The One-Two Punch
The Bush administration is hoping that a rare one-two punch of U.S. diplomacy—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates—will add force to talks with Iraq’s neighbors about the war and Iran’s influence in the Mideast.
Rice and Gates traveled to this Dead Sea resort to meet Tuesday with Arab leaders as part of an 11th-hour effort to get their assistance in helping Iraq’s fledgling government survive sectarian strife and political infighting. At the same time, the U.S. officials want Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to use financial pressure on Iran as a way of discouraging its nuclear ambitions.
For their part, Arab countries may be worried that escalating opposition in the U.S. to the war in Iraq may signal a declining commitment to security in the region.
Hours before Rice and Gates embarked on their diplomatic mission, the Bush administration announced Monday a proposed U.S. arms package to Arab nations worth more than $20 billion. The sophisticated weaponry, according to U.S. officials, would strengthen relatively moderate Persian Gulf regimes against extremist regimes and ideologies, chief among them Iran.
Rice said the arms deal, along with an aid package for Israel and Egypt, was not a trade-off for assistance but the fruit of years of partnership and a recognition of the region’s strategic importance. Although she did not mention oil, that is the region’s chief export and the origin of the historical U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, one of the recipients of the U.S. arms initiative.
“We have the same goals in this region concerning security and stability,” Rice said. “There isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to … U.S. interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see.”
Gates said key goals for the trip included reaffirming that the United States will continue to have a strong military presence in the region. Although a buildup in U.S. forces has raised the number of troops in Iraq to nearly 160,000, pressure is mounting in the U.S. for redeploying troops if the political and security situation there doesn’t improve by fall.
U.S. officials want “to reassure all of the countries that the policies that the president pursues in Iraq have had and will continue to have regional stability and security as a very high priority,” Gates said.
Congress must approve the arms deal. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Monday that the weapons should be defensive and added that other nations would step in to sell arms in the region if the U.S. did not.
Specific figures for Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were not final and will be settled in the coming weeks, the State Department said.
The new sales to Arab countries will be balanced with a more than 25 percent increase in military aid to Israel over the next 10 years so it can hold its military edge over neighbors with which it has no peace deal.
(AP)
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I can’t help but feel this is going to come back and bite us in the ass later on down the road.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:58 amCondi doesn’t appear to be doing the greatest job at State. We promised the Turks we would take care of PKK terrorists coming across their border from Iraq, and didn’t, and now the Turk people (they are a member of NATO) have gone from being pro-US to virrulently anti-US. Our state dept. has a relatively new policy of meeting with dissidents and political prisoners, yet we haven’t followed through. We give billions to Fatah, for short term gain, but what about the long run? Last summer, she pressured the capitulation of Israel in their little war with Hezbollah (albeit Israel still kicked their butts). We haven’t been even making a show of supporting Taiwan, heretofore a staunch ally, leaving them twisting in the wind against mainland China’s saber rattling. Will these weapons, a short run hedge against Iran, turn into a long term problem, used against Israel? Condi needs to get busy.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:09 amFor anyone to be effective at State they must clean house. Bring in some recent veterans of combat with jihadis and people with an America First attitude. The old bowin’ and scrapin’ ass kissin’ diplomatic corps is passe and State is full of that type now. Plus the Clintonistas who are there to undermine President Bush at any cost to American interests should just die. Remember the lying skunk Joe Wilson?
July 31st, 2007 at 7:38 pmIt amazes me how soon we forget the opening battleground of the war on terror - Afghanistan. Did we not give the muhajadeen every toy they wanted to kick Russian ass, and now, years later the muhajadeen have morphed into Al Queda, the Taliban and various other problems world-wide. So, WTF??? Are we going to do this all over again so that our next generation of America’s finest will have to go and die in the desert again, fighting against enemies that short-sighted, appeasement oriented foreign policy armed to the teeth??
July 31st, 2007 at 9:42 pmCondi and Gates need to pay more attention to history, and less to the “put our ass in a sling for the enemy” policy wonks in the State Department - many of whom are Clinton liberal hold-overs who should have been purged by Bush long ago.