An immediate presence is necessary. As President Clinton has said, as recorded in Bob Woodward’s new book, even when we just fumble around (i.e., when we engage), things get better. We need to be there, and fast.

This is especially true for an Obama administration. As one very well placed Saudi told me “expectations are unreasonably high… There is no way an Obama administration can live up to expectations. He and his team will be met with very good will. They will need it in this turbulent time. To smoothly manage the transition from expectations to reality, there needs to be a trip out to the region, and fast.

This is also true because of the situation in Iraq. We will need to convey steadiness there. There is some concern that Obama won’t be as invested in Iraq as Bush. There would be good reason to keep Secretary Gates steadily at the helm of Defense while other positions are being filled first. This would convey steadiness and resolve. Another don’t is thus, don’t rashly change teams without being sure who the successors are.

Don’t move too fast on engaging Iran. It is right to do this, and everyone is expecting it, but a new President should make sure all his ducks are in a row before moving in this direction.

Finally, do stop in Israel and then meet with Palestinians. Tzipi Livni can use the visit to bolster her position vis-a-vis Bibi Netanyahu.

So don’t linger in getting to the region, and once out there begin to sow the seeds for engagement with Iran, (already established by Bush) but that can wait for the new dust of an incoming administration to settle. Meeting with existing partners cannot.