May 26th, 2010 by Chanan

Ahmet Davutoglu and Celso Amorim, the respective foreign ministers for Turkey and Brazil, took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times today to spell out the rationale for, and importance of, the May 17th nuclear fuel swap deal. In a piece called “Giving Diplomacy a Chance,” the two argue that they are in full support for a nuclear-free world and that any attempt to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state will only be successful through “result-oriented negotiations.” They explain: “There is only one viable solution to disagreements with Iran over its nuclear program, and that is a negotiated diplomatic solution.”

The day prior, however, Thomas Friedman, expressed his utter disgust for this deal perpetuated by two nascent democracies. “Is there anything uglier,” he asks, “than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table?” Friedman continues that while halting Iran’s budding nuclear program should remain a priority for the international community, it mustn’t get in the way of support for the Green Movement, which he believes is “the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades.” He concluded that a democratic Iran with a bomb is a far better scenario than an authoritarian Iran with a bomb.

The Arabist’s Issandr El Amrani finds Friedman to be nothing short of hypocritical. He argues that “the US backs plenty of undemocratic countries for much worse reasons that Brazil’s desire to play a role on the world stage and Turkey doing the same as well as trying to avoid a war on its borders.” He also asserts that he “would rather see a democratic Iran with the bomb rather than an autocratic Iran without it.”

Nonetheless, Foreign Policy’s James Traub thinks the U.S. “overrates the salience of democracy to foreign policy” and that the evolution of independent-minded maturing middle power democracies, such as Turkey and Brazil, is proof that a synonymous type of government won’t necessarily produce synonymous foreign policy interests. This inherent shift away from uni-polarity, writes Graham E. Fuller, should be applauded. “Shouldn’t the world welcome the actions of two significant, responsible, democratic, and rational states to intervene and help check the foolishnesses of decades of US policy?”

Posted in Concert of Democracies, Diplomacy, Iran, Turkey, US foreign policy, Uncategorized |