Talk is cheap

Calls for negotiated solutions are all the rage.  Secretary of State Kerry wants one in Syria.  The Washington Post thinks one is possible in Bahrain.  Everyone wants one for Iran.  Despite several years of failure, many are still hoping for negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Ditto Israel/Palestine.  Asia needs them for its maritime issues.

It is a good time to remember the classic requirement for successful negotiations:  “ripeness,” defined as a mutually hurting stalemate in which both parties come to the conclusion that they cannot gain without negotiations and may well lose.  I might hope this condition is close to being met in Syria and Bahrain, but neither President Asad nor the Al Khalifa monarchy seems fully convinced, partly because Iran and Saudi Arabia are respectively providing unqualified support to the regimes under fire.  Ripeness may well require greater external pressure:  from Russia in the case of Syria and from the United States in the case of Bahrain, which hosts the US Fifth Fleet.

It is difficult to tell where things stand in the Afghanistan negotiations.  While the Taliban seem uninterested, Pakistan appears readier than at times in the past.  The Americans are committed to getting out of the fight by the end of 2014.  President Karzai is anxious for his security forces to take over primary responsibility sooner rather than later.  But are they capable of doing so, and what kind of deal are the Afghans likely to cut as the Americans leave?

Israel and Palestine have one way or another been negotiating and fighting on and off since before 1948.  Objectively, there would appear to be a mutually hurting stalemate, but neither side sees it that way.  Israel has the advantage of vast military superiority, which it has repeatedly used as an alternative to negotiation to get its way in the West Bank and Gaza.  A settlement might end that option.  The Palestinians have used asymmetric means (terrorism, rocket fire, acceptance at the UN as a non-member state, boycott) to counter and gain they regard as a viable state.

The Iran nuclear negotiations are critical, as their failure could lead not just to an American strike but also to Iranian retaliation around the world and a requirement to continue military action as Tehran rebuilds its nuclear program.  The United States is trying to bring about ripeness by ratcheting up sanctions pressure on Tehran, which fears that giving up its nuclear program will put the regime at risk.  It is not clear that the US is prepared to strike a bargain that ensures regime survival in exchange for limits on the nuclear program.  We may know  more after the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China + Germany) meet with Iran February 26 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Asia’s conflicts have only rarely come to actual violence.  China, Korea (North and South), Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and India are sparring over trade routes, islands, resources and ultimately hegemony.   This risks arousing nationalist sentiments that will be hard to control, driving countries that have a good deal to gain from keeping the peace in some of the world’s fastest growing economies into wars that the regimes involved will find it difficult to back away from.  Asia lacks an over-arching security structure like those in Europe (NATO, OSCE, G8, Council of Europe, etc) and has long depended on the US as a balancing force to preserve the peace.  This has been a successful approach since the 1980s, but the economic rise of China has put its future in doubt, even with the Obama Administration’s much-vaunted pivot to Asia.

This is a world that really does need diplomacy.  None of the current negotiations seem destined for success, though all have some at least small probability of positive outcomes.  Talk really is cheap.  I don’t remember anyone complaining that we had spent too much money on it, though some would argue that delay associated with negotiations has sometimes been costly.  The French would say that about their recent adventure in Mali.

But war is extraordinarily expensive.  Hastening to it is more often than not unwise.  That is part of what put the United States into deep economic difficulty since 2003.  If we want to conserve our strength for an uncertain future, we need to give talk its due.