The Barack Obama-Tom Cotton debate—one in which the neophyte Cotton is a winner already by the assumption of symmetry—is a classic one. It pits international diplomacy often seen as naïveté against unilateral machismo and bellicosity often seen as warmongering.
Politicians have engaged in versions of this square-off for centuries, with both sides being proved right from time to time.
For history, you’d rather be Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain. But I’d rather be Colin Powell than Dick Cheney. I’d rather be anybody than Dick Cheney.
So let’s have the debate. Here is the topic: How should America deal with Iran, a militant, indeed terrorist nation that says “death to America” and enriches uranium toward some uncertain prospect of possessing nuclear weapons at great risk to us and the world and greater risk to Israel and its region?
Obama says the wise course is to talk with Iran if at all possible about impairing its ability to create nuclear weaponry.
He says we spend $600 billion a year for a military force and Iran spends $30 billion. He says we need not be afraid. He says essentially that a great nation never stands as tall as when it stoops to talk with a smaller hostile one it could destroy.
He says we should tell the Iranians that we are not bothered by their hate, but interested in whether they might like relief from some of these economic sanctions in exchange for our being able to verify they aren’t building nuclear weapons.
The president says simply imposing economic sanctions and resisting conversation combine to give America and the world no chance to know what Iran is developing and thus no means of slowing that process. He says the dark is no good place to be when nuclear weapons in a militant nation are at issue.
He says direct military hostilities against Iran, always a possibility as unavoidable, must exist as a last resort because of the grave peril of such high-level warfare in the uncommonly incendiary region at an uncommonly unstable time.
He endorses the tentative agreement—subject to actual signatures on an ambitious real deal by June—in which the United States and five other leading countries would join Iran in a plan to limit Iran’s nuclear capability. Presumably, Iran would be subject to international inspections. Parties would establish binding mediation in disputes over what and when we can and cannot inspect. We could ease economic sanctions against Iran only provided we were satisfied the terms of the deal were being met.
The idea is to set up a system by which Iran would be at least a year from developing a nuclear weapon should the agreement break down.
Obama says engagement with hostile nations in pursuit of imperfect mutual understandings is his doctrine and a better goal than alienation and isolation.
He says he would never do anything to jeopardize Israel.
He says Congress has the perfect right to debate and disagree, but that 47 senators led by Cotton should never have taken the unprecedented action of trying to undermine his diplomacy by sending that open letter to Iran urging it not to deal with him.
He says sanctions may be imposed and withdrawn by the perfectly legal and appropriate executive actions of his Treasury Department. He says Congress may disagree with some sort of majority statement, but should not presume actually to interfere to stop his carrying out his executive responsibility to conduct foreign relations.
Cotton’s position has the advantage of taking less space to relate, of simplicity rather than nuance, and of saying to hell with people who say death to us.
He says there is no reason to talk to a nation you can’t trust.
He says there is no reason to welcome terrorists into the international community and no good reason to permit Iran to develop nuclear power in any way, as this agreement would allow.
He says the purpose of sanctions is not to go hat-in-hand to an evil enemy and ask nicely if the evil enemy would like to have the sanctions removed in exchange for doing us a kind favor and not killing us.
Cotton says the purpose of sanctions is to strangle the bad guys until they plead for relief on our terms—our victorious terms, not negotiated ones.
Cotton says you don’t apologize for your greater might. He says you use it, first for leverage, but, yes, directly if necessary. He says you never reveal yourself as averse to using the greater might you possess.
He says a president cannot execute a treaty (which isn’t exactly what Obama is talking about) without running it by the Senate. He says the Senate should have its vigorous debate and do whatever it can to keep Obama from committing us to what looks like a weak and bad deal for us as well as a perilous deal for our good friend Israel, even a double-cross or betrayal.
Who is right in this debate? We’ll have to wait to see what happens to know. History says these things can go either way—that sometimes delicate diplomacy can wisely sustain a peace, but that sometimes bad guys are bad guys and must be vanquished, not engaged.
Generally speaking, accepting that eventual events could make anyone wrong in specific cases, I favor Obama’s engagement over Cotton’s belligerence.
You can always stop talking. You can’t always stop fighting.
The shortest-term question is whether we should support the effort of the Obama administration and the other leading nations to try to put this tentative deal in writing by June. Surely we should. Enough progress has been made to give hope.
After that, the task would be to assess what’s actually in writing and for Congress to debate it—whether the inspection and verification provisions are reliable, whether our withdrawal of sanctions is properly made contingent on that reliability, and how we can get out of the agreement if it turns out Cotton is right that Iran can’t be trusted.
If Congress could convince me at that point that Obama was making a bad deal, then I’d support Congress availing itself of its clearly available authority to pass a law protecting the sanctions from removal—even toughening them—and then fashioning the votes to override Obama’s veto.
But first let’s at least wait to see what this engagement nets us. And let’s try if possible to do so on an objective basis, not a partisan one.
Republicans mustn’t oppose Obama’s success should he actually achieve it.
That’s the most tragic and toxic price of our political polarization and dysfunction—that we can’t accept a good solution for fear of partisan advantage.
Politics no longer stops at water’s edge, or anywhere.
Let’s play out this idea—perhaps hopeful, perhaps naïve—of talking rather than fighting. It all may break down before June anyway.
And that would be no cause for celebration.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.