Saturday, January 23, 2010

CHANGING TIDE

Both in economic and foreign policy, the tide seems to be turning a bit, in so far as the vocal dissatisfaction of people who previously had signed onto Obama's agenda.

Here is a blog entry by Richard Haass that is a signal that people who formally approved of Obama's strategy for foreign diplomacy are now rethinking it:


Here is an excerpts showing his change of opinion:
Diplomacy and negotiations are seen not as favors to bestow but as tools to employ. The other options—using military force against Iranian nuclear facilities or living with an Iranian nuclear bomb—were judged to be tremendously unattractive. And if diplomacy failed, Obama reasoned, it would be easier to build domestic and international support for more robust sanctions. At the time, I agreed with him."
"I've changed my mind. The nuclear talks are going nowhere. The Iranians appear intent on developing the means to produce a nuclear weapon; there is no other explanation for the secret uranium-enrichment facility discovered near the holy city of Qum. Fortunately, their nuclear program appears to have hit some technical snags, which puts off the need to decide whether to launch a preventive strike. Instead we should be focusing on another fact: Iran may be closer to profound political change than at any time since the revolution that ousted the shah 30 years ago.
I have not thoroughly thought through Richard Haass' new opinion of the U.S.'s approach to Iran, but I do find it telling that he has made a very significant shift. I wonder how many others will follow?


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