“The security of US allies is more important than liberal values” - American analysts
The White House needs tough realism, not liberal idealism, if it wants to contain Iran, Russia and China.
Russell A. Berman, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of humanities at Stanford University, and Kieron Skinner, professor of international relations at Pepperdine University, write about this in the National Interest.
The authors emphasize that the Hamas attack allegedly occurred at the direction and with the material support of Iran, the sworn enemy of the United States. In other words, one of America's closest allies was attacked by one of its most brutal adversaries, acting through one of its puppet proxies.
According to R. Berman and K. Skinner, the White House must hold Iran accountable:
“President Biden has decided to declare the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia a 'pariah' over the murder of a journalist. What would his reaction be to the murder of 900 Israelis, as well as hundreds of prisoners and thousands of wounded? The fantasy of Iranian innocence has become obscene."
The authors believe that recognizing the regime in Iran for the enemy that it is (and the Islamic Republic has never claimed to be anything else since the Islamic Revolution of 1979) is only the first step that Washington must take to develop a realistic foreign policy adequate to the historical moment .
“The United States faces an axis of adversaries: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. No matter how different these regimes are, and despite their diverging regional ambitions, they all pursue the goal of reducing the power of the United States and its allies.
Beijing wants to oust Washington from the Western Pacific, while Moscow plans to restore its hegemony in Central Europe and the Black Sea.
Tehran wants to dominate the Middle East and the Muslim world, while Pyongyang's target is Northeast Asia, including South Korea and Japan.
Together they want to push the United States back into the Western Hemisphere. After America's disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia took the next step by invading Ukraine. Iran followed suit with the Hamas attack on Israel. It is not crazy to think that such unanswered aggression will embolden China to take the next step against Taiwan.”
According to American analysts, against all these adversaries, the United States must create a new effective security alliance, which will include both democratic and non-democratic countries:
“Security interests necessarily take precedence over our commitment to the values of democracy. If we lose security, all our values will cease to matter. South Korea, Japan and Australia, our democratic partners, can be linked to Vietnam as a bulwark against China and North Korea. India will play a key role, despite criticism of its Hindu nationalism. Israeli democracy and the Saudi monarchy are critical partners, as is Turkey, a NATO ally. The countries on the eastern front of the European Union understand the threat from Russia and will gladly join. Whether “free riders” from Western Europe will participate in this remains to be seen.”
As R. Berman and K. Skinner suggest, the principle underlying this alliance will be a realistic commitment to security from revisionist powers, rather than the empty idealism of the current Biden administration's "democracy summits":
“Instead of telling the Saudis about liberal reforms of our liking, we should offer security guarantees on the condition that they refrain from partnering with Russia in the oil market and avoid future ties with China. Likewise, we must stop coercing the Israelis into meaningless concessions to Hamas—meaningless because no concession will ever be enough. The Hamas attack and hostage taking show that their real goal is the ethnic cleansing of all Israelis.
Instead, our goal with Israel should be to ensure that it hermetically seals off China from its advanced technology sector. Mutatis mutandis throughout the alliance: in this time of war, security is more important than values.”
The authors are convinced that the terrorist attack on October 7 was the final test for the Joe Biden administration:
“Our enemies are uniting with us, inflicting blow after blow on us: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel. They compete for great power status while Washington falters. <…> Will President Biden go down in history as a weak old man who accepted defeat in Afghanistan, failed to supply Ukraine with weapons quickly enough, and decided to shower the Iranian regime with $6 billion while it represses its own people and wreaks havoc throughout region? Or will Biden dare to become the president who will finally hold the regime in Tehran accountable for its crimes?
According to the authors, this means that Iran should be punished in response to an attack on an American ally. This may be the last moment before it becomes a nuclear power, a potential North Korea, looming over the Middle East and Central Asia. In addition, they are confident that the regime of the Iranian ayatollahs has lost legitimacy in the eyes of its own population.
“But the main reason America must act now against Iran is to send a message to our adversaries that their acts of aggression—whether through proxy or not—come at a cost. In this great power competition, we must play to win,” argue Russell Berman and Kieron Skinner.
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